Plato XIII (Symposium, Phaedrus)

Plato's reaction to a troubling kind of relationship. The idea is that the relationships introduce children to the polis. Plato's characters speak bluntly about the rights and wrongs of the practice. But Plato ambivalent, in general, about eros.

Symposium: series of speeches about love, then Alcibiades' speech about Socrates. Phaedrus takes love as a god; then idea of two gods (lower love--desire--and heavenly love--loyalty). Then love as a cosmic force (love as an effect on the human body.)

Aristophanes' story by way of myth: the story of humans as pairs, split to stop them challenging the gods. So desire for reunion is desire to reunite with missing half. The serious point: love as desire for a strong kind of union, i.e. an identity.

Socrates rejects previous ideas. Diotema, his imaginary interlocutor, takes love as desire. So if love a god, he's desirous, and therefore doesn't have a lot--he's a poor, rough god. So that looks like what Aristophanes said--love a desire. But Diotema says that the object of desire can't be something that is a proper part of me, or possessed by me--it must be something that I think of as good, i.e. the beautiful.

But now, as usual: if want what's beautiful, should not be content with physical bodies--should seek the Form of beauty. Get explanation of desire for children this way: attempt to imitate immortality of the Form of beauty.

Love always points towards Form, so away from body and towards soul--so love is expressed as a desire to make soul beautiful, i.e. to educate. So qualified approval for the troubling practice. A higher expression of this kind of love: laws that improve many souls, not just one.

But highest of all is grasping of the Form itself: i.e. philosophy.

---o---

Phaedrus: A bucolic encounter with Phaedrus outside Athens; again, speeches on love exchanged. The question: is a lover, ideally, a friend or a dependent? Possible reason for second option: lover doesn't want to meet with resistance.

Image of souls as winged chariot: the noble horse and wild one, steered by charioteer. If well steered, can glimpse forms. If not, don't. Note similarity of this image to the tripartite image of soul in The Republic.

The present point? Seeing a beautiful person reminds us of the realm of Forms. Note this like the theory of recollection of Forms from the Phaedo. So a relationship, if it goes well, leads to a philia kind of relationship, not an eros kind.

Objections: this is a weird picture of love. If beautiful persons' role is to remind us of the Form of beauty, any beautiful person will do as well. It seems the person him/herself drops out of the picture. That seems to miss something important about loving relationships.

---o---

Lysis: A more charitable version of Plato's picture of love can be reconstructed from this. Being in a friendship is aiming for something good. And the good is my friend's good--not the Form of the good, or anything else. So that looks like a more convincing picture.

 

Plato XII (Timaeus)

Note: the only dialogue extant in the Western tradition 'til quite late, because translated to Latin, unlike the rest that don't get translated 'til the 12th century. Mostly a monologue by Timaeus.

Timaeus is Plato's account of God. But unlike the Judeo-Christian God, he's a craftsman--a Demiurge. What's different: he's working from plans--the Forms. The universe as representation of the Forms. And he has a receptacle, into which his representation goes; without that, nothing he crafts would have anywhere to be put.

Numbers and mathematics literally and centrally at the forefront of Timaeus. Seems to follow from discussion in Republic--the ideal city. There, we had parallel of soul and city. Now get parallel between city and universe.

Initial qualification: Timaeus only to give a "likely account". The cosmos is the physical world, subject to change, hence only fit for opinion--not the Forms, fit for knowledge.

Demiurge wants to create best possible universe. That apparently [why?] leads to universe as living being with soul. So, using Forms-plan, Demiurge has universe partake in the Form of living being. It's spherical, composed of Empedocles' four elements (to be visible and tangible, needs fire and earth, and air and water in between elements to mathematically complete things). Picture of "layered" elements, heavier to inside, lighter to outside. Universe as a whole is divine--i.e. a god, made by the divine Demiurge--a living sphere.

Note oddness of Timaeus' argument: some parts of cosmos needed for empirical explanation, but some elements needed mathematical explanation (Pythagorean-sounding).

The Homeric gods are created as adjuncts to the Demiurge. Question of whether this is ironic or sincere (recall Xenophanes' criticism of this sort of reasoning about the divine).

The Homeric gods as the fashioners of humans, combining elements with the Demiurge's parcelling out of spirit. Explanation of why humans have heads (imitation of sphere).

The receptacle: the container for everything we observe. We know it by positing: we know there must be something into which things move when they change. Note Heraclitean character of this argument. The receptacle unchanging and propertyless.

So this a third metaphysical element in Plato's picture: Forms, things that partake in Forms, and receptacle in which those things are. That introduces constraint: e.g. the skull as it is given the constraints imposed by necessity of the receptacle.

Triangles: these the constituents of elements! So this a geometrical atomism. Earth is made up of 90-45-45 triangles: combining those gets cubes. Other elements: made up of half-equilaterals: combining these gives the polyhedra: the five Platonic solids. This gives mathematical explanations of empirical stuff: solidity of cube explains solidity of earth. The other elements (e.g. fire - pyramids) can recombine into each other as triangles change. But since earth different, it can't change into other elements nor they into it.

Note this looks like a recombined Presocratic picture--elements, divine mind, world in change, but fundamentally mathematical. Odd picture of providentially designed universe, but with constraints in materials and plans. Note many differences from Christian faith--God not personal, not loving (loving bound up with desire, but Demiurge has no needs).

Plato XI (Cratylus)

Cratylis as a first foray into philosophy of language.

The question: how do words have meaning? Note that random syllables do not have a meaning. But "Frege" or "philosophy" do. What's the difference?

One theory: stipulation--e.g. naming. E.g. baby: two people dub an arbitrary thing a string of syllables.

