And Then Socrates
The previous installment in this series (issue #7) was a review of the first two of the three significant theoretical issues that were concerns of philosophers before Socrates. Both of those two had to do with explanations of natural events.
The third issue for the Pre-Socratics concerns conflicts between what reason tells us and what experience (through the senses) tells us. Here are some cases where such conflict can occur:
(1) Cases of seeming faults in our senses.
An example of this can be illustrated by the following experiment: Set two long lengths of rope on the ground, at an equal distance from each other as parallels. Up close they look just fine. Step back far enough and it will look like the two lines converge in the distance. So your senses tell you one thing, that the lines get closer to each other, but your reason tells you they don't converge, as you know they are set down in parallel. Your vision must be mistaken then; so this means that our experience must be mistaken and our reason correct when the two are in conflict like this.
(2) What is usually known as the problem of motion.
It seems that reason tells us that we can never arrive anywhere, that we can’t get from somewhere to anywhere, and this is so because there are an infinite number of steps required in stages of motion. In order to get from point A to point B you must first go halfway to B, call that halfway point C. But then to get from C to B you must get a further halfway to B, call that D. But then to get from D to B you have to go a further halfway there. The problem here is that reason tells us that there will always be a halfway point that has to be reached before any terminal end point can be reached, and that this can go on infinitely, and so we should not be able to arrive at some terminal end point. But clearly, our experience tells us every day that we can move from two points A to B, so reason must be mistaken and experience correct when the two are in conflict like this.
The same thing happens at any starting point but with regard to initial stages of motion: It seems that reason tells us that we can never move fromanywhere. To move from point A to point B requires moving off A to a halfway point between A and B, but that itself requires a halfway point to that halfway, and so on infinitely. And so it seems that we should not be able to move off a starting point, since there is always another halfway point to be the object of a first step in motion. But our experience tells us that we do, and so again reason must be mistaken and experience correct on this one too.
(3) What is usually known as the problem of identity through time.
Suppose you have a boat. Take your boat out of the water and give it a thorough inspection. Find the one board that is in the worst shape and replace it with a new board, then paint that new board to match. Clearly, your reason tells you that you have the same boat as you had before, since that very boat came out of the water, got fixed, and then went back in. But does the experience from the senses agree with this? Maybe, maybe not. The boat at the later time has whole new parts, so isn’t exactly what it was before; it sure looks different from how it looked before even just with one small change.
But maybe this is just an insignificant issue because of merely minute changes. Suppose you have to do this repair operation a number of times, so many times that a high percentage of the materials in the boat are replaced and so are new and different. Does the information from your senses agree that this is the same boat now? Not really: That boat in the water now isn't the same as the boat that came out of the water before, since it has many very different parts; as proof of this a significantly large part of the pre-existing boat is still in your hands, namely the old rotten boards. So your experience tells you that the boat now clearly isn't the same as the boat that was then, as it certainly looks very different from one time to the next; and so they must be two different boats from the start time to the end time. But your reason tells you there’s only been one boat there the whole time; the boat could have been tracked at each step and so your boat has somehow been there the whole time. So again, there is a conflict between the information from the senses and the ideas of reason, but its not clear which one is correct.
(4) What is usually known as the problem of change.
Now its possible that the identity through time of objects that are important to us (as the boat described above) can be accounted for through our convention-based methods, such as just saying that a chain of possession of an object is what makes it the same through time. For example, one solution is that a boat is the same boat over time through it being my boat, where I have a document of title to it and call it by the same name as I always have.
However, there is a whole lot more going on in the world than change over long periods of time of and in the things that are important to us. Experience tells us that the fact of and the reality of change is far more pervasive and invasive to an extent that goes far beyond just the things that we identify as important to us, and far beyond the abilities of our identifying methods. Change doesn’t just happen over time to the things that we care about, its happening at every instant with every object. The material of an object is always in flux, with new material being added, and old material being lost, in addition to all the changes in the formatting and the organization of any material that persists. For example, during a growing season, a tree will every day add woody material to its stems, lose material off its bark surface, add to and subtract from its leaf inventory, and change its shape and size. If it were possible to zero in on any of this with a microscope at any time you wanted to, you could see at the most minute level that all of this is happening every instant of every day.
