Sophistry
I think that sophistry is a big problem in the modern world and I’m wondering how it should be combated. “Plato sought to distinguish sophists from philosophers, arguing that a sophist was a person who made his living through deception, whereas a philosopher was a lover of wisdom who sought the truth”. “From Plato's assessment of sophists it could be concluded that sophists do not offer true knowledge, but only an opinion of things”. This is the notion of sophistry I have in mind. How can we guard against sophistry? “Gorgias is criticised because, "he would teach anyone who came to him wanting to learn oratory but without expertise in what's just…" (482d). Socrates believes that people need philosophy to teach them what is right, and that oratory cannot be righteous without philosophy”. I think that this criticism of Gorgias is what I have in mind when I think of sophistry. The art of persuasion which is separated and disconnected from the truth. Some might say that hitler was especially skilled when it came to sophistry. I want to be skilled in the art sophistical refutation.
Comments (158)
has happened in the land:
The prophets prophesy lies,
the priests rule by their own authority,
and my people love it this way."[/i]
Jer. 5:30-31
Care to explain? Can you provide examples?
I'm interested in how marketing seems to have superseded sophistry in taking false arguments and adding scientism, technology, research and public relations psychology to the mix.
I tried to give the example of the nazis but if I’m being honest the multi billion dollar industries you mentioned are good examples in my opinion. Edward bernays kind of turned sophistry into a science. But I’ll try to think of some good examples. Off the top my head I think that televangelists and mega churches might fall into this category. But there is also the question of psychological warfare and psychological operations to contend with.
Ok The Nazi's are not really current - unless you are referring to the neos.
Is sophistry the issue? Or are you really talking about choreographed lies and propaganda used to convince people of things which are untrue? Maybe I'm wrong but I consider sophistry is a bit more subtle and nuanced.
Apart from the people who fall for conspiracies or evangelical religions - most people seem to be apathetic and uber-skeptical rather then credulous. They don't believe anyone any more.
Lol
Men are so simple, and governed so absolutely by their present needs, that he who wishes to deceive will never fail in finding willing dupes.
Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are.
You have my undivided attention if you’d like to delineate sophistry from choreographed lies and propaganda used to convince people of things which are untrue. I’d love to read your argument in favor of that position.
You mentioned that it is a 'big problem in the modern world' - I still don't feel I understand how you mean. You mentioned televangelism. But is the problem there sophistry or religion?
Is sophistry just an old fashioned term for bullshit, perhaps? When someone is taken in by 'sophistry' is this a hallmark of a skilled persuader or is it a product of unsophisticated credulity?
I’ll do my best Tom. I’d like to start off with what I said at the beginning when I characterized sophistry As an art of persuasion which is separated and disconnected from the truth. Some of the original sophists didn’t even seem to think that the truth existed and advocated relativism. So I guess I would say that sophistry is a lot like a skilled lawyer who will defend his client even if he is guilty. So a sophist might defend a position even if it is false or teach others how to do the same thing. Essentially it is unethical persuasion.
Could you give me an example?
I don’t think that these things are necessarily mutually exclusive.
I don’t think that these things are necessarily mutually exclusive.
Maybe the example of some unscrupulous politicians and their political campaigns might illustrate my notion better.
How do we determine when it is unethical? Is advertising in general ok?
Quoting Average
Don't have anything in hand, but in essence I think sophistry is a skillful argument put forward that looks convincing but is actually false. As per what you said below.
Quoting Average
A lot of marketing and lying today is not presenting a skillful argument, it is much cruder and less rhetorical. It's often down to the use of images. E.g., 'Buy this product and you'll get laid.'
LoL
It would depend on the product. If you’re advertising a product that will destroy someone’s life and you either don’t care or aren’t aware then I would say that it is unethical. But the way I measure morality is based on its actual relationship to results that are desirable and necessary. If you’re selling snake oil or are engaging in other forms of medical malpractice knowingly or unknowingly then I would say that it is unethical because your actions aren’t actually going to produce results. I hope that I haven’t gone on a tangent.
I think what we’re basically discussing is whether or not sophistry is misinformation, disinformation, or both. I think that it is probably both.
But Socrates too offered only opinion, including the opinion that knowledge of divine things is not something he found in human beings. His criticism of the Sophists is that their concern is with persuasion rather than an attempt to determine the truth.
Quoting Average
The philosopher teaches those who would be philosophers to inquire via an examination of opinions in order to determine what seems good, and just, and beautiful/noble. In the case of Plato he also tells those who are interested in such things but not well suited for philosophy by temperament and intelligence what opinions to hold as true.
The art of persuasion which is separated and disconnected from the truth.
But there is a connection. Socrates employed sophistic arguments in order to persuade, but persuasion was not divorced from what he thought best for those he was persuading.
I think that his criticism is what I have in mind when I mention sophistry.
Could you refer me to a specific dialogue?
Well, that settles it!
Here is one that highlights Socrates' irony and irreverence. In the Apology the oracle says that no one is wiser than Socrates. Socrates changes this into the claim that the oracle said 'Socrates is the wisest' (21c). The two statements are not the same. It is like the difference between 'no one scored higher than Sally on the test' and 'Sally scored higher than everyone else on the test'. It may be that several students have the same high score, and so it is true that no one scored higher that Sally, but it is not true that Sally scored higher than everyone else.
In the Apology Socrates distinguishes between human wisdom and divine wisdom. His human wisdom consists in his knowing that he does not know. In the Symposium the philosopher is a lover of wisdom, but does not possess wisdom. In the Republic, however, the philosopher is not someone who desires wisdom but one who possesses it, and it is for this reason that the philosopher should rule. The wisdom the philosopher is said to possess in the Republic is the wisdom that Socrates elsewhere denies that anyone possesses.
Big time!
For sophists, rhetoric is primary, but for philosophers it's an adjunct, accessory, secondary. Sophists want to fool you with flowery language, philosophers want only to make the truth pleasing to behold.
1. Verum (truth)
2. Bonum (good)
3. Pulchrum (beauty)
Philosophers seek the truth, the goodness in truth, and the beauty in truth. Sophists are interested in beauty alone, neither truth nor benevolence feature among their desiderata/objectives.
I don't think this is the case. As Plato demonstrated, through the actions of Socrates, the sophist most often truly believes oneself to be doing the right thing, professing the truth. The problem is that the sophist is not properly educated in the true nature of right and wrong, good and bad. This means that the sophist's attempt to persuade, through the use of rhetoric, can be in the wrong direction, while the sophist truly believes it is the right direction.
There is no necessity for intent within this form of deception. The sophist simply attempts to, and claims to, teach what is beyond one's qualifications. Misinformation, is not necessarily disinformation. And there is a form of deception, like when a person deceives oneself, which does not require malintent.
Sophistry is rather rampant in our society, because mass media and an abundance of information, has turned us all into "know-it-alls", and we will go around showing off our knowledge in subjects which we are really quite ignorant of.
This is another issue, and it really strikes at the heart of Plato's attack on sophistry. Socrates actually demonstrates that people are knowingly evil. We often do what we know is wrong. Augustine discussed this issue, as derived from Plato, at great length. Through this principle Plato demonstrates that virtue is not a form of knowledge. Since the sophists claim to teach virtue as a form of knowledge, and virtue is argued to be distinct from knowledge, sophistry is refuted in this way.
This is consistent with what I posted above. The sophists' claim to be able to teach virtue is based in the assumption that they knew virtue, in order to be able to teach it. Socrates demonstrated that they really did not know virtue. So what they taught was really a form of deception, even though they truly believed that they knew virtue, and that they could teach it.
The problem seems to be that sophistry is always something they do.
We of course are rational and clean and nice and good.
Interesting. Virtue is not knowledge. Could you expand and elaborate on that?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
How was Plato going to teach people virtue, if virtue isn't something knowable?
Plato did not claim to teach virtue, the sophists did, and they charged a lot of money for it. Socrates argued that a person could know what is right, but still act contrary to this, and do what is wrong. This type of behaviour is actually quite common, as intentional criminal acts.
So the problem is that knowing what is right will not necessitate doing what is right. And since virtue is a judgement of one's actions, we have to conclude that there is a separation between knowing what is right, and doing what is right. Therefore even if the sophist were capable of teaching what is right, this would not ensure that the student would proceed to act virtuously. There is an ingredient to virtue, a necessary ingredient, which is missing here.
Look at the difference between your two statements above, "virtue is not knowledge", and "virtue isn't something knowable". The first can be true while the second is false. We know that virtue is not knowledge, from the evidence that people knowingly act wrongly. But this does not imply that virtue is not knowable, as was stated, we can know what is correct, but not act that way. So we can know virtue. But the missing ingredient is the motivation to act according to what is known. Virtue can be known, as an object of knowledge, but it is not itself a type of knowledge, so this is not an instance of knowing knowledge, it's knowing something else, virtue.
What did Plato claim to teach with respect to morality?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Are you sure? How do you explain Socrates' statement that no one knowingly is evil?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
How can we know something that isn't knowledge?
I don't recall ever coming across, in Plato's writings, a place where he makes explicit claims concerning what he is teaching. But I think might refer to "dialectics" as what he, or Socrates in his dialogues, is doing, representing the philosophical process he supports. This appears to be a form of skepticism, where he takes a word like "just" in "The Republic", and questions a number of people who claim to know the meaning of the term, in an attempt to get an understanding of the "idea" which the word signifies.
Quoting Agent Smith
You'd have to provide this statement for me in context, for me to answer that question. I'll tell you though, that it is often very difficult when reading Plato's dialogues, to distinguish between Socrates' actions of critical skepticism towards a concept, and the appearance that he is supporting that concept. Further, Plato changed his attitude toward a number of fundamental concepts over the lifetime of his writings. That is a feature of Platonic dialectics, to maintain an attitude of uncertainty, an open mind. This mental capacity, which is a suspending of judgement toward fundamental propositions, provides for the Socratic condition of uncertainty, not knowing, which is the prerequisite for the dialectical process.
So if Socrates claimed, "no one is knowingly evil", and he professed to know the truth of this proposition, rather than proceeding toward understanding what is meant by this proposition, to better enable a judgement of truth or falsity, that would contradict Socrates' claim to be unknowing, and this would completely undermine the dialectical process demonstrated by Plato. Furthermore, I suggest that the fact that this concept (no one is knowingly evil), is recurrent in a number of dialogues, indicates that it is one that Plato was far from settled on at that time. It could even be, that Socrates himself, the real man, was inclined toward believing this concept, persuaded by sophistry, while Plato was inclined to be more skeptical of it. If this is the case, then we'd see the concept appear in numerous dialogues, even having Socrates appear to be supportive of the idea, and it might not be until a later dialogue where we'd find the indication that Plato actually trends toward rejection of the concept.
