Socrates is said to have thought that what is responsible for seeming cases of akrasia is ignorance. He also seems to have freed himself, in his own life, from the distinctive kind of inner resistance that plagues the akratic. But if ignorance is responsible for seeming cases of akrasia, how, if at all, does this ignorance differ from other kinds of ignorance? And how could Socrates have possessed the kind of serene self-control that according to one plausible reconstruction of his own views could only belong to a person with the kind of knowledge that Socrates claimed not to have? In this dissertation I try to shed light on these questions and on Plato's _Protagoras_ by presenting my own Socratic-Platonic account of akratic behavior and tracing the correspondences between my account and Plato's textthe whole text, not just the most relevant part of it (352a-359a). The core idea of my account is the concept of a knowledge-oriented mode of thinking, feeling, and acting: the 'epistemic frame of mind'. To fail to inhabit this frame of mind with regard to the activity of living a human life is, I suggest, to suffer from a kind of ignorance, while to fully inhabit this frame of mind with regard to this activity, though it is not yet to possess the kind of knowledge that properly governs a human life, is nevertheless to free oneself from the kind of inner resistance that plagues the akratic.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-11192005-122814 |
| Date | 17 March 2006 |
| Creators | Berger, David J. |
| Contributors | James Allen, Jessica Moss, Michael Thompson, James Conant |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-11192005-122814/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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