Plato considers the stipulation theory--has one of the characters

Recall that Cratylus was one of the (radical) Heracliteans ('can't step in the same river once')

Cratylus disagrees: words have meanings by nature.

Note this a familiar Sophistic distinction: nature and convention (as with morality).

So what is it to have a meaning by nature? Cratylus says that things have true names. Getting them right is saying something true; getting them wrong is not naming it at all (i.e. not saying anything at all). This good news for Plato, since he agrees with the relativist picture on which you can't say anything false.

But note this different from the Theaetetus reasons for absence of falsehood: it's a semantic reason why there can't be falsehood.

Socrates' reply to the stipulation theory: names, as man-made, have functions. So not just any words can be names. But what words are suitable names or not? Socrates' answer: the word that reveals something of the referent's nature. His evidence: Greek words whose etymology reveal the nature of what they refer to.

Objection: the etymologies are far-fetched. Interpretive dispute about whether we're supposed to take Socrates' etymologies seriously.

Note: proposal to remove letters to reveal "real" etymology?

Regress objection: if we etymologize, e.g., "god", to show how it derives from "run", then what about "run" itself?

Socrates' reply: some things have a 'natural' likeness to their referent--i.e., onomatopoeia. That explains all the roots of names. Get a theory of words originating in nascent Heraclitean ideas: people used sounds to signify different kinds of change.

This not an affirmation of Heraclitean theory; just an analysis of semantics of language that appeals to an alleged sociological fact about early prevalence of Heraclitean thought.

Socrates' reply to Cratylus (the actual Heraclitean): language can't be entirely natural. Saw, e.g., change of letters/sounds in the earlier reply. But word still functions after this. So rejects Cratylus' extreme nature-based account of meaning.

So words are representations of their referents, in Socrates' theory. That opens up, against Cratylus, the possibility of mismatch between the word and what it represents. So we get the possibility of mismatch again (note similarity of this to the way falsehood shown possible in the Theaetetus: there, a mismatch of wax imprints).

So Socrates trying to vindicate two uses of language: to communicate intentions (a la naming a baby) and to reveal the true nature of things (a la getting things right and wrong).

HoPwaG: Plato X (Sophist)

Recall: Forms explanation, by way of being the cause of, the properties things of.

Also note that when you get this explanation and cause of, e.g., beauty--expressing that is going to be knowledge.

A worry: why think the cause of beauty is going to be the definition/explanation of beauty (as we might now think)?

Note that Plato might get out of this: if you find a cause that is a cause by virtue of being the nature of (explanation of), then it can fill both roles (i.e. cause and definition/explanation).

[Is a good way to think about this to say that he's got hold of something like Aristotelian formal cause here?]

The Sophist

Main character here a stranger from Elea, talking to Theaetetus the day after the Theaetetus (the dialogue). Brief meeting with Socrates. Eleatic stranger, obviously, representing Parmenidean school.

Question of defining a sophist--are they different from a) politicians b) philosophers?

Difference from other dialogues: Eleatic stranger makes definite doctrinal proposals.

The attempt at definition: method of collection and division:

• get a large class of things;
• divide into smaller things until get what you want;
• e.g. to define angling, start with hunting, subdivide (into two--not always named);
• at end, get list of classes, with one the definiendum.

One idea: a Sophist as maker of false images. Leads to the central problem of Sophist:

The problem of non-being:

• Context: Proposed definition of Sophist is someone who sells falsehoods (images) for money;
• To get that as definition, want falsehoods to be real;
• The worry: The Sophist would deny there's any such thing as falsehood--to say what falsehood is involves using concept of non-being, but PPMI rules out concept of non-being, so looks like the definition of sophistry includes a meaningless term;
• How falsehood involves non-being: to say a falsehood is to say that what is not is, or what is, is not;
• Question then of what the problem with non-being is.
• First idea: states of affairs that don't obtain (e.g. on a nice day you could say "It's not raining"-- that would be true, but it would be true in virtue of a state of affairs not obtaining, i.e. it not raining;
• So we have a state of affairs "inherently" negative (not raining) being somehow real as one idea to explain non-being, but this seems odd since what's real just seems to be nothing to do with rain, so hard to see how anything negative is manifested (or 'real') at all;
• Second idea: when I say a falsehood (e.g. "It's raining" on a nice day) what's expressed is a state of affairs that doesn't obtain;
• So, again, second idea is that falsehoods involve these odd things--states of affairs that don't obtain;
• So there only seem to be "positive" states of affairs--things that do obtain.
• So what's the problem of non-being? That saying what a falsehood is entails mentioning something (a non-obtaining state of affairs); but if there aren't any such, then our definition of falsehood includes a term with no meaning [?]; and that makes it a bad definition.
• Another problem for Plato: the Forms explain, metaphysically, positive states of affairs (e.g. things are beautiful because they participate in Form of beauty). But what about negative states of affairs [e.g. not being beautiful = being ugly]? Do we now also need a Form of ugliness? Altnerative: might say that some things fail to participate in a Form. But how to explain this--what is it not to participate.
• Another way to think about this: the Forms came in to explain truth; now want explanation of falsehood (esp. since we have Sophists there is no falsehood).

