G'day Carrol and Yoshie,
> >Gee, think a little bit.
Well, okay, I'll try ...
> If that was all there was to Socratic Method, then everyone has been > using it for
>a 100 thousand years or so -- and the whole discussion > is trivial.
Well, I'm not sure it isn't trivial, as it happens. Anyway, I doubt we've
been typically articulating conclusion, reasoning and premises amongst
ourselves these last 100000 years. That's the practice of a community steeped
in modern reason - where the human (reason) is ascending to the throne
hitherto inhabited by gods and sacred convention. I'm all for that ascension.
myself - shonky modernist that I am.
> I wonder if Rob has read philosophical literature that discusses the
> problem of the "Socratic fallacy."
Well, I don't think much of Aristotle's reservations, for a start - Socratic
method can get all the way down to the premises, for mine (even if, as with
Polemarchus, we get there by way of pursuing the argument to immanent but
unacceptable conclusions). Reckon Habermas thinks so, too. A ruthless
critique of all that exists could thus be undertaken, and the validity claims
understood for what they are. So I don't think we need worry too much about
whether or not Socrates was trying to get down to Absolute Essence/Truth. As
Oakeshott says somewhere, we have to throw the anchor out somewhere along the
line if we're to act in this world. We get down to the point we're
sufficiently satisfied that we understand sufficiently to agree or disagree,
and that, given agreement, we may coordinate action accordingly. We're the
actors, and we're the measure - that's what I understand by praxis. Fools
all, but our congress is ever where truth resides, nevertheless.
Sure, Socrates could get a bit playfully vicious (Thrasymachus calls him
malicious, but I reckon he's just a fun way to get to where you don't know
you're going), but that ain't a requirement, and a mailing list would be a sad
place indeed if people did not feel free to chance a thesis, and others not
free to question its constituents to see where its implications go or its
problems originate.
> In any case, the Socratic method
> as employed by Plato is inseparable from a quest for definitions
> existing in the realm of eternal Forms.
Don't agree. For the practical discussant, its telos is agreement and, where
indicated, concomitant coordinated action. That's not to say the discussants
get there (Habermas is too casual in that 'understanding and agreement'
stuff), but it is the only way to get there.
> Plato's Socratic dialogues
> are fundamentally driven by his attempt to negate the idea that
> definitions are historical (= historically evolving products of human
> social intercourse & therefore riven by class contradiction).
Maybe, but that's Plato. Socratic dialogue per se can get you to all sorts of places.
Cheers,
Rob.
