Showing posts with label Plato. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Plato. Show all posts

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Socrates's Defense



Greek philosopher Socrates (ca. 469 B.C.E. - 399 B.C.E.)


Mental and ethical traits such as intelligence and virtue are what make up a person’s character. Personality is a unique set of behavioral and emotional traits and shows in a person’s actions. Reputation is public knowledge and value of an individual. It is important to know the difference because they may not always reflect each other. A person may not always do as their conscience tells them. Here, personality does not reflect character. Reputation is based on others’ knowledge of an individual’s personality, which is subject to change.

Socrates is concerned with his accusers’ conceptions of character, personality, and reputation because he feels that some of the charges against him are based on his reputation among the citizens as an annoying man who has corrupted the youth. The so-called “crimes” of being a “curious person” and a “busybody” are more personality traits than tangible actions that are either just or unjust. Thus, they do not warrant government intervention or punishment. Socrates asks the jury to “concentrate your attention on whether what I say is just or not.” He tells Meletus, “You… have avoided my company and were unwilling to instruct me, but you bring me here, where the law requires one to bring those who are in need of punishment, not of instruction.” Socrates believes that his accusers were rash in their recommendation of punishment when a simple conversation would have been more enlightening to both parties. It is probable that the accusers would have been too annoyed by Socrates or threatened by his argumentative skill to confront him.

Socrates asks his hypothetical interlocutor, “…are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation and honours as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom and truth, or the best possible state of your soul?” Socrates believes that when he examines the people he meets, he is fulfilling his “divine mission” as “a gift of the god to the city” to improve people’s souls by determining whether they have the wisdom they are reputed to have.

The Oracle revealed that there was nobody wiser than he, although he did not believe himself to be wise, so he was confronted with a paradox. He concluded that to begin any argument by admitting ignorance is to start from a neutral perspective so that he may be open to the many different possible truths, while using reason to discern what possibilities are false. Socrates accuses his accusers of lying, slandering him, contradicting themselves, and trying to deceive the jurors. He shows that Meletus contradicts himself in accusing Socrates of both atheism and believing in gods other than those endorsed by the state. He begins by making it clear that he is different from the depiction of him in Aristophanes’s play “The Clouds,” which helped give rise to his reputation as a person concerned with the sky.

Socrates also tells the jurors that they were influenced by that depiction at a young age and that it is unfair for that past event to have such a great influence on jurors’ opinions and he regrets that it is something he is unable to cross-examine. He reasons that if he were truly a corruptor of the youth, then the youth or their families would have brought charges against him instead of Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon. Socrates says, “Someone might say, ‘Are you not ashamed, Socrates, to have followed the kind of occupation that has led to your being now in danger of death?’” and proceeds to argue that there is greater shame in knowing what is virtuous and not doing it because of fear.

Heraclitus would characterize Socrates as a person with more potential for understanding than his accusers. Heraclitus says, “Much learning does not teach insight.” and “Men who are lovers of wisdom must be inquirers into many things indeed.” Socrates’s ability to admit he knows nothing enables him to consider whatever opinions he encounters, and argue against them not based on what he has been taught, but whether the opinion his interlocutor presents makes sense logically.

The mathematikoi is more similar to the Socratic method than the akousmatikoi because the akousmatikoi were more concerned with memorizing Pythagoras’s sayings and were not allowed to interpret, add to, or argue about them. The mathematikoi emphasized understanding and insight and were encouraged to think for themselves about the substance of what was being said. Like the mathematikoi, the Socratic method encourages deliberation instead of mere acceptance and memorization of unproven sayings.

There are two accusations that Socrates must refute with regard to spirituality. He says, “It goes something like this: Socrates is guilty of corrupting the young and of not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other new spiritual things.” Socrates begins by leading Meletus to say something very similar to “not believing in the gods in whom the city believes;” Meletus claims that Socrates does not believe in any gods at all. Socrates insists that he believes the sun and moon to be gods, which Meletus refutes by telling the jury that Socrates believes them to be stone and earth, and since stone and earth may not be gods, Meletus may be right. Then Socrates begins leading Meletus to his logical contradiction. Socrates asks him whether anyone believes in spiritual activities who does not believe in spirits, and Meletus says no. Socrates states that Meletus has said that Socrates believes in spiritual things and that “if I believe in spiritual things I must quite inevitably believe in spirits” and he asks Meletus “Do we not believe spirits to be either gods or the children of gods?” Meletus responds affirmatively, which proves that Socrates believes in spirits, so he believes in gods, so he cannot be an atheist.