The solution:

• So want to explain falsehoods and negative predications by way of analyzing positive states of affairs;
• They consider "Theaetetus is flying", a falsehood.
• Proposal: Theaetetus is participating in some Forms, e.g. sitting. So "Theaetetus sits" is true, and we have an explanation of that. But Sitting, the Form, participates in another Form, Difference From All The Things That Are Flying [or Difference From Flying, The Form?] Since Theaetetus participates in that Form, "Theaetetus is flying" is false.
• Note: other interpretations of this.
• The work of negation done by the Form of Difference--when something participates in this (and note, seems to be only Forms that participate in this Form), get [possibility of] falsehoods.
• This new in the Sophist: idea that Forms participate in others.
• Idea of greatest kinds: Being, Sameness, Difference, Motion, Rest
• Is this a problem? We had things participating in Forms. Now Forms participating in Forms. But this might be a problem--e.g. Third Man problems. So why think that Forms can participate in each other?
• Note that one reading of this is whether properties can have properties, i.e. whether there are second order properties.
• Example: If the Form of Motion is not, numerically, the same Form as the Form of Rest, then the Form of Motion differs from the Form of Rest in one way. So the Form of Motion participates in the Form of Difference (w.r.t. the Form of Rest)--just like any physical object can participate in the Form of Difference (w.r.t. some other physical object).
• Note: he might not have to say that all Forms participate in all others--might be that all Forms share in some Forms, e.g. the greatest kinds all participate in Sameness, but no Forms share in Motion or Rest [that seems to make sense], all Forms share in Being. So maybe can tell an interesting story here. (Suggestion that figuring out inter-relations of Forms is the 'work' of philosophy.)

So: if Plato's solution works, have a metaphysical account of both how there can be true statements (participation in Forms) and true negative predications and false statements (also, in a complicated way, by participation in Forms). [Still not 100% on how we've explained false statements, as opposed to true negative predications. When Th. participates in Form of Difference, get that it's true to say, e.g., "Th. does not fly". Do we get an explanation that's it's false to say "Th. flies"? Can we just say that when you participate in this Form (w.r.t. X), then any statement "You are Xing" is false? Maybe yes. Form of Difference "special" in that respect--only it explains false statements. OK.]

HoPwaG: Plato IX (Parmenides)

Question of whether the Parmenides reaffirms or refines Plato's doctrines (and questions about the chronology of the dialogues).

Starts with Zeno reading his paradoxical arguments. Recall, the point of the paradoxes is to affirm the Eleatics' doctrines.

Socrates rejects Eleatic doctrines: things are one and many. But that doesn't mean there's no oneness and manifoldness: the Forms, e.g., since they don't feature compresence of opposites, are oneness.

Socrates posits Forms to explain why things are similar--explain presence of shared characters in some things: they explain both why things are similar and dissimilar.

Parmenides poses problems for the theory of Forms, which Socrates is unable to resolve.

The problems:

1. Which things have Forms?

• Socrates says there are Forms of goodness, beauty, largeness, etc. Is there also a Form of man? Of every animal? Of hair, dirt? Man-made things?
• This a serious problem. If there are Forms, how are we to know what they are? Sometimes Plato seems to suggest there are Forms of man-made things, but in the Parmenides   

2. What is it to share in or partaking in a Form?

•  E.g. does each large thing have a piece of the Form of largeness? Then each part of the Form of largeness would be small by comparison with the Form as a whole.
• Or, e.g., is the whole Form of largeness present in each large thing? Then the Form would be separate from itself (the largeness of the giraffe is spatially distinct from the largeness of the Eiffel Tower).
• Socrates' reply: Metaphor of the same day being present in different places.

3. The Third Man argument

• Recall Socrates posits a Form to explain similarity. Eg: there are several large things, so the Form of largeness is posited to explain their similarity.
• But if the Form of largeness is itself large, then there are {large things, Form of largeness}, so we need another Form to explain their similarity. 
• To explain largeness, we need to posit an infinite number of Forms.
• Reply option 1: 'So what?' What contradiction follows from the need for an infinite number of Forms (e.g. they are immaterial!)
• Problem: the idea was that one thing was to explain the similarity of many things. It spoils that aim to have to have not just one, but an infinity, of Forms before we can explain the similarity of all large things. [In fact, it doesn't really advance the explanation at all.]
• Reply option 2: Deny that the Form of largeness is large. But this awkward. Recall: the Form of largeness was not supposed to be small: it was supposed to differ from physical things that feature compresence of opposites. If he also denied that the Form was large, the Form would be neither large nor small. Also, recall the self-exemplification thesis from before. And also, physical things are supposed to be large by virtue of resembling or partaking in the Form. If we're now saying that the Form itself isn't large, then how do they resemble it? [That last problem seems to me fatal for this reply option.]
• But there also seems to be good reason to deny that the Form of largeness is large. Forms are immaterial; immaterial things can't be large; so, the Form of largeness can't be large. [This seems disastrous.]
• Reply option 3 (Socrates): Forms are not "separately existing objects". Rather, they are thoughts. Not clear how this solves problem, but as thought, Form wouldn't be large, so wouldn't get infinite regress.
• Objection: Thoughts have referents. The referent of the Form-thought would be outside our mind and subject to the argument. 
• Even if they're "paradigms that exist in nature", which other things resemble, they're independent of us, etc., and subject to the Third Man argument. And also...

4. Third Man argument, redux

• The Form of largeness is invoked to explain why large things are similar to each other: large things are similar to the Form of largeness. But then we have: {similarity of large things to Form of largeness, similarity of Form of largeness to itself, similarity of Form of similarity to itself}. So we need another Form of similarity to explain the similarity that these things partake in. Again, an infinite regress.
• This time the infinite series of Forms are Forms of similarity, not largeness.[Not clear why that's worse than the first Third Man argument?]

5. Impotence of Forms

• If Forms are separate [from us?], they can relate to each other but not to us ('mastery' example supposed to show this: the master is master of the slave; the Form of mastery doesn't master the slave).
• The upshot: two disconnected realms--the Forms and what is supposed to participate in them.
• If nothing in our world can relate to the Forms, then there are no relations between physical world and Forms; knowledge is a relation; so we can't have knowledge of Forms. But they were supposed to be the objects of knowledge.

