How to read Plato (1995) • Hacker News Board

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#31

Post by noncoml » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 1:07 AM UTC

westoncb wrote: post #22

noncoml wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tho…

I see what you mean, great example. But I think when people recommend Plato is not for his conclusions but for the reasoning he uses. At least that's what I find fascinating.

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#32

Post by naravara » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 1:11 AM UTC

westoncb wrote: post #9

nmg wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was reading "Physics and Beyond" by Werner Heisenberg this weekend, and he mentioned reservations about Plato, specifically, speculation about the form and behavior of constituent particles of matter as described in the Timaeus. Heisenberg goes on to illustrate that in thinking critically about his disagreements with Plato, he arrived at some of his most important ideas. The ideas presented by Plato may become outd…

But there doesn't appear to be anything special about the 'mode of thinking', anymore . It was an extremely important innovation thousands of years ago. From my understanding it's basically habitual questioning of assumptions. Great—but do I really need to read thousands of pages of his dialogues (as a modern reader!) to get that? I've already spent my life living that way (often to my own detriment), no doubt in par…

>But there doesn't appear to be anything special about the 'mode of thinking', anymore.

If it was easy everyone would be doing it. There's nothing special about a traditional roundhouse kick anymore either. Various martial arts traditions figured out that bit of applied kinesthesiology ages ago. But mastering it still takes practice, practice, practice.

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#33

Post by westoncb » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 1:56 AM UTC

skissane wrote: post #30

westoncb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 b…

> Physical objects, events, and processes, and the correlations between them, are all patterns in the experiences of minds

But there is no evidence of such minds, right? We have no ideas about where or what they are, or actually anything anything at all about them?

> whereas an idealist can explain them in terms of minds generating brains

But the difference is that causality is moving in a particular direction in the example I gave about brains being poked or having chemicals added to them, where the mind is affected by such actions. However, it has never been demonstrated in the opposite direction: there is an absence of a brain somewhere, then a mind does something, then a brain manifests. If the causality there were actually bi-directional, then that sort of thing would be observed too.

Now I know that when you say 'mind' you are referring to something else, and I partly just give the above answer to show how misleading it is to use the same term for what you're talking about (which I assume is more like the 'mind' of a monistic panpsychism).

I can grant your assertion that there is a mind-like something underlying everything, it's the substrate through which all matter appears (including brains), and actually believe something a little like that myself—but it doesn't change the fact that at the end of the days we're left with the matter thus generated, and that it is governed by certain predictable rules, etc. So for spiritual purposes perhaps it makes sense go ahead and contemplate the mind-medium that is more fundamental than our physical reality; but for the purpose of understanding how our universe works, you want to engage the materialist perspective.

So I think we agree that at least for transcendent, truly fundamental matters, materialism is insufficient. I think where we disagree is about which sort of things are fundamental/transcendent or not: 'knowledge' is something that I believe to be totally mundane and amenable to scientific description (same with 'justice' and the best way of governing), whereas philosophers have a tendency to elevate it. It makes sense that they would elevate it because in the days of its original elevation it was as unapproachable and mysterious to them as anything—as say, the notion of an afterlife, is to us. But time has passed, science encroached on that territory, and a lot of philosophers need to catch up.

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#34

Post by westoncb » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 2:06 AM UTC

naravara wrote: post #32

westoncb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there doesn't appear to be anything special about the 'mode of thinking', anymore . It was an extremely important innovation thousands of years ago. From my understanding it's basically habitual questioning of assumptions. Great—but do I really need to read thousands of pages of his dialogues (as a modern reader!) to get that? I've already spent my life living that way (often to my own detriment), no doubt in par…

>But there doesn't appear to be anything special about the 'mode of thinking', anymore. If it was easy everyone would be doing it. There's nothing special about a traditional roundhouse kick anymore either. Various martial arts traditions figured out that bit of applied kinesthesiology ages ago. But mastering it still takes practice, practice, practice.

That, I can totally agree with. But again, I strongly disagree that Plato is the best way of practicing, or even a good way of practicing (in comparison to the authors we now have access to, or perhaps had access to even hundreds of years ago, who happened to take some advantage of the thousands of years passed between themselves and Plato).

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#35

Post by astazangasta » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 2:16 AM UTC

curious_yogurt wrote: post #11

westoncb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there doesn't appear to be anything special about the 'mode of thinking', anymore . It was an extremely important innovation thousands of years ago. From my understanding it's basically habitual questioning of assumptions. Great—but do I really need to read thousands of pages of his dialogues (as a modern reader!) to get that? I've already spent my life living that way (often to my own detriment), no doubt in par…

Indeed, questioning assumptions is a part of what hopefully comes out of a careful reading of Plato's dialogues. But it is much more than this. Plato not only tries to figure out which questions are worth asking, but embeds a plethora of different approaches and ideas in his dialogues. Many of these approaches and ideas are specific to the type of question under discussion—part of why we have different classes of arg…

Questioning assumptions is hardly what Plato conveys - rather the opposite. Most of his arguments are constructed of blank suppositions which we're meant to take at face value, usually because the social burden of contravening them in the back-and-forth flow of dialog is so difficult - Thrasymachus was right, Socrates is simply a bully. This is how the Republic is able to take us to such, frankly, asinine places (like a ban on fast-tempo'd music) - because Plato doesn't even attempt to unpack most of his (rather conservative) assumptions.

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#36

Post by empath75 » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 2:24 AM UTC

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…

> The important question is not what Plato did and was trying to do, it is what is the truth and how can it be clearly communicated to people so they can make use of it.

