PreRepublic and Repubic Lecture notes for Philosophy 2010

           

Two paradoxes to start with:

1) This course is, and isn't, about “Liberal Arts” “Cultural Heritage” or “Literaes Humaniores” ("Humanities")

2) The best way to try to get a good grade is: try not to try to get a good grade.
 
[How to read a book, some simple pointers:

1) Who wrote it?, To Whom?, When? Why? (Plato "wrote" for 4th Century BCE graduate students.)

2) What Interpretations, influences, etc.? (Plato's Republic influenced Christianity's St. Paul; also many teachers and aristocrats of Modern Europe; many heads of religious orders and modern dictators; 20th Century cognitive science)

3) Check the structure, and particularly in philosophy the arguments and proofs -- chapters, index; look up terms, people.

4) read, summarize, reread; discuss.]

 [Introductory note: Aristotle, who founded the first university dedicated to empirical research, divided sciences, technologies, arts, and inquiries into theoretical and practical.

 

Theoretical sciences (such as astronomy, physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc.) aim to understand what sorts of things there are in the world and how they relate to each other causally.

Practical sciences, technologies, and arts aim to understand how we should act, what choices we should or should not make, when confronted with a variety of practical problems (these would include medicine, navigation, animal husbandry, agriculture, engineering, playwriting, sculpture (since aim at a particular kind of making, he also called them practical "productive" sciences)).

 

Logic is the most general of the sciences for Aristotle because logical reasoning is employed in all sciences and all inquiries in general. Aristotle and others put together what was known about logic in ancient Greece and this knowledge can down to us virtually unchanged until it was further formalized and systematized in the later nineteen century.

 

Logic. Patterns of reasoning common to all the sciences (syncategorical).

 

1)Statements, descriptions, theories, and equations are true or false (not “valid” or “invalid”).

 

2)Arguments and proofs are valid or invalid (not “true” or “false”). Arguments and proofs have premises (which are statements) and conclusions (which are also statements).

 

A valid argument is one whose conclusion has to be true if its premises are true. A sound argument is one that has true premises and is valid, so the conclusion of a sound argument has to be true. “If A, then B. A; therefore B” is a famous argument form called “modus ponens” (MP): for example “If this liquid smells of burnt almonds, it is cyanide. And the liquid does smell of burnt almonds; therefore, this liquid is cyanide.”  

Another distinction very basic to logic is between using and mentioning a word. In Philosophy is a long word I am mentioning the word “Philosophy.” In Philosophy is a central subject I am using the word “Philosophy.” It can be really important to distinguish whether you or someone else is talking about a word or about what the word stands for. Here's another big distinction:

                                           

1)   Formal Truths (and contradictions). (2+2=4, I am I, You aren't me, All bachelors are unmarried males; 2+2=5) Formal truths concern what is necessary, possible, impossible, what has to, might, or can't be. Formal statements can be true, false, or (occasionally) indeterminate/indeterminable. (e.g., "There is no highest twin prime number). Formal systems & languages & computer programs abound in formal truths (and formal falsehoods).

 

2)   Natural languages have formal properties too (phonology, syntax, semantics). Just as a computer has a built in and programmed language, so human's have natural languages (mind - cognitive science).  (Are there a lot of such truths built into us (at least as part of normal biological maturation)? Note that human's got far with sciences of the formal sort before they did well with empirical sciences whose truths summarize experiments and observations. See Leiber's intellectual squeeze, Noam Chomsky. For a shorter intro to Chomsky

 

2) Empirical Truths (and false statements). (Earth is a sphere, salt dissolves in water; 1 pint water added to 1 pint alcohol will amount to or equals 2 pints liquid)

These truths concern what is, happens to be, has happened, the actual facts, etc. History collects such facts. Empirical sciences, particularly at the descriptive level: geography, archeology, anthropology, geology, botany & zoology, molecular biology, much of chemistry & physics. Each of us exists as a formal (rational) and an empirical being.

Empirical statements can be true, false, or (often) indeterminate.

 

Now back to:

  

What is PHILOSOPHY and "PHILOSOPHY"? Classical Greek (circa 800BC)

          Let's talk about a word (mention):

"philo": "love" as in Anglophile, pedophile, etc.

"sophy": "knowledge" as in sophisticated, sophistry

"Philosophy" = the systematic pursuit of general knowledge. (from ?800BC or 800BCE)

 

Today, philosophy (use) is the inquiry into the most general, interdisciplinary, issues in the sciences and other disciplines. In particular:

1) Human nature & cognition (mind). (e.g., Is the mind just the brain?; what do I really know?)

2) Scope & limits of formal, empirical science. (e.g., Does life have a meaning?)

3) What is justice and happiness? How should we live?, What are we?, What's the world like and

   What should we do?

 

GREEKS. Greeks dominated the Mediterranean from about 1000-200BCE; Alexander (356-323BCE) and the Romans (200BC-600AD), Islam, and Europe, spread Greek philosophy & culture to the world.

