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.]

HoPwaG: Sophists

Sophists (not quite philosophers) as making contribution to history of philosophy via their impact on Socrates and Plato: four dialogues named for Sophists (and, of course, the Republic), only one for a Presocratic!

Prodicus as emphasizing need for civility, and debate not argument.

Idea of persuasion, not truth, as the goal of argument. Radical version: there is no truth to aim at; persuasion is what's left.

Protagoras:

• endorses the radical thesis about truth;
• also says (says Plato) that can teach virtue;
• (capacity for) virtue shared equally among men, unlike, e.g., flute-playing ability; grounds why we punish lack of virtue but not lack of musical ability;
• "man is the measure of all things: of the things that are, that they are; of the things that are not, that they are not": relativist thesis.

Question of how to interpret of Protagorean relativism:

• (1) Platonic version: there are only truths for X, i.e. what X judges to be true is true for X; there are no stance-independent truths.

Problem: Protagoras claims to teach virtue. How can that make sense if there is only virtue for me?

Response: Virtue is what is to the advantage of X. So Protagoras teaches X what is advantageous to X. Similar idea in Republic from Thrasymachus: virtue the advantage of those who are stronger. So, what should happen (what is virtuous) is that the stronger get more than the weaker.

Problem: What is this Sophistic "should", if there is no absolute "should"? 

Response: Distinguish custom from nature. By custom there are laws of, e.g. justice. Customs can, but need not, reflect the natural order. Natural for strong to dominate; custom for weak to band together to resist. Morality is just [ossified?] custom; the Sophists are defending the rightness of what's natural. [Are they just moral naturalists, then?]

• (2) Protagorean version: more modestly, idea that if it can seem to you that you do better, that's all that matters, or that you should care about [not quite how to phrase the more modest conclusion].

Gorgias:

• stresses moral neutrality of his teachings: the teaching can be used for good or bad, but neither is anything to do with Gorgias;
• no such thing are being or non-being, and if there were, we couldn't know about it--a satire of the Eleatics;
• but a deeper point: given that there's no independent truth, or none accessible to us, what we're left with is rhetoric, persuasion, relativism.