> Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2011 07:37:43 -0700
> From: [email protected]
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [MD] The trouble with Sophists
>
> DMB had said:
> Ron and any interested MOQers:
>
> I appreciate your efforts, Ron, but now that the specifics are on the table
> I'm even more skeptical. If fact, I'd say the passage you dished up would
> count as a classic example of Platonic rationalism and the slander of
> Sophists as pandering pastry chefs by comparison to "real" philosophers.
> Notice, for example, the Visitor makes the classic Platonic distinction
> between appearance and reality, between mere opinion and the truth. We see
> this right off the bat when he says "the Sophist has been shown to have a
> sort of conjectural or apparent knowledge only of all things, which is not
> the truth?"
>
> In the next lines, notice how the Sophists are denigrated in the exact same
> way that artists are denigrated. It might be worth reminding you that, as
> Plato saw it, knowledge of the Forms was real knowledge. These were conceived
> as transcendent and eternal, as opposed to the empirical realities down here
> on earth. The things of this world are like fleeting instances or imitations
> of the real Reality. And then the painter, according to this Platonic view,
> is one who merely makes imitations of the imitations. He does the same thing
> to the Rhapsodes, play writers, poets, as well as the Sophists. On this view,
> none of them have any real knowledge because they only deal with empirical
> realities, not eternal Ideas. See, this is why Plato is considered a
> rationalist, as opposed to an empiricist.
>
> Ron:
> Right, but to be more specific he bangs on them because they deal in cultural
> assumptions that opinon is
> commonly drawn from therefore they give the appearence of truth or trueness.
> They are a kind of shadow
> of the intelligible. Like SOM.
> When we begin to examine those opinions we find that we really know nothing
> at all about it because it has allways
> been taken as granted as "known" with certainty.(objectivism)
> Relativism seems to hold a particularly stong point of view within the
> context of empiricism so much so that
> it created a real problem for these philosophers, the Sophists really had
> their panties in a bunch over the
> seemingly air tight case that all is relative and in flux. How can we ever
> know anything with any kind of
> certainty? We can't. So only through careful inquirey, through collection and
> division through the dialectic
> and through reflection apon the consequences of each hypothisis should we
> ever hope to gain a more
> precise understanding of the concepts and subject matter.
> "Ive heard Gorgias insist that the art of persuasion is superior to all
> others because it enslaves all the others
> with their own consent, not by force,and is therefore the greatest of all the
> arts."
> But the greatest sort of art deals with precision and acuracy and as to not
> to offend Gorgias concede
> that persuasion is increased by them.
>
> So we can understand that Socretes is in the business of first inspiring
> others to the life of inquirey
> Second the craftsmanship of ideas and that memory and history play a part in
> how we percieve things.
>
>
> Visitor: We know, of course, that he who professes by one art to make all
> things is really a painter, and by the painter's art makes resemblances of
> real things which have the same name with them; and he can deceive the less
> intelligent sort of young children, to whom he shows his pictures at a
> distance, into the belief that he has the absolute power of making whatever
> he likes. And may there not be supposed to be an IMITATIVE ART of reasoning?
> Is it not possible to enchant the hearts of young men by words poured through
> their ears, when they are still at a distance from the truth of facts, by
> exhibiting to them fictitious arguments, and making them think that they are
> true, and that the speaker is the wisest of men in all things?
>
> dmb resumes:
> As I read it, the visitor is accusing the Sophists of practicing an imitative
> art of reasoning and in Plato's world them's fightin' words, a huge insult.
> On this view, the Sophist's truths are just pictures that resemble the
> shadows on the cave wall, which is just that much further removed from the
> things of the upper world and the sun that illuminates them all.
>
> Ron comments:
> Right, again we see him stating that cultural assumptions (opinion) ta endoxa
> as the starting
> point of reasoning is an imitation of reason. And that method of collection
> and division, the is and is not of
> the matter , Dialectic, I contend, is a radically empirical method of gaining
> a more precise meaning of a concept.
>
> Theodorus: Here we are, Socrates, true to our agreement of yesterday; and we
> bring with us a stranger from Elea, who is a disciple of Parmenides and Zeno,
> and a true philosopher. .., he is not one of the disputatious sort-he is too
> good for that. And, in my opinion, he is not a god at all; but divine he
> certainly is, for this is a title which I should give to all philosophers.
>
> dmb says:
> This bit is telling. I mean, Zeno's name jumped out at me because Henri
> Bergson and William James both use him as a prime example of what James
> called "vicious intellectualism". James said it was Bergson's work that
> finally allowed him to reject rationalism entirely and this immediately led
> James to formulate his radical empiricism. Zeno, you may recall, was the one
> who used logic and math to "prove" that all motion and change is impossible
> and that all appearances to the contrary are an illusion. These guys did not
> trust empirical reality at all and they not only could but did explain it all
> away as unreal, as mere appearance and ignorance. That's pretty much the
> attitude that turns intellectualism into vicious intellectualism; when ideas
> and abstractions are taken as more real than the empirical reality from which
> they were abstracted in the first place. The effect is to de-realize and
> denigrate empirical reality, which is the only reality we can ever
> experience. As I under
> stand it, James and Pirsig are radical empiricists precisely because they
> think the rationalists have it exactly backwards.
>
> Ron:
> I think here is where we have to be careful about making assumptions and
> really look at what is being said.
> These guys saw that empirical reality is subjective and most of it was based
> apon cultural bias and opinion.
> Relativism had them stiemied. Which is the direction we tend to follow also.
> If Pirsig takes the tact of subjective idealism, then he most certainly is
> traveling in the same direction as
> the rationalists where else can intelligibility lie? but.....we can see..that
> like Pirsig...these philosophers
> understood that truth was a love of wisdom a passion for the precise and
> accurate the highest virtue.
> And this is what Aristotle really took up and expanded apon in scientific
> inquiry and method. The Pythagoreans
> on the other hand went precisely the way you state toward a vicious
> intellectualism and they really influenced
> Plato's latter work so much so that it's really difficult to see the great
> contributions to Pragmatism Plato
> made in earlier writ.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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