Plato's Semiotic of Ignorance:

Teaching the Giants to Speak

The significance of the doctrine of Socratic ignorance is commonly regarded as

the call for humility in our posture towards learning. One will never begin her passage

through inquiry if she does not first accept that there is something for her to learn. I will

make the case in this paper that Plato systematically developed the doctrine of ignorance

to at least two further levels of meaning within the dialogues. I will attempt to illustrate

the ways in which Plato shows us both how and why the possibility of error dictates the

precise and specific nature of our possible knowledge. I will try to show that Plato

elaborated within this doctrine a full blown semiotic or calculus of ignorance upon which

his theory of knowledge is substantially grounded.

My approach will be threefold. I will first, following Josiah Royce, show that the

Doctrine of Ignorance, as elaborated in the Theaetetus, amounts to a transcendental proof

of the conditions for the possibility of knowledge. I will then attempt to go beyond

Royce in showing that Plato subsequently transposes those conditions into the typology

of kinds of knowledge itself.

In this second task, I will elaborate how Plato utilizes the polar elements of the

antithetical ideologies of Heraclitus and Protagoras to breed a viable and knowable

offspring. In particular I will try to capture how Plato utilizes Protagoras’ slippery use of

logos to prompt his two mathematical “giants” to recognize the need to speak better, in

order to make sense of what they can see.

 And finally I will overlay the two hermeneutic webs, that of rhetoric and that of

geometry, and we will be able to glimpse Plato’s ambitious vision of how we may order

and measure that which we do not know.

In an article entitled, “Josiah Royce’s Reading of Plato’s Theaetetus”, David

Giddings attempts to show that this section of the Theaetetus had a cathartic role in the

formation of Royce’s overall philosophy. In particular, the writing of Royce’s first major

work, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, was strongly influenced by his reading of

Plato, “It is that work [Religious Aspect] which prefigured the major themes of Royce’s

subsequent views. And it is Chapter XI of that work, ‘The Possibility of Error’ which

grounds Royce’s metaphysical orientation within his reading of Plato’s Theaetetus.”1

Much like Descartes, Royce begins with an examination of his own initial turn

towards skepticism. His own reaction to this stance is decidedly more transcendental

than Descartes’:

From the depths of this imperfectly defined skepticism, which seemed to

him provisionally the only view he could adopt, the author escaped only by asking
the one question more: ‘If everything beyond the present is doubtful, then how
can even that doubt be possible?’ With this question that bare relativity of the
present moment is given up. What are the conditions that make doubt logically
intelligible? These conditions really transcend the present moment.2

But if we can escape doubt so quickly, where is it that we can retreat towards? What

kind of foundation is left to us upon which to rebuild knowledge? Royce’s answer is not

so different from Plato’s:

We have not the shadow of doubt ourselves about the possibility of error. That is
the steadfast rock on which we build. Our inquiry, ultra skeptical as it may at

1
David Glidden, “Josiah Royce’s Reading of Plato’s Theaetetus,” History of Philosophy Quarterly, Vol.
13, July 1996, p. 274.
2
Ibid., p. 289.

2
 moments seem, is into the question: How is the error possible? Or, in other words:
What is an error?3

His answer to skepticism is not merely a defense, but rather a complete reversal.

The very conditions which make skepticism conceivable, the possibility that I could be

mistaken, are to become for Royce, as they were for Plato, the bulwarks of knowledge

itself: “Since error is plainly possible in some way, we shall have only to inquire: What

are the logical conditions that make it possible?”4

Royce consciously saw that he was continuing the work of the Theaetetus: “The

first European thinker who seems to have discussed our present problem was Plato, in a

too-much-neglected passage of the Theaetetus, where Socrates, replying to the second

definition of knowledge given by Theaetetus, namely, knowledge is True Opinion,

answers that his great difficulty has often been to see how any opinion can possibly be

false. The conclusion reached by Plato is no very definite one, but the discussion is

deeply suggestive. And we cannot do better here than to pray that the shade of the

mighty Greek may deign to save us now in our distress, and to show us the true nature of

error.”5 With Plato he believed that the Protagorean attempt to isolate individual

judgments, apart from any further context of meaning is a destructive rhetorical device

which necessarily leads to relativism:

In sum we shall find the case to be thus: Common sense regards an

assertion as true or as false apart from any other assertion or thought, and solely in
reference to its own object. For common sense each judgment, as a separate
creation, stands out alone, looking at its object, and trying to agree with it. If it
succeeds, we have truth. If the judgment fails, we have error. But, as we shall
find, this view of common sense is unintelligible. A judgment cannot have an
object and fail to agree therewith, unless this judgment is part of an organism of

3
Ibid., 390.
4
Ibid., p. 392.
5
Ibid., p. 396.

3
 thought. Alone, as a separate fact, a judgment has no intelligible object beyond
itself. And therefore the presuppositions of common sense must be supplemented
or else abandoned. Either there is no error, or else judgments are true and false
only in reference to a higher inclusive thought, which they presuppose, and which
must, in the last analysis, be assumed as Infinite and all inclusive.6