 

1) Universal items: alphabet, logic, arithmetic, geometry, physics, biology, research institutes & universities, political & ethical science, democracy, history, etc. Plato (427-347BC). Aristotle (384-322BC). What is common to the world's cultures is Greek or human nature. It only happened once.   (possible exception: China)

 

2) Cultural peculiarities: Tragic plays as central to culture (the equivalent of superbowl/world series); realistic, perspectival painting and statuary; public, athletic nudity; Olympic Games; openness about sexuality (tolerance of homosexuality); religious tolerance, polytheistic tradition, coupled with monotheism and materialism. Agrobusiness in olive oil & wine, traded for wheat and other raw materials. Seagoers, explorers, technologists, and professional warriors. (Xenophon, Anabasis) Here's a sampler:

 

“Homer”’s Iliad & Odessey ??900BCE. (“Greek Bible”; We'll see what Plato has to say about it)

 

Sappho's Poems. ??600BC

 

Sophocles'  Oedipus Rex ?425BC. (Killed his father and married his mother. Both Plato (and Freud) say much about this.) 

 

Aristophanes's Lysistrata 411BC. (Old Comedy. Still fresh today.

 

Thales (624-546BC). First philosopher/scientist. Deductive mathematics. Predicted eclipses.Magnetism.

                                      

Pythagoras (582-497BC). Pythagorian theorem (for right triangles, the

   sum of the squares of the two shorter sides is equal to the square of the

   hypotenuse). Square root of 2 is an irrational number. Earth is a

   sphere.

 

Zeno (5th century BC). The Liar Paradox. Why the tortoise always outruns Achilles. The Heap. 

 

 Democritus(?480-?400BC). Milky Way a galaxy of stars. Atoms & void. Materialism and ethical naturalism.

 

Hippocrates, Archimedes, Hero, Euclid, etc. (the first fifty names in Asimov's historical list of

          scientists are Greeks).

 

Parthenon (our campus symbol), post offices/statehouses/Monticello. Secret of the Parthenon.

 Secret of Salamis.

 

So let's move on to one of the deepest, smartest, most beautifully written, and most influential books ever written: Plato's Republic:

Scene setting: When and why did Republic get written?

Events leading up to (bold face key words):

Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE) between Athens and its democratic allies and Sparta and its aristocratic allies. Although Greece almost alone had eliminated monarchy by 800 BCE, the many Greek city states were now ruled in the interest of either aristocrats ("the few") or democrats ("the many" or hoi poloi).

          This class warfare arose when cash crops (wine and olive oil) led the Greeks away from subsistence farming, bringing money, sea trade (Greece imported wheat), and a variety of trades, professions, arts, and luxuries (Marxian economic theory explains this). In these centuries, the Persian empires attempted several invasions of Greece and the shores of the Agean, which were beaten off in a long series of wars (Thermoployae, Salamis, Delian League, etc.).  (Note: Wealthy Athens started the Peloponnesian War and Sparta eventually won it).

 

A few years after the war ended, Socrates (?470-399) was executed. Probably because he was regarded as an ally of the aristocrats who supported the "Thirty Tyrants" government that the Spartans installed after Athens defeat. See Plato's Apology for Socrates' trial and Plato's Phaedo for Socrates’ last day (during which Socrates discusses the nature of mind and body, the "forms" and mathematical truth, and the possibility of immortality).

Note that Plato's dialogues were written and presented dramatically beginning two decades after Socrates death and, with the exception of Apology and Phaedo, they present Socrates as he supposedly was years before Plato's birth; the thirty odd dialogues present Plato's views - Plato probably read the part of Socrates in semi-public presentations. The dialogue form derived from oral debates that Athenians practiced a century before Plato wrote them
          From 450BC?? on the Sophists trained aristocratic young Greeks in political/legal debate through elenchus (demolition) contests. These oral contests were supposed to train young men for real legal and political contests. Elenchus:

 

1)One contestant was assigned a thesis.

(examples: "Justice is the interest of the stronger". "Virtue can be taught.")
2) The other contestant can just ask questions and he strives to lead the other into contradiction.

(Republic, Bk. I is an example of elenchus. Law schools call them “moots.”)

 

Plato (427-347BC). Aristotle (384-322BC). Plato presents what we now call Platonism (a form of

Rationalism) and Aristotle presents a form of Empiricism.

Plato knew Socrates but did not begin writing dialogues until twenty years after his death. Plato turned the elenchus into an art/educational form that could reach positive conclusions (dialectic). Wrote Symposium, Republic, Meno, etc., with Socrates as mouthpiece. Founded the Academy (370-529AD), the first university (Republic apparently was intended to instruct Academy students and lay out its rationale and its curriculum. After Plato's death, Aristotle created the Lycium, the second university, and one centrally devoted to empirical research (Darwin on Aristotle's biology).

    

Republic Bk I is a self-contained dialogue. (called Trasymachus or The

Statesman; closest to the elenchus form; intended for public presentation.)