You’re assuming such an entity as truth exists which is a fairly platonic position...

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#37

Post by fmajid » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 2:57 AM UTC

The author’s conclusion that Plato was working for the betterment of humanity is simply laughable. He was an Athenian aristocrat, deeply resentful of his loss of social standing by the newfangled invention of democracy. Like many of Socrates’ students, he was disloyal to democracy (his uncle Critias, also a Socrates associate, was the leading member of the quisling Thirty Tyrants imposed by the Spartans when they defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War).

That’s why Socrates was executed, for treason really but under different charges because of an amnesty on collaborators imposed by Sparta in exchange for the restoration of democracy. And why Plato was exiled to Syracuse, where he failed to worm his way into Dyonisios’ favor with his transparent flattery.

The Spartan-inspired political system advocated by Plato in The Republic is totalitarian beyond the wildest dreams of a Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot. It does suggest philosophers ought to be the supreme rulers, which may explain that useless profession’s fondness for the guy, and the excuses they make for him.

Far better to read Karl Popper’s “The Open Society and Its Enemies”, volume 1, “The Spell of Plato” to understand how abominable Plato’s influence has been for mankind.

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#38

Post by curious_yogurt » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 3:02 AM UTC

abecedarius wrote: post #29

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…

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.

Does Plato actually advocate this? If you are referring to an argument Socrates makes in the Republic regarding politically motivated lying, it seems to me not unreasonable at an initial glance to say that Socrates represents Plato's position.

But it also seems to me that there are other ways to take this. First, the Socrates in the Republic is a character in an exchange — and so it seems not unreasonable to think that perhaps that character is not a simple mouthpiece of the author. For example, nobody would say Hamlet is Shakespeare's mouthpiece. Second, there are dialogues where Socrates gets completely trounced by his opponent — in particular, the Parmenides. Interpretations of what is going on in the Parmenides are diverse; but at the very least it seems that Socrates is not Plato's mouthpiece. Third, if (contrary to the previous two points) it turns out that Socrates is Plato's mouthpiece, but that mouthpiece is telling us that Plato will manipulate the reader as he sees fit, then it seems at least possible that the whole idea that Socrates is Plato's mouthpiece is itself not a straightforward claim. Thus, the grounds for your claim that one should be careful about applying this principle to Plato — assuming I am right that you base it on evidence in the dialogues — is not entirely solid.

As an additional point, it seems to me that even if the author wants to manipulate the reader, it still stands us in good stead to have a principle of charity. It is a starting point, not an ending point.

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#39

Post by curious_yogurt » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 3:13 AM UTC

westoncb wrote: post #16

curious_yogurt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, questioning assumptions is a part of what hopefully comes out of a careful reading of Plato's dialogues. But it is much more than this. Plato not only tries to figure out which questions are worth asking, but embeds a plethora of different approaches and ideas in his dialogues. Many of these approaches and ideas are specific to the type of question under discussion—part of why we have different classes of arg…

> But this just scratches the surface. I'd be curious to hear about any others. Additionally, my understanding is that his actual argumentation is generally pretty bad and he's really just trying to convince people of things that the thinks would be effective for them. That's mostly coming from reading Bertrand Russel, but the fact that his arguments are bad (structurally, not just because of the data he's missing) s…

It seems to me that the claim that Plato's "actual argumentation is generally pretty bad" is something that might be challenging to defend. It is a very sweeping claim, and it also assumes the argumentation of the author is reflected by the characters in the dialogues. Even if we were to weaken this to say that the actual argumentation of the characters in the dialogues is generally pretty bad, I think that it would be challenging to defend this claim. I'm not saying it's not possible; but it would be interesting to see if it could be sustained. My guess is that it would not be possible to sustain such a general claim.

Bertrand Russell, of course, is a master of logic. But if you are drawing from his History of Philosophy, I'm not sure that is a particularly good source for views on ancient philosophy. I tend to think the best way to justify a claim is to look at the primary sources themselves (if we have them—which in the case of Plato we are pretty sure we have everything he wrote and then some extras).

In terms of scratching the surface, much of what Plato contributes is ways to approach particular problems. For example, if you look at the treatment of universals in the Parmenides and the Philebus, the approaches in the arguments here (severally considered) have a lot of staying power: in particular, you find related arguments being made regarding universals by Aristotle and on, going all the way up to the present day (including, for example, Bertrand Russell). What is going on here is not merely philosophical scepticism (though there is that), but also approaching and techniques that need to be solved in order to make progress on a particular problem. So, that is an example of how the dialogues go beyond simple scepticism. There are so many other examples: the dialogues are packed with them — which is part of the reason why treatments of many modern philosophical problems and approaches can be traced back to Plato.

Re: How to read Plato (1995)

#40

Post by Tomte » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 3:22 AM UTC

fmajid wrote: post #37

The author’s conclusion that Plato was working for the betterment of humanity is simply laughable. He was an Athenian aristocrat, deeply resentful of his loss of social standing by the newfangled invention of democracy. Like many of Socrates’ students, he was disloyal to democracy (his uncle Critias, also a Socrates associate, was the leading member of the quisling Thirty Tyrants imposed by the Spartans when they def…

Right, but those supreme rulers (not a single ruler, but many) may not marry, they may not own stuff (kind of a monk caste), and they are not hereditary, but relentlessly sieved out until they reach that ruler status in old age.

I doubt that would have appealed to Hitler or Stalin.

I think your judgement is clouded by „democracy is good“ which is (a) a very modern stance and (b) one that many philosophers through the ages opposed.