Is Knowledge Just Perception?

In this opening lecture of a course on Plato's Theaetetus, Richard Polt guides viewers through one of philosophy's most entertaining and enduring dialogues. He begins by addressing the challenge of reading Plato, a writer who never speaks in his own voice, and the paradox of a philosopher who distrusted writing yet produced some of the greatest texts in history. Polt then walks through the prologue's themes of death, character, and everyday knowledge before introducing the dialogue's central question: what is knowledge? Along the way, he unpacks Socrates' role as intellectual midwife, the difference between giving examples and offering definitions, and the problem of circular reasoning. The lecture builds toward the first major answer proposed in the dialogue: that knowledge is perception, connecting it to Protagoras' relativism and even modern physics. Polt shows why this ancient conversation still matters for anyone trying to understand what it means to truly know something.