A Reliabilist Interpretation of Socrates’ Autobiography
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21865073 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tonguç Seferoğlu (0000-0001-8604-7851, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 582-604 |
| Publication date | 2023-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | ΣΧΟΛΗ Ancient Philosophy and the Classical Tradition (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1995-4328 • E-ISSN: 1995-4336 |
| Publisher | Novosibirsk State University (NSU) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.25205/1995-4328-2023-17-2-582-604 |
| OpenAlex | W4385659718 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 21 |
This paper aims to offer a novel interpretation of Socrates’ autobiography in the Phaedo 96-102 by using reliabilist epistemology as a heuristic guide to spell out the complex dynamics of the intellectual development of Socrates of the Phaedo. Surprisingly, scholars have mostly focused on the outcomes of Socrates’s scientific investigations, but they neglected the dynamics of the discovery process. The reason why Socrates rejected many earlier scientific ideas and the way in which he discovered new theories as much significant and noteworthy as those theories. I argue that Socrates’ discovery and implementation of new methods of inquiry meet the epistemic standards of reliabilism that emphasize the reliability of processes involved in belief-formation. I show that Socrates criticized the physicists’ materialistic-mechanistic approach to explain coming-to-be, perishing, and being because of its unreliability. The paper concludes that (a) the concept of reliability is used as a guide to theory choice in Socrates’ autobiography (b) the positive feature of Socrates’ second sailing is its reliability and (c) reliability is the motive behind Socrates’ choice of certain belief-forming processes, namely a priori reasoning, the method of hypothesis, and the theory of Forms, in the search of the cause of coming-to-be, perishing, and being
Epistemology · SOCRATES · Spell · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science
Plato's earlier dialectic
Belief, Truth and Knowledge
What is Justified Belief?
Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge
The Deuteros Plous in Plato’s Phaedo
Themes in Plato, Aristotle, and Hellenistic Philosophy
The Cambridge Greek Lexicon
Platonic Conversations
Platonic Causes Revisited
Internalism and Externalism
Essays in Ancient Epistemology
Teleology, Causation and the Atlas Motif in Plato’s Phaedo
The role of the hypothetical method in the Phaedo
Logic and Music in Plato's Phaedo
The Final Proof of the Immortality of the Soul in Plato's Phaedo 102a - 107a
Forms and Explanation in the Phaedo
Anti-luck virtue epistemology and epistemic defeat
Plato's Image of Immortality
Second Sailing towards Immortality and God
Anaximander
Aristotle on Inefficient Causes
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |