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How to read Plato (1995)

plato-dialogues.org

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Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#21

Post by westoncb »

pmoriarty wrote: post #20
westoncb wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've probably read a hundred or so pages on my own, and 'recaps' by Russel, Durant, and have spoken with practicing philosophers about him. I have enough exposure that I've been able to make much more sense of why later philosophers seem obsessed about certain points that only make sense if you consider the historical philosophical tradition from Plato. But hearing people talk about him, especially when they insist o…

It's not about the answers, but about thinking deeply about these questions and questioning your own assumptions (and those of others). I'd highly recommend taking an intro to philosophy course, or one on ancient philosophy, where you can read the Socratic dialogues and engage with them in a group setting, along with others who are encountering these for the first time. When done well, if you're lucky enough to have…

I've already taken in intro philosophy class. Furthermore, I've been debating philosophical points with friends since I was a kid—and since I've grown up two of my good friends who I spent multiple years talking philosophy with were either presently in grad school for philosophy or had finished with it.

I see what you mean about doing philosophy in a group setting, but for what I'm interested in anyway, I'm not going to have a great time debating the above questions with an intro to philosophy class. A starting point for me to enjoy it would be that my interlocutors would need to be able to have some degree of understanding of the answers I gave above, what points might be in their favor, and what their limitations might be.

I can say no philosopher I've met personally would answer those questions like I did (though I think I've read some who would), so I'm still very curious to see why we choose different ways. But my guess is still just that they'd answer differently if they had more knowledge of cognitive science and other topics.

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#22

Post by westoncb »

noncoml wrote: post #17
westoncb wrote: post #2

> Make the assumption that Plato was a smart guy (A. N. Whitehead once wrote that all western philosophy is but a set of footnotes on Plato's dialogues...) and, if you find some place where there is a dumb way of reading the text and a smart one, assume Plato had the smart one in mind, even if Aristotle tried to make us believe he had the dumb one, ... This is not starting off well. The first rule is to interpret him…

> And any ideas I came across in my own reading were either easily demonstrable to be incorrect Genuinely interested to learn which ideas you found to be incorrect

I think the tougher thing would be to find any specific ideas of something that is correct.

But I'll give you an easy incorrect one: his 'tripartite theory of the soul'.

See what really gets me about people still recommending Plato is that they'll encourage others to go read some (now) useless theory like that, when they could instead be reading some modern cognitive science which covers the same ground, but with thousands of years of progress.

It's to my mind similar to telling someone to study an old doctrine about the world being composed of earth, wind, and fire instead of learning modern Chemistry.

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#23

Post by ianai »

westoncb wrote: post #10
curious_yogurt wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is not starting off well. The first rule is to interpret him in the most favorable way possible Actually, as a principle of reading in general, this is not a bad one. It does not mean that we have to decide that the most favourable interpretation is the one correct interpretation, but it does mean that it is reasonable to search for such an interpretation in the beginning. This is called the principle of charit…

This also called giving someone the 'benefit of the doubt.' It's clearly necessary for a fair reading. The extreme form advocated by the author, while potentially problematic, was more just a signal to me of bias. And that's problematic for me, because what I want is someone to talk about Plato who knows it well but can be objective about it.

Phht, objectivity doesn’t need to be taken to an absolute. It’s ok to be a Platonist. Especially if you disclose it up front!

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#24

Post by skissane »

westoncb wrote: post #14
pmoriarty wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but I can never get them to say what any particular idea(s) he has that's useful or true/important but not already well known" Philosophy does not rack up facts in some sort of storehouse of knowledge. Much of the value of reading Plato is that he gets you to question your own assumptions and those of others, and does so in an accessible and easy to understand way. What is justice? What is good? What is the best way…

I've probably read a hundred or so pages on my own, and 'recaps' by Russel, Durant, and have spoken with practicing philosophers about him. I have enough exposure that I've been able to make much more sense of why later philosophers seem obsessed about certain points that only make sense if you consider the historical philosophical tradition from Plato. But hearing people talk about him, especially when they insist o…

> > What is good?

> A word we use to label a fundamental behavior in our brains: we use values as something like utility functions in optimization processes.

That position limits the degree to which ethics can be objective. Suppose some other culture believes in doing things we believe to be gravely immoral. If our idea of good is just "a behaviour in our brains" or a "utility function" or a product of "evolved biology", well then theirs is too, so how can we say our moral views are objectively better than theirs? The ability to say that certain behaviour is immoral, in an objective and transcultural way, is threatened by your position; and I think that threat is a good reason to reject it.

> > Where does knowledge come from?

> Brains.

You seem to treat (some version of) materialism as if it were obviously true, but I don't think its truth is obvious.

I'm inclined toward idealism, and I don't believe there are any good reasons to believe that materialism is more likely to be true than idealism.

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#25

Post by AnimalMuppet »

woodandsteel wrote: post #18
curious_yogurt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So if Plato is misunderstood, it is because he failed to make himself clear by clearly stating that an easy way of misunderstanding him is not what he actually meant. I think your inference is partly true, but partly not true. In some cases, of course it is the case that by not saying "this is an easy way of misunderstanding" a particular claim does lead to Plato being misunderstood. But Plato is very much unlike Ar…

My suspicions are that he wanted to put the readers into a position where we have to figure out what we actually think is true, and what we think about the arguments themselves. I guess what I want to say here is that making himself clear, in the sense of stating propositions, is not obviously the goal of Plato. You are coming at this all wrong. The important question is not what Plato did and was trying to do, it is…

What if Plato thought that (at least part of) the truth was that it was more beneficial for people to think and seek than to be told the pre-canned truth? Then getting people to actually read and think about Plato (or other Plato-ish philosophers) would be more valuable than to "present Plato's ideas to the world as an organized philosophical work".