Quoting Agent Smith
The object of knowledge, what is known, is not the subject of knowledge (the thing as it is represented within the knowledge itself). So for instance, I know my chair, as the object of my knowledge, but the chair isn't my knowledge. The knowledge I have of my chair holds "my chair" as a subject, and predication determines how I know my chair; it looks like this, and is in this place, etc., are predicated to the subject. The subject in this case is meant to have a direct one to one relationship with the object, so that "my chair" might refer to the object itself (external to myself), and it might equally signify the subject of predication (internal to my knowledge). It is intended, in that case, that the subject "my chair" represents only that one identified object, but the subject might in other cases represent many objects classed together, like when the subject is "a chair".
Then how do you know what he didn't teach?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
How do you know this?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'll give you an example of something that's not knowledge, the string of symbols: )^a. This is not a proposition, hence can't be knowledge. How can we know )^a?
I like to take the Socratic approach, and claim not to truly know such things. Those were my opinions, I do not profess them as knowledge.
Quoting Agent Smith
I don't know. Got any suggestions? There are some serious difficulties involved with any attempt to understand the nature of knowledge, which Plato demonstrated.
Same here.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
None whatsoever. I thought you would know (better). It's your theory.
He has made the same claim before, along with the same reluctance to actually support it.
:ok:
Sorry Paine, I can't read the material for you.
Here, I haven't time to work on providing the requested support, but start with this:
[quote=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics/] Finally, in the Meno the question how virtue is acquired is raised by Meno, a disciple of Gorgias, and an ambitious seeker of power, wealth, and fame. Socrates’ interlocutors are usually at first quite confident about their own competence in the discussion. Nor is such confidence unreasonable. If virtue is a kind of ‘skill’ or special property that enjoys general recognition, its possessor should know and be able to give an account of his skill. As the Socrates’ examinations demonstrate, however, such self-confidence is usually misplaced and the ‘knowledge’ professed by Socrates’ conversation partners is frequently revealed to be at best an implicit familiarity, When they are confronted with their inability to explain the nature of their cherished virtue or expertise, they end up admitting their ignorance, often with considerable chagrin and anger.[/quote]
That excerpt sits well with Socrates' overall take on knowledge. (I neither know nor think I know).
But the issue is with what Socrates demonstrates about the claims that others make, in particular, claims about the relationship between virtue and knowledge.
Consider that virtue is attributed to human acts. Socrates goes to those who act (have a skill), and asks them to explain the knowledge which enables the skill. They cannot, So Socrates forces them to admit that they do not really have the knowledge which they claim to have.
What we have exposed here is the division between know-how and know-that. And, knowing how to do something does not really qualify as "knowledge" in the strict epistemic sense of the word, which refers to knowing that. So Socrates exploits this division to demonstrate that those who know how to do something do not necessarily know what they are doing.
If we apply this principle to virtue, as an attribute of human activity, then we see the division between knowledge, as knowing-that, and virtue, as an activity. Knowledge, in the strict sense of the word is not a requirement for virtue.
MU's explanation does not touch upon his claim regarding knowingly doing evil. Consider the following regarding intentions which obviously are the source of a world of suffering:
I would type in more but have to do some chores to shore up my righteousness.
:ok: but...
Makes sense, yin-yang, but what if...
But then...
Hmmmm :chin: We ain't seen nothin' yet.
People and their delusions. Me and mine...
Which planet?
Sophistry, is it pre-philosophy or post-philosophy?
The dialogue continues to say the one we are living on, seeking the good as much as possible or suffering the cost of not trying.
Quoting Agent Smith
The dialogue of that name says this at the end:
Is that how you are asking if it is pre or post philosophy?
That I can relate to.
You mean to say philosophy is about truth? To me, philosophy is about discourse that happens in the search for truth, there being no gurantee that there is a truth, good/bad for us.
I get the part about no guarantees. I don't think promises are what is on offer in the Theaetetus text. We don't know much about what is going on. We do have lots of data about bullshiting ourselves and others.
Just before the part I quoted, Theodorus was wondering how much better the world would be if we weren't so stupid. I took Socrates' response to be an agreement with the statement if one accepted the difficulty involved for everyone who tries to act on the observation. And the first step is to say it is not stupid to try.
Not deliberate. (Genuinely) confused, hence the BS we find ourselves neck deep in.
Quoting Paine
Quoting Paine
:broken:
Plato's first step in his overall demonstration that people knowing commit evil, is Socrates' examples which refute the idea of a necessary relationship between knowing and doing. As Socrates shows, people act without knowing what they are doing. This means that actions are not necessarily derived from knowing. Therefore acting does not require knowing. This is only the first step in a long, and complicated, demonstration which proceeds from Plato's earlier writings to his later. It is complex and nuanced, requiring significant effort to understand and this is the reason why I didn't provide the support for my claim, which you requested earlier. The next step is to understand that acting is inherently good. A human act is directed toward an end, the good.
Put those two principles together, acting does not require knowledge, and acting is inherently good, and you have what is required to conclude that virtue is not knowledge. Beyond this, there is a need to place "evil" in relation to good.
That "the good" must have a contrary is the very idea which Plato ends up demonstrating to be faulty. The good is shown as the motivation for action, and there is really nothing which is contrary to this. In this way the good is shown to be the cause of existence. Why did God create the universe? Because He saw that it was good to do such. So under Aristotelian principles all existence is good, to exist is good, so that the various existing things have different degrees of goodness as determined by the perfection of their forms. Form is fundamentally good. Then it doesn't make sense to assign evil, or badness (if this were the contrary to good) to anything, because all things have form, therefore existence, and the contrary of good (as existence), would be non-existence. This is fundamental to Christianity in the principles of love and forgiveness. We are all fundamentally good, and it makes no sense to assume a contrary to this, that people are evil.
What is contrary to this is what prevents the fulfillment of the motivation. We seek the good but if we do not know the good then what we do may be contrary to it. This is the connection between knowledge and virtue.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
From the Republic:
(379b)
I agree
Notice that you say "what we do may be contrary". The point is that we are always going to do something, and we are always acting for some good. And as you say we can act without knowing the good. Therefore acting, which logically implies a good, does not require that the good is known.
Remember, Plato demonstrates that the good cannot be equated with pleasure, by showing how pleasure has an opposing condition, pain, and the good cannot have such an opposite. There cannot be an opposite to the good, because any such condition (like pleasure), must come into being from the non-being of itself, its opposite. So a condition of pleasure must be preceded by a condition of pain which is the non-being of pleasure. Then pleasure is a relief from pain. If this were the case with the good then the bad would necessarily precede the good, and we'd have to seek the bad in order to obtain the good.
Here's a point to consider concerning the relation between knowledge and virtue. If we look at the evidence of how morality has been successfully cultured in the past, we look at religions as the propagators of morality. And, we see that morality is induced through faith, rather than through knowledge. Good acts and good moral character are encouraged and conditioned through hope and faith, not through knowing the good.
See the distinction between opposite things and the opposites themselves in the Phaedo.
(103b-c)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
A good example! Unfortunately for you it points to the opposite of what you claim. Euthyphro believes he is acting piously by indicting his father. Socrates argues that Euthyphro does not know what piety is. He turns the discussion to the question of the just. Whether what Euthyphro was doing was good turns on knowledge of the just and good.
Immoral things are often induced through faith. Atrocities done in the name of God. Acting as though one is doing the will of God. In such cases it is not a lack of faith but a lack of knowledge. They are doing what they think is good but what they are doing is the opposite.
What you've presented seems to support precisely what I've said. Notice, that when we are discussing the good of an act, we are discussing something attributed to or directly related to the act. We are talking about opposing qualities, like pleasure and pain, we are not not talking about opposites themselves, as independent ideals.. You seem to be trying to separate "good" from the act, as if it were something independent from the act.
There is a distinction between the intent of or motivation for an act and the evaluation of that act. Not everything we do is good.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Being directed toward an end is not the same as attaining that end. Not every act is good.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
When you say:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
When Plato talks about "the good" he does not mean some quality that is good but the good itself. The good itself cannot be opposite of itself. The good itself is not some thing or act that is good. Knowledge of the good itself is that by which we can truly determine whether a particular act is good.
But everything we do is for a good.
Quoting Fooloso4
As I explained in a post above, every act is inherently good. I don't know if you read that post, but this is fundamental to Christianity, and why love and forgiveness are the chief principles of Christianity.
Quoting Fooloso4
The good itself is what motivates the act, what Aristotle calls "that for the sake of which". Knowledge of the good itself, is knowing what motivates one's own actions. Since every act is particular, there is a specific good unique to each and every individual act. Accordingly, your phrase "Knowledge of the good itself is that by which we can truly determine whether a particular act is good" makes no sense at all. There is no such thing as an overarching "the good", relative to which, particular acts might be judged as good or not.
But that does not mean that everything we do is good.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That is an assertion. One that is wrong and is not supported by Plato.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sin is fundamental to Christianity, although that problem was supposed to have been fixed, Christianity does not claim that people no longer sin.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Knowledge of the good itself is not knowledge of what motivates one's own actions but rather what distinguishes between those actions that are good and those that are not. Actions can be motivated by the desire for power, greed, anger, and on and on. Plato was not blind to these motivations. He discusses them in the Republic and elsewhere.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is clear that you have not read or perhaps just not understood what Plato says about the good itslef in the Republic.
Yes it does mean that everything we do is good, unless you move to judge "good" by some other principle. What principle would you propose?
Quoting Fooloso4
"Sin" is a completely different concept. We were talking about "good". This is the point, it is a mistake to oppose "sin": with "good". A sinner is still fundamentally good, therefore we forgive.
Quoting Fooloso4
Again, if "good" is not defined in the way I described, a definition which is consistent with both Plato and Aristotle, as that for the sake of which an action is carried out, then what principle do you propose? You talk about some phantom sense of "good" which is supposed to have an opposite, "not good", and you claim that knowing this "good" will provide you with a basis for judgement between "good" and "not good". But obviously this is just your phantasy, there is no such sense of "good".
Suppose we define "good" as the opposite of "not good". How is this supposed to help us distinguish actions that are good from actions which are not good? That is why we don't define "good" in this way, we define it in relation to a specific purpose. Then we have a principle to judge whether an act is conducive to the specified good.
Quoting Fooloso4
In The Republic, the good is what makes an intelligible object intelligible, just like the sun is what makes a visible object visible. This is exactly what I've been describing, an intelligible object becomes intelligible to a person, as it is required for a purpose. The purpose, or good, lights up the intelligible object, making it intelligible, just like the sun lights up the visible object, making it visible.
Sophistry = No substance + rhetoric (Marilyn Monroe dead)
Philosophy = Substance + rhetoric (Marilyn Monroe alive)
?
Sophists offer us beautiful dead women as if we're necrophiliacs, philosophers offer us beautiful alive women who we can have a decent relationship with.
Nice!
As the old man put it, a living dog is better than a dead lion.
:lol:
Agent Smith alive is better than Socrates dead. :grin:
The problem is to distinguish the one from the other. If your relationship with Marilyn Monroe is only to see her on the screen, then this relationship is exactly the same whether she's presently dead or alive. In this situation there is no difference to you between sophistry and philosophy.
Is your intent to demonstrate your sophistic skills?
