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L04-205_16-01-07-16 • The arguments, the problems. • First. Arguments by analogy. • We could not mount any arguments without some reliance on analogy, but the fairly obvious problem is that in an analogy, as in metaphors, one is making a comparison between two (or more) distinguishable things, that have an aspect or feature in common. Thus, there is always an additional analytical step: IN WHAT SENSE is the analogy pertinent? Does it FIT the question to which it is related? What is the balance between the confirming relevance of the analogy, and an actual dis-analogy—where the things compared are actually incompatible (again, you have to consider the sense in which they may be incompatible). • IS the relation between being AWAKE and ASLEEP really analogous to being ALIVE and DEAD? Theme and Problem: opposites • Opposites are thematically active, in the sense that our languages and our experiences are marked extensively by opposites. But here, the theme does not by itself make an argument, and arguments by analogy on this theme are very commonly crap. • EXAMPLES from PHAEDO • Consider whether a particular has one opposite, or many, or none. • Don’t forget that there are a host of other relations that are similar • Opposite or Contrary? • Contrary or Contradictory? • PLATO was proceeding by intuition: Aristotle actually sorted it out. LOGIC, as we typically use the term to characterize FORMAL arguments, is Aristotle’s invention. Traditional square of oppositions ANAMNESIS • Learning as recollection, literally, UNFORGETTING. • • • • ἀνάμνησις Note that this is the only argument to which the entire group gives assent. Two things to notice: first, that it is not literal, but associative. If you see Simmias, you recall Cebes. But second, it has cognitive force ONLY in the case of our having a conception that we simply cannot confirm comes from experience. Modern readers get confused on this, after 600 years of weak empirical arguments, but there is a real issue here. ABSOLUTES, universals • Plato does not always make clear that these are instances in which we make a JUDGMENT. X is Y. This is not sorted out until Aristotle’s Categories, and Aristotle relied on observation of Plato’s many screw-ups to get it clarified. • Two examples today: • Beauty and Equality Not the attribution of a property • If you say this object is “BEAUTIFUL” you have made a JUDGMENT about it—and that judgment needs to be characterized: in what is it focused? • If I say, Becky is Beautiful, and the person next to me says, ‘Are you kidding? She is obviousl Ugly, the disagreement has nothing directly to do with what is meant by claiming that X is “beautiful”. It is a disagreement about X. • Put otherwise, if you say something is beautiful, we do very reliably recognize what is meant, no matter how much we may disagree about particular objects of such judgments. EQUALITY • This is a stronger case, since we are not so likely to be misled by focus on empirical properties. • If you say that X and Y are EQUAL, you could not possibly derive the concept of EQUALITY from experience, since to recognize that X and Y are equal, the same, etc. is precisely what CONSTITUES the experience in the first place. • You might suppose (though you would be wrong) that you arrive at it by comparison. • X, it seems, is equal in that it has all the properties of Y. But notice that you already have to have the conception of SAME, or EQUAL, to even be able to make the comparison. Other focal issues • • • • • • Permanence / durability Simple or Composite The Simmias – Cebes crisis The core issue: CAUSE The main operator: KNOWLEDGE THE CRISIS AND MISOLOGY: Though Socrates is gone, the enterprise, the arguments, the inquiry is JUST GETTING STARTED. It’s actually getting passed on to PLATO. • ANAXAGORAS: Mind as Cause • The SOUL as EIDOS or FORM • If the FORMS are eternal, and Soul is a FORM, does it follow that it is eternal? The unnoticed liability: The question they have been pursuing is whether one’s OWN soul would survive, with its knowledge, experience, and moral credit intact. But if the proof is that the SOUL is a FORM, a case of EIDOS (IDEA), how does it account for your own personal identity. It takes a long time for Plato to see this, but it is transparent as early as EIDOS. The HUGE issue: Theory • A ‘philosophy’ is not a bag full of commonplaces—but that is what Socrates had to offer. All of them are problematic; some are obviously false; most are radically incomplete or in one way or another incoherent. • Socrates admits as much, in breaking new ground about an hour before he dies. The new problem: Cosmos (ORDER), and integration of insight (THEORY) • The long standing debate about whether there is any difference between the thought of Socrates and Plato is a simple result of literally millennia of careless reading. • The large psychologized debates, as if Socrates and Plato were in competition, and even more so with Plato and Aristotle are mostly confusion and clap-trap.