Royce’s recourse, like Plato’s is to conclude that there is a fundamental

distinction between blindly making an error and the possibility that we can know when

we make an error: “But in this case a judgment can be in error only if it is knowingly in

error.”7 This distinction can only make sense if knowing is a matter of “degree”. Again

going back to the problem of the Meno, we must somehow be able to mediate between

“knowing something all together” and “not knowing something all together”. Our

knowing must be like a continuous fabric, of which the “ignorances” are like holes8:

Now it is hard to say how within this arbitrarily chosen fragment itself there can
still be room for the partial knowledge that is sufficient to give the judgment its
object, but insufficient to secure to the judgment its accuracy. If I aim at a mark
with my gun, I can fail to hit it, because choosing and hitting a mark are totally
distinct acts. But, in the judgment, choosing and knowing the object seem
inseparable. No doubt somehow our difficulty is soluble, but we are here tying
first to show that it is a difficulty.9

Royce’s procedure follows that of the Theaetetus. In order to uncover the

absolute ground for the possibility of knowledge, one must first be able to determine how

error is at all discoverable: “But our question is: How do judgments that can be and that

are erroneous differ in nature from these that cannot be erroneous? Astronomers would

be equally right in case they should agree to call Uranus Humpty Dumpty, why are not all

judgments equally favored? Since the judgment chooses its own object and has it only in

6
Ibid., p.393.
7
Ibid., p. 398.
8
Jacob Klein, Commentary on Plato’s Meno, (Chicago, 1965).
9
Ibid., p. 399.

4
so far as it chooses it, what can it be in that partial relation to its object which is implied

in the supposition of an erroneous assertion?”10

True and false judgments can only be viewed as such in respect to the indefinite

object towards which they have a “sense of dependence”. This “sense” is of the nature of

a “degree of knowledge” and never becomes perfectly clear, “for to make it so would

often require many, perhaps an infinite, series of judgments. Yet, for the one judgment,

the object, whether full and clear or not, exists as object only in so far forth as the sense

of dependence has defined it. And the judgment is true or false only with reference to

this undefined object.”11

So like in the progressively increasing complexity of Socrates’ “warp and woof”

in the Statesman, knowledge becomes a network of relationships between a somewhat

indeterminate object and the dimensions of thought which capture the necessary

conditions for representing it:

How this absolute thought is to be related to individual thoughts, we can in

general very simply define. When one says: “This color now before me is red,
and to say that it is blue would be to make a blunder,” one represents an including
consciousness. One includes in one’s present thought three distinct elements, and
has them present in the unity of a single moment of insight. These elements are,
first, the perception of red; secondly, the reflective judgment whose object is this
perception, and whose agreement with the object constitutes its own truth; and,
thirdly, the erroneous reflection, This is blue, which is in the same thought
compared with the perception and rejected as error. Now, viewed as separate acts
of thought, apart from the unity of an including thought, these elements would
give rise to the same puzzles that we have been considering. It is their presence in
a higher and inclusive thought that makes their relations plain.12

It is this model of the relationship between the conditions for error and knowledge

which fully frames Royce’s transcendental psychology of knowing, as it did Plato’s.

10
Ibid., p. 400.
11
Ibid., p. 404.
12
Ibid., p. 424.

5
This approach not only uses the skeptic's argument form as the skeleton for truth itself,

but also can thereby conclude that, “The conditions that determine the logical possibility

of error must themselves be absolute truth, that was the treasure that remained to us amid

all our doubts:”13

What then, is an error? An error, we reply, is an incomplete thought, that to a

higher thought, which includes it an its intended object, is known as having failed
in the purpose that it more or less clearly had, and that is fully realized in this
higher thought. And without such higher inclusive thought, an assertion has no
external object, an is no error.14

We must now go the further step beyond Royce and determine just what are those

positive, necessary conditions of knowledge that emerge from the transcendental proof of

its possible failure.

A Juridical Reconstruction of Truth

Plato is establishing in the Theaetetus, his theory of knowledge on the basis of a

juridical hermeneutic. Socrates is on his way to his trial. Plato is elaborating the Socratic

defense to the only jury qualified to sit in judgment. Socrates must prove that his art of

match making was not merely an illicit procuring15. How is it that the jury can

reconstruct a knowledge of the crime without an eye witness? The key seems to be, that

the knowledge itself, like the new born, may be examined independently of the conditions

of how it was produced. The jury, like the midwife, must test the Socratic deliveries and

establish whether they are fully human or “wind bags.”

In this activity, it is not that there can be no eye witnesses, but rather that they are

of limited epistemic value. Those pregnant students who left Socrates’ care prematurely

13
Josiah Royce, Religious Aspect of Philosophy, ( ), p. 385.
14
Ibid., p. 425.
15
Theaetetus, 150.

6
can little attest to his guilt because they are miscarried deliveries. If Socrates’ parenting

is to be held fully accountable, there must be some independent and objective criterion

that can determine whether the offspring has come to full term.

This program of eugenics is why Socrates does not flatly rejuct either of the

ideologies of Heraclitus or Protagoras. They each in their own way capture some sort of

“truth.” The Theaetetus begins to show how the negative critiques of these philosophers

in the past can finally be transformed into a positive contribution on the nature of

knowledge. The Theaetetus is Plato’s test case as to whether we can reconcile the

competing ideological relativisms of Protagoras and Heraclitus – the prescriptive noble

lie and the descriptive likely story.