Republic 509b:
(Bloom translation)
No, I am demonstrating Plato's use of "the good". You use "good" in a way which demonstrates that you do not understand Plato, so I am trying to help you. If you have no desire to understand, insisting that my demonstration of what Plato wrote is just sophistry, then this discussion is pointless.
Quoting Fooloso4
Exactly as I described above, "consequence of the good" refers to what Aristotle named as final cause, purpose. "Being known" is subsequent to (the consequence of) the purpose or intent of the knower, and purpose and intent are necessarily relative to a good. So for instance, I'll learn how to change a tire for the purpose of repairing a flat. Repairing the flat is the good. That knowledge within me (how to change a tire), that instance of "being known", is a consequence of the good I intend, which is to repair a flat.
You have a desire to take another step, to make a judgement as to whether what I intend (as the good), is a true good or is perhaps not good. But you have given me no principles for making such a judgement, nor have you given me reference to where Plato describes such principles. As I've told you this sense of "good", which has an opposite, "not good", is not consistent with Plato. "Pleasure" has its opposite, "pain", but "good" has no such opposite, and this is why "good" cannot be equated with "pleasure".
Therefore I assume that this is just your own subjective opinion, a feature of your imagination, this sense of "good", which you are trying to insert into the discussion. Thus it is you who is practicing sophistry, trying to slip in a meaning of "good" which is not consistent with the one which is the subject of our discussion, in an attempt to equivocate.
I tend to demand fewer fallacies and biases from the ones I debate against. More careful attention to how facts stick together with the premises and conclusions. The more we challenge our own arguments with the same scrutiny as our "opponents" do, the more we reach the truth we are trying to reach for ourselves. To demand that others review their own logic and force them to make their argument airtight before continuing the discussion, the less the discussion becomes a battle of emotionally argued opinions.
Be early in these demands of the other interlocutor, otherwise, the discussion will derail quickly.
On this forum, this is happening a lot. And I find it interesting that when I bring up fallacies and biases that other people are making, that becomes an unwelcome addition to the discussion. This has always puzzled me and feels more like an unwillingness to actually review their own argument, holding onto the opinion, the ideology or faith as if their life depended on it. People generally don't want to change, and even in a place like this forum, people tend to be bad at actually seeking truth past their own beliefs, ideologies and opinions.
On that we agree, but not for the reason you imagine.
Thanks Paine. Somehow it escapes MU's notice that there is the problem of unjust actors and unjust actions in the Republic.
:rofl:
There are interesting points of comparison and contrast between Plato's 'idea of the good' and Aristotle's use of 'final causes'. Declaring they are identical, and that that fact is obvious to anyone who has done enough reading is an odd abandonment of a thesis. It is a kind of solipsism.
Apart from specific claims, it seems to me that the role of the dialectic is important to keep in mind as both Plato and Aristotle have their own ways of recognizing and using it.
Well, consider the source. Enough said.
I don't know what has not been revealed.
How is this a problem? We ere talking about "the good", not "just" or "unjust". You never moved to establish a relation between these. And I still do not believe you could if you tried, because it's not at all straight forward.
Quoting Paine
[quote=The Republic 504e] And I suspect the latter, for you often heard it said that the form of the good is the most important thing to learn about and it's by their relation to it that just things and others become useful and beneficial[/quote]
Notice above, that what is described as being in relation to the good, is what Aristotle calls the means to the end. The good is the end, and things are deemed as just or beneficial when they are apprehended as the means to the end. Now consider the line below, and take it for exactly what it says. "Every soul pursues the good". Therefore what every person pursues is the good. In Aristotle this is final cause, as in his example, health is the reason why the man is walking. Health is what the man pursues, and is therefore the (final) cause of him walking. It is the good, in this instance, what the person pursues.
[quote=The Republic 505e]Every soul pursues the good and does its utmost for its sake.[/quote}
After linking the more excellent activity with the highest good, Aristotle says:
As demonstrated in De Anima, we can only know the world through our lives as combined beings. Our inquiry into first principles, however, allows us to reason what the fundamental conditions of this experience might be. Aristotle discusses the good in this context in his Metaphysics::
It is worthwhile to read all of Chapter 10 to see how his view of an 'overarching good' compares with other thinkers. As a matter for the inquiry of first principles he says:
I will continue tomorrow to compare the observations made above with the Sun as an analogy for the good in the Republic. The good order of my household now requires that I eat too much corned beef and cabbage.
You fail to see your mistake. It does not follow from the claim that we pursue the good that the good is whatever it is we pursue.
A little help from Lewis Carroll:
To say what you mean is not to mean what you say. We may see what we eat but that does not mean we eat what we see.
If the good is whatever we pursue then the destruction of the rain forests to build luxury housing is good. To kill everyone you do not like is good. To enslave people in order to obtain cheap labor is good.
Reading Book 6 of the Republic after reviewing Aristotle's objections strongly suggests that Aristotle had at least some of these passages in mind when making his arguments. Aristotle questioning the value of the claims as propositions in the inquiry of 'first principles' naturally raises the question if Plato's goal in making his claims were meant to satisfy such an inquiry. How rigidly to understand the 'theory of the Forms' as a theory has been debated for centuries and we are still at it. My tiny mind is not going to resolve that for all time, but it may not be remiss to focus on the context in which Plato is arguing for the possibility and the need for a philosopher king in these passages. Since they are not very far apart, I figure that reading between where starts and ends his citations might be instructive.
I was hoping this comment could be done in two parts. But it now seems to me that the analogy of the Sun as the good requires more work on my part.
Yes it does, unless one states that we pursue something other than the good as well as pursuing the good, the inverse holds. No qualification is stated at this point. We pursue the good, therefore whatever it is that we are pursuing is the good. The end.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes it does mean that. I see what I eat means very exactly, that I eat what I see. That I may be seeing other things, or that I might eat other things, needs to be mentioned to be made relevant. If you tell me, "I see what I eat", then ask me "what do I see?", so I name what you are eating, and you say I am wrong, because you were looking at something else as well, you are only practicing sophistic deception by using unstated premises.
Quoting Fooloso4
Actually you need to distinguish the means from the end here. The luxury housing is the good which is pursued, the destruction of the rainforest is "just", or justified by this end. So it is beneficial. That's what I described above, concerning Plato's statement that the just and beneficial exist in relation to the good, as the means to the end.
The problem you disclose here (i.e. that what is sought as "the good" to some might not be thought to be good to others), is dealt with by Aristotle in his classic distinction between the apparent good, and the real good. But we can find the seed to this distinction in Plato, at the part I referenced above for example:
[quote=The Republic 505d] And isn't this also clear? In the case of just and beautiful things, many people are content with what are believe to be so, even if they aren't really so, and they act, acquire, and form their own beliefs on that basis. Nobody is satisfied to acquire things that are merely believed to be good, however, but everyone wants the things that really are good and disdains mere belief here.[/quote]
Thanks for the quote, it puts what I've quoted in context. Notice that after he says that the good is what every soul pursues, he proceeds to say that we are unable to get an adequate grasp of it. Our actions are brought about by our pursuit of the good, but we are not even able to properly grasp the good which we pursue. This is why Plato argues that virtue is not knowledge. Aristotle assigns "happiness" as the ultimate good, attempting to bring the good into the fold of intelligibility.
I think you'll find the best discussions about whether virtue is knowledge, and teachable, in Protagoras and also Gorgias. This I think is where he does the most work to separate good from pleasure.
So, how does your acknowledgement that the pursuit of the good is difficult relate to your previous claims that there is no 'overarching' good?
Do you eat everything you see?
Pursuit of "the good" as one individual object, the One, is a mistaken venture, and that is the obvious reason why pursuit of the good is extremely difficult. I covered this with Apollodorus, who insistently reduces "the good" to the One, in another thread. Incidentally, this is one reason why Aristotle rejects "the form of the good", because "the good" turns out to be a multitude of particulars, rather than one specific form.
Understanding "the good" is how Plato came to the revelation (in his middle period) that the Pythagorean theory of participation was inadequate. If you look closely you'll see that he actually rejects "participation" in his later work, such as "The Sophist", and this rejection is what Aristotle provides us with a continuation of.
The principal issue is the relationship between passive and active, which Aristotle did an excellent job of exposing. In the theory of participation, the Idea is passive, and the objects which partake in the Idea are active, in the sense that they partake. This passivity denies the Idea any active causality in the real world. But what we see in the evidence of artefacts, is that ideas are somehow very causally active. So Plato sees "the good" as what gives causality to ideas, and this is final cause in Aristotle.
This is the reversal of "representation" which is required to truly understand the nature of knowledge. Commonly, knowledge is described as a representation, a modeling, or a map of the real world. But this totally misses the principal function of knowledge, which is to bring about change in the world. So we need to reverse things, to see the real world as a representation (or reflection) of the ideas. This is the significance of the cave allegory. The shadows on the wall are the material artefacts, the fire is the good, and the human beings are using the ideas to create the shadows. The shadows are a reflection of the ideas, but they can only be apprehended as such through a grasping of "the good", as the fire. Once the philosopher apprehends this, then he ascends beyond the cave (the artificial world) to an understanding of the whole world in this way. The material existence is a reflection of the ideas, but we cannot neglect the fact that it is only such if we appeal to a higher "good" beyond the human good. The human good is the fire, the higher good is the sun.
Quoting Fooloso4
This is the unstated premise, (that you do not eat everything you see), which makes your example an example of sophistry. In logic the premises must be stated, and if you appeal to subliminal implications it's not valid logic but sophistry.
What are you talking about? There is no unstated premise in the distinction between seeing what you eat and eating what you see. Either you eat everything you see or you don't.
I don’t have the era-specific expertise required for direct support herein, but the expertise.....or maybe just the favoritisms......I do have, being taken from the same general arguments as yours, offers support indirectly. What I mean is, for a great deal of what you’ve said so far, I can find references from subsequent metaphysics that supports it.
For whatever that’s worth.....
In the passage from Book Lambda I cite above, the element of causality of what Aristotle finds to missing from Plato's good: " And those who posit the Forms also need a more authoritative principle; for why did things participate in the Forms or do so now? "
However one looks at the questions of the first principles of the creation, Book 6 ends with observations upon the uses of images (such as analogies to the sun and the divided line} to approach what is beyond images:
Pursuit of the good in this context is not an object or a goal in the way one says that the telos of making a chair is made actual when the plan for it has come into being. Learning what is real versus what is opinion is the activity being sought after. Aristotle speaks of telos as becoming what one was made to be, as quoted above:
In speaking of the good as a quality of creation as a whole, this language of telos for individual beings is exchanged for the outcome of the activity of the unmoved mover:
With these differences in mind, what does it mean for the 'final cause' to replace Plato's good? Perhaps you could cite particular passages that illuminate the idea.
Philosophy is this: pearls of wisdom, with/without a velvet-lined top-of-the-line case.
What I argued with Apollodorus in the other thread, is that "the good" itself is not properly a Form. The key to understanding this is that the good enlightens the intelligible objects, like the sun enlightens the visible object, as described in The Republic. This puts the good into a separate category from the Forms which are intelligible objects. It is by making the good into a Form, that Apollo equated the good with the One, and insisted that the One is the first principle for Plato, claiming the Neo-Platonists to have a better interpretation of Plato than Aristotelians.