 

 Bk II-V originally Kallipolis. Intended for a serious, restricted audience. Probably read by Plato in a contest on the political state presented before the Tyrant of Syracuse.    Note less characterization and drama, and less polished writing, than Bk I.

 

Bk V-VII originally probably written for students and scientists of the Academy; justifies the occupation of the philosopher/scientist and Academy's curriculum.

 

Bk VIII and IX. Inferior forms of the state.

Bk X. Wrap up of the whole dialogue.                                                                      

 

REPUBLIC. Bk 1. The cast of characters:

Cephalus (literally, "Head"; traditional, well brought up Athenian aristocrat)

Polemarchus ("General"; aristocrat youth who might be educated or corrupted;

 Alcibiades)

Thrasymachus ("Beast"; Sophist, relativist)

Glaucon, Adeimantus (brothers of Plato, serious young philosophers).

(Notice how the real conversation starts: "Do you see how many we are? I do. Well, you must prove stronger than we are, or you will have to stay here." Why this beginning???)

Note the beginning of the argument itself: the opening, who's speaking, and the elenchus form.

 

C: justice is speaking truth, paying debts. Polemarchus takes over for his father.  

S: Should I return a man's weapons when he's gone crazy? Or tell him where his victim is? (rhetorical questions)

 

P: Justice doing good to friends, bad to enemies.                                                                         

S: What if you just think you are doing good (or bad)?

        What if your friends are bad, enemies good?

 

P: Justice doing real good to real friends (good people) and real harm to

real enemies.

 

S: Should a just man ever harm anyone? Good horse trainers make bad horses better; same for dog trainers. (same for rulers/statesman??) Shouldn't justice make bad men better, not harm them? (note meaning shift).

(Note moral reformers such as Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed.)

    

Thrasymachus: Justice is the interest (advantage) of the stronger!

 

S: You mean a weightlifter diet?

 

T: By stronger I mean rulers. The laws of states benefit the rulers; justice

is obedience to law. (Note: Marx)

                            

S: Since the ruler may mistakenly pass a law harmful to her,

wouldn't justice then harm the ruler?

 

T: I mean a ruler who is really ruling, doing it right and not making mistakes.

 

S: A doctor who's really doctoring cures the sick; a real captain takes care of

her sailors: Crafts, Arts, and Professions (techne) always rule over and seek the good of their subjects. So a ruler who is really ruling does good to her subjects!

 

T: F-you! Injustice on a large scale is stronger, more profitable than justice.

Justice is really high minded stupidity.    (note meaning shift).

T. has lost the elenchus!

 

S: The just person (just like any professional) does as other just people, co-

          operating to correct injustice. Injustice destroys states and other units.

 

S: Frankly, I feel I don't really know what justice is, or whether the just man

is happy.

 

(Note Socrates as legendary philosopher: "I only know that I know nothing" (broad and narrow sense paradox). Socrates as “mid-wife.”)                                                                                                                                                               

Bk. 2 Let's Get Serious!!! Socrates, you've had it much too easy. Cheap, verbal victories are not really satisfying! (Note again: Socrates claims to

 want to go. "We are many" is the reply.)

 

G: Good things fall into three groups:

1) feel unpleasant but have good effects

2) feel pleasant with no further effect

3) feel good & have good effects

 

Most people feel justice is in the first category: Unpleasant but with good effects. Well????

 

S: Common opinion is it's best to do injustice and get away with it (Gyges' Ring of invisibility; What other ring?). It is common opinion that it is worst to have injustice done to one; "justice" is a compromise. But I think justice belongs to the 3rd category.

         

So I have to demonstrate that the just man will be happy no matter what his circumstances --- and that Gyges will be miserable (who is like Gyges???).                                                                        

Let us imagine two extreme cases:

 

1) The perfectly unjust man who is rich & famous and has a reputation

for justice.

 

2) The perfectly just man with a bad reputation; maybe he is in prison too.

          (Who is precisely like this??). I maintain that 2 will be happy; 1 unhappy.

This is, of course, hard to demonstrate to you.

So we are going to have to take a long pathway to the truth.

 

To do a good job we must MAGNIFY: look not to justice in the individual but in the state!!!. (Socrates)

[Cool move: psychology, sociology, and political science related. Some psychologist claim that happiness and justice is "being adjusted to the norms of your society. This seems to be a profound mistake. ---

What is it to "adjust" to Hitler's Germany? What is it to "adjust" to a

society in which half the population can't vote, speak in public, run for political office, appear in public with bare faces, chose jobs or spouses, earn a living, engage in a profession, be judges, police, or soldiers, have an education, or own property? –

Or a society that prohibits all that (except appearing in public with a bare face) and in addition, where the other half of the population owns, buys, and sells you? –

Or a society that has a law that says that a white man cannot be held liable or any way blamed if he happens to kill "his" slave, child, or wife "while

 engaged in reasonable discipline"? (Mississippi).]

         

And what about Socrates' own society??? And what about our own society (today's global system)? Or just the USA?]