This account of knowledge is one of the selective “breeding” of complementary

hypotheses to deliver a well grounded offspring. This is why Socrates hints that besides

delivering his charges of their offspring, like the farmer planting seeds, he is also

responsible for the proper orientation of their impregnation: “Have you noticed this

about them, that they are the cleverest of match-makers, because they are marvelously

knowing about the kind of couples whose marriage will produce the best children?”16

We must not lose sight of the significance of this activity. It is exactly the poorly

planned timing of births which was responsible for the degeneration of the ideal city

state.17 Here, as in the Cratylus, we find Socrates in the “middle”, both mediating the

intermixture of the two opposed narratives, and concurrently, adjudging each offspring

for “vitality.” But can the match maker, in some sense the true parent, be impartial to her

own offspring?

16
Theaetetus, 149d.
17
Republic, .

7
 Throughout many of his dialogues Plato lays out an elaborate genealogy of

competing ideologies. The one branch, originating in father Parmenides, includes the

Pythagoreans, Protagoras and any other “friends of the forms” who believe in some sort

of normative valuaton. The other, sired by Heraclites includes Gorgias, Polus, Meno, the

ever unmentioned Democratus, and other giants, declares that the world can only be

described, since standards of value are not observable. Although Parmenides and

Heraclites are the origins of these ideologies, Plato will often chose different sets of

characters to champion the positions. Most often it is the developed positions of

Heraclitus’ empirical, nominalist materialism that gets opposed by Protagoras’ rationalist,

constructivist, idealism.

When the theme of the dialogue focuses on methodology, rather than being or

knowledge, it will be the rhetoric of Gorgias that is contrasted to the pedagogy of

Protagoras. Orators are the truest skeptics, utilizing speech as a tool for the “pastry

cooks”, merely for victory, with no regard for the proscriptive, better or worse. It will

seem in the latter dialogues that he mixes up his strategies and models, but this is because

he is attempting three distinct activities with these rhetorical positions: refutation,

rehabilitation, and reconciliation.

It is little pertinent whether or not the representation of these philosophers is

completely accurate. Like Socrates in the dialogues, they are peoma, somewhat

fictionalized characters utilized to fill specific roles.

Dialogues that deal with trying to frame knowledge of the phenomenal world are

oriented towards the forensic oratory of the skeptical Heraclitus, towards history and

memory (Meno, Timaeus, and Phaedrus). Those attempting to frame the normativity of

8
the ideal, look with Protagoris’ Promethian ‘fuzzy’ gaze towards the future (Protagoras,

Symposium, Republic, and Phaedo). This heuristic key is elaborated in the analogy

between the statesman and the lawyer in comparison with the sophist and the rhetorician

in the Gorgias. The lawmaker and sophistic educator look forward to the possible while

the litigator and skeptic look back toward facticity. Skepticism and relativism are

definitively oriented as dispositions towards the temporal horizons of knowledge.

The Heraclitean position approximates a rejection of any objective standard of

normativity for values, but they maintain a cognitive normativity for truth,18 although

this can easily break down into a skeptical stance when their evaluation of knowledge

becomes reflexive, as with Meno and Hume. All knowledge is based on simple sense

perception: they are ‘seers’. Their epistemology is based on correspondence, their

ontology on materialism, and their semantics on nominalism: they are ‘namers’.

The Protagoream position supports the possibility of normative values, but denies

any objectivity to truth, or our knowledge of the world. This relativity can also become

reflexive when it is made to be self consistent, and then even values are relativized:

Each is the measure of his own Good. In constructing our conceptual models we equally

create our own theories of truth. Knowledge cannot have its independent grounding in

objectivity, but is rather derived from our own evaluative network of standards. The

"ugliness" of this position is that it concedes the Good while undermining any objective

determination of it.

The Protagorean is a ‘speaker’ who allows his words to construct his world. His

epistemology is coherentist, his ontology idealist, and his semantics is constructivist. His

18
Thomas Seung,

9
Parmenidean lineage derives from his hiding in the puzzle that if one cannot “speak what

is not” then there is no falsity, and all must be true (Euthydemus).

The examination of perception as knowledge through the philosophies of

Heraclitus and Protagoras is a banquet of confusions. We can tell that something peculiar

is happening in the Theaetetus with the duplicity of temporal vectors. The jury must look

“back” towards the crime. Yet we are told that the midwife must look “forward” to

anticipate the genetics of the child.

We also cannot accept the original assumption that Heraclitus and Protagoras

share the same theory of knowledge, that knowledge is simply perception. This

confutation of positions is merely a preview to the comedy of errors to follow. The

respective relativisms of Heraclitus and Protagoras could only be lumped together by

someone whose shaggy wax grouped too many particulars under an overly general,

ambiguous concept. Perception is an equivocal concept with respect to these polar

ideologies. Someone has too few words.

For Heraclitus, the world is given and in flux. We are the passive observers who

are “imprinted” by the world (at least to the degree that perceived objects vibrate at a

slower speed). For Protagoras, it is we, the observers who are active and “imprint” the

world with our views. No one view is more “true” than another, but some are “better”

and some are “worse”. Both positions are in some sense “relative”, but each in an inverse

fashion from the other.