The One is definitely a Form, but Apollo and I discussed Aristotle's mentions of a difference between mathematical objects and Forms, because the One can be seen to be both. I argued that mathematical objects are just a special type of Form which are derived from the One, which crosses the boundary between types. However, the good escapes mathematics altogether, and as I argued, even if we make a hierarchy of type of Forms, the good must be something completely different, by the sun analogy. And the good belongs in the category of many, not of one.
Quoting Paine
I would say that thinking in this sense is in the pursuit of a goal. The goal might be truth. But then the goal might be some other pragmatic thing based on application, or prediction, or whatever. It is this feature, that the action is carried out for a purpose, a goal, but the goal is unclear even to the person thinking, which creates the problem. And if we look directly at the action, as Aristotle did, in his ethics, in an attempt to determine the end, we see that whatever end is intended, becomes the means to a further end, and then a further end, which appears as if it might extend indefinitely, unless we posit an ultimate end, as he did, happiness.
Quoting Paine
I don't understand this at all. You seem to be making "the good" into "the One", like Apollo was, saying it's "a quality of creation as a whole". And this appears completely inconsistent with Aristotle. For Aristotle, perfection, or good, is a feature of the individual, in its fulfilment of its own particular form, which is unique to it, and only it, by the law of identity.
Quoting Fooloso4
I can't believe you don't see this. The statement says I eat what I see, and it says I see what I eat. There is no difference between these unless it is specified either I see more than I eat, or I do not see more than I eat. That further premise is not provided. So your claim "either you eat everything you see or you don't" is not relevant to any conclusion drawn. The information has not been provided. Allowing such information to affect your conclusion is invalid logic. You are producing a conclusion drawn from a premise which is not part of the argument.
It's a sophistic trick, a form which is very commonly exemplified with equivocation. A common word will be used in a premise, and the premise will give that word a very strict meaning. However, since it's a common word, the interpreter will assign a much wider meaning to the word then is given to it by the premise. Then the interpreter will allow a conclusion based on the wider meaning, rather than adhering to the strict meaning given in the premise. This is equivocation, and its very similar to what you re doing here. You are giving a wider meaning to "see" than what is provided by the premise "I see what I eat". The premise allows only what I am eating to be what I see, but you are assuming some further meaning of "see", not stated.
Quoting Mww
When I'm getting attacked mostly on the basis of ad hominem Quoting Fooloso4It means a lot.
Ehhh....not to worry, until it becomes as bad as....
“....How should the minds that in the freshness of youth have been strained and ruined by the nonsense of Hegelism, be still capable of following (...) profound investigations? They are early accustomed to take the hollowest jingle of words for philosophical thoughts, the most miserable sophisms for acuteness, and silly conceits for dialectic, and their minds are disorganised through the admission of mad combinations of words to which the mind torments and exhausts itself in vain to attach some thought....”
(W.W.R., I, Pref.2, 1844)
....Arthur’s verbal castration of poor ol’ G. Dubyah F., or at least his followers, which is the same thing.
Anyway, I’m merely a pacifist spectator, maybe with a clandestine affirmative nod here and there.
Aristotle relates the telos of individuals to the fulfillment of their kind of being, as noted in the quote given above. I will add the passage that prefaces it for clarity:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
On the contrary. Chapter 10 of Book Lamba of Metaphysics presents the good of the whole world as the relations between beings through the order imposed by the Mover. This view conforms with the first criticism of the 'Form of the Good' Aristotle brings forward in the Nicomachean Ethics:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That makes sense. Plato, however, is keen to make a distinction between dialectic and art in the matter. As quoted above from Book 6:
Ad hominem or astute observation of my limitations?
Only Pot and Kettle can know for sure.
A Venn diagram with one circle being the things you eat and the other circle being the things you see shows that there is an area of overlap but also an area that does not overlap. They are not the same.
A Venn diagram with one circle being the things you pursue and the other circle being the things that are good shows that there is an area of overlap but also an area that does not overlap. They are not the same.
It is your failure to see the difference that leads to your absurd conclusion that everything we do must be good. A claim that Plato not only does not make but one he rejects.
Well, obviously there are many different kinds. So this "good" must be specific to the kind. Now how do you make this compatible with what you said earlier "the good as a quality of creation as a whole", when the whole consists of many different kinds each with its own sort of good?
Quoting Paine
Again, you state "relations" here in the plural. There is a number of different relations therefore there must be a number of different goods. By what principle do you attribute these relations, which are the goods, to the whole, rather than to the individuals. A relationship between you and I has aspects specific to me, and aspects specific to you, but nothing proper to "the whole".
Take Socrates' description of "just" for example. The just state is the one in which each individual does one's own thing, minds one's own business, without interfering in the affairs of others. Clearly, each individual has one's own goods, making each individual privy to one's own particular affairs. But what "good" has the state? The state is said to be just, because it provides for each individual to have one's own particular goods. We cannot assign "good" also to the state, without changing the meaning of "good", because a state is a different kind of thing from an individual. And if you insist that the good of the state is the same as the good of the individual then we have a vicious circle of logic which provides us with no headway in trying to understand "good".
Primary substance for Aristotle, as defined in his Categories, is the individual. So if the good is a quality of substance, it is attributed to the individual. This is why there cannot be a Form of the good.
Quoting Fooloso4
It was a simple statement, not a Venn diagram. You're trying to alter the premise.
Quoting Fooloso4
There's a big problem with this assumption. Plato said "the good" is what every soul pursues. It is you who wants to define "the good" as something other than this, in some way which would allow your Venn diagram of overlap. So I asked you, how are you going to define "the good" then. It's easy to make a bold assertions like "every soul pursues the good some of the time, but not all of the time", but by what principles are you going to distinguish between when the soul is pursuing the good, and when the soul is not pursuing the good? And what kind of randomness within the soul would make it be pursuing the good at one moment, but not pursuing the good at the next moment? We do not experience such random shifts in our pursuits.
Suppose for example a person is working on a good project and is therefore pursuing the good. But something comes up and the person perceives a need to steal, to keep the project going. The person is still working on the good project, therefore pursuing the good. But since the person is actively stealing, is the person pursuing the not good at the very same time that the person is pursuing the good? How could the person be pursuing the good and pursuing the not-good at the same time, in relation to the same project?
It is a simple statement that can be represented in a Venn diagram.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That is not the assertion. The assertion is the one you quote from Plato. The point is, the fact that you pursue something does not make it good. It is pursued because it is thought to be good, but pursuing something because you think it is good does not make it good.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Suppose a person is working on a bad project.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Then what the person is doing, stealing, in pursuit of what is good, the project, is bad. The means, stealing, is bad even though the ends, the project, is good.
You obviously haven't read Plato. It is clear that things are not pursued because they are thought to be good, as "the good" escapes the grasp of reasonable thinking, We do not grasp "the good", we do not think "X is good therefore I'll pursue it", we simply pursue things for various reasons. This is important to understand, because it is central to the idea that virtue is not a type of knowledge. "The good" does not guide us as a form of knowledge, such that it enters into our thinking about our activities, and we conclude "I must do X because X is good". It guides us by influencing our thinking from a position which is external to our knowledge. It guides us without us knowing that it guides us.
So, what defines something as "good" is the fact that it is pursued, because the good is what guides our pursuits. When he is talking about understanding "the good" in that section of "The Republic", he issues the disputed statement. "Every soul pursues the good and does its utmost for its sake." 505e trans. Grube.
Before stating this, he mentions the problems with defining "good'" and that people talk about the good as if they know what it means when they do not. Then he suggests that some define "good" as "pleasure", and some as "knowledge". He rejects pleasure because obviously, some pleasures are bad, and some are good.
Instead of moving toward a more specific definition, such as a certain type of pleasure, he moves to a more general description, what every soul pursues is the good. This allows that pleasures which are not pursued are not good. And, that things pursued other than pleasure might be good as well. Also, in not giving a clear definition, it allows that "the good" is not a form of knowledge. He excludes "the good" from knowledge.
So he rejects "knowledge" because the soul "is perplexed and cannot adequately grasp what it is". When asked again, whether he considers the good "to be knowledge or pleasure or something else altogether", Socrates move along to the analogy with beauty.
By this analogy, beauty is related to the senses in the same way that good is related to the intellect. He says that in the case of visible beauty, there is, other than the beautiful thing and the perceiver, a third thing required, this is light. And in the case of visible beauty, light is what turns out to be the "valuable" thing, as the overall "cause" of sight. In an analogous way, the good is described as the cause of intellection. The good illuminates the intelligible objects, making them intelligible to us, just like the sun illuminates visible objects, making them visible to us.
We can conclude therefore, that intellection, and understanding, are guided by the good, and that whichever intelligible objects (ideas) become intelligible to us, this is caused by the good illuminating them. The good shines its light on the idea, making it intelligible to us.. Furthermore, the good is something which is pursued. Therefore we can make the further conclusion that our pursuits determine in a causal way, the intelligible objects (ideas) which are intelligible to us.
The good therefore is not a type of knowledge, but a guiding principle of knowledge. It is external to, and independent from, the objects of knowledge, like the sun is independent from the objects of sight.
Thinking something is good is not the same as grasping the good. Believing something is good is not the same as knowing it is good.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Let's see what Plato's Socrates has to say about this:
As the quote from the dialogue Protagoras makes clear, it is what one believes to be good that one pursues and what one believes to be bad that one avoids.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
One might believe the pleasant is good (358b) and pursue it, but, as you point out:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So, it cannot be what defines something as good is that it is pursued since we do pursue pleasure.
Socrates concludes:
A false opinion and being deceived about what is good leads one to pursue what is bad. Here we see the connection between knowledge and virtue.
:grin: Protagoras...makes...clear :rofl:
I keep asking you to justify this claim, but you do not. If there is some simple, clear and distinct principle, other than "thinking something is good", which makes the thing actually and truly good, then please produce it.
Quoting Fooloso4
Notice in your quote that it says "so it seems". There is a reason for this. That idea (what seems to be the case) is the very idea which Plato ends up refuting. We often willingly do what we believe, and know to be bad. How is this possible?
It is possible because we do not have a true understanding of "the good", as explained in The Republic. What we claim to know as "good" might be false. Your understanding of "the good" produces a situation where we can knowingly do what is bad; when a person lies, steals, or cheats for example. We truly believe that such things are bad, we even claim to know that they are bad, yet we do them any way.
How is this possible, when it is completely contrary to what "seems" to be the case? It is possible because what seems to be, is not really what is the case. What is the case is that we really and truly do not know what "the good" is, yet we assume to know what it is, as you exemplify, and from this faulty assumption we assume to know what "bad" is as well. Then we proceed to do what we believe to be bad, because our believe as to what is good and bad, is faulty.
Quoting Fooloso4
As I said, some pleasures we do not pursue. because we cannot engage in all at once, so we need to prioritize. Therefore you have no argument here.
