Review: [untitled]Author(s): Christopher GilbertReviewed work(s):

Epistemology after Protagoras: Responses to Relativism in Plato, Aristotle, andDemocritus by Mi-Kyoung Lee

Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Jun., 2006), pp. 891-892Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20130718Accessed: 26/05/2010 08:16

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SUMMARIES AND COMMENTS 891

cal entities with transcendental ideas" (p. 111). So, the strong mimesis view fails. The view arises, Kuisma argues, when the Platonic forms (ideas) "are downgraded" to the level of "human subjectivity or when they are confused with the Aristotelian notion of forms in matter" (p. 143), or else when "imitation is confused with symbolization" (p. 133). In short, the claim that Plotinus gave a new direction to Platonic art the ory is false. We are left with weak mimesis, which is no departure from standard Platonic doctrine. Kuisma's refutation of the strong mimesis view is unassailable, and in the course of making it the author has pro vided much insight into Plotinus' philosophy as well.?Dana R. Miller, Fordham University.

Lee, Mi-Kyoung. Epistemology after Protagoras: Responses to Relativism in Plato, Aristotle, and Democritus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. 254 pp. Cloth, $74.00?Mi-Kyoung Lee has produced an engaging study of the development of skepticism in ancient Greece. Although ar guments against the possibility of knowledge?and responses thereto?

were common during the Hellenistic period, the great works of the Clas sical period hardly give skepticism a second thought. Were great minds like Plato and Aristotle blithely unaware of the threat posed by skepti cism? Lee's answer is that the questions and arguments of Hellenistic period skeptics were not unprecedented, for a nascent form of skepti cism had already been debated in the Classical period. The relativism of Protagoras' measure doctrine?"Man is the measure of all things"?was a challenge to Classical epistemologies, for it implied that no one could ever be mistaken about anything. Plato, Aristotle, and Democritus all recognized this challenge, and their responses to it shaped the debate over skepticism in the Hellenistic period.

Sifting through the testimony of later philosophers, Lee explains how Protagoras's measure doctrine should be understood. On the basis of views that other thinkers attributed to Protagoras and their responses to those views, Lee argues that Protagoras did not defend a theory about truth itself, such as truth-relativism (nothing is true simpliciter; things are only true relative to particular individuals in particular contexts). Rather, the measure doctrine asserts fact-relativism?the idea that ev ery property or state of affairs is relative to particular individuals. Thus, Protagoras had a nonrelativized notion of truth, but he claimed that things actually are as they appear to us; each and every human being can determine what is true simply by consulting his own beliefs.

Although Protagoras did not develop a full-fledged relativist episte mology, Plato did. In the Theaetetus, Plato offers a "Secret Doctrine" on behalf of Protagoras. This doctrine, which Plato introduces so that he can then refute it, is a set of metaphysical theses meant to explain and justify Protagoras' measure doctrine. At its heart are two ideas: (1) the Heraclitean claim that all things are constantly changing, and (2) total relativity?the claim that "nothing is anything by itself, but is so only rel ative to something else" (p. 86). In Lee's view, Plato's Secret Doctrine and his attack thereupon constitute, not a conclusive refutation of Protagoras, but a Classical experiment in thinking about relativism.

892 ELIZABETH C. SHAW AND STAFF

Aristotle is more explicit than Plato on the skeptical implications of relativism. In Metaphysics book 4, chapter 5, Aristotle identifies three beliefs as leading to the conclusion that the truth about things can never be known: (P) the Protagorean measure doctrine; (H) the Heraclitean idea that all is in flux; and (C) the contradictionist claim that everything

both is and is not the case. Aristotle responds to the skeptical implica tions of these ideas, not by attacking skepticism itself, but by identifying and undermining the faulty assumptions that lie behind beliefs (P), (H), and (C). All three beliefs rest on the mistaken idea that thinking is like perceiving?that the mind's thinking is a purely passive affection caused by the objects of thought. Beliefs (P), (H), and (C) also presuppose that all of reality is material?that to be is to be perceivable. Lee thus dem onstrates that Aristotle was

"genuinely interested in engaging with and fending off [skeptical] challenges to his own realist and objectivist as sumptions" (p. 253).