Both views have the seeds of perception’s demise built into their models.

Socrates shows that they each need some abiding subject for which the world can be

10
known. For Heraclitus, the soul is that within which all these changes are perceived.

For Protagoras it is that by which the better and worse are legislated for the world.

After dealing with the double self-refutations of knowledge as perception [ ],

Socrates moves on to consider what the real Protagoras would have argued for:

knowledge is belief. Again, after a set of only partially convincing self-refutations,

Socrates settles down to a more serious consideration of Protagoras’ position. If we are

to convict someone of error, we cannot stay in the perspective of the present. Me must

make “man the measure” measure the future. And once he has established that it is the

soul that calculates this measure of past and future, Socrates adjusts the second definition

to: knowledge is true judgment. But to even talk about this definition, Socrates has to

show that he can sidestep Parmenides’ injunction against talking about falsity. It is this

problem that brings the examination of false judgment to the focus of the dialogue. If we

are to convince Protagoras that there is truth and falsity in judgment, we must go beyond

the arguments of Royce.

We cannot, however, prove the possibility of speaking falsely while fully

contained within the realm of speech itself. In order to show the possibility of speaking

“what is not”, we must somehow utilize Heraclitus’ keen sense of vision to teach our

Protagorean orator how to discern in language what is distinguished in sight. Only by a

strict comparison of sight and sound can the possibility of error in their well matched

offspring, judgment, be detected. Socrates begins this examination of the full spectrum

of possible errors in judgment within three groups.

The first group of four possibilities corresponds to Protagoras' relativism. Here

Socrates examines the four possibilities of error involved with mental representaion or

11
beleif. Socrates demonstrates the impossibility of error when we are dealing with only

one parameter of knowledge – as mental representation. I can't be mistaken if I know

both or neither, or one and not the other. He does qualify the examples of "knowing"

with the requirement of "remembering" also. This is a recognition that the relativists

concede that some know "better" than others. This normative qualification introduces the

need for a further elaboration of relationships in the third part of the examination.

In the second part of the exercise, Socrates examines the four possibilities of

perceiving falsely. If I see them both, I cannot be mistaken. If I see one and not the other,

there is no possible error. And if I don't see either, I cannot be mistaken. It seems clear

from the possibilities that as long as we limit ourselves to merely perception, there can be

no false beliefs. Earlier in the dialogue, Socrates had refuted this position as being

knowledge, but also agreed that it was not Protagoras', but Heraclitus' position.

In the third part Socrates examines six cases that can most usefully be taken three

at a time. In the first three cases examined in the third part, all involve knowing, seeing

one subject while seeing or knowing the second subject, as well as an ability to keep

these perceptions and beliefs “in line”. This additional dimension of accurate aligning

will be essential to our understanding how someone could be in error.

In the last half of the third part Socrates examines the three possibilities, involving

not knowing or not seeing one of the subjects. In none of these cases can I be in error.

Perhaps now we can make some sense of the kinds of cases Socrates cites as

possible false beliefs. Interestingly, he cites three examples, and they are exactly the

three examples from the first half of the third part (8, 9, 10), but minus the property of

being properly aligned. He then proceeds to explain each of them, but there are warnings

12
of playful trouble here. One he names in two different ways (STt+KTt, STd+KTd, 3rd

example), another he doesn't name at all (KTt, KTd+STd, 1st example), and a third he seems

to forget (KTt, -KTd+STd, 2nd example). We must somehow try to utilize these errors of

error to sort out a kind of knowledge about possible ignorance.

We have two hermeneutic patterns to guide us. We can utilize the polar structure

of the rhetorical orders to sort out some system of knowing from the possibilities of

mistakes. Or we can refer to the hint of some relationship with geometrical

accomplishments of Theodorus and Theaetetus. We will follow both to find the ways in

which they are constructively consilient.

We should first clear up a confusion that has emerged in the recent tradition of

commentaries. It is assumed that Plato is only examining a single kind of error in these

examples, that of misidentification. Some hold that Plato is mistaken in assuming that

there is just one kind of mistake we can make. Others hold that his exposition is on the

contrary showing that these can’t be the only kind of error.

At one level that all of these errors are mistakes of misidentification is trivial.

They are all about confusing one person for another. But on deeper inspection this

proves not so simple.

Plato gives two very distinct examples of how we can come to misidentify our

beliefs with our perceptions, and we must not, like Theaetetus, allow Socrates to

“confute” them.

The fist mistake he identifies is that of “switching shoes”. It is knowing, but not

seeing Theaetetus while not knowing and seeing Theodorus (KTt, -KTd+STd, 2nd example).

This is most plainly a kind of heterodoxy, and signifies a kind of category error. Our

13
hard headed Heraclitean nominalist (Cratylus) is most likely to err this way. Like the

Giants of the Sophist or Cratylus in the dialogue of the same name, Heraclitean

empiricists resort too heavily on "naming" everything (hence the double name for the

single error). His hard wax lacks depth does not admit enough classes to properly

identify unambiguous differences among his perceptions. Since they do not look for the

general principle their wax gets cluttered with details. And with no sense of "higher

dimensions" of unity to their knowledge, they cannot see the relationship between the left

and right feet.19 His tendencies to think in strict and discrete dichotomies (Meno) keep

him from recognizing the finer grades of differentiation.