Quoting Fooloso4
Ah, you're catching on, but not drawing the proper conclusion yet. The proper conclusion is that the belief that virtue is a knowledge is the deception. The claim "I know the good" might incline one to act in a way accordingly. However, as Plato points out in The Republic, the good is not something that anyone knows, not even the highest philosophers. The good is something completely outside the realm of human knowledge as that which illuminates the things known. It is the cause of intellection, and therefore not knowledge, which is the product of it. So we must conclude that the real relationship between knowledge and virtue is not as you assume. Virtue is the cause of knowledge, not the effect of it. Therefore it must be something other than knowledge. And, any person who says "I know the good", and acts accordingly, is the one who is deceived, because no one can know the good.
My claim is that thinking or believing something is good is not the same as knowing that it is good. Thinking or believing something is good does not make the thing actually and truly good. You make the distinction yourself when you point out:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If we pursue pleasure and some pleasures are bad then pursuing pleasure does not make it good.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You are now making the argument you rejected! If we willingly do what we believe, and know to be bad then what we are pursuing in such cases cannot, as you previously claimed, be good because we pursue it.
Previously you said:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
and:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
but now you admit that we often do what is bad. If every act is inherently good then how can an act that is inherently good be bad?
You say:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
How do you know that every act is good if we do not have a true understanding of the good?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
A true understanding of the good cannot be that the good is whatever we pursue. You now say that we do not have a true understanding of the good:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree, but you seem to disagree with yourself. You previously said :
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If it is not by knowledge that we can truly determine whether a particular act is good then in what way can we determine that it is good? Certainly not by the fact it is done.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The proper conclusion is that virtue is problematic. Lacking knowledge we do not have the true measure of virtue.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Is your claim that virtue is the good?
How can we distinguish between virtuous and non-virtuous acts? By virtue of virtue? If virtue is the good and we cannot know the good then we cannot know virtue.
I've been asking you to justify this claim, because I really cannot understand it. I can't see how anything other than thinking that something is good could make something good. If you can't justify it, perhaps you can give me an example or something, so that I could begin to understand what you mean.
Are you familiar with Plato's Euthyphro? Is pious being loved by the gods, or is piety what the gods love? We can apply the same test here. Is "good" what is deemed by human beings, or is good a quality apprehended by us to be inherent within the thing. I think the answer is obvious. It is not a quality which we apprehend as inhering within the act, but a judgement we make by comparing the act to some principles. Therefore belief in those principles and one's capacity to judge, is what makes the act good.
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't see that you have a point here. Pleasure comes in a variety of types, the ones pursued are good.
Quoting Fooloso4
You are cherry picking quotes out of context. In the context of "everything we do is good", I clearly stated that bad is not opposed to good. So you really have no point here.
Quoting Fooloso4
Look, we can know that every act is good without having a true understanding of "the good", simply by knowing what it means to act. Once we reject determinism and accept free will, then a freely willed act requires a cause which is not deterministic. "The good" as an overarching Form of knowledge would be deterministic, forcing one to act according to that Form. "The good" as your will to act, in whatever way you want, at any particular moment in time, is not deterministic. Obviously we cannot have a true understanding of "the good", or else our acts would be deterministic, forced by that understanding.
You seem to be confusing the predicate "good" which we might attribute to an act, or a type of act, with the supposed Form called "the good". The point demonstrated is that we attribute the property "good" without knowing the Form, "the good". As Paine explained, Aristotle took the further step to completely reject "the good" as a Form altogether. And, I've been explaining that this is consistent with Plato, because "the good" is what makes the Forms intelligible by illuminating them, and is therefore not a Form itself. In the terms of free will, in the preceding paragraph, it is the will to understand. So it is very common for people to say such and such are good, without having any understanding whatsoever of "the good".
And, when you consider what I say above, that when we judge an act as good, this is "a judgement we make by comparing the act to some principles", you'll see that there is no single principle by which we judge "good". Each time we judge an act as good, we employ principles specific to the situation. Therefore it is impossible that there could be one principle called "the good", by which we could judge acts as good.
Quoting Fooloso4
Why not? I see no justification for your claim that good is something other than this, and a very convincing argument from Plato that this is exactly what makes an act good, that it has been carried out as an intentional act.
This is all hopeless twisted. On a number of different topics several of us having tried to help you untangle your confused thinking. I am done trying.
That's why most people give up on trying to understand Plato, it requires a lifetime of effort to even get close. They cannot read it in a week and fit it all into a simple exegesis, so they give up. not having the ambition required to match the ambition of Plato. Most philosophy appears hopelessly twisted to anyone who requires their education to be in a straight forward format. In the end though, the individual may proceed forward by following the straight forward doctrine, but we move ahead by solving the hopelessly twisted puzzles.
I have been reading and studying Plato for close to fifty years. I have started several threads here on Plato. Why people give up on trying to understand Plato has nothing to do with you.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What you fail to see is that your hopelessly twisted puzzles are of your own making. This is true not only of your perverse reading of Plato but for your perverse reading of Wittgenstein as well.
The Categories does point out that what can be predicated as a quality requires a primary substance, an individual being, without whom referring to qualities would be meaningless. On the basis of this reasoning, you seem to be denying that a relation between beings could ever go beyond the 'good' as the predicate of an individual being. It is difficult for me to visualize, it seems to be a Protagorean result gained through an inversion of the eternal, or something.
But I don't have to understand the thesis to notice it does not fit with other things Aristotle said. Aristotle discussed the good as a quality of the cosmic whole in Book Lambda, For the purpose of inquiring into first principles, the whole of creation is a substance that the Mover causes to exist, along with the order that comes into being through his rule.
The holistic view that connects the individual (and what is good for them) with the cosmos (the being that includes all beings) can be seen in the introduction of soul into the arguments made by Aristotle. The Categories make no mention of the idea of composite beings:
The concept of soul is said to be central to the process of becoming an individual. With this starting principle it becomes related to the whole of creation:
Aristotle bases this claim on linking the inquiry of all nature (fusis) to the existence of the soul:
This use of light as an analogy bears a strong resemblance to its use by Plato in Book 6 of the Republic, but reformulated in order to avoid the deficits Aristotle finds there. For the purpose of this present argument, the important point to realize is that the 'function of man' discussed in Nicomachean Ethics is not just a general predicate that can be applied to a set of individuals but relates to how those individuals come into being in a cosmos filled with these other beings.
To argue that one's interlocutor has not studied enough is an abandonment of a thesis made upon its own merits. Admitting that one's arguments are useless is not exactly a clinic on how to do Platonic dialectic.
Indeed.
Quoting Paine
A dialectic involves a topic and two people. If one of those people has a hopelessly twisted conception of the topic, the only recourse for the other may well be to laugh and walk away.
Rationality is of little use on the irrational.
Well, I do not mean to claim as much. I cannot judge as irrational what I cannot conceive of in my own terms. There is always the possibility that I am too limited to understand. I just wanted to observe that withdrawing from the discourse between two, as you observe, is not one of the possible moves within it.
If, on sitting down to a game of chess. one's opponent moves the rook diagonaly, you might at first try to instruct them as to the correct move. But if they insist on repeating the error, one might reasonably attribute malice or foolishness. Either way, the game is at an end.
In this case, the game is trying to understand what certain texts are trying to say. All the players are interpreters. If one does not understand what the move is, one cannot claim it is breaking a rule. I don't understand MU's argument. The fault could be mine. His withdrawal from the game has no bearing upon that possibility.
No, it isn't. You are relatively new here. You'll learn. It's a worthwhile lesson. Sometimes folk just do not make sense.
I think the issue here is that predication is of a subject. If we want to make a relation into a subject and make a predication of that subject, we lose the substantiation afforded by the primary substance because a relation cannot be primary substance. Then there is no object which exemplifies the subject, only relations, and relations are fundamentally relative, therefore subjective. In other words, a relation cannot be a primary substance, consequently it has no true identity by the law of identity, so there is no possibility of truth.
Accordingly, if we make "good" (by definition) the property of a relation rather than the property of an individual, the concept is not grounded in anything substantial. But there is no problem to make "good" the property of individuals, because it is individuals who act, and acts are what are judged as good. As the action is a property of the individual, so is the good. Therefore we have virtuous, or "good" people. This you'll find is very consistent with Aristotle's ethics, a virtuous person is one who acts as such, and the acts come from strength of character rather than chance. It really makes no sense to define "good" as the property of a relation. And I haven't yet seen any serious attempts to make this sensible.
Quoting Paine
This is a pointless paragraph. You know from the other thread that I reject Book Lambda as inconsistent with the rest of Aristotle's writing, and it is debatable whether it was actually written by him. It is more consistent with the Neo-Platonist trend to equate the good with the One. As I said above, I believe Aristotle had a better understanding of Plato then The Neo-Platonists. And, I think Book Lambda to be a Neo-Platonist teaching passed off as Aristotle. because the bulk of Aristotle's writing is extremely consistent but this is not consistent with the rest.
Quoting Paine
I think you are mistaken here Paine. The soul is "in a way" all things, through the potential of the intellect, and its capacity to know all things. Aristotle does not mean that the soul actually is all things, "in a way" is used for a reason. The power of the soul "to know all things" is not necessarily the good, because if the good has to do with intellection, it might simply be the power of the soul to know. Then "all things" is accidental. But you want to make "all things" essential, and conclude therefore that the good is a relation between the individual and the whole cosmos. This is unwarranted because even if I grant to you that "good" ought to be defined as the quality of a relation, rather than the quality of an individual, there is nothing to indicate that it is any more than a quality of the various relations between the individual and the particular things that the individual knows. Where do you derive the need to relate the individual to the whole cosmos from? I see no principles here. So the quotes you've produced do not support your conclusion.
You have yet to provide the support for this statement. I have seen some commentary regarding this topic in various writings but you have not attempted to do more than claim it to be true. In any case, the argument in De Anima replicates the same view given in Book Lambda.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
On the contrary, there is vast difference between the 'good' as it relates to the whole of the cosmos and the problems of individual beings. But I am not the one claiming there is no 'overarching' good. It seems absurd to assert that Aristotle intended to separate the two goods as a category mistake in the way you seem to be arguing for.
I thoroughly demonstrated the inconsistency in that other thread. In De Anima Bk 1 Ch 3 he explains why the soul is not an unmoved mover, it is not an eternal circular motion, nor any type of motion at all, because it is definitively immaterial, and it's incoherent to speak of an immaterial motion. Further, he explains that the thinking on thinking which is thought to be such an eternal circular motion does not describe the true nature of thinking, because thinking consists of conclusions, ends, and never proceeds endlessly without such. Therefore the ideas expressed in Metaphysics Bk 12 are directly refuted here.
Then Appollodorus proceeded to De Caelo in an effort to support that part of Metaphysics. However, a thorough reading of that work will show that it also refutes Metaphysics Bk 12. First, he's very clear to say that an eternal circular motion is theoretically "possible". Then he proceeds to explain how any circular motion must consist of material substance. Then, anything material is generated and corrupted. So he leaves it to us, from these premises, to conclude that although eternal circular motion is logically possible, it is in reality, physically impossible.