The goal of the elenchus is to find logical contradictions in the interlocutor’s argument and to conduct the conversation in a way that exposes that contradiction. In this elenchus, Socrates is faced with two accusations that can be shown conflict with each other as long as he can prove Meletus believes a third thing about Socrates. Socrates is accused of believing in some false gods or spirits, but he is also accused of not believing in the city’s gods. Once Socrates can get Meletus to say that Socrates teaches the youth about spiritual things besides the gods that the state endorses, and also that Socrates is an atheist, then he can go about proving to Meletus, that he has contradicted himself, through a reductio ad absurdum. At the end of this, Socrates says, “Socrates is guilty of not believing in gods but believing in gods” and ridicules the statement.

Although at first glance it might appear that Socrates is leading Meletus into a trap, Socrates makes it clear that Meletus is among those making the accusations. So when Socrates leads Meletus to say that Socrates doesn’t believe in any gods at all, Meletus and the other accusers’ assertion has fallen through. Socrates has brought up a new accusation, but has disproved it and two other accusations simultaneously.


Originally Written in October or November 2007 as a college essay
Originally Published on October 24th, 2010



For more entries on justice, crime, and punishment, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/thrasymachus-support-for-justice-being.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/social-policies-for-2012-us-house.html

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The Platonic Forms


 
Plato (ca. 427 - 347 BC)

In the Parmenides, Plato, represented by Socrates, thinks that objects can be at once both one and many. He thinks this because an object can be shown to partake of oneness when it is shown to be a single entity out of multiple separate entities, and an object can be shown to partake of multitude when it is shown to be comprised of several parts. Socrates tells Zeno that he would be amazed if someone were to distinguish opposite forms (i.e., oneness and multitude) as separate things, and then show that in themselves the forms can mix together and separate.

Parmenides gets Socrates to agree that things partake of forms by being likened to them, and that things cannot be dissimilar to things they are like. This poses a problem because it means that if something were shown to be both one and many, then it has oneness and multitude, so it is similar to both oneness and to multitude, so the thing and its two forms are all similar, so the thing is both forms themselves, so both forms are the same.

Plato thinks (and has Socrates and Parmenides agree) that someone who won’t allow that there are forms will “destroy the power of discourse” because “he won’t have a direction for his thought, since he doesn’t allow that for each thing there is a character that is always the same”. Parmenides argues that there are difficulties and objections involved in trying to make sense of the forms, so people argue that the forms “do not exist, and that, even if they do, they must by strict necessity be unknowable to human nature”.

Parmenides thinks that a form is separate from itself if everything that partakes of a form partakes of it as a whole because the form is separate from the things that partake of it.

This is not a good argument against the forms because Parmenides is thinking of a form as if it were an object of finite size instead of as a property. He seems to think that when several things share the same property, they can somehow use it up and take it away from itself. This is why using the phrase “to get a share of” instead of “to partake of” can be misleading, because “to get a share of” gives the impression that when a thing gets a share of a form, part of the form is lost to the thing, causing the parts of the form to separate.

Parmenides is right to say that Socrates’ example of the day is like his own example of the sail because they both cover many parts at once and part of each covers different places and different things. Those things exist during the day and under the sail, all at once, without the day or the sail having to be divided so that the things can fall under them.

In the dialogue, Parmenides presents the argument that objects partaking of a form have sameness, which makes the observer conclude that the form is one thing. When the observer thinks of the form and the things that partake of the form, the mind’s eye views them all as sharing a form that is different from the first form. Objects partaking of the form largeness and largeness itself partake of a form labeled the “third large.” Each time one thinks of what is common to a form and things that partake of it, a separate, different form is conceived of in the mind. The “fourth large” would be partaken of by the “third large,” largeness itself, and large things, and so on.

Parmenides says, “There is for each thing some being, itself by itself… to begin with” and “the forms are what they are of themselves and in relation to themselves”, which is to say that forms do not originate in the things that partake of the forms. This could provide an escape from the “third large” argument, but another problem is encountered when Parmenides says this argument means we cannot possess the forms themselves, so we cannot possess knowledge itself, but if anything partakes of knowledge itself, it is a god that does so. This is a problem because it contradicts Parmenides’ and Socrates’ earlier agreement that “the forms are what they are of themselves and in relation to themselves”.

