Plato's Definition Of Knowledge

Defining the knowledge was one of the major aims for most of the philosophers who left some marks on the history of philosophy from antiquity to contemporary times. Some like sceptics have said that it is impossible to define it and they have questioned also its existence. They have started a debate about certainty and even possibility of the knowledge with such a position. However, there is a consensus on the content of it by the majority except for the sceptic point of view of course. Generally, there must be a belief in its ground and that belief must be true but obviously, this is not enough to form it. As stated by Plato in Theaetetus where the nature of knowledge is discussed, true belief must be justified for turning into the knowledge.1

We can give a more comprehensive explanation by clarifying these point of views. The first one of these approaches is called particularism and it suggests that one must check the instances of knowledge one by one. Particularists say that we can detect the criterion after doing this investigation. The way to do this is to identify the common points of the individual moments in which we can know that we have knowledge somehow. However, this position does not give an answer to the question that how we can make inferences from various individual cases without any satisfying standards for measure them. In connection with this, unfortunately, it does not explain either how we can assume that we have the knowledge in the first place. It ignores this problem and treats the knowledge as a collection of particularities that are compatible with each other. In this manner, the thing that particularism do seems like just begging the question. Basically, it suggests that we have to be satisfied with this necessary but not sufficient type of understanding what knowledge is and its criteria are. That 's why we can say that it is a really pragmatic solution to the problem of criterion. Although this option is often preferred by contemporary philosophers, it still looks quite

Why? Why they leave these questions open and let this long-running debate to go on and on? They are creating vicious circles because of the positions they have against the problem of the criterion. Is it possible to break this infinite loop? For answering this, we must get deeper in the subject and analyse the questions that they left unanswered. In fact, there are only two questions linked to each other that cause all these problems which is understandable as they lead to the emergence of these two opposing views. One of these is about making the proper list, which can be seen as the sum of the instances which we think that knowledge occurs. The other is concerned with the key to checking this list, that is, the criterion for which the knowledge must be determined with. Clearly, everything is about the choice to answer which question. Particularism answers the first question and pays no attention to the second, while methodism answers the latter and ignores the first one. However, the point that must be remarked here is the strong link between these two questions. These questions actually give birth to each other. When one of them is being asked, it is necessary for the other one to be asked too because they implicitly involve each other. However, in order to solve the problem of the criterion of knowledge, it is necessary to choose one of these two