Belief, Knowledge, and Learning in Plato's Middle Dialogues

There is a problem about belief and knowledge in Plato's epistemology that has exercised serious students of Plato only to settle into a recent orthodoxy. Guthrie characterizes the problem and its current resolution this way: ‘In the Meno doxa appeared to be a dim apprehension of the same objects (Forms and the necessary truths of mathematics) of which knowledge is a clear and complete understanding … in the Republic each is directed to different objects, knowledge to the Forms and doxa to the sensible world alone … at least the opinion seems now to prevail that on the relationship between doxa and knowledge Meno and Republic are irreconcilable, and exhibit a complete change of mind on Plato's part.'