Considering the forms thoughts would not help escape the argument. Socrates says, “[E]ach of the forms is a thought of the many… and properly occurs only in minds”. Socrates thinks that the mind recognizes a form when it observes many things partaking of it, and that to partake of a form is to be likened to it. Parmenides says that if Socrates is correct and a thing and a form resemble each other, and if “that which is like… partake[s] of the same one thing as what is like it”, “and if like things are like by partaking of something”, then that something is the form itself. Parmenides ends this argument by concluding that the thing and the form cannot be alike, otherwise “a fresh form will never cease emerging”, so this argument fails to refute the “third large” argument.

I believe that Platonic forms can be salvaged. Considering the forms thoughts comes close to refuting the “third large” argument, but a different approach must be taken. I think it is true that “each of the forms is a thought of the many… and properly occurs only in minds”, but I disagree that to partake of a form is to be likened to it. I think things are what they are in and of themselves, but I think forms are dependent on the things that partake of them.

Each form is a positive or negative value of a dimension, and thus each form has an opposite. For example, large and small are positive and negative values of size, and beauty and ugliness are positive and negative values of aesthetics. Thus, when a thing partakes of a form, it does not get a share of one form or the other; rather, a thing’s size or beauty is relative. It depends on what other thing – something bigger, smaller, more beautiful, or more ugly – it is being compared to.

This conflicts with superexemplification because it rejects the proposal that a form is the thought of a perfect example, which is to say, using my examples, that there is something of ultimate size or beauty, of which everything else large or small or beautiful or ugly is a thought.

If we imagine something with a size, and that size were greater than the size of the smallest conceivable thing and smaller than the size of the largest conceivable thing, this would present no problem because everything besides those two things fits that description. But this is distinct from claiming that the universe is largeness itself, or a subatomic particle is smallness itself. Size is relative. It is possible to conceive of something larger than the universe, and it is possible to conceive of something smaller than a subatomic particle. Every description we can attach to something only exists relative to its opposite.


Originally Written in October or November 2007 as a college essay



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Aristotle’s Criticisms of Plato’s Form of the Good

                  

Greek philosophers Plato (ca. 427 - 347 BC) and Aristotle (384 B.C.E. - 322 B.C.E.)


The categories are Aristotle’s attempt to place the senses of being into ten classifications. They are substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, and affection.

Aristotle argues against the Platonists’ view that there is such a thing as the “form of the good.” Aristotle believes that good is not a single, common universal because what it is to be good is particular to the essence of the individual; that is, what makes something good varies depending on what the thing is.

Aristotle defines what goodness is with respect to each category of being. For example, he says the good place is the right situation, the good relative is the useful, and the good time is the opportune moment. He says that if good were a common and single universal, it would be spoken of in only one of the categories and not in them all.

To describe two different individuals as “good” is to assign them a homonymous quality. They are both called “good,” but what it is to be good is different for the two individuals. For example, what it is to be a good master is different from what it is to be a good slave because different properties define each individual and different properties define what makes each individual good. Were a slave to try to be a good slave by partaking in that which makes his master a good master, he would either cease to be good, cease to be a slave, or both.

Aristotle says that “good” is the same as “good itself” because they both have the same account of “good” in the same way that “the human being itself” and “human being” have the same account of “human being”. To argue this is to disagree with the Platonic idea that “good” and “human being” are individuals that partake of the forms “good itself” and “the human being itself.” To add the word “itself” to an idea is to suggest that the idea is a form that is dependent upon the things that partake of it.

Aristotle also says, “good itself will be no more of a good by being eternal; for a white thing is no whiter if it lasts a long time than if it lasts a day”. Aristotle means that just because some individual may have a quality that is thought of as a perfection, it does not mean that that individual is any more perfect with respect to what makes that individual what it is. In other words, if an individual (“f”) has a perfection (“p”), its “f-ness” is not affected.

Next, for the Platonist who would respond to his criticisms by distinguishing goods which are good in their own right from goods which are merely useful, Aristotle poses a dilemma. He asks, “is nothing except the Form good in its own right, so that the Form will be futile?” He then says that if practical wisdom, pleasures, and honors are goods in their own right, and if there is a Form of good, then the same account of good turns up in all of them. He says those three things have different and dissimilar accounts, so “the good is not something common corresponding to a single Form”.

When Aristotle says that good “is not like homonyms resulting from chance,” he means that it is not due to chance that one definition of “good” shares something with another. “Good” has many meanings depending on the nature of the individual to which it is applied. This is why the idea “good” can be represented in a single word; for each individual, there exists a property or a set of properties required for the individual to be called “good.”