Question of what the upshot of this is. Is there a reply available on behalf of the theory? Suggestion that the sequence of questions is a list of desiderata for the theory of Forms: we want an account of which ones there are, how they can be different enough from physical things to explain their similarity, but not so different that they are radically disconnected from physical things (and so unable to explain their similarity).

HoPwaG: Plato VIII (Forms)

Recall: have account of just polis and soul. Question now of how to get to ideal city. Answer: via philosopher rulers. Argument via famous images from The Republic: the cave allegory, the divided line.

Note that the philosopher in question is someone who has knowledge (not, e.g., Socrates!). So we get the picture of what that philosopher looks like by an account of what knowledge is.

Knowledge and belief are powers; powers distinguished by their objects (e.g. sight, by visible objects; hearing, by audible objects); so want to know what the objects of knowledge and belief are. Answers: the objects of knowledge are what is; the objects of belief are what is and what is not; (objects of ignorance are only what is not). Note Parmenidean tenor of this.

How to understand this? Some Platonists say that the objects of knowledge are a different realm of reality--the Forms--which are, and are different from the physical objects that both are and are not.

Why or how is a physical thing not? Some Platonists answer, along Heraclitean lines, that: physical objects always changing, so both are and are not. Alternative answer: knowledge always true (always is), belief can be true or false (is or is not), ignorance always false (is not).

So want the philosopher, since he grasps the nature of justice, to rule the city, if we want the city to be just. (Analogy by navigator of ship.)

New idea: philosopher also has knowledge of the Form of the Good, by which he knows what is good about the other forms. Form of the Good like the sun. Sun makes other objects visible by its light; so the Form of the Good makes other forms intelligible to soul and gives them being. The Form of the Good as "beyond being, dignity, power"--a super-Form.

Glaucon objects: what is this Form?

Socrates' answer: the divided line. Shows that the Good is a first principle for Forms: justice, beauty could not be what they are without the Good. So Good is at the top of the hierarchy of Forms, then the Forms themselves, then (below the divided line) are physical objects that partake in the Forms (i.e., are "images" of the Forms), then below them are images of physical things--shadows, etc--(hence, images of images).

So above the divide is what we can know; below is what we can see. Question of what exactly fits where above the divide: just above the line are "hypotheses", but at the top appears to be the Form of the Good. Hypotheses not clearly the Forms, though, so maybe the Forms are in the fundamental principles part (the highest segment).

Cave allegory another illustration of the theory.

 ---o---

Note cave allegory does not commit Plato to a separate "heaven" of Forms, radically separate from physical objects. But they're not radically separate: can get from one to another, and the images are images of real things. So there is a connection. So Plato need not be saying that physical objects are pseudo-real. Plato can be read such that they are just as real.

The alternative reading: there are two ways of looking at the world. We can look at it as a collection of objects of belief (when we look at physical objects, etc) or we can look it as a collection of objects of knowledge (when we think about the Forms). So there's an epistemological, not a metaphysical, separation between the physical and the Forms.

Note also: the cave allegory is not mysticism (as some Platonists think): the prisoners don't get a mystical flash of insight; what the allegory of coming into the sunlight is an allegory of is education (albeit difficult education).

HoPwaG: Plato VI (Phaedo)

Phaedo introduces theory of Forms--note, Forms absent from many of Plato's dialogues, and even in Phaedo they come after soul's immortality.

Soul's immortality:

• note that the discussants assume that we have soul, and assume dualism--i.e. soul different from body, though not necessarily incorporeal;
• might be that soul is like smoke that blows away after death, or harmony of tuned instrument (i.e. not corporeal, but may disappear on death);
• so the idea to show that the soul immortal--and on the way, we get that its incorporeal, invisible, etc.;
• first step: soul existed before body (theory of learning as recollection), so soul can exist without body;
• second step: soul must be akin to what it knew before birth;
• this where the Forms come in: the 'Form' of beauty is, e.g., one of the things we knew before birth;
• the 'Form' of beauty not a physical object: it's the nature in which beautiful physical objects partake;
• this gives another way to argue for soul's independence from body, the affinity argument;
• the affinity argument: soul must be akin to what it knows, so soul akin to Forms, but Forms eternal and immaterial; so, the soul is eternal and immaterial;
• note the point here is to show the soul's immortality--the Forms are assumed;
• but also want an argument for the Forms and a better story about what they are, and why we should think there are any.

The Forms:

• question of how recollection of Forms works;
• analogy with other cases of reminding: can get reminded in metonymic way or mimetic way;
• e.g. two equally long sticks resemble the Form of equality, in being of the same length, but dis-resemble the Form of equality by being in other ways unequal--i.e. they're like a (mimetic) portrait of the Form: like any portrait, they get some things right, others wrong;
• clearer reading of why the 'equal' sticks also unequal: they're unequal to a third stick, despite being equal to each other; but the Form is only equal);
• this the compresence of opposites reading: things have contradictory attributes, e.g. things are good in some ways, bad in others, beautiful but not beautiful, etc.;
• Forms then are standards of judgment when we judge that something is, e.g., good or beautiful;
• but Forms play not just epistemological role but a metaphysical one: they cause beautiful things to be beautiful;
• Plato's standard of causal explanation: cause must necessarily give rise to its effect; if something else could have happened, we haven't identified a causal structure;
• e.g. the cause of tallness could not have caused any shortness;
• So the Forms are the only things that seem to meet this causal standard, since they exclude their opposites;
• But then get a query about what causes inequality: could be either a Form of inequality or a failure to resemble the Form of equality;
• Note that what we have so far entails that each Form also exemplifies itself: and this is a weird consequence (e.g. the Form of largeness is large?) 
• [Note how self-exemplification follows from what we have so far: the Form of equality, unlike the equal sticks, just is equal and nothing else; i.e. it self-exemplifies.]

