Epistemology in the Earlier Dialogues
The objects-based epistemology I have attributed to Plato in the Republic and other dialogues depends on a robust metaphysical distinction between ontologically privileged Beings and ontologically inferior seemings, and so we should not expect to see this kind of epistemological view in the absence of a full-blown Two Worlds metaphysics. Nonetheless, the Socratic dialogues and Meno take it as basic principles that epistêmê is primarily or specially of Being, and that there is a widespread inferior cognitive condition which fails to get at Being. Arguably they do not embrace Distinct Objects, but this is precisely what we should expect given their metaphysical differences from the Two Worlds dialogues. In sum, Plato’s views in the earlier dialogues are such that when he comes to develop a more developed epistemology, along with a more inflated metaphysics, the Basic Conceptions of doxa and epistêmê are the natural conceptions for him to adopt.