 

Aren't societies sometimes just (or mostly so) and sometimes unjust (or mostly so), and sometimes in between?        

 

[Import note: You could take another view: cultural relativism, which holds that nothing is ultimately just or unjust (ethically good or bad), that really everything is just a matter of local opinion - "Custom is King" (Heroditus in his History)]

 

Socrates: The state is a scaled up version of the individual: we will see justice more clearly when we look at it there.

 

(Is the state really like the individual??? Where does this comparison lead?

Thomas Hobbes, Social Contract, etc.)

 

 

 

 

Constructing the ideal state (Kallipolis)     (just state will be the just person

 writ large)

 

I. The first, minimal, essential, healthy state:

A Question of Principle: What makes a State a State? Why do states arise?: to provide for our needs (food, shelter, clothing, sex, necessities).

Answer: Specialization of tasks according to talent. Necessities.

 

Probably also need traders, merchants, & money (Do you see where these last three may lead?).

 

No luxuries, no arts ("techne" ) and especially no poets ("makers"). Simple food, simple clothes, basic housing, etc. (Glaucon: a city of pigs. No style or

 spice.) (What was it like in Greece in the "good old days"?)

 

II. The luxurious state: unnecessary desires fulfilled. Gold, silver, ivory; perfume, spices, pastries; tutors, sophists, barbers, beauticians, chefs, artists, poets, etc.

 

Will need to expand & defend our wealth: war is inevitable.

We will need "guardians" (war/police specialists). What sort? --- Our Guardians must be "spirited"; brave & gentle. (Heinlein's Space Cadet. Juvenal: Who will watch the guardians?)       

 

How will we educate the potential guardians?

1)     decoration, music & poetry (children's stories).

Content: No Ouranos, Cronos, or Zeus stories that involve patricide, child-eating, etc. (Oedipal stories).  [Note: S. B. Hrdy The Langurs of Abu; what about animals (biology)]

Gods described as living in harmony & justice, doing only just & beneficial things to humans. Death & the underworld must be described as pleasant for guardians who die in battle for the state. The just will be happy; the unjust will be miserable. Moderation in food & drink commended.

(How does Plato          know that the Gods and human life are really like this???

What were the actual beliefs of ancient Greeks? How does this play out in other cultures (through the "Old Testament," Christianity, Islam, Confucius, Buddha, Zoroastra, etc.?)  Monotheism (metaphysically and ethically); Freud's The Future of an Illusion (the psychology of religion; whether or not there are God(s), why do people believe in them?)

    

Plato: Early education all important.

 

 1) Style: Don't allow imitation of imperfect humans (tragedy & comedy); only narration, or imitation of just people, allowed. [imitation, or mimesis, is important; Plato thinks art imitates nature, but nature itself imitates the forms] Eliminate dirges & "soft" drinking-party music. Dorian (war like) & Phrygian (comtemplative) music allowed. Similarly for the whole cultural fabric: painting, decoration, statuary, sports, etc. Affection but no lusty sex.                      ("platonic love"; education (Socrates and Alcibides))

 

2) Little alcohol, simple, natural food, exercise. [Among the ancients wine served to disinfect water]

 

3) While the whole population will benefit from moderation, our guardians must not only be moderate & but also brave toward our foes and gentle toward our people.

 

[4) Very unhealthy let die; psychopaths put to death; overall efficiency.]

By careful examination we can pick out the best & brightest guardians, who will become judges & rulers. [Note: from now on we call the ordinary guardian soldiers "auxiliaries" and reserve the term "guardians" for the best and brightest, who will go on to further education and rulership responsibilities]

Auxiliaries & guardians will live communally & without personal wealth. [Note: Sparta sets the pattern here; note also that this sounds like monks and nuns, professional revolutionaries, etc.     ]

 

The Divine Lie (the central myth of Republic, and also, for its rulers, a broad sense paradox). There are:

 

GOLD people = guardians (whose special virtue is wisdom; but they must

 also be brave & moderate)

 

SILVER people = auxiliaries (courage, bravery; but they must also be

moderate)

 

IRON people = producers/workers  (moderation).  But some questions remain: 

 

Book 4. G & A ask: How can the money-less, possession-less

Guardians be happy?

 

Socrates:    Happiness of the whole is important; besides the rulers do what

they're most suited to, which is to pursue truth and, when necessary, do

the duty of governing. [Compare again: Church, Military].

 

And Socrates goes on:

1) Avoid wealth or poverty in producers.

 

2) Advantages over other cities: a) better army; b) little incentive to fight us;

c) other states wracked by class warfare.

 

3)   Relentless need to preserve tradition. This may be very difficult.

 

Summary of our ideal state:

Wisdom is the virtue of the rulers;

Courage is the virtue of the auxiliaries;

Moderation is the virtue of the producers; And what is Justice???

 

Justice is the whole arrangement. (doing one's work & not meddling

 with others)

 

And now the big question that returns us to our beginning point:  Are (just) humans like (just) states???