Objection to the theory:

• Does it help to be told that the reason, e.g., Helen beautiful is that she partakes in the Form of beauty?
• Reply: Forms, as well as causes, are the objects of our knowledge;
• Why does this help? Because someone who knew the Form of beauty would be able to explain why [cp. Theaetetus?] Helen beautiful and, e.g., why she's not as beautiful as a goddess, etc., so theory of Forms, combined with theory of knowledge, can be informative;
• Reply 2: can give a clever as well as simple cause of an effect: e.g. can say that something cold because of snow (clever) or because of partaking in Form of cold (simple);
• Objection: it's true that whenever snow involved, something will be cold, but it's not true that whenever something cold, snow is the 'clever' cause (might be ice, etc.). So a worry about how far Plato can push the 'clever cause' reply.

Application of theory of Forms to immortality of soul:

• soul is the cause of being alive; if it is, then soul can only be alive, not dead (as with snow as cause of cold); so, soul cannot be dead, by nature; so soul immortal;
• note: this avoids the objection that even if soul can survive death, might still eventually 'wear out' after many survivals;
• note: this is an inverse of our worry, that the soul might not be distinct from the body, so that bodily death is death full-stop. Socrates' worry is that the soul, which is distinct from the body, might itself have a different death.

So the Forms are:

• the objects of knowledge;
• free from compresence of opposites;
• Forms the (proper and universal) causes of, e.g., equality and beauty; but also:
• Forms are stable and unchanging, helping solve Heraclitus' universal flux problem (with Forms, we can have universal physical flux, and still have knowledge);
• Forms explain the meanings of words.

HoPwaG: Plato V (Knowledge)

Simple question: on Plato's view, can I know that I'm sitting in a chair now?

Usual response: whether we have knowledge, for Plato, depends on the object we're asking about. And chairs might be the wrong sort of object to be knowledge-apt. But (apparently) that's a wrong view to have about Plato, since otherwise would be hard to connect knowledge with virtue, which is what Plato wants [Not sure this was the point, but seems to make some sense.]

A real problem: Plato's view has trouble making sense of individual units of knowledge.

Why does Plato think knowledge has to be systematic?

• Because knowledge [recall from end of Theaetetus] connected with explanation--can't know that x without knowing why x: so knowing one thing is knowing two things, and;
• If we know x, we know that we know x.

So, upshot: I can't know x without knowing I know x. But should distinguish what it feels like to know x from what it is to know x.

Apparently this is a pair of distinctions: an internal one (what knowledge is like--which I think is supposed to be the link to explanation) and a second one (knowing that you know--or is this the 'systematic' condition?).

Knowledge and virtue

Possible link between these two via the internal condition on knowledge: knowledge turns out to be a state of soul (the explanatory thing), and virtue is a state of soul, and they turn out equivalent.

Idea that best to view Plato as engaged in exploration (not expostulating a 'secret' doctrine) of the link between virtue and knowledge.

Idea that what the link between knowledge and virtue supposed to establish is that wisdom is the only thing good (in itself).

So we have these questions:

• scope: what sorts of things can we know (e.g. can we know 'boring' things, like that we're sitting in a chair);
• starting question: how do we go from not-knowing to knowing, whatever it is (this was a Theaetetus question).

Sometimes it sounds like, on the 'starting' question, that Plato thinks that whatever it is that you add to true belief about x to get knowledge about x is not something too dramatic. But other times it sounds like adding whatever it is yields not just knowledge about x but knowledge in some more dramatic fashion ("sage-like" knowledge, perhaps of everything).

Note that explanation looks much more holistic than justification. Justification, as we talk about it these days, attaches to individual items of knowledge. Explanation seems to mean a change in your internal structure such that it allows knowledge of much more than an individual x.

Note that might hold this 'holistic' view of knowledge--that only know x when know everything--without being committed to accepting theory of forms. But for Plato knowledge is definitely knowledge of something real, and that (for Plato) is going to commit to commit you to forms.

A 'lingering' question: if knowledge always tells you the right thing to do, it must be that knowledge also tells you the wrong thing to do. But then why is knowledge connected to the right thing to do, rather the wrong thing?

HoPwaG: Plato IV (Theaetetus)

Question of whether there are things--or everything--such that they are x for me but y for you. That is, there is a relativist theory of truth. Theaetetus explores this question, and other epistemological questions: how false belief possible, etc.

Theaetetus himself features, as does Theodorus, as offering definitions of knowledge.

First pass:

• Theaetetus suggests that knowledge is perception (aisthesis)-- can include sensory and 'mental' perception; we know something when we perceive it;
• Socrates' reply: this suggests that what seems to be case is the case for me; if perception is knowledge, then, e.g., I could know that it is warm and you could know that it is cold. That seems wrong: it entails that truth is relative, since can only know x if x true.
• Note this is what the Sophists endorse (you are the "measure" of how the wind is for you) and Heraclitus (universal flux |= relativism, since no stable existence for anything, so everything changes from moment to moment, and all we have is reports from moment to moment);
• Defense of the relativist thesis: if you're interested in what's good, you just are interested in what's good for you, and the relativist can tell you that! What would it mean to be interested in what's good, but not for anyone, asks, e.g., Protagoras?
• Bad reply to relativist: there are thermometers! But then the relativist can just say that perceptions of the thermometer are not stance-independent, etc.;
• Socrates' replies: (1) relativism denies expertise; (2) questions of future; (3) relativism fails on its terms--it's self-refuting.
• Possible weakness of Socrates' reply (3): Protagoras might have only to admit that the doctrine is false for Socrates, but not false simpliciter.