The second type of mistake is that of the archer “missing his mark”. It is the first

example, knowing, but not seeing Theaetetus while knowing and seeing Theodorus (KTt,

KTd+STd, 1st example). This is a mismeasure error and is the result of keeping all of one’s

beliefs on a simple continuum. Our fuzzy minded Protagorean constructivist often fails

to keep his view of the future in proper “measure”. His shaggy and soft wax learns

details quickly, but just quickly loses them. The details of the faces of the two men he

knows are vague and not well distinguished. Like the Friends of the Forms, or

Hermogenes and the teacher/weavers of the Cratylus, having clear universal forms with

poor discrimination of their instances, leads to an inability to draw accurate distinctions.

This is the Protagorean error of making everything which shares in the good just the same

as the good. This is a very different kind of reason for the misidentification. The Stranger

specifically identifies “missing the mark” with the “disproportion” or “ugliness” of the

Protagorean sophist in the Sophist (228c).

19
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason,

14
 The last kind of error of confusing Theaetetus and Theodorus, while knowing and

seeing Theaetetus, and knowing and seeing Theodorus, Socrates identifies as both

“switching” and “missing” (STt+KTt, STd+KTd, 3rd example). It is a hybrid possibility for

which either kind of wax is liable. This case will have interesting implications when we

attempt to utilize the conditions for error in establishing the constraints on knowledge.

It may be time to look to our mathematicians for help in sorting out the deeper

structure of our inquiry. After all Socrates indicates that it is precisely Theaetetus’

ordering of the surds that could serve as the map for our problem of knowledge: “Try to

imitate your answer about the powers. There you brought together the many powers

within a single form; now I want you in the same way to give one single account of the

many branches of knowledge (148d).” Then there is the provocative equivalence

between the seventeen kinds of conceivable error and the proofs of Theodorus. There are

a number of speculations as to why Theodorus only explored the surds up to the square

root of seventeen and then “somehow got into difficulties.”20

One hypothesis holds that Theodorus may have been playing with the musical

problem of finding the interval of the semitones around the number 17.21 This suggestion

has some support from the musical measure of the layout. Seventeen is centered on the

number nine and is the sum of nine and eight, the numbers that make up the ratio of the

diatonic whole note (9/8).

Another suggestion, backed by both Brown and Van der Wearden notes that up to

17 only three calculations are needed when using the method of antanairesis. After 17,

at least six calculations are needed.

20
Malcolm Brown, “Theaetetus: Knowledge as Continued Learning,” Journal of the History of Philosophy,
7:4 (1969; Oct.), p. 367.
21
Ibid.

15
 There is another possible correlation we might try to track down. Theodorus is

not alone at picking 17 as a halting spot. Euclid, in Book (II) of the Elements, arbitrarily

stops at seventeen when demonstrating which polygons could be inscribed within a

circle. This correlation may be because those constructions rely on some subset of the

surds, or it may be because of some further Pythagorean mystery.

These speculative suggestions can be somewhat reconciled if we accept a

unifying model, suggested by Anderhub22. By progressively building one right triangle

onto another (diagram), Anderhup shows that a unique kind of spiral develops. At the

construction of the root of 17, the spiral completes one full cycle. This figure, aside from

its simple elegance expresses a certain musical measure through its cyclic structure.

Also, the fact that a second octave begins at 17 might help explain why there is an

inflation of factors that need to be worked out in the calculations:

The Theordoran Spiral is neither strictly a "logarithmic" spiral, nor an

"Archimedean", but rather some hybrid in between. Rather, it determinately relates a

22
Arpad Szabo, The Beginnings of Greek Mathematics, (Boston, 19 ), p. 57.

16
structural progression of surds with a functional progression of angle functions. Each of

these progressions is a type of unlimited or indefinite. The surds present a kind of linear

progression of additive "material". This makes it "arithmetic". The trigonometric

functions are cyclical and logorithmic. They expand in a geometrical pattern which

conserves form. The fact that we can combine these two "indefinites" into a single spiral

which determinately relates the two kinds of indeterminacy implies that we have found a

kind of harmonic bond which makes them a true unity.

But even if Theordorus’ system could explain our typology of errors, it could only

be a kind of true belief, since there is no theoretical unity to his analogies. It is to his

student Theaetetus we must turn for the systematic account of our irrationalities.

In Book X of Euclid’s Elements, commonly attributed to Theaetetus, we are given

a complete and systematic exposition of the nature of irrationals. Euclid demonstrates

that there are 13 distinct species of irrationals distributed among three general kinds:

medial (1), binomial (6), and apotome (6). Curiously, our thirteen species correlates in

number with our thirteen surds in the spiral (“one” is neither a surd or a square). Our

three genera correlate with both the three square numbers and the three possibilities of

error. It seems that somehow we have generated a full typology of knowledge from the

ordering of our ignorances.

In addition to the numerical correlations, there is a seductive pattern to the way in

which our three “species” of ignorance, or irrationality, have the ‘look’ of our three kinds

of error. Two of our kinds of surds are related as binomial conjugates, the binomial (a +

b√c) and the medial (a - b√c). These have an uncanny resemblance to the structure of the

idealogical failings of Protagoras’ mismeasure, or vagueness (KTt, KTd+STd), and

17
Heraclitus’ mismatching, or ambiguity (KTt, -KTd+STd). And the third kind error, the mixed

kind (STt+KTt, STd+KTd), is the hybrid of the other two, and has a family resemblance to the

apotome (a√bc ), which is a kind of mean between the two other species of surds.