Aristotle also asks whether good is spoken of by analogy. This may be so, as when two individuals each have the set of properties that respectively make them good, the goodness of one individual is analogous to the goodness of the other with respect to what the individuals are and what makes them good, even though the properties that make them good may be in completely different categories.

Aristotle says that in trying to determine whether there is a Form of the Good, we are looking for “the sort of good which a human being can possess or achieve in action.” He says, “If there is some one good predicated in common, or some separable good, itself in its own right,” that is not the sort of good that we can possess or achieve. He disagrees with the proposition that if we have a view to the Form of the Good “as a sort of pattern, we shall also know better about the goods that are goods for us, and if we know about them, we shall hit on them.”

Aristotle says it is useless for a craftsman to know good itself because the craftsman has nothing to gain by knowing it. What makes a doctor or a weaver or a carpenter useful is his understanding of the work he practices; not simply knowing good itself and thus being able to partake of it.

It may not be the case that the “possess and achieve in action” argument is an argument against Plato at all. What is probable is that it was not intended as an argument, but rather as a rationalization. In this section of the text, Aristotle is not using his statement about the uselessness of understanding the Form of the Good to mankind to argue against its existence, but  rationalizing the difficulty of determining, once and for all, the answer to the question of whether there exists a Form of the Good.

Aristotle’s weakest argument against Plato is the argument that “good itself will be no more of a good by being eternal, for a white thing is no whiter if it lasts a long time than if it lasts a day”. Aristotle is trying to say that if an individual “f” has a perfection “p”, the “f-ness” possessed by “f” is no greater. This statement seems true, as it does not contradict Aristotle’s assertion that for an individual to have a superfluous characteristic in a state of perfection does not make that individual any more “good.” However, the first statement makes it necessary to ask, What does Aristotle think is the property that allows for goodness itself to be good?

Aristotle’s strongest argument against Plato is the argument that good is spoken of as an analogy. If two individuals are described as good, a Platonist would take that to mean that both individuals partake of the same thing, goodness. Aristotle, on the other hand, understands that the individuals are good with respect to what it is for each individual to be good. He rejects the idea that their goodness is the same, but he also rejects the idea that they are both called good for no reason whatsoever. Instead, he sees goodness as something abstract and difficult to define, proposing that the goodness possessed by the individuals are analogous with respect to what makes the individuals what they are. This argument is fair to Plato in that it seems to reconcile that notion with Plato’s position that the Form of the Good exists as something that encompasses all different types of good.



Originally written in November or December 2007 as a college essay






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Thrasymachus’ Support for Justice Being the Advantage of the Stronger

 Greek sophist Thrasymachus of Chalcedon
(ca. 459 - 400 B.C.E.)


In Book I of Plato’s Republic, Thrasymachus claims that “the just is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.” Asked by Socrates to explain the statement, Thrasymachus says that in each city that is ruled tyrannically, democratically, or aristocratically, the ruling group is master. He says, “each ruling group sets down laws for its own advantage; a democracy sets down democratic laws, a tyranny, tyrannic laws; and the others do the same. And they declare that what they have set down… is just for the ruled, and the man who departs from it they punish as a breaker of the law and a doer of unjust deeds.” He says, “in every city the same thing is just, the advantage of the established ruling body. It surely is master, so the man who reasons rightly concludes that everywhere justice is the same thing, the advantage of the stronger.”

While Socrates examines Thrasymachus’ point of view, he gets Thrasymachus to say that it is just to obey the rulers, and also that rulers sometimes makes mistakes, setting down some laws correctly and some incorrectly. Thrasymachus agrees that a law that sets down what is advantageous for the rulers is correct, and the law that sets down what is disadvantageous for the rulers is incorrect.

Socrates tells him that, according to his argument, “it’s just to do not only what is advantageous for the stronger but also the opposite, what is disadvantageous”. Thrasymachus defends his statements by saying, “I suppose that each [the doctor and the calculator]…, insofar as he is what we address him as, never makes mistakes.” He says, “The man who makes mistakes makes them on account of failure in knowledge and is in that respect no craftsman.” and “…the ruler, insofar as he is a ruler, does not make mistakes; and not making mistakes, he sets down what is best for himself.”