> Also, for one particular topic, namely biology, do you agree that Aristotle invented scientific biology, and that this was a great advance?

I don't know. If I understand correctly, Aristotle said that women had fewer teeth than men. He was married twice, but apparently never bothered to open either wife's mouth and count. That may have been biology, but it wasn't very scientific.

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#26

Post by ianai »

westoncb wrote: post #19
coldtea wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but do I really need to read thousands of pages of his dialogues (as a modern reader!) Yes. For one, because those are foundational texts of the western civilization. Even if Plato's text were insignificant, understanding one's civilization (in a way that goes beyond the pop culture of the day) remains as illuminating as ever. Second, because texts written 100, 50, 20 and 1 year ago are still influenced by them, in…

Sure, I agree about the history—and I have already read a decent amount of Plato, and multiple summaries. > Third, because good philosophy (including theology) is perennial, not tied to this or that era For historical relevance sure, but from what I can tell the rest of it has already passed its time. > those who don't understand philosophy will construct their own philosophical system badly This is a common defense…

It’s important to remember that, aside from mathematics, every area of modern human knowledge started in philosophy. Over the years, all of these topics were taken out of philosophy. And all of those topics still have philosophy in them - including logic and the basic approaches to reasoning in the field.

It’s too much to divorce a topic from philosophy and later go back to philosophy for a defense of its worth.

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#27

Post by ianai »

noahlt wrote: post #13

My favorite is to read Plato as a set of advertisements for the Academy. "Come to the Academy," they say, "and partake in conversations like this!" (This is why Phaedrus ends with Socrates arguing that you cannot learn anything by reading, only through discussion with a teacher.)

Funny viewpoint, but let’s not forget that Socrates was part of the oral tradition and skeptical of the worth of writing. It’s why we’re reading Plato’s account of Socrates’ teachings.

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#28

Post by westoncb »

skissane wrote: post #24
westoncb wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've probably read a hundred or so pages on my own, and 'recaps' by Russel, Durant, and have spoken with practicing philosophers about him. I have enough exposure that I've been able to make much more sense of why later philosophers seem obsessed about certain points that only make sense if you consider the historical philosophical tradition from Plato. But hearing people talk about him, especially when they insist o…

> > What is good? > A word we use to label a fundamental behavior in our brains: we use values as something like utility functions in optimization processes. That position limits the degree to which ethics can be objective. Suppose some other culture believes in doing things we believe to be gravely immoral. If our idea of good is just "a behaviour in our brains" or a "utility function" or a product of "evolved biolo…

> and I don't believe there are any good reasons to believe that materialism is more likely to be true than idealism.

You poke someone in the brain (or drop some chemicals in there), their behavior changes. This is a pretty good reason for considering the brain to be the generator of our minds. And then on top of that, we now have another hundred years or so of experiments (via neuroscience and its antecedents) and theoretical models which allow us to accurately predict things about how the brain in fact behaves, and how people's larger scale behavior conforms to that.

But that's only a reply I give because you called me a materialist after my answer of 'Brain.' In fact I'm not a thoroughgoing materialist, but we have enough data at this point to confidently say values arise from brains.

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#29

Post by abecedarius »

curious_yogurt wrote: post #5
westoncb wrote: post #2

> Make the assumption that Plato was a smart guy (A. N. Whitehead once wrote that all western philosophy is but a set of footnotes on Plato's dialogues...) and, if you find some place where there is a dumb way of reading the text and a smart one, assume Plato had the smart one in mind, even if Aristotle tried to make us believe he had the dumb one, ... This is not starting off well. The first rule is to interpret him…

>This is not starting off well. The first rule is to interpret him in the most favorable way possible Actually, as a principle of reading in general, this is not a bad one. It does not mean that we have to decide that the most favourable interpretation is the one correct interpretation, but it does mean that it is reasonable to search for such an interpretation in the beginning. This is called the principle of charit…

I would be careful about applying this principle to Plato because he himself advocates lying to students, insofar as you can take him at face value -- and if you can't, well, here we are. Plato seems to have been a smart guy with an agenda and no qualms about manipulating his readers. That it's manipulative doesn't mean it's false or worthless, but I won't read it in the usual Gricean way.

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#30

Post by skissane »

westoncb wrote: post #28
skissane wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > What is good? > A word we use to label a fundamental behavior in our brains: we use values as something like utility functions in optimization processes. That position limits the degree to which ethics can be objective. Suppose some other culture believes in doing things we believe to be gravely immoral. If our idea of good is just "a behaviour in our brains" or a "utility function" or a product of "evolved biolo…

> and I don't believe there are any good reasons to believe that materialism is more likely to be true than idealism. You poke someone in the brain (or drop some chemicals in there), their behavior changes. This is a pretty good reason for considering the brain to be the generator of our minds. And then on top of that, we now have another hundred years or so of experiments (via neuroscience and its antecedents) and t…

> You poke someone in the brain (or drop some chemicals in there), their behavior changes.

An idealist can say: Physical objects, events, and processes, and the correlations between them, are all patterns in the experiences of minds. "Brain" is a pattern in the experiences of minds. "Poke someone in the brain" or "drop some chemicals in there" are also patterns in the experiences of minds, and so likewise is "their behaviour changes". The fact that the former is regularly correlated with the later is a yet further pattern in the experiences of minds. There is nothing here that cannot be explained by idealism.

> This is a pretty good reason for considering the brain to be the generator of our minds

A materialist explains these observations in terms of brains generating minds, whereas an idealist can explain them in terms of minds generating brains. Since both can explain the evidence in terms of their own theories, it is unclear how this could be a reason to prefer one theory to the other.

> In fact I'm not a thoroughgoing materialist

I'd be interested to know what your position is.

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