  Notice that it is the empiricist who will most naturally tend to rely on this analogy. It is the empiricist who finds it natural to assimilate judgement and knowledge to perception, so far as he can. So we may suggest that the Second Puzzle is a mere sophistry for any decent account of false judgement, but a good argument against the empiricist account of false judgement that Plato is attacking. The moral of the Second Puzzle is that empiricism validates the old sophistry because it treats believing or judging as too closely analogous to seeing: 188e4–7. For empiricism judgement, and thought in general, consists in awareness of the ideas that are present to our minds, exactly as they are present to our minds. It cannot consist in awareness of those ideas as they are not; because (according to empiricism) we are immediately and incorrigibly aware of our own ideas, it can only consist in awareness of those ideas as they are. Nor can judgement consist in awareness of ideas that are not present to our minds, for (according to empiricism) what is not present to our minds cannot be a part of our thoughts. Still less can judgement consist in awareness of ideas that do not exist at all.