Yet at the same time, while all the changes to an object are occurring, reason tells us that objects somehow stay at least to some extent the same thing that they are and were, and this applies both to the individual thing that they are and of the kind of thing that they are. Even simply to say that some object changed in color from green to blue in itself presumes that there is something that is the same from the point it was green to the point it is blue, namely, the “it” that is there in both cases. We are not inclined to say in such a case that there was a green object and now a blue object, and that these are two, and that there is no connection between the two. Something has persisted through all changes, the something that has undergone the changes. It may seem easy on the surface to think that everything is just different from one point to the next, as if each object were just a slice of something that is here and then gone, and that the world is just a bunch of these slices, unconnected with each other. But a consequence of that view is that it never makes sense to say that change ever even occurs; that nothing has ever changed in color, shape, or age, since to say that something has changed is to be committed to there being something there through change, and if there is nothing through change, there is no change at all.
So there is a fundamental conflict here in that reason tells us that things persist through change in some way, while experience tells us that things completely change, even to the extreme extent that they never are anything, any one thing; and it is again not clear which one is correct.
In response to cases of conflict between reason and experience, there are three possible reactions:
(1) Divide the cases.
Basically, this involves adopting the idea that there is no general overall rule about trusting reason or experience; that it depends on the details of the individual, particular case. So, we just have to divide the cases between the ones where we can trust reason and ones where we can trust experience. One obvious problem with this response is that there will be infinite cases to have to sort through, which means we would never be able to put together a final list and would always have new cases appearing that require a special new decision each time. Another bigger problem by far is that there are no grounds for choosing which to trust in what case. Since we would be following no general principles, we would essentially be picking an answer based on what we happen to want just to come up with an answer in each case; but of course what we want or what seems convenient is no sound guide to what actually can be trusted. In the end, this just ends up being an arbitrary method to give us something merely convenient.
(2) Bite the bullet.
This means that we should adopt as reliable either reason or experience and just stick with that decision through thick and thin, no matter how intuitive or counterintuitive the results are. For example, we can just decide that reason must be the guide and so will determine that experience must be faulty, that there must necessarily be some element of illusion in some of our experiences, no matter what that entails. Or, we just decide that experience must be reliable (excepting cases of clear sensory disruption), and so determine that reason has an element of self-delusion for us.
(3) Throw up hands on the issue.
This just means adopting the view that you can’t trust either reason or experience; that the fact of the conflict between them and the fact that we are inclined to run with different answers in different cases simply means that neither of them can be trusted to give a complete and accurate account of what is going on around us. The obvious net result of this is both skepticism and pessimism about both the capabilities of reason and the value of the information from our senses.
One of the main features of the Pre-Socratic historical period is that a significant number of people were willing to jump on board with this third option and ended up being happily pessimistic, and they became famous for doing just that and being so inclined, being more than willing to be called Sophists (“the wise”) even though some people of the time meant that sarcastically. Not only did they find this ultimate conflict of reason versus experience to be grounds for general pessimism between the two, they were also adept at making an argument that even reason by itself and on its own can’t be trusted to provide consistent answers. They were really good at showing how it is possible in many cases to make clear and rational arguments just as well for one position as a contrary one, which suggests that no position you can take is rationally any better than another.
An entirely natural outcome of these attitudes of the Sophists is to get to the point of thinking that all we are doing in the course of investigations or debates or argumentation is that we are playing rhetorical games; that its all about who can make the best point and get the biggest applause for their point. Or to put it another way, the idea here is that the goal of rational argumentation is not to determine the truth of anything, but just to win your point, whatever point that is. So the Sophists ended up being the first professional advocates of and teachers of the art of rhetoric and debate for the sake of success in debate, not for any other reason. And to take that initiative a natural step further: When it comes to rational argument and investigation, that this is the best it gets, this is all that you can ever hope to do, persuade people into what you want them to believe.
Now we are in a position to step back and take a broad overview. As a round-out, wrap-up summary of what is going on in this historical period, there are these three major trends:
(a) An attempt to formulate explanations through natural factors only;
(b) A trend towards generality in explanations rather than specific accounts;
(c) Concern with conflicts between reason and experience, and some pessimism about either our rational or experiential capabilities, or both.
Against this background philosophical environment, there is a new wave that appears in the form of Socrates. He is one who was willing to stand up and say something different, and those different things are intended to directly address the trends of the time. Socrates said things like these:
(1) In the course of our focus on physical explanations we have lost sight of what really matters, namely, ourselves and what it means to be us, and how we should live, both as rational beings and as members of a society of others like us.
In an example physical explanation, suppose it is true that we can explain the growth of a tree by identifying the elements of earth, air, fire, and water combining together in a special way under the guidance of some natural force of attraction. This is all very nice to be able to do, and no one is necessarily here to disregard or deny the usefulness and the accuracy of such an explanation. But there is a glaring question that remains to be asked in this context, which is this: How do such explanations bear upon us, in the sense of making us better people, or making our communities better places to be, or making our societies better off? In other words, though revised and modernized physical explanations may all be true, there is no guidance for life in any of them.