Socrates and Thrasymachus agree that the doctor is one who cares for the sick and not primarily a money-maker, and that the pilot is a ruler of sailors and not primarily a sailor. They also agree that the art, whether it is medicine or ruling sailors, is “directed toward seeking and providing for the advantage of each”. Socrates says “there isn’t ever anyone who holds any position of rule, insofar as he is a ruler, who considers or commands his own advantage rather than that of what is ruled and of which he himself is the craftsman; and it is looking to this and what is advantageous and fitting for it that he says everything he says and does everything he does.”

Here, Thrasymachus, rather than agreeing, tells Socrates that he thinks that shepherds, cowherds, and rulers only take care of their subjects as it relates to how they themselves, the rulers, will benefit, and that he thinks that Socrates would disagree. Thrasymachus reasons that “the just man everywhere has less than the unjust man”, and he speaks of situations in which the just man suffers more than the unjust. He says there is more advantage in being unjust than there is in being just, and that “injustice… is mightier, freer, and more masterful than justice”, reiterating that the just is the advantage of the stronger, and adding that “the unjust is what is profitable and advantageous for oneself.” He thinks that injustice rules the just, that people who serve make their rulers happy but do not make themselves happy. Socrates responds to this by suggesting that Thrasymachus thinks of the shepherd as primarily a money-maker and not a shepherd, and argues that “art surely cares for nothing but providing the best for what it has been set over”.

They agree that rulers rule willingly, though not voluntarily, as they demand wages. Socrates says, “the benefit the craftsmen derive from receiving wages comes to them from their use of the wage-earner’s art in addition.” Thrasymachus agrees with Socrates that if the craftsman were not paid, he would derive no benefit from practicing his craft, and so Socrates says that “no art or kind of rule provides for its own benefit, but… it provides for and commands the one who is ruled, considering his advantage – that of the weaker – and not that of the stronger.” He says that decent men rule because they fear being ruled by a worse man were they to choose not to rule, and so they rule out of necessity, and the ruled “choose to be benefited by another rather than to take the trouble of benefiting another.”

Thrasymachus maintains that injustice is more profitable than justice, and says that justice is high-minded innocence and injustice is good counsel. He says that “those who can do injustice perfectly… and are able to subjugate cities and tribes” are good and prudent. He says that injustice is among virtue and wisdom, and justice is among their opposites. Socrates says, “if you had set injustice down as profitable but had nevertheless agreed that it is viciousness or shameful… we would have something to say… But as it is… injustice is fair and mighty, and, since you also dared to set it down in the camp of virtue and wisdom, you’ll set down to its account all the other things which we used to set down as belonging to the just”, and Thrasymachus agrees.

When Socrates asks Thrasymachus whether the just man and the unjust man would want to and would claim they deserve to get the better of each other, he says yes. He also says that “the just man is like the wise and good, but the unjust man like the bad and unlearned.” He says that the good and wise man will want to get the better of the unlike, while the bad and unlearned man will want to get the better of both the like and the unlike. Socrates says, “the just man has revealed himself to us as good and wise, and the unjust man unlearned and bad”, and Thrasymachus uneasily agrees to this.

Socrates says, “if justice is indeed both wisdom and virtue… it is also mightier than injustice, since injustice is lack of learning”. Thrasymachus tells Socrates that justice is not wisdom, and therefore a city that enslaves another does so with injustice, but if justice is wisdom, it does so with justice.

Thrasymachus agrees that injustice produces quarrels, justice produces friendship, and that if a group of people with some common unjust enterprise would be more able to accomplish something if they didn’t act unjustly to each other. Likewise, Thrasymachus agrees with Socrates’ assertion that if injustice should come into being within one man, that man will cease to be of one mind with himself, and he would be an enemy to himself, to just men, and to gods.

Socrates and Thrasymachus agree that there is some work and some virtue that belong to a horse, and to eyes and ears. Socrates asks if things could do their work if their virtue were to be replaced with vice, and Thrasymachus says that they would work badly. They agree that the soul must have some virtue, and that it would not accomplish its work were it deprived of its virtue. Socrates reiterates that the virtue of the soul is justice, and argues that this means that the just man and the just soul will have a good life, and that “it is not profitable to be wretched; rather it is profitable to be happy”, and also that “injustice is never more profitable than justice.” Thrasymachus ends the discussion by saying that he does not know what the just is, nor whether it is a virtue or whether a just man is happy or unhappy.


Originally Written in October or November 2007 as a college essay



For more entries on justice, crime, and punishment, please visit:
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