The three positive kinds of surds that Theaeteus discovered, the medial, the

binomial and the apotome, also correlate closely to the patterning of harmonic relations.

Theaetetus compare the medial to the geometric mean, the binomial to the arithmetic

mean and the medial to the harmonic mean. In the division of the canon two of these

means correlate directly with the high harmonies. The arithmetic mean (x+y/2)

determines the harmonic fifth, the most consonant harmonic. The harmonic mean

(2xy/x+y) determines the major fourth, the consonant complement to the fifth. The

geometric mean is described in the Timaeus as the strongest bond of the three, since it

can stand as the mean proportion between the other two: [x+y/2] [2xy/x+y] = xy.

But of course this resolution of errors in perceptual judgment may not yet be

sufficient for the real Protagoras. It is not enough for us to merely look for “wisdom

among frogs.” We must now see if our model can account for errors in thought itself.

How is it that we can calculate 5 + 7 and sometimes come up with 11?

And the necessity of this new level of thinking is also called for in trying to

explain the third kind of possible false judgment. How is it that we can mistake one thing

that we both know and perceive with another that we both know and perceive? This

seems identical with one of the previous cases we had eliminated from the possibility of

error (192d). The key to the distinction is that in the previous case there was an explicit

provision that both lines of connection between sign and signified, and percept and

perceived are kept correctly in tact and separate. The provision of maintaining this

18
double set of connections is the ground of possibility for a different level of error. And it

is this level of error, of that between the two lines of connection, which necessitates the

consideration of a new level or “offspring” of possible knowledge.

To handle this different level of “rule following” in thought relations, Socrates

must again complexify his model of the soul. The mind is compared to an aviary. When

we are young it is empty. As we learn we “capture” pieces of knowledge and keep them

for future use inside our bird cage. This model allows for us to distinguish between

“possessing” knowledge we at one time have caught, and “having” knowledge present

within our grasp or view. We can now explain thought errors as attempting to recapture

knowledge which we have in our possession but mistakenly grasping for the wrong

“bird”.

But there are problems with this model also. The model seems to avoid the

problem of “not knowing what one knows”, by equivocating on what we call knowledge.

Both possessing and having are knowledges of a kind: “For we now find that at no point

does it happen that we do not possess what we possess, whether we are in error about

anything or not.”23 But this leads to the absurdity that our ignorance (not having) can

account for our knowing (possessing), which is akin to saying that blindness can make

one see.

Theaetetus’ suggestion that we include “pieces of ignorance” along side our

“pieces of knowledge” is quickly shown to lead to back to our original problem that “ a

man who knows both knowledge and ignorance is thinking that one of them which he

knows is the other which he knows.”24

23
Ibid., 199c.
24
Ibid., 200b.

19
 Socrates suggestion to extract them from this a poria is to move away from this

project of finding the possibility of false judgments. He says they were wrong to move to

this question before they already had an adequate idea about what knowledge itself was.

So the discussion moves forward to this further, positive speculation.

According to the distinctions he will next make, we can differentiate between

opinions, true opinions, accounts and knowledge. Somehow knowledge will be a kind of

true opinion accompanied by an account. But there remain significant problems.

In order for knowledge to be true opinion conjoined to a logos, the interlocutors

conclude that it must then be a logos tied to a logos, by a logos. This seemingly comic

conclusion resonates with the earlier presentation of the theory of vision, as to the

necessity for homogeneity within mixtures. In examining the hypothesis that knowledge

is true belief accompanied by a logos or an account, the interlocutors arrive at the

conclusion that the only way to make sense of ‘an account’, is to understand that it is

some kind of knowledge of differentness. But then the hypothesis reduces to the viscous

regress that knowledge is a true belief accompanied by knowledge.

Interestingly enough, when we enter the aviary, we are told that there too, there

are three distinct “kinds”- but this time of knowledge. The three types of false judgments

seem to indicate our complete typology for the possibilities of true judgments. The three

kinds of mismatches are indicative of the three kinds of positive links we are now able to

identify as true perceptual judgments. This triadic pattern certainly indicates the

possibility that Plato would have us more fully attempt to apply the lessons of the wax

block to the problems of mathematical knowledge.

20
 The reason for the necessity of this procedure seems clear from the problems we

have already dealt with in the earlier part of the dialogue. Knowledge can only be a

unity. But unities are perceived not thought out. We can give no account of that which is

absolutely simple. To be able to give an account of knowledge, we must somehow be

able to develop the minimum sufficient multiplicity from our negative evaluation of

necessary conditions – the knowledge of our ignorance in the possibility of error. The

positive model, a unity of this multiplicity, can only be fully developed after the negative

conditions have been explicitly laid out.

But let us return to the aviary. Just having birds in the cage can only constitute

some level of opinion. Even the grasping of the “correct” bird might not be signified by

knowledge, since, like the slave boy with his final answer, it may eventually “run off”

from him like the Deadlian statues. Such a grasp can only be a true opinion.