We know that "The Metaphysics" is a collection of works put together by Aristotle's school a long time after his death. This part you refer to is clearly inconsistent with the work which we know is his. Instead, it supports a Neo-Platonist tradition which proceeded in a different direction from Aristotle with respect to immaterial substance. The principal point being that Aristotle demonstrated how we cannot appeal to matter based descriptions (circular motions, and the human being thinking about thinking), in any real attempt to understand immaterial substance. He leads us through the rest of his Metaphysics, and De Anima, to understand the logical necessity to assume immaterial forms as prior to, and the cause of, material things being the particular things that they are, by the law of identity. And, he shows us that these classic ideas, circular motion, and thinking on thinking, do not provide us with a true immaterial representation, and therefore ought to be rejected.
Quoting Paine
The point though, is that there is no such thing as "the 'good' as it relates to the whole of the cosmos". That's an idea you've fabricated, or imported from somewhere else, as is not derived from Plato nor Aristotle. The "good" in Plato, is what illuminates individual intelligible objects. Until "the cosmos" becomes intelligible, rather than simply having some sort of aesthetic eloquence, or appeal as a beautiful proposal, there is no "good" in relation to the cosmos. And Aristotle is explicit to refer to the good of man, as happiness, and the highest activity as contemplation, without speaking of any "good of the cosmos'. And he is very careful to dissuade us from the sophistry of eternal circular motions, and a thinking thinking on thinking, which might have been proposed as the good in relation to the whole cosmos.
So it is not that I am trying to separate "the two goods". There is only one true sense of 'good'. Plato and Aristotle each support this, the "good" is relative to the individual, or particular. The idea that there is some sort of universal "the good", as good relative to the cosmos, is what both of them reject as sophistry. People who claim such a "the good", are claiming to know what cannot be known. Obviously "the 'good' as it relates to the whole of the cosmos" is self-contradicting, because the the whole of the cosmos is an absolute, absolutely everything, so to say that there is something such as 'the good' which is relative to this, is blatant contradiction. This why creation myths have a hierarchy of goods in a temporal order, God created this because He saw it was good, then that, then that, etc..
Well, at least we can agree that your interpretation is not tenable if Book Lambda is a legitimate expression of Aristotle's thought. There is a hefty amount of scholarship regarding the sources of text and editors of the book and its relation to other writings, but you are the first I have heard say it is an out and out counterfeit. You have not provided any support for this claim. Perhaps you could pull the source of it out from under its cover.
Your demonstration on the other thread brought you to this point:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In a separate comment, I will list all the places I know of where Aristotle alludes to a separate, independent intellect. I don't have time to run them all down until can get back to my books next week.
But I will restate the problem I had with your comment the first time around. You are using a certain set of texts to establish your interpretation of what Aristotle means to say. On the basis of that, you declare Aristotle is not consistent with his own principles when he refers to an active, separate intellect. Whatever explanation might be put forward for the conflict of principles, it is always logically possible that the inconsistency belongs to your interpretation.
Outside of its description in Book Lamba, it should be noted that many of the other books of the Metaphysics try to see how and if the introduction of composite beings relate to the method in the Categories. There is much scholarly debate on these topics and disagreement about which statements are consistent with other statements. The statement in Book Lambda: "the soul is the first substance" is a part of that conversation even if you dismiss the rest of the book as Neo-Platonists propaganda.
When that possibility is not taken seriously the whole of the text or texts may be distorted in order to accomodate an interpretation. That is just bad hermeneutic practice. I follow the advise of those who say that when there is an apparent contradiction look to see if it is or can be reconciled based on further consideration and closer examination.
As I said, I provided the support in an in depth way in the other thread, and outlined it in my last post. That book is clearly inconsistent with works of Aristotle which are well known to have been produced by him. And, since it is also known that the books under the title "Metaphysics" were teachings collected together in Aristotle's school, many years after his death The conclusion that this particular section was not actually his work is justified, in that way.
Regardless though, the point is that this section of "Metaphysics" is inconsistent with other parts of Aristotle's work. This could be a feature of a changing mind of the writer, like we find in Plato. So Plato's works are carefully ordered chronologically, and his thoughts are divided into distinct periods. In the case of Aristotle, we'd have to put that section of "Metaphysics" near the beginning of the order, because we see how he produces arguments to refute those ideas. He would not conclude this after refuting it, but he might propose it prior to refuting it. This is similar to the way that Plato produces arguments which refute the theory of participation, so the dialogues which support participation are presented as earlier. Instead, though, that book Lambda is placed at the end of "Metaphysics", as if it's Aristotle's final conclusion. As I showed in the other thread, and outlined in my last post, he actually moves to refute it those ideas.
Quoting Paine
Yes, I remember you brought up a number of mentions of an independent intellect. I agree that with respect to "the intellect" there is obvious inconsistency in Aristotle. And this is an issue which has always been a problem. It is very evident in the Scholastics, manifesting as the division between the active intellect and the passive intellect. The desire to have as a principle, a separate, independent intellect, led to the notion of a complete separation between active and passive intellect. This allows that the active intellect might be free from the influence of the passive matter (potential), allowing the intellect the capacity to know all things.
This is a clear problem, because what Aquinas presents, is that the human intellect is deficient, being dependent on the material body. So Aquinas proposes that the intellect might only adequately know things like God, after separation from the body.
But a completely separate, active intellect appears to be impossible by Aristotle's principles. This is because the intellect in each of its capacities, the capacity to know, prior to learning, and the capacity to act, posterior to learning, are all properly described as potentials. This led Aquinas to assume a potential which is not properly material, to account for the desire to portray a separate, active intellect, unbound by matter.
I do not accept this resolution, because it introduces two distinct types of "potential", and distinctions of type are formal. This distinction of types of potential would put fundamental forms as inherent within matter, instead of allowing for the reality of true separate Forms. But if we allow for true separate Forms, as Aquinas surely wanted to do, with God and the angels, then these Forms (form being actual) cannot be a sort of intellect, because intellect is fundamentally a potential.
The need to conclude separate Forms is produced by the cosmological argument, BK.9 of "Metaphysics". The separate Forms account for the actuality which is necessarily prior to potential, in the absolute sense. If we adhere to what Aristotle discusses in Bk 1, Ch.3 of "De Anima", we see that the separate Forms must be truly immaterial, and cannot be described in material representations like eternal circular motions. Further, the thinking on thinking representation is said to be improper as well, because it does not accurately represent thinking. And, it is later shown how thinking as the act of an intellect is fundamentally a potential, therefore it cannot be used to represent a pure, independent actuality.
So here we find the fundamental inconsistency of Neo-Platonism, specifically Plotinus. We see "the One" as the first, and most fundamental principle. But the One is supposed to be both pure, absolute potential, as well as the first cause, from which all proceeds. But pure, absolute potential cannot be a cause, because it lacks any actuality, as explained in "Metaphysics" Bk.9, the cosmological argument. This argument by Aristotle effectively refutes both materialism (having matter as the first principle), and Pythagorean Idealism (having ideas as the first principle), by classifying both as potential. "Matter" may then be understood as an idea, and ideas are potential. This leaves the aspect of reality which is supposed to correspond to "matter" as something unintelligible, and opens the door to matter based mysticism. Neo-Platonism mistakenly adhered to principles of Pythagorean Idealism which had been refuted by Plato and Aristotle, in a bid to ward off material mysticism.
Quoting Paine
Actually, I refer to a wide variety of material, as indicated above. Chiefly, Aquinas provide a very good presentation of these interpretive problems, because they had become exposed by the Scholastics. Appollodorus accused me of reading Plato through Aristotle, and Aristotle through Aquinas, instead of interpreting the person directly. The problem being that Appollo took this as a fault, when really these are the people who put much effort into solving the puzzles put forward by the philosophers before themselves. So it doesn't work, as a criticism, to accuse me of an idiosyncratic interpretation, and also accuse me of reading one philosopher through the mind of another, as Appollo did.
Quoting Paine
The fundamental issue of the "Metaphysics" is, I would say, what Aristotle lays out around BK 3, I think. The question is why is a thing what it is. He dismisses often cited question of why is there something rather than nothing, as unanswerable, and therefore misleading, so he proceeds to the more relevant question of why is any particular thing, the thing which it is. Primary substance according to "Categories" is an individual, a particular, and now, the particular must have an identity by the law of identity.
He points to the following logical argument. A thing must be the thing which it is, by the law of identity. And, when a thing comes into being, it must necessarily come into being as the thing which it is or else a thing could be other than the thing which it is, in violation of the law of identity. It is impossible that the self-same thing could be two distinct things at the same time. Therefore we can conclude that the form of the thing, as "what the thing is" is temporally prior to the existence of the material thing, as the cause of the thing being what it is, rather than something else, when the thing comes into existence. Otherwise a thing would be a random collection of parts, but it is not, it has an orderly form. When taken in the absolute sense, as the cosmological argument (Bk 9), we see that there must be an immaterial Form, prior to all material existence.
Around BK 6, Aristotle questions where the form of the thing comes from. He distinguishes between natural things and artificial things, and provides an in depth description of artificial things. The form of the thing comes from the soul of the artist. This is important, because we see that the form, of what the thing will be, when the thing comes into existence, does not inhere within the matter itself, but comes from some other source. Then he leads us toward the conclusion that there is a very similar situation in natural things. So we must assume separate independent Forms, according to the principle that the form does not come from within the matter.
The issue you point to. "the soul is the first substance", needs clarification. Primary substance is a particular individual, which by Aristotle is a composition of matter and form (hylomorphism). The soul, by "De Anima", is a form, the first form of a body having life potential in it, so we can understand it in the sense of an independent Form, described above, being the cause for the material body coming into being as the body which it is, rather than something else. But it's doubtful whether it is correct to call such a Form a substance, because it doesn't fit into Aristotle's definition of "substance" in "Categories", either in the primary or secondary sense.
Quoting Fooloso4
More often than not, what is the case is that the inconsistency gets overlooked, it goes undetected by the readers, because each reader interprets in one's own way, ignoring the parts which don't really make sense. However, it manifests later in discrepancies between various interpretations. The inconsistencies in Plato produced discrepancies between Neo-Platonism and Aristotle, for example. And the inconsistencies in Aristotle manifest in the problems which the Scholastics confronted.
So the bad hermeneutic practice is actually the opposite of what you say it is. To attribute the appearance of inconsistency to a deficiency in the skill of the reader, rather than to a deficiency in the skill of the writer is the wrong approach. This is because inconsistency in philosophy is common and pervasive due to the complicated, complex, and unexplored subject matter. Philosophy ventures into the unknown. If we assume the the appearance of inconsistency is a deficiency in reading skills, when the inconsistency is real, and within the material, due to a deficient understanding of the writer, we will either get bogged down in our attempts to understand, never being able to understand inconsistent material, or we'll have to ignore relevant material, and then we'll get bogged down in discussing who's interpretation is the correct one.
