True Believers

            What precisely does it mean to know something? More specifically (since we are human and fallible) What is one to say that knowledge is? This is Plato's vital question in the Socratic dialogue Theaetetus. Plato's character Socrates is the primary force used to pick this question apart. In this particular passage, Socrates companion Theaetetus asserts that knowledge is the same as true belief in this case, an opinion one holds that factually and accurately reflects the real world. .
             Socrates immediately rejects this idea, saying We need not go far to see that true belief is not knowledge. (Theaetetus, 908) After some interchange Socrates resolves, If true belief and knowledge were the same thing, the best of jurymen could never have a correct belief without knowledge. It now appears that they must be different things. (Page 908) This, I feel, is the ultimate conclusion at which Plato finally arrives; he asserts that true belief and knowledge, though related, are independent of each other in both definition and practice. The primary question of the passage What is knowledge? remains essentially unsettled. However, the possible conclusion that true belief is knowledge is clearly and successfully refuted.
             Socrates advances only one premise in support of this conclusion. He says, You will find a whole profession to prove that true belief is not knowledge. (Page 908) He continues, The profession of those paragons of intellect known as orators and lawyers.there you have men who use their skill to produce conviction, not by instruction, but by making people believe whatever they want them to believe. (Page 908) He expounds upon this subject, offering that lawyers will not always teach a jury the facts, but instead convince them to find a particular verdict. Socrates then concludes that if the jury reaches a correct verdict by these means, its conviction is correct through having accepted a true belief even though the justification for this acceptance is lacking.