Socrates reminds us that when we first learned to distinguish letters, it was “by

both eye and ear” that we made the differentiation. This contrast between the visual and

the audial continues certain strains of thought from the earlier dialogues, as well as

establishes some new and distinct inter-relationships.

For one the reference to seeing and hearing have a direct expression with

relationship to the classifications of whole-part and universal-particular. Wholes are

things we see, while genera are names we say. As such, in this problem of knowing

“things”, hearing is a “higher” dimension than sight, as universals in knowing are prior to

the wholes through which they are instantiated.

The importance of this set of distinctions is brought clearly to the fore by the

emphasis on the difference between sum and whole. If there is no difference between the

21
sum and the whole, then we cannot protect errors in calculation from a kind of

Protagorean relativism. What we calculate the sum to be just is the whole.

But this difficulty ignores the consequences of the earlier model. The wax block

established that error comes about by a mismatching of perception to thought. If each of

the symbols added together can be linked up with an image from either perception or

memory, than the sum also must be able to link up with some image. If we accept the

Protagorean position that the result of the calculation just is the whole, without having an

alternative recourse to “check” whether the whole is distinct from the sum, we can never

fully explain the nature of grabbing the wrong bird.

Socrates seems to dispute Theaetetus’ maintaining of this distinction. He instead

wants to emphasize the aspect of number as a self sufficient unity – beyond that of a mere

wholeness. I believe this is to re-establish the triadic relationship between the three

possible kinds of knowledge that must exist at the level of thought. Borrowing the

language of the Parmenides, the sum is the situation of “no unity or ‘Oneness’ in respect

to the many.” The eidetic number is “the One in respect to the One itslef.” The whole is

the “Oneness in respect to the many.” So that when Socrates disputes that the whole is

different than the sum, he is not rejecting the possibility of wholeness as a distinct idea,

but rather emphasizing the more significant distinction of the autonomous unity of the

form, which is the condition for the possibility of knowing in the first place.

We should be very clear on the significance of this problem. Jacob Klein25 has

argued that Plato’s theory of numbers is completely reducible to “counting numbers”.

This model makes them indistinguishable from the algorithmic, recursive formulas of

logic and set theory. Modernity has attempted to reduce number ordering to the recursive
25
Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, (1968, Cambridge, MA).

22
operations of simple increase. Number ordering is defined in a “bottom up” progression,

by a formula such as: n2 = n1 +1. With such a model counting numbers can be nothing

more than the additive vision of number as a sum of material parts, or hyle, and as such

indistinguishable from theoretical logistic.

This very example (7 + 5 = 12) has been utilized by Wittgenstein to demonstrate

the problematic of mathematical inquiry26. All mathematical operations merely are

algorithmic and therefore completely transparent to consciousness. There can be no

mysterious results in mathematics or logic. Mathematics can provide no partial or “new”

knowledge: Socrates is finally defeated by Meno’s fork.

But beside the constructivist [Protagorean] complaint of emptiness, modernity’s

concept of number also suffers from the skeptic’s [Heraclitean] accusation of

inconsistency. Godel has shown that any formal system based on a merely recursive

formula is viciously incomplete and therefore inconsistent. Plato seems justified in his

case that all such one-sided conceptual systems inevitably collapse into such mires.

If we follow our “ears” rather than our eyes, we find that the model of music

gives us a completely distinct origination of numerical order. Numbers related in a

continuous scheme, like music, are the result of divisions: 2:1, 3:2, 4:3, etc. In this

framework, addition comes about as a secondary way of gathering the fractional parts of

a whole: Two halves make a whole. Three thirds also make a whole. This top-down

generation of numbers, from the continuous toward the discrete, gives Plato the

possibility of having an independent and objective means of “checking” calculations.

26
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, (

23
 Identifying one of the possible “parents” of number with the proportional division

of the cannon does not confute arithmetic, which “treats of the eidos”27 , with logistic,

which is “of the multitude of ‘hylic’ monads.”28 Harmonic proportions are of the

continuum, where logistic proportions are of the multitude of monads.

That this way of understanding the triadic nature of knowledge in general and

number in particular is correct is confirmed by a further example of the number twelve

which Socrates hints at: "Take a simple example, which will make my meaning clear.

When you compare six dice with four, we say that the six are more than the four or half

as many again; while if you compare them with twelve, the six are fewer - only half as

many - and one cannot say anything else. Or do you think one can (Theaetetuas 154c) ?"

Clearly we can say more. Twelve is twice six, as well as being 5+7. Which is the

"real" twelve?

This is the same distinction that Socrates made to establish the independence of

the form of “Twoness” from its various causes in generation, in the Phaedo:

Then would you not avoid saying that when one is added to one it is the
addition and when it is divided it is the division that is the cause of the two? And
you would loudly exclaim that you do not know how else each thing can come to
be except by sharing in the particular reality in which it shares and in these cases
you do not know of any other cause of becoming two except by sharing in
Twoness, and that the things that are to be two must share in this, a that which is
to be one must share in Oneness, and you would dismiss these additions and
divisions and other such subtleties, and leave them to those wiser than yourself to
answer (Phaedo 101c).