Now Socrates making this observation about this restricted explanatory environment doesn’t mean that he thought he had the answers to these questions himself. And in many ways he made it clear that in all probability he did not have the answers, being famous for being able to demonstrate that anyone who claimed to know things who in fact did not (and in this “anyone” category he included himself) was doomed eventually to have to recognize that they did not. What has come down to us as what we call the Socratic Method, a process of asking questions of people to draw out what they know or think they know or know without realizing it, as a replacement for just stating presumed answers, is a process that was used by Socrates to bring about this recognition of what people do not know.
In the end, Socrates had a goal of pointing out that the theoretical environment of this historical period didn’t really have enough in it to do all that was needed. Before his influence, for the most part, the endeavor that has come to be called philosophy was only concerned with the details of what was going on in the physical world. As a result of making this point about the things that really matter, he was able to focus a great deal more attention on our ethical and societal natures. And so, with Socrates, ethical and social and political philosophy were added to the subject matter.
(2) With problems that arise through the evident conflicts between reason and experience, and the point that reason itself shows weaknesses even when on its own, there are not much grounds to be highly optimistic about reason. However, that does not mean that there are good grounds to be highly pessimistic about it. In fact, the tool value of reason will actually always be high.
So it may be that one feature of this historical period is that there was a discovery of special cases of clashing views and a resulting diversity of ideas, and this was something that came about due to conflicts between the sources of our information about the world. But there is no reason to just stop at the discovery that we have a conflict of and diversity of ideas; these give us a motive to plunge onwards.
We can cut through the fog of clashing views to find maybe something in common or even maybe some solution in the end, and this through another side of the coin of the Socratic Method. By asking pointed questions of people (and further pointed questions based on their answers) about the things they claim to know or claim to be concluded and settled matters, it is possible sometimes to draw out mistakes that they are making. And as a result of this, it is possible to find some solutions that were not apparent before, when everyone thought that they “knew” the final answers and had stopped right there, once they thought they had them. These new, once hidden solutions are especially good when everyone thought before that there was no solution to be found.
An illustration of this point can be found in a contemporary example, which could be called the metaphor of the elephant: Suppose that three blind people encounter, unbeknownst to them, an elephant. One grabs a leg, one its trunk, one its ear. The first states that he has found a stone column and hence they have found a building, because that’s what he feels in front of him, and the conclusion that he draws. The second states that he has found a snake, and hence they have found an animal den, because that’s what he feels in front of him, and the conclusion he draws. And the third states that she has found a leaf, being what she feels, and so concludes that they have found a large plant. Now in contemporary time this metaphor has been used (sometimes though not all the time) to try to say that we each have our own little viewpoint perspective, and make judgments within that perspective, which judgments are applicable only to our own little perspective, and not outside of that. Or: Who is to say that other people are mistaken and us correct, or even us mistaken and they correct? Or also: All we have of the world is our little picture of it, and each one’s is possibly different, and this we must respect and accept.
Now here is what Socrates would say in response to this metaphor: It is a bad idea just to take a report of each person’s viewpoint perspective and leave the issue there, as if that settles the issue; issues are not settled that easily. And the reason why this is a bad idea is this: Suppose a fourth person comes along and states that they have all encountered an elephant. The new person would be correct, would have a true view about what they were all up against, and all the other three would be mistaken. The important thing to note about this example is that the fact that the first three people have differing and conflicting views proves nothing about what they are making theories about.
And there we have more value in using what we call the Socratic Method. Suppose you ask each of the first three people to wonder why it is that the other two are coming to different conclusions than they are. By asking this question is should be possible to make them look into the issue of what they have actually encountered further than they would have otherwise. By asking them why they have the judgments they have and others have different, that should help them see that their particular viewpoint is incomplete, that it does not tell a whole story. Asking for more detail or for a re-assessment of each person’s own views forces them to incorporate the views that others have. And this is a process that could possibly lead each person to approach the point where they may adopt the view of the fourth person, which in this case is a correct view.
In the end here, Socrates had the idea that throwing up hands on the issue of trusting reason or experience cannot be a good response to the conflicts and problems we find with them, as it means giving up just when the fundamental questions have been drawn out and laid down. We can actually use this scenario of conflict as a good starting point to see where we can go with it.
Suggestions for further reading:
As far as we know now, Socrates did not go on record by writing down his own material, so we have to rely on one of his entourage/students, Plato, for most of what we know about him. So see Plato’s Apology (meaning “defense” and not an apology at all) which seems to be the clearest example of anything like a direct report of views specific to Socrates.
published 9/10/20
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