Therefore the appropriate procedure is to proceed with a healthy respect for the likelihood of inconsistency in the material, and with a mind open to the reality that the writer most likely did not have a complete understanding of the material. Remember, what is being sought is the truth concerning the subject, not the truth as to what so and so said about the subject. This leaves us in a position to accept whatever an author says, which appears to be consistent with the truth, and reject whatever one says which appears to be inconsistent with the truth. Looking for the truth as to what so and so said will be a fruitless effort because the reality of ambiguity renders this as an impossible ideal.
The problem is that you wildly overestimate your reading skills. Although there may be cases where an inconsistency is real, you are all too quick to declare inconsistencies where the real problem is evidently a deficient understanding on the part of the reader. Modesty and humility are hermeneutic virtues.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The chronology of when the dialogue were written is not the same as the chronology of when the dialogues are set to have taken place. Parmenides is a "late dialogue" but it takes place when Socrates was young. The chronology of events raises serious questions about dividing Plato's work into distinct periods. Why would he situate what is supposed to be a late development, his criticism of the the theory of forms, at the beginning of Socrates' philosophical education?
There' a saying, 'better safe than sorry'. It's safer to say that conclusions cannot be drawn, due to inconsistency, then to assume consistency and draw a false conclusion. We ought to approach all philosophy with the skeptical attitude that inconsistency is possible, and be very alert to recognize it when we see it. As I described above, in philosophy it's far more likely that a declaration of no inconsistency is the sign of a deficient understanding, than a declaration of inconsistency. As I explained, it's a feature of the subject matter.
See, you misrepresent my position. The person who does not see the possibility of inconsistency projects one's own principles into the reading, forcing an understanding based on that. The person who sees inconsistency is not forcing an understanding, and maintaining an open mind. The latter is the appropriate method of philosophy.
Quoting Fooloso4
I can't understand this. Are you asking why Plato wrote about the young Socrates' fascination with the theory of forms, later in Plato's lifetime? Isn't there numerous dialogues concerning the young Socrates' fascination with the theory of forms, right from the beginning of Plato's writing? Can you make the point clearer? I don't see it.
Saying that conclusions cannot be drawn is not the same things as what you do when you draw conclusions about Metaphysics Book Lamba.
You draw a conclusion when you say:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What may appear to you to be an inconsistency may not be. But rather than any further attempt to understand or even leave it open as problematic you have concluded that it should be rejected.
There is a clear inconsistency in saying a) conclusions cannot be drawn and b) concluding that what the author says should be rejected.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I have claimed no such thing. What I am saying is that we should not be too quick in deciding there is an inconsistency that a philosopher like Plato is unaware of.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You say that there are distinct periods in Plato's development. Does he change his mind about Forms?If so, in what way?
My guesstimate:
Sophists' goal: How to win arguments! Nobly/ignobly doesn't matter!
Philosophers' goal: How to find truths! Nobly!
Ignoble methods of winning in an argument: Fallacies part of the toolkit or should I say arsenal?
Noble methods of doing the same: Fallacies, a big no-no!
That's just the tip of the ice berg, there's (probably) more!
Wanna win the war? Give me one sophist, just one. Oh, there's Krishna! We're in luck, fellas!
Yes, if it is unintelligible to one's own mode of interpretation, it ought to be rejected for that reason.
Quoting Fooloso4
"Consistent with the truth" is a judgement made by an individual subject. If this is not the judgement then we really ought to reject the proposition.
Quoting Fooloso4
I see no justification for this claim. If I interpret some things as inconsistent, why should I believe they are really consistent? That makes no sense at all.
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't think there are "distinct periods", just a progression. And yes, he clearly changes his mind about Forms, he comes to reject the theory of participation
Is it possible that one is wrong? That one's own mode of interpretation in this case misses or misunderstands something? If so then rejecting what is read as inconsistent is itself inconsistent.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Is the judgment of the individual subject always consistent with the truth? If it is not then it is inconsistent to say in this case that we really ought to reject the proposition.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There is a clear inconsistency here. A contradiction. First you say there are distinct periods then you don't think there are distinct periods. Are you saying that there are distinct periods but you don't think there are?
What you say contains several inconsistencies. It should be rejected.
I don't see how this would be possible. How could a person be wrong, in one's judgement that they cannot understand something. This would mean that the person really understands something which they think they do not.
Quoting Fooloso4
It's not a matter of rejecting what is read, it's a matter of recognizing inconsistencies within what is read, which makes it impossible to understand it. So the interpreter never claims to understand what is written, because this is impossible, as it is interpreted as inconsistent and therefore impossible to understand. Therefore the initial assumption which the reader makes is that the material is misunderstood.
You are misrepresenting it as a claim of understanding. But this cannot be the case, because the person interprets the material as inconsistent, which renders understanding as impossible. This is why we move to secondary sources. So for instance, when Plato is interpreted as inconsistent with respect to the theory of participation, one might move on to Neo-Platonists and Aristotle, to aid in the process of trying to understand Plato.
The point being that it is not a matter of claiming to understand the material, then rejecting it because it is understood as inconsistent, it is a matter of recognizing that you cannot understand the material, so you move to secondary sources for assistance. Then, when the secondary sources offer conflicting interpretations, you have grounds for a judgement of ambiguity or inconsistency. The primary source then needs to be revisited, with a new attempt to understand, before that judgement is made. Nothing can be rejected simply on the basis of inconsistency, because one or the other of the two inconsistent parts may be acceptable.
Quoting Fooloso4
I really don't see that you have a point here. When a person judges a proposition as inconsistent with truth, this is grounds for the person to reject it, forcing the ought by implication, false therefore reject. The fact that the person might make a mistake, does not negate the judgement, nor the ought implied by the judgement. If the person is worried about mistake, and is skeptical, then the judgement is suspended. If the person is not skeptical, then the judgment is made, and the ought is implied, and whether or not the person is wrong in that judgement is irrelevant because the ought is forced by the judgement, not by anything else.
Quoting Fooloso4
I really can't grasp what you are saying. "His thoughts are divided into distinct periods", indicates an artificial act of division, so that the divisions produce distinct periods, which have become conventional. Think about the way that the day is divided into morning and afternoon. So, I told you that I don't believe that there are real distinct periods, I believe there is just a progression, which has been divided into distinct periods for pragmatic purposes, convenience. Likewise, I think that the passing of time is just a progression which has been divided into distinct periods, for convenience.
But your claim is not that you don't understand but that what you are reading is inconsistent. If you do not understand there is still the possibility that someday you will. But you think you understand well enough to reject what you have read, Again, you are not being consistent.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
And yet you say it is:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
More inconsistency.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In that case you are no longer talking about one's judgment that they cannot understand but that one understands well enough to reject it. It may still be the case that a person still does not understand.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It means that the judgment was wrong.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The question is: what significance and conclusion do you draw from the conclusion that some dialogues are placed in the early period, some in the middle, and some in the late period?
Yes, that's because I've gone through the further stage I've describe, reference to secondary sources. This justifies my claim. What I could not understand in my primary readings, it turns out that I could not understand it because of inconsistencies.
Quoting Fooloso4
Again, this is the secondary stage, which is justified by secondary sources.
Quoting Fooloso4
No, that's clearly false. The possibility that one's judgement is wrong does not mean that the judgement is wrong. If the only way to justify a judgement was to exclude all possibility of mistake, then judgement would be unjustifiable.
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't think so, there's simply a clear lack of effort to understand, on your part, and a refusal to recognize the part between (reference to secondary sources), which separates statement A from statement B. Furthermore, you are comparing a statement about the whole, (not rejecting what has been read), with a statement about a part (rejecting a proposition). The first applies to an inability to understand what has been read, and the second to an understanding developed through further analysis.
For example, suppose there's a logical argument which consists of two premises which appear to be acceptable, and a conclusion. The conclusion however, appears to be wrong for some reason, outlandish, absurd, or totally inconsistent with observation. This is how Aristotle described sophistry, as using logic to produce an absurd conclusion. Take Zeno's paradoxes for an example of such sophistry.
Now, we ought not simply reject the whole thing, just because we do not like the conclusion. But, we cannot accept it because the conclusion is clearly wrong. So, we need to analyze the premises individually, along with the logical process applied, to see what the problem is. These are the puzzles of philosophy which I referred to earlier.
What Aristotle noticed, is that strict adherence to the law of excluded middle as a logical principle, by sophists, could produce absurd conclusions. He demonstrated that the reason for this is that "becoming" is of a completely different category from the logical category of "being and not being". Plato revealed this issue in numerous dialogues. So if an act of becoming, a movement for example, is described in a premise as states of being and not being, there is really an incompatibility between the thing being described, and the description. Therefore we ought to reject such premises as false. So for example, in relation to Zeno's paradoxes, if a movement (an act of becoming), is described as being at point A at one time, and being at point B at a later time (states of being), we ought to reject those premises as false. The movement is what happens between point A and point B, and it is categorical different from being at point A and being at point B, as "becoming" is categorically different from "being and not being". The law of excluded middle would incline us to believe that it must be either being or not being, thereby denying the possibility of becoming.
Quoting Fooloso4
When there is an inconsistency in a philosopher's material, between what is stated at an earlier time, and what is stated at a later time, we can accept that the later is more representative of what the philosopher believed as the truth. And when the philosopher has much material like Plato, we can usually find within the middle part, the arguments by which the earlier statements are refuted, and which ultimately support the later statements.
In the case of Bk Lambda, of Aristotle's "Metaphysics", which Paine refers to, this book has been placed at the end of "Metaphysics", which is supposed to be after his "Physics". So we get the illusion that this book expresses Aristotle's final decisions, his most developed thought. However, in reality we find the ideas and arguments expressed in Aristotle's other books, which actually refute these proposals of Lambda. Therefore we ought to conclude that this book should really be placed at the beginning of Aristotle's work, as the beliefs of a young Aristotle, which he later refuted, or the more likely conclusion, as I explained to Paine, that it is not really Aristotle's writing.
You have convinced me of one thing: what you say should be rejected because it is inconsistent. But according to you, you are in good company:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The problem is that you have clearly not followed what I said, so you have simply convinced yourself through some sort of bias or prejudice. I clearly said that the whole of what the person said is not to be rejected, only specific propositions, which are judged to be inconsistent with truth, are to be rejected.
If I have given you two contradicting propositions, by what principle other than ad hominem, do you reject them both?
Although this topic is on subject that most of us know what it is all about and there's no much more to talk about --it's an almost "dead" subject-- I wanted to see if there's something new that maybe could revive it!
Well, you brought up something that triggered my interest: that "sophistry is a big problem in the modern world". Unfortunately though I got somehow frustrated because I didn't even see where is the problem. Not a single example ...
Well, since I'm here ...
Quoting Average
I don't know if Hitler indulged in sophistry. This little matters. But one of the things he said was "If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed". It sounds like a confession, most probably not indented. But this is what he did and this is what a lot of politicians were always and still are doing, esp. when people have lost their hopes for a better tomorrow. You lay a hand to someone who is getting drawn in the water, he grasps it, because he would grasp whatever hand is extended to rescue him, and then you drawn him yourself by pushing him deeper into the water. And this is most probably what Hitler did, but most probably not on purpose. He was just insane. Anyway, False promises and lies do not consist "sophistry".