 

Do individual humans have a three part mind/soul?

How can we tell?: Look for oppositions in the human mind/soul.

Especially in less than perfectly harmonious humans.

 

1) Appetites (hunger, thirst, sex, etc.; symbol of this is the hydra)

2) Reason (sometimes we govern desires; symbol is the human, man)

3) Spirited element (example: revulsion against a desire to look at corpses (evening news)). Anger/courage. Ally of reason.

 

Virtue/justice is the Health of the Soul!!!

The just person is wise (reason in control), brave (spirited element), moderate (desires well controlled). In fact: Unjust actions make the soul sick; destroy reason, unleash anger & lust.

 

[Compare to Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

reason (man) = ego (conscious mind; adult)

spirit (lion) = super ego (inhibitions; parent)

appetite (hydra) = id (unconscious drives).] There is a difference however:

 

Plato: reason can be king!                                                                                 

Freud: reason is an executive and rationalizer for the  superego & id.                               [Both aware of dreams & Oedipal complex]

 

Freud is a materialist; ideas have no independent power & existence..]
 
 (Need to briefly discuss four degenerations of the state:

Aristocracy (rule of the honorable - courage)

Oligarchy (rule of wealthy few-moderation)

Democracy (rule of many appetites)

Tyranny (rule of many-headed hydra driven one: cf. Nero, Caligula, Michael Corleone)

 

[Modern comment: Lawrence  Kohlberg, stages in child's development: snatch & dodge; help friends, hurt enemies; follow rules; act for greatest good of all (utilitarianism), on universalizable principles (Kant). Kohlberg's stages in detail:

Preconventional Level

Stage 1: The Stage of Punishment and Obedience
Stage 2: The Stage of Individual Instrumental Purpose and Exchange

 

Conventional Level

Stage 3: The Stage of Mutual Interpersonal Expectations, Relationships

and Conformity

Stage 4: The Stage of Social System and Conscience Maintenance

 

Postconventional Level

Stage 5: The Stage of Prior Rights and Social Contract or Utility [Utilitarianism

 and/or Social Contract -- Consequentialism]

Stage 6: The Stage of Universal Ethical Principles [Immanuel Kant;

 Deontic Morality]

          No preliterate society reaches beyond "help friends; hurt enemies";

law is law.]  We have some wrapping up do:

 

Is Plato an evil anti-democrat?

 

Yes:

1) Recommends lying to the many;

2) All power for the guardians.

 

No:

1) The guardians have no wealth; the many will own everything (but

see Church, USSR).

2) Plato well aware of the fragility of the ideal.

3) Who runs the US?-"people" or professionals?

 

An update and compromise solution:

Plato's "many" were illiterate; why not educate everyone fully?

Two theories of democracy:

1) Well-educated, literate citizenry good judges (Locke, Jefferson, etc.). The many can of course make mistakes.

2) Everyone has a right to self expression. (Which theory takes Plato into account?)

   

Plato's most shocking proposals:

1) Children should be brought up by the state: ["public" education; kibutz society; but stepfathers 200 times   more likely abusers]

 

2) Females educated the same as males; the best females should also have auxiliary and guardian rolls. [Plato's society practiced slavery and male domination; both are eliminated in Republic]

 

[a) In actual Athenian society woman confined to home; women actually more free in Sparta.

b) Woman gained right to vote, be educated, work freely, hold office only in 20th century.

Why now?

c) 10,000,000 women are missing! A. Sen.]

 

3) Selective breeding (eugenics); infanticide of unfit.

 

Bk VI. "Philosophers in our society don't look like suitable rulers."

(Trasymachus, eg.)

 

S: our society corrupts potential philosophers (clever public speaking, etc.);

only someone ugly like myself, who can't make it politically, could become a philosopher.  [Nerds]

 

Digging deeper: the intelligible forms (allegory of the cave).

PLATONISM: What makes beautiful things beautiful, good, good, true, true; square square? Participation in the form (universal).

 

1) Our senses give us a shadowy, changing, unreal and fuzzy world.

 

2) Our reason can get us to the changeless, real, and knowable world

 of the forms.

Good is analogous to the sun; it illuminates the intelligible world just as the sun, the visible.

 

All cognition is a four fold hierarchy:

 

1) Understanding. Grasp of ultimate principles.

 

2) Deductive knowledge from axioms. Mathematics.

 

3)   Belief (based on sense). Animals, plants,etc.

 

4)   Imagination: reflections, illusions etc.

 

Bk VII. THE CAVE ALLEGORY:

 

1) Shadows = "real" world of sensed objects.

 

2) Talk about shadows = belief & imagination.

 

3) Objects that cast the shadows = the forms.

 

4) Outside the cave = the intelligible world.

5) Sunlight = the good, true, & beautiful.

 

The true purpose of real education: to free the soul from the cave, to know oneself (the intelligible within each of us).

 

 

The Education of the Guardians (since you have read Republic, this is for you as well):

 

1) Music, mythic poetry, gymnastics, simple math.