Although neither a relativist nor a skeptic, Democritus was the Classi cal philosopher whose ideas were most akin to those of Protagoras. Democritus held that a thing has a sensible quality if and only if it ap pears to have that quality to some perceiver. So sensible qualities really are as they appear to us, for that is all sensible qualities are?our sense perceptions tell us only how things affect our senses, not what things are like in themselves. In order to know what things are like in them selves, Democritus argued, our minds must grasp that which is too fine for the senses to discern?namely, atoms and the void. Democritus thus embraced a qualified version of the Protagorean measure doctrine. The senses are (incomplete) measures of truth because knowledge is impos sible without sensation?without sense data, our minds would have nothing about which to think. Human beings (as both sensing and think ing things) are complete measures of truth because when we think care fully about the things that cause our sensations, we are capable of un derstanding the truth about those things.

This book is thoroughly researched, well argued, and clearly written. Lee's analysis of epistemological issues is technically rigorous, but she gives plenty of everyday examples to make the finer points clear to non specialists. I would especially urge anyone interested in Plato's Theae tetus to read Lee's fifth chapter, which offers an excellent explication of

a very difficult section of that dialogue.?Christopher Gilbert, Cuesta College.

Livingston, Paul. Philosophical History and the Problem of Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. viii + 279 pp. Cloth, $70.00?The core of Livingston's book consists of a series of four criti cal studies of how twentieth-century analytic philosophy dealt with

what many (Livingston included) believe to be a hard case: conscious ness. What makes it hard, the thinking goes, is a perceived dissonance that arises when analytic philosophy, with its emphasis on representing the world against a background of linguistic structure, comes face to face with pure subjective content. How can the latter be accommodated

within the former without ignoring some of its fundamental properties? The root problem is endlessly old and much larger than the scope of Livingston's immediate concern. While we have pure experiences?be

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Issue Table of ContentsThe Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Jun., 2006), pp. 723-966Volume InformationFront MatterLife as "Self-Motion": Descartes and "The Aristotelians" on the Soul as the Life of the Body [pp. 723-755]Self-Consciousness and Intersubjectivity [pp. 757-779]How Does Kant Prove That We Perceive, and Not Merely Imagine, Physical Objects? [pp. 781-806]Immediacy and Mediation in Schleiermacher's "Reden ber Die Religion" [pp. 807-840]The Myth of Atomism [pp. 841-868]Book Reviews: Summaries and CommentsReview: untitled [pp. 869-871]Review: untitled [pp. 871-872]Review: untitled [pp. 872-874]Review: untitled [pp. 874-875]Review: untitled [pp. 875-877]Review: untitled [pp. 877-878]Review: untitled [pp. 878-880]Review: untitled [pp. 880-881]Review: untitled [pp. 882-883]Review: untitled [pp. 883-884]Review: untitled [pp. 885-886]Review: untitled [pp. 886-887]Review: untitled [pp. 888-889]Review: untitled [pp. 889-891]Review: untitled [pp. 891-892]Review: untitled [pp. 892-894]Review: untitled [pp. 894-895]Review: untitled [pp. 895-897]Review: untitled [pp. 897-900]Review: untitled [pp. 900-901]Review: untitled [pp. 901-902]Review: untitled [pp. 903-904]Review: untitled [pp. 904-906]Review: untitled [pp. 906-907]Review: untitled [pp. 908-909]Review: untitled [pp. 909-911]Review: untitled [pp. 911-912]Review: untitled [pp. 913-914]

Recent Titles in Philosophy [pp. 917-935]Current Periodical Articles [pp. 937-962]Back Matter