Quoting Average
If you can be more specific, and esp. give me a couple of examples, I could maybe help you! :smile:
How would you define sophistry?
Use of clever but false arguments --apparently plausible reasoning--, especially with the intention of deceiving.
The term "sophistry" is a modern version of what in Greek antiquity was called "sophism", an activity or movement that was disapproved by many.
The ending -stry has been inherited from the French "erie", which is mainly used for professional and commercial activities. Indeed, sophists in antiquity were paid for teaching, among other things, rhetoric, another activity involving the deceiving of people, which has survived well until our days and is used mainly by lawyers and polititians.
Didn't you ask me how do I defined sophistry? Well, this is what I did.
If the end result of both a "lie" and a "sophistry" is deception, this does not mean that there's no difference between them! (In fact, a big one.)
Please explain the difference.
I already did. I shouldn't. A bad habit of mine. My effort is often ignored and, more importantly, I encourage people avoiding looking up words to see for themselves. (In this case, "lie" and "sophistry".)
The issue isn't always truth, it's intention and deception. The content of a sophist and a truth teller will often look much the same.
Understood. But there are technologies that can help users discern intention and deception. Those are the kinds of solutions I'm interested in.
Interesting. I wonder how. Apologies for misunderstanding.
The active intellect, in so far as it exists separately from the composite beings who are able to think because of it, are not experiencing this aspect of the principle:
And:
The difference between the active principle and the sort of knowing that composite beings do is collapsed again when you say:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Only the composite beings have a capacity to learn, act, or remember. In regard to 'potentials" that is what caused Aristotle to object to his predecessors:
These observations move me to ask for you to provide textual references for the following statement:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This idea, I cannot accept. The idea that when a person becomes old, and mentally incapacitated, suffering dementia or something like that, the person is still fully capable of "thought", and it's just something else that decays, I believe is completely refuted by evidence. We'd have to really distort the meaning of "thought" to support such a position.
What happens in Aquinas' principles, from what I remember, is that the human intellect is fully united with the material body, and is dependent on the body. Because of this dependency the human intellect is left deficient, and incapable of properly grasping the independent Forms, God and the angels. So Aquinas says that the soul of man is incapable of completely knowing God, so long as it is united with the body. It is implied therefore that the soul can completely know God after being freed from the body.
However, we can see a problem arising from this, in relation to knowledge and the intellect. The human intellect necessarily has a body, and "knowledge" is a property attributed to the human intellect, as is "thought" above. So if we disunite the soul from the body, then whatever union the soul is allowed to have with the independent Forms at that time, it is improper to refer to that union with those terms. "knowledge" and "intellect". It would not be a case of the soul "knowing" the independent forms because "knowing" is what the human intellect does, and the human intellect is dependent on a body. "Knowledge" being something which is fundamentally flawed, as fallible.
Quoting Paine
I believe I produced this in the other thread. Read thoroughly \De Anima Bk 3 Ch 4.
"The thinking part of the soul must therefore be, while impassable, capable of receiving the form of an object; that is, must be potentially identical in character with its object without being the object." 429a 15. "Therefore...mind...can have no nature of its own, other than that of having a certain capacity." 429a 18-23.
Then:
"Once the mind has become each set of its possible objects, as a man of science has, when this phrase is used of a man who is actually a man of science, (this happens when he is now able to exercise the power on his own initiative), its condition is still one of potentiality, but in a different sense from the one which preceded the acquisition of knowledge by learning or discovery; the mind too is then able to think itself." 429b 5-10
The mind is shown to be fundamentally potential, therefore we can conclude that we're barking up the wrong tree if we think that we can proceed toward demonstrating that the mind could be an independent actuality.
There's a number of complex and difficult issues right here in this chapter. First, the mind being impassable, yet capable of receiving forms. This I believe is what allowed Aquinas to say that the passive intellect is some type of potential which is not matter. I believe that in reality we ought to reject this qualification "impassable", and allow the simple solution, that the material aspect of the human mind is what receives forms.
Another issue, which is much more difficult, and complex, not having been well explored, that I know of, is the way that different potencies relate to each other. Obliquely, we can see the foundation for a sort of hierarchy of potencies or capacities here, and this is consistent with Aristotle's powers of the soul, where the posterior potential is dependent on the prior potential. The mind must first receive forms, learn, and in this sense it has the capacity to become something. Prior to this, it is not any particular thing, but the potential to be many things (matter?). After learning, when the person has knowledge, the mind is described as the potential to act in numerous different possible ways ("able to exercise the power on his own initiative"). The capacity attributed to the posterior potential is dependent on the actualization of the prior potential.
So the potential to learn exists in a certain relation with the potential to act, which is a temporal relation. Learning is prior to acting. And what we can see, is that even though the actualization of a potential, (the capacity to learn is actualized), this actualized potential remains a potential still, in relation to the posterior thing, which is acting. So even though the base potential has been actualized (learning), it remains a potential in relation to the next actualization (acting).
This does not reflect Aristotle's thinking. Only some combined beings are capable of thought. The capacity is directly related to the condition of the body. This is made clear in the passage preceding the one I quoted:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Here again, it is important to follow distinctions Aristotle makes between the soul as a principle that animates all life from the experience of combined beings. Aristotle states at the beginning of the book that only combined beings can be affected:
Book 3, chapter 4 follows the discussion of imagination in chapter 3 and begins the argument of how the intellect can be seen as a potential in relation to what makes it actual. The last paragraph of chapter 4 says:
The following chapters demonstrate how admitting in 431a8 that the 'soul never thinks without an image" is not admitting that the intellect is a "form of imagination" as described at the beginning of the book.
That's exactly the point I am making. The capacity to think is directly related to the material body. Therefore it is a mistake to represent that capacity (the intellect), as something which can exist independently of the material body.
When the word "seems" is used, one must be aware that this is an idea which is being expressed as something to be doubted. It appears you are not distinguishing between the use of "intellect" at the beginning of the passage, and "soul" at the end of the passage. The two are very distinct in Aristotle, and statements about one cannot be used as a conclusion about the other.
Quoting Paine
I don't understand your use of "combined beings". It doesn't appear Aristotelian to me. Is this supposed to be like the Plato's notion of body and soul? If so, it is mistaken to represent Aristotle in this way, because he breaks down this ancient notion. For Aristotle, each individual thing, alive or inanimate, consists of matter and form, the living being has a special type of form, "soul".
Therefore the distinction you make "only combined beings can be affected", appears completely unsupported. Notice in your quote he talks about specific affections which are peculiar to the soul. He does not make the more general statement that affection is something unique to the soul. Of course in his physics he talks about all material substance as capable of change, matter being the potential for change.
Quoting Paine
There is a very real problem with saying that the intellect "is actually nothing before it thinks". You ought to be able to see this clearly. Before it thinks, the intellect must have the capacity to think. And this is a very specific capacity, it's not the capacity to be warm or cold, the capacity of self-nourishment, the capacity to move, or anything like that, it is the specified capacity, to think. Therefore the thing which has the capacity to think, the intellect, must very clearly be something actual, prior to thinking, in order to have this specific capacity. So when we say that the intellect is "actually nothing" before it thinks, this must be qualified by a very specific set of possibilities,. It is actually nothing, in relation to that specific set of possibilities.
Quoting Paine
I don't see what you're alluding to.
Read Chapter 8 of Book Zeta of the Metaphysics for the briefest account of the "hylomorphism" that Aristotle uses throughout his works on natural beings. The chapter should be read as a whole to understand its parts but here is the decisive sentence regarding this discussion:
I'm fully aware of hylomorphism, as is evident in my last post. All things are "combined beings". So I don't understand your usage, as if "combined beings" refers to a special class of beings.
They are a "special" class of beings in regard to distinguishing the generated from what is not generated.
In Aristotle all beings are generated.
Except for the forms and matter which make such beings possible.
But form and matter are not separate beings. Form and matter are principles of Aristotle's physics, which are applied toward understanding being, such that we can say that a being necessarily consists of both. Primary substance is individuals, and individuals consist of both form and matter.
They are not separated in the generated individual, but Aristotle distinguishes between the soul as form and the individual repeatedly as the bulk of my quotes demonstrate. De Anima begins with the distinction:
After Aristotle develops his proposed answer to the problem he can say:
The book is meaningless without the distinction.
The soul, as the form of the individual, is not a being which is separate from the matter, nor is it an intellect. The soul is a type of actuality which is necessarily prior to the material body, as the cause of it. A cause must be an actuality. That's what I tried to explain to you before, but you seem to want to describe the soul as some sort of intellect which persists after the material body. The intellect, as a power of the soul is a potency, or potential, though. And we have no principles to support the idea of a cause persisting after its effects.
The intellect is a property of what you call a combined (material) being. There is no principle to support an "active intellect" which "exists separately". The idea of a "separate form" is supported by the necessity of a cause (the soul in this case) preceding its effect (material body). The soul must be separate because it necessarily exists when there is no material body, prior to it, because of the temporal nature of "cause"; it is prior to the material body. As necessarily actual, Aristotle assigns "the soul" to the category of "form" But the intellect, as a potential (from the passage I quoted), is posterior to the material body, dependent on it, just like every other power that the soul has. Each and every one of the soul's potencies is dependent on, therefore not separable, from the body. In the case of the intellect, this is demonstrated by the example, the intellect is dependent on the imagination. The idea of a separate active intellect is a notion which is left unjustified.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The potentiality of the intellect in III.4 is not described as a dependency upon the "material body" but as a condition that allows it to think "all things":
This is the last comment I will make in this discussion. Feel free to have the last word. I am still no closer to understanding your interpretation and you report the same consternation about mine. It is time that I exit the revolving door.
Do you apprehend a difference between the soul, as "the cause and first principle of the living body", and the intellect, as "a condition which allows it to think 'all things'"? The latter is posterior to the former, as the former is the cause of being of the latter.
Also, the potentiality of the intellect is definitely described as dependent on the material body. That's the point of the reference to imagination. Thinking requires imagination, which requires the bodily senses. That's how Aristotle describes all the powers of the soul, the higher are dependent on the lower, and they are all features of the various living bodies. We can conclude that the powers, or potencies, of the soul are materially based, because in his physics, matter provides the potential for change. They are potential, therefore they are materially based.
He demonstrates that the powers exist as potential, by explaining that any of the powers is not active all the time, it must be actualized. So the power resides in the potential (we can conclude matter). Aquinas looked at this with respect to the nature of "habit", and found that the habit, even though it is a specific way of acting, resides in the potential, material aspect, not in the act itself, the formal aspect.
Quoting Paine
I have to admit, I do not see the point you are trying to argue. There appears to be no consistency to what you say. You assert an "active intellect" which "exists separately", but then you readily admit to the obvious, that Aristotle describes the intellect as a potential, in all of its facets. When attempting to support the idea of a separate "active intellect", you refer back to "the soul", as if there's no separation between the soul and the intellect. But you need to respect the fact that the intellect is a product of the soul, just like all the other powers of the soul, which are all features of the material body. In describing the intellect, you cannot refer directly to the soul, because one is just a property of the other.