 

2) Physical/military service training.

 

3) Ten years of mathematics (the study of the eternal & unchanging:

arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music (quadrivium)); [trivium:

grammar, logic, rhetoric]  This is also the Medieval Christian

church education

 

4) five years dialectic; 15 yrs practical politics.

 

REPUBLIC'S FINAL ARGUMENT:

 

1) Comparing the five states, and five personality types, the just state & just human is the happiest. (compare: knowledge professions)

 

2) With our tripart soul, the reason dominated person is the healthiest

psychologically.

3)   Pleasures of the rational human are superior; the pleasures of the appetites

 (the many) & of honor (the few) are ultimately competitive, unendingly hungry, disordering.

[cheap Platonic broad sense paradox: the life of pleasure isn't the life of pleasure.

Not so cheap broad sense paradox: since memes survive your death more than genes, identify with them!]

Book 10. "a likely story," the transmigration of souls. Probability only after demonstration.                                                              Let's take a general look at Plato's whole philosophy:

 

General Features of Plato's Philosophy:

1)     Metaphysics:

What is real are the eternal, changeless FORMS. Bedness, triangularity, numbers, logical truths, etc.

Everyday physical objects = shadows of forms.

Art objects = imitations of imitations.                                                                                          

Ultimately, the Good = the True = the Beautiful. ("Truth is beauty and beauty is truth;

          That is all you know and all you need to know" P B Shelley)     

The mind/soul is immortal because it grasps form

2)     Epistemology:

Certain knowledge of the Forms (through dialectic). "Reminiscence" theory of knowledge.                                                                                                                              [what we most deeply can know is build into us]

Hard science is deductive (arithmetic, logic, geometry, astronomy).

The senses provide us at best only likely opinion.                                                              

Universal method: seek the forms.

3)     Ethics (personal & political):

          Deductive knowledge of statescraft & psychology, of ethics, justice, and beauty.

Good (inspired or real) art communicates truth.                                                                                                      

 

Compare to Democritus' (?470--?380 BCE) Materialism:

1)     Metaphysics:

         Atoms and space are the only reality. Form is just the actual atomic layout

[D: the (physical) whole is just the sum of the parts: a line is composed of points.

P: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts: a line is NOT composed of points.]

The "soul/mind" is just the (physical) brain arrangement. Ideas are ultimately just brain states.

[The Plato/Democritus debate in present day terms: Are the generalizations of psychological science essentially reducible to those of natural science (of  physics and chemistry)?]                

2)     Epistemology:

"Knowledge" is the state of brain atoms produced by sensory input & brain structure.

[Why should our brain states have a useful (or "true") relationship to the external physical world?    Without something like evolutionary theory, it is very hard to believe that life arose from arrangements of inorganic material and that "mind" belongs to complicated biological organisms. Note Aristotle's criticisms      of Empedocles in his Physics Book 2.]

3)     Ethics:

Live to pleasurably fulfill biological needs, maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain for everyone (utilitarianism).

Art, whether from mimesis or "inspiration") gives us pleasurable experience (not "ultimate truth").

Death is not to be feared because you don't survive it. ["Who would not shuck off this moral coil/But for the fear of something after death/ That bourn from which no traveler returns" Shakespeare]


 
 TRANSITION TO THE MODERN ERA. (400 BCE--1600 ACE)

Greek Science/philosophy spread & maintained by Alexander and his successors over Mediterranean Basin, Middle East, India & North Africa.

Sustained by Rome (200BCE--500ACE) to Europe & Asia, preserved and augmented by Byzantium & the Islamic Empires, restored to Europe by 1500. "Renaissance."

450 AD Fall of the Western Roman Empire

Beginning of the Dark Ages in Europe.

Eastern Roman Empire continues until the 15th Century but steadily shrinks after rise of Islam

Islamic empires dominate Mediterranean and preserve and add to classical science.

 

[[Notes for G K Chesterton's poem Lepanto. Note Chesterton's hated for not only Islam but

also the Protestants of northern Europe and the Spaniards, etc. for lack of support. Note

the meaning of the word CRUSADE (from "cross").

Crusades periodically and partially challenge Islam, motivated by loot more than religion.

ARichard, Raymond, Godfrey,@ etc.: 10th, 11th century crusaders.

Christians generally more intolerant than Islam in these battles, although both sides capable of great violence (Europeans see Ottomans as advanced).

Lepanto. Galley battle 1571. G K Chesterton (Bigoted, racist, Catholic Medievalist; his Father Brown mystery stories

   feature the "Atheist" as Brown's greatest opponent.)

Protestants (North) despised. AHateth Mary, whom Christ kissed in Galilee@

ACool Queen of England@ C Elizabeth I

ALord upon the Golden Horn@ --- Spain

Abrown, black bearded chiefs@ Ayellow faces@

King Philip: suicide.]]