Abandoning that Sophistical answer to the "knowledge is perception" idea, we get a puzzle about false belief:

• Theaetetus' next suggestion: knowledge is true belief;
• We then want to know: what is it for one belief to be true and another false?
• The Sophist challenge: it's impossible to have false beliefs; there is no such thing.
• The Sophist's argument: either I know x or I don't. If I know x, won't make mistake about it. If I don't know x, I won't be able to think about x, so again I can't make a mistake about it. In either case, I can't have false beliefs about x.
• Reply: As with Meno's paradox, there seems to be space for knowing enough about x to have false beliefs about it. The wax tablet picture of memory: some people get impressions quickly but lose them fast, others keep them, some don't get them easily. So, this opens door to mismatch: when there is a difference between something in the wax and a new  impression you get.
• How does this solve the paradox: I have the impression of someone in memory, and I match up a perception with that impression that just doesn't match.
• Problem: doesn't cover all cases of false judgement, e.g. saying 7+5=11. There, there's no impression being received. So how is false judgment possible? 
• Socrates' reply: soul as aviary. Acquiring knowledge is putting birds in aviary. Saying 7+5=11 is pulling the wrong bird from the aviary. So it's that you know 11 (that it's in the aviary) that enables you to get things wrong!
• Problem: it's paradoxical to say that it's because you know 11 that you can say 7+5=11. [Is the idea here: because, if you say 7+5=11, you don't know 11? I think so]
• Theatetus' amendment: the aviary also contains birds that represent ignorance. But: the point was to say something about knowing enough to get stuff wrong. Birds that represent ignorance won't solve that problem.

So we seem to be in aporia. We don't yet know that it's possible to have false beliefs, but we're considering the proposal that knowledge is true belief, and that at least still seems right. But:

• Socrates' reply: suppose jury is convinced someone guilty, and he is guilty, but they're persuaded by bad lawyering. So we don't want to say they know he's guilty.
• But knowledge does still seem to be true belief and something else.
• This a contemporary task for epistemologists.
• The new proposal: logos is what's needed in addition to true belief to get knowledge, logos being some kind of "rational account" [i.e., an account of why the true belief is true? Maybe.]
• Not fully worked out, but the Platonic proposal, such as it is, is that knowledge has something to do with what account you give of your true belief when you're asked why it's true.

HoPwaG: Plato III (Meno)

How is it that people get virtuous? Is it 'natural'? Is it taught? Meno suggests that we don't learn! When we think we are learning, we are recollecting--from a time, before we were born, when we knew everything. But ends in aporia, as usual.

Meno:

• presented as dialogue about virtue;
• Meno, student of Gorgias, kicks off dialogue by asking whether virtue taught;
• Socrates' response: need to know what virtue is, then can decide the original question;
• Meno's response: each kind of person has own virtue (polis for man, oikos for woman);
• Socrates' response: this a list of kinds of virtue, not a definition;
• Now get a conversation about what it is to have a definition--a list? non-circular? etc?
• But Socrates gives us a model definition of a geometric concept;
• Central part--Meno challenges inquiry into ethics, epistemology, or anything as follows:

Meno's paradox:

• either you know x or you don't; if you know x, don't need to do inquiry; but if don't know x, how can you know how to inquire about x, or recognize it when you find it?
• reply options: (1) escape between horns: there are plenty of things we know enough about to engage in inquiry about it (HoPwaG eg: Bustor Keaton movies, having seen some but not all);
• problem: How did we get to this partial knowledge? The dilemma applies to that knowledge too--seems we can't get started on knowledge [Note: this has a 'Zeno's paradox' air--for epistemology.]
• reply option (2) (Socrates): our souls have always existed, and over that time have learned everything, so we're never in the know-nothing position, have just forgotten most of what we know--so really we're just been reminded of what we already know when we learn;
• then get a theatrical demonstration of the 'religious myth' theory--Socrates just asks the slave boy questions, never asserts anything, and even if the questions leading, the boy has to figure things out, hence the knowledge doesn't come from without but from within;
• question of how strongly Plato is committed to the theory of recollection;
• doctrine can be modified to avoid the religious part of the myth, just by making the knowledge innate rather than soul-derived; 
• problem: immortality of soul seems an extravagant solution to the problem of knowledge;
• motivates reply option (3): partial knowledge doesn't help, but what if there's a third state between ignorance and knowledge, s.t. it's greater than ignorance but less than knowledge--the answer is yes, there are true beliefs without knowledge;
• thus Socrates says that his questions to the slave boy have brought out true beliefs, not knowledge--that much more questioning would be required for knowledge
• so get this very important distinction between true belief and knowledge.

 Knowledge and true belief:

• So what is this distinction? And if have true belief, why care about knowledge? 
• e.g.: if have true belief about horse race winner, will win my bet about the race, so why care about knowledge about the winner? answer: with knowledge, would bet more!
• true beliefs inferior to knowledge: true beliefs not grounded in a good reason for belief; ability to give reasons, not our degree of confidence, that makes for knowledge;
• so, like Socrates' 'magical statues' that can run away, true beliefs are unreliable until they are 'tied down' by finding the reason for their truth;
• a test for whether x has true belief or knowledge: if x can impart the beliefs to others;
• so virtue would be teachable if it were a kind of knowledge (back to that Socratic idea).

Teaching of virtue:

• a puzzle: if virtue is knowledge, and x having knowledge entails that x can impart what he knows, why are there no teachers of virtue?
• solution: since there are no teachers, seems that some (e.g. Pericles) that seem virtuous might have just true beliefs about what to do, not knowledge (e.g. by divine dispensation, rather than whatever work is needed to turn true beliefs into knowledge--don't get an account of that in Meno).

So have this very important distinction: true belief certainly isn't knowledge, we agree, but certainly necessary for knowledge; so the question is what has to be added to true belief to get knowledge.

HoPwaG: Plato II (Gorgias)

A central question: why be moral, if immorality can fulfill our desires? Callicles, follower of Gorgias, a Sophist or rhetorician, poses the central challenge to Socrates in Gorgias.

