Two kinds of belief in Plato

The purpose of this paper is to clarify a distinction between two kinds of belief in Plato’s Theaetetus and the Sophist. In the Sophist, Plato distinguishes between phantasia, which occurs “through sense perception,” and doxa, which occurs “according to thinking.” What distinguishes these two kinds of belief is the believer’s understanding of the thing the belief is about, as a result of the way in which each kind of belief is formed. A doxa is formed through a particular kind of thinking, and the person having it grasps the nature of the thing. A phantasia, by contrast, is formed through sense perception, and the person having it grasps the mere appearance of the thing.