This paper argues for the presence in Plato’s work of a conception of thinking central to which is what I call the Transparency View. According to this view, in order for a subject to think of a given object, the subject must represent that object just as it is, without inaccuracy or distortion. I examine the ways in which this conception influences Plato’s epistemology and metaphysics and explore some ramifications for contemporary views about mental content.

The argument at Phaedo 74 B 4‐C 6 that the equal itself is ‘something different from’ sets of physical equals depends on Leibniz's Law: there is a property that perceptible equals have that the equal itself does not have. What I call the ‘epistemic interpretation’ holds that the property is an epistemic one: having appeared unequal. The ‘ontological interpretation’ holds that the property is not epistemic, but simply the property of being unequal. The most natural reading of the text favours (...) the epistemic interpretation; scholarly support for the ontological interpretation is based on the widely held view that on the epistemic interpretation the argument is manifestly invalid. But this view implicitly relies on an impoverished sense of ‘appearing’ as equivalent to ‘being thought’. Drawing on an analogy with colour perception, I elaborate an experiential sense of ‘appearing’ which makes Plato's argument on the epistemic interpretation philosophically defensible. (shrink)

One puzzling feature of Plato’s Republic is the First City or ‘city of pigs’. Socrates praises the First City as a “true”, “healthy” city, yet Plato abandons it with little explanation. I argue that the problem is not a political failing, as most previous readings have proposed: the First City is a viable political arrangement, where one can live a deeply Socratic lifestyle. But the First City has a psychological corollary, that the soul is simple rather than tripartite. Plato sees (...) this ‘First Soul’ as an inaccurate model of moral psychology, and so rejects it, along with its political analogue. (shrink)