Note here, unlike Charmides, we move from rhetoric to ethics, unlike a move from ethics to epistemology.

Start by asking Gorgias: what art has Gorgias mastered, by analogy with shipbuilders who can make ships, etc.? Gorgias' answer is that rhetoric is the mastery of speech about the greatest of human concerns, which seems to amount to persuasion. And this art supposed to be morally neutral--the use to which it is put is something extra.

Note the historical background against which we're to understand this: Gorgias gave Helen's defense speech, arguing that compulsion by words equivalent to physical compulsion.

Another provocative example: an audience will prefer a rhetorician's answer to how to cure a patient to a doctor's in a debate.

Socrates wants to know whether Gorgias can also teach good, to avoid the bad use of rhetorical skill. Note Plato here makes Gorgias more like Protagoras (who did say he could teach the good) than the historical Gorgias, who doesn't appear to have made that claim.

But now Gorgias is in a bind. Rhetoric was supposed to be knowledge of the greatest of human concerns. But now it looks like rhetoric is persuasive speech in the absence of knowledge, i.e. rhetoric seems to be the art of getting people to make mistakes.

---o---

Next: Polus asks for Socrates' definition of rhetoric, and Socrates replies that it's not an art at all (the pastry chef/dietitian example).

Polus' objection: if rhetoric gives us absolute power, who cares if it can't tell us what we really ought to do?

Socrates' response: true power is being able to do what's good for you; rhetorician tyrants aren't truly powerful.

So: better to suffer wrongdoing than to do wrong oneself.

Polus' objection: no one agrees with this!

Socrates' argument:

P1 Justice is a good thing; injustice, bad
P2 Things are good because pleasant, beneficial, or both
P3 Justice is not pleasant
C1 If justice is good, justice is beneficial
P4 Things are bad because unpleasant, harmful, or both
P5 Injustice is not unpleasant
C2 If injustice is bad, injustice is harmful
C3 Justice is beneficial; injustice, harmful.

Combining this with the earlier point vs Gorgias about rhetoric as lack of knowledge of what's good, get another argument for Socrates' virtue is knowledge claim--i.e., virtue is knowing how to get what's in fact good. People who lack virtue are ones who do not know what is good for them. [Hence, better to suffer wrongdoing than inflict it? But surely can agree that inflicting wrongdoing is harmful because unjust, but still say that suffering wrongdoing is also harmful, so that it's not yet clear whether it's better to suffer wrongdoing than to inflict it.]

And, of course, worse for you to have great power if you have little knowledge--inflict harm on everyone, including yourself.

Objection: is it odd to say that the reason to be virtuous is for our benefit? Virtue seems to be tied with welfare of others being at least as important as our own. But maybe the answer here is just that Socrates appealing here to premises that Polus would accept.

---o---

Callicles' challenge. The accusation: Socrates exploits Gorgias' and Polus' shame which leads them to admit that rhetoric should be able to teach good, and that injustice bad, justice good.

Callicles' strategy is to deny P1, i.e. say that justice is bad; injustice, good. 

Callicles' argument: 

P1 Justice is a set of conventional rules to keep the strongest in line, i.e. to protect the interests of the weaker.
P2 The law of nature says that the strongest should get power, pleasure (i.e. what's naturally good).
C1 Justice deprives the strong of what's rightfully (by natural right) theirs.
C2 Justice contradicts the law of nature.
C3 Justice is bad; injustice, good.

Note this resembles Nietzchean critique of morality.

Socrates focuses on hedonistic tenor of Callicles' reply: his objection is that the life Callicles describes is slavery, not mastery. Reply by allegory: soul as jar. The hedonistic jar is full of leaks, and needs continual replenishment; water rushes out even as poured in. The temperate jar is sealed, never loses its contents. So hedonism requires continual trouble.

Callicles' reply: he's good with the hedonistic jar! Socrates tries to push the idea that as much pain in the hedonistic life as pleasure. But Callicles has a separate objection: that the life of the sealed jar is the "life of a stone".

Plato possibly here drawing attention to the limits of Socratic dialogue: if no common ground, or if common ground taken back, then no way to get purchase to refute a consistent immoralist (or indeed a radical skeptic).

HoPwaG: Plato I (Charmides, Euthydemus)

The Charmides and ethics:

• named for one of its main characters, Charmides, legendarily handsome (both Critias and Charmides among the Thirty Tyrants--their controversial history relevant to the dialogue's meaning);
• reference to curing headache via curing whole body--and soul;
• so led to question of whether Charmides has sophrosyne (moderation or temperance);
• so need definition of sophrosyne;
• irony here: when Socrates asks whether Charmides as beautiful in soul as in body, we're supposed to think of Charmides' chequered future as among the Thirty Tyrants;
• the implied question: not necessarily what is temperance, but how can we know if someone (or ourselves) temperate?
• Charmides proposal: sophrosyne is "doing one's own business"
• Critias (originator of the proposal) clarifies this as "doing what one should", i.e. "doing what is good"
• In response to Socrates' question about whether temperance is knowingly or unknowingly doing good;
• Critias modifies proposal to temperance as self-knowledge;
• Socrates now wants to know what self-knowledge is knowledge of (as medicine is knowledge of health, etc.);
• Critias' surprising proposal is that self-knowledge is "knowledge of knowledge"
• But this is odd: there's no "vision seeing vision", etc.;
• Now we're at nature and usefulness of knowledge, i.e. moved from ethics to epistemology.

