Doxa and episteme: why being right isn't knowing

Think of someone who gets the directions right to a city they've never been to. They arrive at the correct place. But ask them why it's that way, and they can't answer, and at the next fork in the road, they get it wrong. That's how professor Rodrigo Bitencourt, in the class, explained Plato's most-used and most poorly explained distinction: the difference between doxa and episteme isn't about who gets it right. It's about who has solid ground underfoot.

The image changes what the next question should be. It isn't "is this right?", which both people in the example answer the same way, with the same result. It's "does this person know why it's right, or did they just get there out of habit?", which only one of them can answer.

Two people, the same correct address

Most ready-made explanations of doxa and episteme stop at the literal translation, opinion on one side, science on the other, and leave it there, as if swapping two Greek words for two English ones were enough. But the distinction only makes sense when you see the two people side by side, arriving at the same destination by different routes.

The first person got it right out of habit, out of luck, from having heard it from someone who knew. She has the correct result, and nothing behind it that holds up. The second knows why that's the way: she knows what's on either side of every corner, and so, if the street is closed, she finds another route without getting lost. Both arrived, but only one of them knew what she was doing while getting there.

From the outside, nobody can tell the difference. Both give the same directions, with the same confidence in their voice, and only an unexpected detour along the way reveals which of the two actually understood the route.

Once you notice that, the example stops being about traffic and becomes about any claim you've ever made with confidence without being able to explain why. Someone who repeats a clever line they heard from a serious author, without having read the author, is in the first person's position. They may be right, they may even convince whoever's listening, and still have nothing to answer if the next question comes at an angle.

Doxa isn't a word of contempt

Before going further, it's worth clearing up a common misunderstanding: doxa, opinion, isn't a synonym for error in Plato, or for shallowness. It's simply the name for the level of knowledge that corresponds to what changes, to what is perceived through the senses, and a carefully formed opinion can be right almost every time. An opinion can be correct. Being right was never the problem.

Doxa corresponds to what changes, to what passes, to what you see and touch, the most unstable level of reality, and therefore the hardest to hold up. You can have a correct opinion about that level, and still not be able to explain why it's correct. That's exactly the case of the person who gets the directions right without ever having been there: a true opinion gets it right, but doesn't hold up.

Episteme: knowing that you know why

On the other side is episteme, the classical concept of science: certain knowledge through its causes. It isn't just knowing that something is so, it's knowing why it's so, and so being able to answer when the question comes from a different angle. Plato works out this distinction between the two levels of access to reality in the Republic, in Book V, tying each level of knowledge to a corresponding level of reality: to what changes, opinion; to what remains, science.

Notice that this is a distinction about structure, not about intelligence. It isn't that someone with doxa is less capable than someone with episteme. It's that an opinion, even a well-formed one, rests on what changes, and so wobbles when the ground shifts. Science, in the ancient sense of the word, rests on what stays, and so doesn't lose its footing when the surrounding circumstances change.

Whoever has episteme can answer at the fork in the road. Not because they memorized the whole map, but because they understand the principle that produced that specific path, and so can recalculate when the scenario changes. That's exactly why the difference between opining and knowing, by the argument's own terms, isn't about being right. It's about the ground.

Everyone has their own opinion, and that's fine

This distinction is useful far beyond the classroom. Next time someone tells you that everyone has their own truth, there's a clear answer, and it doesn't have to sound like an arrogant correction: everyone has their own opinion, and that's fine, it's part of how anyone gets through the day without having to verify everything before acting. Truth is something else. It's what doesn't change with circumstances, or with the mood of whoever is looking.

That phrase, "everyone has their own truth," has a logical weakness that Nous has already covered in another article, on what relativism is, worth reading for the full refutation. The angle here is different: even without falling into any contradiction, the phrase mixes up two levels of access to reality that Plato had already separated with precision, twenty-four centuries earlier.

Plato's argument doesn't ask you to give up your opinions, or to feel ashamed for having gotten somewhere right without knowing exactly why. Everyone lives on reasonable opinions most of the time, and most of them never need to be tested down to the root. It only asks that you know how to tell the two apart, and that you recognize what ground you're standing on before defending a position as if it were unshakable.

What changes once you know which of the two you're in

This distinction pays off the most outside the classroom, exactly where most people mix up the two levels without noticing. A story repeated without checking, a quote from an author nobody actually read, a piece of life advice passed along because "everyone says so": all of that can even be correct, and still be pure doxa, with no ground underneath it. Knowing how to name the difference isn't about dismissing whoever holds the opinion, it's so you yourself know when you can speak with the force of someone who understands, and when you're just repeating a correct address without knowing why it's that way.

It's that difference, between being right and standing your ground, that professor Rodrigo Bitencourt develops in the class this article comes from, along with the rest of Plato's argument about what is more real.

Continue: Recollection in Plato: recognizing what you never saw · The analogy of the sun: Plato's Good beyond being · Plato's Phaedo: three passages to read first · What is Fides et Ratio
Source class: F&T 2.4 - Platão I: o Mundo das Ideias e a busca pela transcendência