Transcript L04-205_16-01-07-16 - follow in order to start your

L04-205_16-01-07-16
• The arguments, the problems.
• First. Arguments by analogy.
• We could not mount any arguments without some reliance on
analogy, but the fairly obvious problem is that in an analogy, as in
metaphors, one is making a comparison between two (or more)
distinguishable things, that have an aspect or feature in common.
Thus, there is always an additional analytical step: IN WHAT
SENSE is the analogy pertinent? Does it FIT the question to which it
is related? What is the balance between the confirming relevance of
the analogy, and an actual dis-analogy—where the things compared
are actually incompatible (again, you have to consider the sense in
which they may be incompatible).
• IS the relation between being AWAKE and ASLEEP really
analogous to being ALIVE and DEAD?
Theme and Problem: opposites
• Opposites are thematically active, in the sense that our
languages and our experiences are marked extensively
by opposites. But here, the theme does not by itself
make an argument, and arguments by analogy on this
theme are very commonly crap.
• EXAMPLES from PHAEDO
• Consider whether a particular has one opposite, or
many, or none.
• Don’t forget that there are a host of other relations that
are similar
• Opposite or Contrary?
• Contrary or Contradictory?
• PLATO was proceeding by intuition: Aristotle actually
sorted it out. LOGIC, as we typically use the term to
characterize FORMAL arguments, is Aristotle’s invention.
Traditional square of oppositions
ANAMNESIS
• Learning as recollection, literally, UNFORGETTING.
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ἀνάμνησις
Note that this is the only argument to which the
entire group gives assent.
Two things to notice: first, that it is not literal, but
associative. If you see Simmias, you recall
Cebes.
But second, it has cognitive force ONLY in the
case of our having a conception that we simply
cannot confirm comes from experience.
Modern readers get confused on this, after 600
years of weak empirical arguments, but there is
a real issue here.
ABSOLUTES, universals
• Plato does not always make clear that
these are instances in which we make a
JUDGMENT. X is Y. This is not sorted out
until Aristotle’s Categories, and Aristotle
relied on observation of Plato’s many
screw-ups to get it clarified.
• Two examples today:
• Beauty and Equality
Not the attribution of a property
• If you say this object is “BEAUTIFUL” you have made a
JUDGMENT about it—and that judgment needs to be
characterized: in what is it focused?
• If I say, Becky is Beautiful, and the person next to me
says, ‘Are you kidding? She is obviousl Ugly, the
disagreement has nothing directly to do with what is
meant by claiming that X is “beautiful”. It is a
disagreement about X.
• Put otherwise, if you say something is beautiful, we do
very reliably recognize what is meant, no matter how
much we may disagree about particular objects of such
judgments.
EQUALITY
• This is a stronger case, since we are not so likely to be
misled by focus on empirical properties.
• If you say that X and Y are EQUAL, you could not
possibly derive the concept of EQUALITY from
experience, since to recognize that X and Y are equal,
the same, etc. is precisely what CONSTITUES the
experience in the first place.
• You might suppose (though you would be wrong) that
you arrive at it by comparison.
• X, it seems, is equal in that it has all the properties of Y.
But notice that you already have to have the conception
of SAME, or EQUAL, to even be able to make the
comparison.
Other focal issues
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Permanence / durability
Simple or Composite
The Simmias – Cebes crisis
The core issue: CAUSE
The main operator: KNOWLEDGE
THE CRISIS AND MISOLOGY: Though Socrates is gone, the enterprise, the
arguments, the inquiry is JUST GETTING STARTED. It’s actually getting passed on
to PLATO.
• ANAXAGORAS: Mind as Cause
• The SOUL as EIDOS or FORM
• If the FORMS are eternal, and Soul is a FORM, does it follow that it is eternal?
The unnoticed liability: The question they have been pursuing is whether one’s OWN soul
would survive, with its knowledge, experience, and moral credit intact.
But if the proof is that the SOUL is a FORM, a case of EIDOS (IDEA), how does it
account for your own personal identity.
It takes a long time for Plato to see this, but it is transparent as early as EIDOS.
The HUGE issue: Theory
• A ‘philosophy’ is not a bag full of commonplaces—but
that is what Socrates had to offer. All of them are
problematic; some are obviously false; most are radically
incomplete or in one way or another incoherent.
• Socrates admits as much, in breaking new ground about
an hour before he dies. The new problem: Cosmos
(ORDER), and integration of insight (THEORY)
• The long standing debate about whether there is any
difference between the thought of Socrates and Plato is
a simple result of literally millennia of careless reading.
• The large psychologized debates, as if Socrates and
Plato were in competition, and even more so with Plato
and Aristotle are mostly confusion and clap-trap.