 

Early Modern Europe (1450-1750):

1) Christian aristocratic states; Protestant rebellions (Henry VIII & Elizabeth (Armada), Luther, Calvin); Lepanto (1571) ends the now weakened Islamic control of Mediterranean.

2) Persecution of heretics, "witches," free thinkers; unending religious wars. Malius malifacarem. Hysteria. [Salem and today.]

3) Vigorous increases in trade and technology. Rise of Europe to World Dominance. Astronomy, Clocks, Machines. Artificial animals. "Scientific determinism"; the secular state, modernity.

4) Heart & circulation understood. Brain. Dissections (for the first time since Roman times). Anatomical studies and growth of modern medicine (Leiden, Borhaave). Descartes (1596-1650): animals are meat machines. Heliocentric solar system established (Copernicus, Galileo). Matter & motion suffice.

 

Big Problem: IF universe a smoothly running machine (clock), IF scientific determinism: everything in principle predictable, following from previous conditions, THEN,

1) Doesn't seem to be a place for God & prayer. The world is a gigantic machine, running by and completely explained by scientific laws; miracles do not happen and are unneeded (God got it right first time around; Deism [even Darwin in his Origin of Species]. 

2) If humans are machines like animals in general, then nothing survives death.

3) If humans deterministic machines and all human action determined by mechanical causality, then no moral praise or blame (any more than we praise a computer for correct operation or morally censure it for erroneous operation (we fix the computer)).

Descartes' solution in MEDITATIONS:

1) I doubt the existence of material objects: I can't be sure whether I am awake or asleep.

2) But I am certain that I, as doubter & thinker, exist; I think; therefore I am (a mind).

3) Therefore, minds and bodies distinctly different substances: dualism

Mind: not sensed, unextended, indivisible.

Body: sensed, extended, divisible

[Rationalism: high road of science through our innate clear & distinct ideas, not our senses.]

4) THEREFORE: I am certain I have (am) a mind, which may well survive death; while my body is a machine, my mind (somehow) interacts with it, causing my voluntary actions, which can be truly praised or blamed because I have free will and I am not a machine but rather essentially a mind.

[Note that Meditations was dedicated to the Sacred Faculty of Theology at Paris; Descartes suppressed his life work, Le Monde after Galileo (1640) recanted the heliocentric theory under torture threat; Galileo's Dialogue on Two Worlds and Meditations on Papal Index until 20th century.]

Note also that there seem to be two Descartes:

1) The dualist of cogito ergo sum: the primacy of mind ("the ghost in the machine")

2) The neurophysiologist. As we will see, La Mettrie thought Descartes a closet materialist

1) More Rationalists:

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). In Ethics, he "deduces" the nature of the world from self-evident axioms; the physical & mental are two attributes of God.

Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716). Nature full of "monads" (souls) which reflect the entire universe, past, present & future. All truths necessary. Calculus. This must be the best of all possible worlds. Mocked by Voltaire in Candide

(Leibniz's argument: God is all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good, and he created the world; therefore this must be the best of all possible worlds, for otherwise God would have lacked power, or foresight, or goodness.) Problem of evil. This problem exists for all monotheist religions.

2) Empiricists (all knowledge from sense experience; mind a blank tablet at birth)

John Locke (1632-1704). Dualist. [Voltaire & La Mettrie thought him a closet materialist]  Locke's Treatise on Government formed the intellectual basis of the US revolution.  

Bishop Berkeley (1685-1753). Since all we ever have is (mental) experience, matter is unknowable. God essentially provides the glue which our mental experience in harmony.  

David Hume (1711-1776). Since all I have is my own experience, I can't know about bodies or other minds. Causality is a secondary impression or mental habit that arises because A (the cause) precedes, is close to, and is constantly conjoined with B (the effect). Pavlov's dog.  Skepticism reigneth.

 

 

 

PS FOOTNOTE AND LATER DEVELOPMENTS: LA METTRE AND THE PHILOSOPHES

 

La Mettrie (1709-1751) & the philosophes (18th Century philosopher/sciences who wished for a generally educated populace, sought to collectively spread scientific understanding, and to collectively change the political, social, and economic structures of their age and of France in particular.)

Context: France, the cultural, commercial, and scientific center of Europe, with a muddled & corrupt monarchy.

Philosophes admired Britain's parliament & constitutional monarchy and the 17th century empiricist philosopher John Locke;                   The philosophes had a characteristic zeal for the advancement of science & technology, public education,                                       freedom of speech; they opposed organized religion and religious fanaticism, bigotry, & savagery;                                            they were atheists, skeptics, or deists. (Deists believed in an impersonal, master architect God, who stood apart                        from all received religion and did not directly intervene in the world (prayer ineffective, no miracles); the first five                        US presidents were deists; deism was regarded as no real religion by most followers of organized religions.                                        Here are some important philosophes:  

Voltaire (1694-1778). Poet, playwright, etc. Public figure who fought for justice for individuals and groups, and against                            the religious and political authorities of his time. Although Voltaire argued for deism, he also wrote that "if there                             were no God, we would have to invent him."