The Charmides and epistemology:

• It does seem that knowing p entails knowing that I know p (indeed, this seems necessary condition, and hence test, of knowledge);
• But then, knowing, e.g. 2+2=4 seems to be all that's required for knowledge: there doesn't seem to be a case in which I also know that I know 2+2=4;
• So knowledge of knowledge seems both necessary and superfluous for knowledge--a paradox;
• Charmides ends without ethical conclusion about sophroysne or epistemological conclusion about self-knowledge;

So what's been achieved in Charmides?

• does look like there's agreement that sophrosyne and other virtues are kinds of knowledge;
• but if virtue is knowledge, then the discussion hasn't really strayed; however odd it looks to us, discussion of epistemology, on the FSA, is discussion of ethics.

 ---o---

The Euthydemus:

• Socrates in conversation with Crito (again, Crito later involved in persuading Socrates to flee after trial--may be relevant to the dialogue's intended meaning);
• same motif as Charmides of Socrates struggling to exert influence over young (Clinias) in face of competing influences (Euthydemus and Dionysodorus are Sophists);
• the set-up: the Sophists are supposed to give a demonstration of their trade by convincing Clinias to seek virtue;
• their argument style: making Clinias contradict himself whatever he says;
• Socrates replaces this eristic argument style with Socratic questioning of Clinias, the idea being that anything that appears good only good when conjoined with knowledge;
• followed by more bad argument from the Sophists: knowing anything |= knowing everything, etc.;
• part of what Plato's up to: displaying fallacious arguments;
• but that's not all: some of the Sophists' arguments are more subtle, e.g. that it's impossible for two people to contradict each other. Example: you say there is a black horse, and I say there is a white horse. We are talking about two different things. But if we are talking about two different things and you're right, then I'm not talking about any thing, so I'm talking about nothing, so I'm not saying anything, and if I contradict you I must be saying something; so, we can't contradict each other.
• note how Parmenidean this is: impossible to think or speak of what does not exist;
• other questions from Euthydemus return in other dialogues at greater length: e.g. the question of whether wise or ignorant learn turns up in Meno as Meno's paradox.

HoPwaG: Socrates III (virtue and knowledge)

Socrates at least endorses the claim that knowledge necessary for virtue, or (perhaps equivalent) can't be reliably virtuous without knowledge (e.g. Euthypro: can't reliably tell what is pious and what isn't without knowing what piety is).

Maybe also endorses the stronger claim that knowledge sufficient for virtue.

Disputing the necessity claim

The objection: courage is a virtue, but courage seems to be about doing. So courage seems to represent a challenge to Socrates' "intellectualized" view of virtue. "Knowing" about courage seems to consist just in acting courageously. So knowledge not necessary for virtue.

Possible Socratic response: Someone who often acts courageously does not (necessarily) display courage; if he's acting by, e.g., instinct, then really, he's getting lucky.

Disputing the sufficiency claim

The objection: if I have a test, and it's reliable, so I know what the courageous thing to do is, isn't there still a gap between my knowing it and doing it?

Response: First, Socrates must endorse the sufficiency claim, otherwise his emphasis on knowledge looks mysterious. He can't just abandon it. So akrasia seems to be impossible--nothing [internal?] can come between knowledge of right thing to do and the doing of it. A sort of argument for this can be extracted from the Protagoras: seems to be based on an identity of pleasure and the good; the good is pleasure; so pleasure, e.g., can't interfere with the good; being overcome by pleasure just is being overcome with the good! So, again, it's lack of information about pleasure that gets in the way of good action. [Presumably pleasure is the obvious candidate for something that can come between knowledge of the good and good action.]

Complication: the argument structure is weird, though--e.g. in the Protagoras, the argument conclusion is supposed to be negative: it shows that, e.g., Protagoras' view that courage is not reducible to knowledge is false. So it's not a positive argument for the sufficiency claim.

HoPwaG: Socrates I & II

Xenophon and Aristophanes as giving different pictures of Socrates from Plato. Better to think of Plato's Socrates as a character of Plato's.

Plato as highlighting Socrates' method in the Socratic dialogues: series of questions to bring out (inadequacies in) definitions of courage (Laches), virtue (Meno), piety (Euthypro), etc.

The Apology:

• Socrates' defense speech, vs. the idea that he is a Sophist or a Presocratic;
• the discussion of Athenians' lack of true wisdom, despite their knowledge of individual crafts; leads to Socrates' understanding of the Oracle's pronouncement (Socrates as the wisest of men) as referring to his Socratic ignorance, i.e. knowledge of lack of knowledge;
• this the context of the other dialogues: brings other to this state;
• Socratic irony: clearly some in, e.g. Euthypro, Meno; but question of how much there is--there also seems to be a genuine search for knowledge.

Question about the Socratic project: why look for a definition of virtue, if the goal is to be virtuous?

Response: Fundamental Socratic Assumption (FSA): that anyone who knows what is good will choose to act accordingly; no one deliberately chooses what's bad; what is good is what is worth choosing--"no one does wrong willingly". So the explanation of bad acts is incomplete information or ignorance (of the think-that-I-know-what-is-good type, not the Socratic-ignorance type).

Problem: It does seem that people, perversely, choose to do bad, sometimes even because it's bad.

Response: This is just denied by the FSA; it's incoherent [Q: is this supposed to be conceptually? psychologically? logically?] to say that you choose what you take to be bad. Important conclusion that follows from this: virtue is knowledge. Knowing what is good, combined with FSA, entails good or virtuous acts.

Another argument for the link between knowledge of virtue and virtuous action: good things, without knowledge, opens the door to badness. So an apparently good thing (e.g. health of tyrant) only becomes good when knowledge added.

Note that what Socrates looks for is a general definition of virtue, though he's happy to concede that his interlocutors have examples of virtue right. But just knowing some examples, without a general principle, opens the door to not acting virtuously out of the domain of those examples. Again, need knowledge. [Note: seems to be an argument against casuistry.]