Dialogue on The Theaetetus, Part 2: Transmission of Knowledge in Two Types of Motion

Participants from the Toronto and Calgary Philosophy and Online Rebels Meetup groups met on June 13, 2021 to discuss themes in the second part of Theaetetus, Plato's dialogue on knowledge. We began by listening to part of a "Joy of x" podcast interview by mathematician Steven Strogatz of computer scientist Melanie Mitchell, addressing the challenges of generalizing the particulars of knowledge in computer algorithms when faced with an infinity of probabilities in everyday existence. We connected the discussion to the ideas in Plato's theory of forms, and to Socrates' challenge to the Protagorean belief that "man is the measure of all things".

Is each one of us equipped to determine the extent of being and non-being and all that comes to be between these two extremes? As the transmission of knowledge has altered over time from the spoken wor ...