Socrates is considering three distinct sources for the cause of the number two. He

dismisses the additive and the divisional wholes as inadequate and declares that it is only

the unifying Idea of Twoness that can account for the number.

27
Klein, p. 16.
28
Ibid.

24
 He again reviews a very similar pattern later in the Theaetetus:

Well now, is there any difference between all the things and the sum? For
instance, when we say 'one, two, three, four, five, six'; or, 'twice three', or 'three
times two', 'four and two', 'three and two and one'; are we speaking of the same
thing in all these cases or different things (Theaetetuas 204b).

Here again Socrates is asserting that six may be generated many distinct ways, but that its

cause cannot be reduced to any of them.

The number six is a "perfect" example of this triadic dimension. We can generate

six recursively by the addition of one unit, to the original unit, five times. Or we can

generate six by multiplying the first two prime numbers (2,3) together. Either of these

paths of production represents an unlimited and indefinite continuum of generation, with

no absolute limits to how far we can proceed.

The idea of six is perfectly simple in being the unique arithmoi which is the

absolutely smallest, perfect number. It is the smallest number for which the

multiplicative (1x2x3) elements, or factors, add up to the number itself. This “scaling” of

the two distinct kinds of parts that a number may be analyzed into will always uncover a

unique transcendental form for every number.

This more complex model for the nature of number calls into question Klein

simplified designation as “counting number.” That description identifies number with

only the hyle of its additive parts. The divisional factors capture the formal unity of a

geometric series: they imitate each other and are similar. It is this similarity of form that

allows Theaetetus to order the surds.

This account of the problem is reaffirmed in the example of the wagon. At

different times Socrates examines the nature of the wagon as a passive whole of structural

25
parts (one hundred timbers of wood) or as an active unity of functional parts (wheels,

axle, body, rails, yoke) (Theaetetus 207a). We can know the wagon by knowing all of its

planks and the way they are put together. This account still doesn’t tell us what a wagon

is. The clue about the axle and wheels, informs us that to know the form of a wagon, we

need to know its functional parts in their role towards its end, as well as its structural

pieces. The form of an entity can only be fuly known by knowing what function it may

serve – to carry loads.

To go back to our aviary, we must now assert that we have two independent

means of identifying our birds. We can use our sight and recognize them through their

bright plumage or the local groups they are within. Or we can listen and attempt to

distinguish their “songs”. Either of these criterion can at best be classified as a kind of

true opinion. It is only when I can tether the visual location of the bird with the perceived

song in a comparison of patterns that makes their bond mutually transparent, that an

intelligence can “grasp” its appropriate object:

Here, just in the same way as the elements themselves are woven together and
become an account of something – an account being essentially a complex of
names (202b).

It is in this relationship to sight and sound that our two hermeneutic lens can

converge.

The linguistic model of information, as manipulated by the Sophists, is akin to

statistical knowledge. When I combine two incomplete or partial pieces of knowledge,

the combination is geometrically reduced by the product of the uncertainty

(.6 known) x (.4 known) = .24 known

26
 With a mathematical model of information, the situation is reversed. I can have

an equation in mathematics with two unknowns that is fully indeterminate. Combining

with a second equation or set of relations in the same unknowns does not multiply the

"ignorance", but rather resolves it by making the equations determinate. Partial

"ignorances" can be harmoniously bred to display fully clothed knowledge.

To the degree that Socrates can determine the limits of the rhetorical positions of

the nominalists and the relativists, he can approximate their "measure" and turn their

elusive ignorances into a determinate solution.

The model which we have uncovered is one of opposing sets of hypothetical

grounds. Marks and parts are merely the negative conditions that are established for the

possibility of two distinct kinds of partial and indirect knowing. Knowledge in the

positive sense is only reserved for the possibility of tying these two sets of conditions up

in a necessary and sufficient account.

This is not the infinite and unknowable grounding of a circular coherency theory.

It is rather a grounding from the center or mean, from which the limits of our ignorance

can be brought under measure (Philebus). And this critique of rhetorical strategies has

established that the positive nature and extent of our knowledge just is the measured ratio

of those negatively established limits.

And it is this vision, of symbolically measuring the interrelationships of our

ignorance, a concrete anticipation of algebraic thinking, that is the deeper understanding

of Socratic ignorance – of truly knowing what one does not know. All knowledge is of

such limits and their measure.

27
 The Heraclitean perceiver and the Protagorean speaker each has his own way of

calculating numbers and each is irrefutable in his own kingdom. There is no way of

objectively establishing error if knowledge follows a simple formula. The formula then

defines the knowledge and we can only resort to some mechanism of either doing it many

times or having different people do the same calculation. Either way there can be no

guarantee of not reproducing the same error.

Only if there are two reciprocal, yet autonomous procedures for determining the

same number can we be certain of eliminating error. Even then two mechanisms of

themselves could jointly give error. We can only be certain of correctability when we

can know how each kind of calculation is mutually captured in the explication of its

complement. Our story must not only explain how the songs and plumage of our birds

must be connected, but also why they must be so. We have a level of reflexive

illumination in the fact that the two means, the arithmetic and the harmonic are mutually

determined in a geometric mean. And we have the same in Plato’s characterization of the

number six in that the relationship between its factors and terms, its fallible elements,

remain always “perfect”.

28