Pierre Maupertius (1698-1759). Newtonian physicist and astronomer.        

Jean D'Alembert (1717-83). Astronomer and mathematician. Appears in Diderot's D'Alembert's Dream, which emphasizes           Trembley's polyp and other ideas originally put forward by La Mettrie.

Denis Diderot (1713-1784). Wrote much of the first great Encyclopedia. Popularized science, wrote intellectual fiction,                     was perhaps the leading philosophe.  

Frederick the Great (1712-1786). King of Prussia from 1730, who was also a political theorist, philosopher, and                                   brilliant general. Wrote bad poetry, but his musical compositions for the flute are still performed. Founded                                       the Berlin academy of science and collected intellectuals.

Frederick's Eulogy on La Mettre

 

La Mettrie's Materialism. Universally condemned in his time but routine to science and medicine today: 

1) Heart understood as pump (Harvey) - broad sense paradox. Muscles & sinews mechanisms and "strings."                                  Clear anatomical descriptions.

2) Clocks, mechanical toys, microscopes.

[Spontaneous generation, pro and contra (John Needham); vitalism; Dr. Charboneau in Life of  Louis Pasteur]

3) "A machine that winds its own springs."

4) "Soul"/mind affected by the body; therefore it is physical. Disease, diet, age, sex,                                             temperature, climate, etc.  [climatic and temperature theories, "beef-eaters"]

5) Localized brain damage or abnormality has specific effects on "soul" ("animating principle"; de amina).

6) Albrecht Haller's "muscular irritability." Electricity bridges gap between animate & inanimate;                                                            "Thought is a property of matter" (La Mettrie).

7) Another Prometheus may make a "talking man." Descartes' "one sure test: reply appropriately to whatever is said [to it]." Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1820); P. B. Shelley's interference. Hollywoodization, 2001, Isaac Asimov, Alan Turing.                             [Alan Turing, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" (Mind 1950); Turing Test for machine intelligence.                                             Leiber, Can Animals & Machines Be Persons? (1984)]

8) Language is what makes us what we are. So why not teach chimpanzees to talk? Adopt methods used to teach the deaf.                    Use young, not infant, chimpanzees. Make "a little man about town."  (Hayes 1945, A. & B. Gardeners 1960-70s,                      Sue Savage-Rumbaugh today.).

[Genetically we humans are very closely related to chimpanzees (note behavioral distinctions between humans, chimps,              and bonobos). Less related to gorillas, still less to orangutans. Failure to teach spoken language to apes. Sign language          works a little (or a lot?) better. Washoe, Nim Chimpsky. Herb Terrace (1975). Real and pidgin sign language, and natural                        language. The Signs of Language (Bellugi and Klima 1980). Recent work on chimpanzee intelligence (Ponelli, Folk                    Physics for Chimpanzees.]

9) Abraham Trembley's polyp. Plant/animal continuity. Every cut makes two more "souls";

[In our time, commissurotomy creates two personalities; two "souls"]

10) More needs, more equipment. Life evolves from simpler to the more complicated.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  [Humans thought to have least instinct, longest infancy & most learning. 20th century Behaviorism,                                        John Watson, B F Skinner; learning can be studied in the same way in all species;                                                                       "reinforcement by environment determines everything" Skinner publishes                                                                                   Walden Two and Beyond Freedom & Dignity. Henry David Theoreau.

       But nativism now says no (Chomsky 1957; behaviorism essentially dead)]

11) Refusal to take Cartesian doubt seriously; "that reef on which Mr. Locke runs aground";                                                         Thought is a mechanical property of matter.

[Alan Turing's 1936 paper "On computable numbers"; simple "Turing Machines" can do any calculation                                 (in many many steps); Universal Turing Machines]

12) Continuity: man a machine, man a plant, man an animal. Evolution toward complexity.                                                                         Hints of origin of species through diversity & selection.                                                                                         

13) Animals have a moral sense: golden rule or reciprocity.  [Game theory's tit-for-tat is well-established for animals as                                   mindless as mollusks or as complex and human like as vampire bats and chimpanzees]

14) Wrong doing among humans often caused by neurophysiological defect, by hormonal disturbance, etc. In particular,                  La Mettrie that horrible "punishments" for behavior of clearly deranged humans is ineffective and morally wrong          [while generally accepted today, this view was regarded as a totally immoral and antireligious in La Mettrie's time.]

15) Like an animal, it is natural, even morally right, for humans to seek pleasure, to fulfill biological drives for food, sex, etc.                   We should maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Physician/humanist.                                                                                               [La Mettrie has been called the first modern sexologist and the first modern penologist. Why?]

16) In moral education, it may be better not to try to make people feel extreme remorse. Why? - a) because the remorse                          comes after the immoral behavior, so feeling remorse may not actually change the behavior; b) sensitive individuals                          may feel remorse all out of proportion to any harm they have caused. 

17) Stoicism (reduce your desires so that nothing disappoints you -- grim duty) is a bad idea.