Fine-grained and Coarse-grained Knowledge in Euthydemus 293b7–d1

ABSTRACT

McCabe [2021: 137–40] identifies a crucial ambiguity in the terms ‘learns’ and ‘knows’. Such terms can be read as either ‘perfective’ or ‘imperfective’. This is an aspect difference. The former indicates a settled state, the latter a directed process. McCabe uses this insight to show how Socrates can rebut the sophists’ view of meaning, render compelling Socrates’ self-refutation arguments, and explain the Socratic connections between learning, knowledge, and how one should live. In the final section of the Euthydemus, Euthydemus offers the ‘Omniscience Sophism’, and the related, rather cheeky, ‘Father Sophisms’. McCabe [ibid.: 140–2] suggests that the Omniscience Sophism might be addressed by identifying an aspect ambiguity, but does not follow up her point in detail. In this response, I argue that McCabe’s instinct is good and that a relative term, such as ‘knowledgeable’, can be understood as having two senses. That distinction is between what I call ‘fine-grained’ and ‘coarse-grained’ senses of ‘knowledgeable’. I suggest that this distinction that tracks McCabe’s aspect distinction between senses of ‘learns’ and best explains the fallacy committed in the Omniscience Sophism.

KEYWORDS:

• Euthydemus
• sophism
• omniscience
• knowledge
• father
• relativity

Acknowledgments

It is my great pleasure to offer this response to a wonderful paper by M.M. McCabe, from whom I have learned so much, in both the perfective and imperfective senses.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In an earlier draft of this reply, I mistakenly wrote that fine-grained knowledge relates to perfective learning and coarse-grained knowledge to imperfective learning. Thanks to MM for pointing out my error.

2 This is very much the method suggested by McCabe [2005: 107–9].

3 δοκεῖς οἷόν τέ τι τῶν ὄντων τοῦτο ὃ τυγχάνει ὄν, αὐτὸ τοῦτο μὴ εἶναι;

4 Elsewhere McCabe [2005: 114] calls this the ‘gross principle of non–contradiction’.

5 For example: Charmides 167c–168c; Parmenides 133c–134a; Republic 438b–e; Symposium 199d–200a; Theaetetus152a–c. Cf. Aristotle, Categories 6a36–8b24.

6 Cf. Charmides 167c; Parmenides 133a-134a; Parmenides 142a. Aristotle coins a term for the correlative of knowledge, ‘knowable’ (Categories 7), but Plato prefers natural language, even if it is not quite consistent. For further discussion of knowledge as a relative in Plato see Duncombe [2013].

7 This distinction is drawn by Quine [1956].

8 For further discussion of relatives in this passage, see Duncombe [2015].

9 See Buridan’s Summulae de Dialectica 7.4.2.