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> Which is what the Socrates character in Platos dialog seems to spend all his time doing. But that is a ruse. The character of Socrates knows the answers ahea

> Which is what the Socrates character in Platos dialog seems to spend all his time doing. But that is a ruse. The character of Socrates knows the answers ahead of time, or at least most of the possible paths the dialogue could take. Otherwise he couldn't achieve the 100% success rate of guiding his partner to reveal the essence of whatever the original topic was. If he was hiding his ignorance there would have been fruitless digressions. If he was an ideologue his incisive questioning would be the hypocritical response to his partner pointing out a fallacy in his own reasoning. If he was a troll he would have added nothing relevant to the discussions he interrupted. Edit: typo

adrianratnapala 9y ago
Perhaps I am putting too much emphasis on Euthyphro, which does end at an impasse. Or perhaps you are putting too much emphasis on things like The Republic, which I think everyone agrees is Plato expounding his own doctrine, without any real pretense at paraphrasing real events. We also don't have much evidence for the historicity of _Euthyphro_, but there is a good reason to think real events went more like it. Socrates did not teach mathematics or other things where there is (sometimes) a single obviously right answer. A real-world Socrates would constantly be blindsided by valid but unexpected points made by his interloculators. Such nondeterminism is great for genuine dialogue, but not for maintaining an aura dialectic invincibility. But if he takes a deconstructionst troll strategy, he can always come out looking clever while honestly repeating that he himself knows nothing.
- jancsika 9y ago
  > Such nondeterminism is great for genuine dialogue, but not for maintaining an aura dialectic invincibility. We were talking about the character, not the person the character was based on. That character is clearly not interrupting a topic to do a random walk through incisive questioning. His questions aren't low-effort questions. So he isn't a troll in any meaningful sense of the word.

adrianratnapala 9y ago

Perhaps I am putting too much emphasis on Euthyphro, which does end at an impasse. Or perhaps you are putting too much emphasis on things like The Republic, which I think everyone agrees is Plato expounding his own doctrine, without any real pretense at paraphrasing real events. We also don't have much evidence for the historicity of _Euthyphro_, but there is a good reason to think real events went more like it. Socrates did not teach mathematics or other things where there is (sometimes) a single obviously right answer. A real-world Socrates would constantly be blindsided by valid but unexpected points made by his interloculators. Such nondeterminism is great for genuine dialogue, but not for maintaining an aura dialectic invincibility. But if he takes a deconstructionst troll strategy, he can always come out looking clever while honestly repeating that he himself knows nothing.

jancsika 9y ago
> Such nondeterminism is great for genuine dialogue, but not for maintaining an aura dialectic invincibility. We were talking about the character, not the person the character was based on. That character is clearly not interrupting a topic to do a random walk through incisive questioning. His questions aren't low-effort questions. So he isn't a troll in any meaningful sense of the word.