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 VII (Political Philosophy)

Echoes in The Republic of Athenian defeat to Sparta in Peloponnesian war: centrally, covers moral psychology and political philosophy. Note that start of The Republic have stronger party introducing idea that they could force Socrates to come with them.

Thrasymachus' view about justice close to Callicles' in Gorgias: real justice is, a la Thucydides on Melos, for the 'stronger to do what they can and the weak to suffer what they must'.

Socrates' response: the virtue of justice must be the interests of the ruled, as shepherding is the interests of sheep, not shepherds.

But Glaucon unsatisfied: proposes justice as an agreement--if we could do what we could, we would and would act unjustly--but if we tried to, everyone would do worse, so we agree to laws, and those are just.

Glaucon's argument for justice as agreement, not something valued for itself: the ring of invisibility.

Socrates' response: parallel between soul and city: there's justice in soul of individual, and also in the city. The city, larger, helps us see the parallel justice in the soul, and that will help refute Glaucon's ring of invisibility argument.

The polis

Note: we're talking about the workings of a city here in the Athenian context.

So what's the just way to run a city? Socrates' method is to start with a blank slate, not to draw from real cities and their histories (as, e.g., Thucydides and to some extent Aristotle).

The first suggestion: a kind of agrarian commune of subsistent farmers.

Objection from Glaucon: this isn't a life fit for men.

The modified suggestion: introduce military, classes, etc. Question (from Popper) of how incipiently totalitarian this is. But (HoPwaG claim) Socrates in fact introduces this as a departure from the (apparent) agrarian ideal.

The picture: guardians, auxiliaries, everyone else (craftsmen). Since important to have the right folks in the right classes, get the other odd features: mating by lot, sharing children, etc etc.

Noble lie introduced as needed to keep class structure stable, keeping people in the right classes. Recall: justice consists in the right classes doing what they ought to. But seem

The soul

Recall: wanted justice in soul to reflect that of city.

First claim: soul is composite. Argument: can struggle against itself, so must be composite.

Second claim: soul like city has three aspects

• reason (directed to truth), 
• spirit (directed to honor, gives anger and courage), 
• appetite (drives for food, etc).

Third claim: justice is the three aspects doing what they ought to: and that's the same as the city: reason, aided by spirit, rules appetites.

But again we have the pessimistic worry that souls can degenerate, as cities do.

Degenerate forms

(Just) -- timocratic -- oligarchic -- democratic -- tyrannic.

Versions for both cities and individuals.

Note when the demos in charge, total freedom exists, all desires satisfied and every conception of the good approved. The 'most beautiful' of constitutions, but defective in the ways spelled out: neither reason nor even spirit in charge.

In link between democratic and tyrannical society, again an echo of Athens after the defeat to Sparta.

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).