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> 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,

> 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 in the most favorable way possible... (And the second rule btw is that Plato is better than Aristotle—which incidentally also makes up most of the first rule.) I've read some plato and been very impressed with what he was doing at his time. That said, I've run into a number of folks who insist that he is still one of the most important philosophers to read (in the sense of being capable of benefitting modern readers)—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. And any ideas I came across in my own reading were either easily demonstrable to be incorrect (and which someone as intelligent as Plato never would have espoused if he lived with our modern knowledge), or I'd already run into them in other contexts.

curious_yogurt 8y ago
>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 charity. The reason the author recommends it is that often people will impute a particular view to a philosopher that implies the philosopher made elementary errors in reasoning or obvious falsehoods. This may, of course, be the case. It is trivially true that philosophers make invalid or weak inferences, and false claims. But there are two good reasons to adhere to the principle of charity that the author does not make explicit. First, if we do not, then we often end up short-circuiting our understanding of what the philosopher may be trying to say. That is, we may prematurely dismiss the claim as absurd instead of trying to sort out what might be the actual claim. Second, while part of philosophy depends on what philosophers are actually saying, a good part of doing philosophy is figuring out what our response to a particular claim is, how we ourselves would support that claim (if the inference is invalid), and what claim we would put in its place (if the claim is false). If we do little more than dismiss a claim as absurd, then we are not really doing philosophy. So I guess what I am saying here is that making the assumption "Plato is a smart guy" is actually not a bad start for one taking a serious study of what he has to say. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
- westoncb 8y ago
  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.
  - ianai 8y ago
    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!
- abecedarius 8y ago
  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.
  - curious_yogurt 8y ago
    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.
pmoriarty 8y ago
"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 to govern? What is true? Where does knowledge come from? Why should any of this matter? Most people without any philosophical training go around acting like they have the answers to all of these questions, or that they're self-evident, or that they don't matter. Plato helps us to see that we and various self-styled experts might not know as much about these as we thought. Later philosophy tends to get more and more technical and jargon-filled, and (at least in Western philosophy) tends to assume a familiarity with Plato. In many important ways, you would be either lost or missing an important piece of the puzzle were you to try to dive in to later philosophy without a knowledge of Plato, as philosophy to a large extent is a dialogue with earlier philosophers, of whom Plato is a seminal figure. Plato is also a good sparring partner for when you're just dipping your feet in to the waters of philosophy. A boxer shouldn't expect to knock out the reigning heavyweight champion the first time he puts his boxing gloves on. Similarly, you should really have a go at Plato before you have a go at later philosophers, who themselves have engaged with Plato and tried to answer Plato or have another go at issues first raised by him. A familiarity with philosophers from every historical period is just part of a well-rounded philosophical education. Skipping to contemporaries would just leave huge gaps in your education, especially if you skip some of the greatest and most influential philosophers of all time, like Plato.
- westoncb 8y ago
  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 on his continued relevance, it makes me think either I'm missing something or they're faking something. But then again, I'd answer the questions you mentioned in a way I feel that most philosophers would find to be 'missing the point'. For example: > What is justice? A concept useful for regulating human societies. It's based on ultimately arbitrary heuristics that are effective for satisfying an approximately maximum number of people. > 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. Ultimately there are constraints placed on the values we're capable of selecting which are imposed on us by our evolved biology, but we do have a good amount of freedom, so by studying human nature we can figure out which values are the most effective for creating the sort of lives we're interested in. > What is the best way to govern? We don't know yet. There probably is no best. If there is, we'll probably find it algorithmically. > What is true? There is too much ambiguity here to really answer, so I'll just choose one interpretation and say: whatever it is, it's highly unlikely that human minds would be capable of 'understanding' it ('understanding' being a human faculty, and not likely something important to the nature of the universe). > Where does knowledge come from? Brains. > Why should any of this matter? Because experience is real.
nmg 8y ago
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 outdated, but the mode of thinking required to challenge those ideas does not. Plato was not only conveying his thoughts, he was trying to teach us how to think.
- westoncb 8y ago
  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 part because of Plato's lasting influence—but that still sums up to me as: read out of respect or curiosity about history, not because you should expect to uncover some magical idea contained therein which will change your whole viewpoint on life and reality.
  - curious_yogurt 8y ago
    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 arguments for different topics. I do agree with you that you should not expect to uncover some magical idea in Plato's works. But this is certainly not what Plato intended us to do. Instead, what Plato is trying to do is encode philosophical practice. This entails not a collection of ideas (magical or not), but rather an approach to philosophical discourse and hence to the world. Curiosity and scepticism, as you correctly point out, are important and are recurrent themes. But this just scratches the surface.
coldtea 8y ago
>This is not starting off well. The first rule is to interpret him in the most favorable way possible... That should be something people should strive for in every discussion. It's called the Principle of Charity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
- supersrdjan 8y ago
  Or what they call steelman as opposed to strawman, right?
  - coldtea 8y ago
    I guess so, though I haven't heard the first term!
noncoml 8y ago
> 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
- westoncb 8y ago
  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.
  - noncoml 8y ago
    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.
Tomte 8y ago
> I'd already run into them in other contexts. But that‘s exactly the point behind the footnotes remark that you seem to dislike. Plato owned philosophy so completely that everyone, even centuries later, still referenced him. You coming across ideas first via some more recent source does not invalidate him any more than Wordpress invalidates the importance of Movable Type.

curious_yogurt 8y ago

>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 charity. The reason the author recommends it is that often people will impute a particular view to a philosopher that implies the philosopher made elementary errors in reasoning or obvious falsehoods. This may, of course, be the case. It is trivially true that philosophers make invalid or weak inferences, and false claims. But there are two good reasons to adhere to the principle of charity that the author does not make explicit. First, if we do not, then we often end up short-circuiting our understanding of what the philosopher may be trying to say. That is, we may prematurely dismiss the claim as absurd instead of trying to sort out what might be the actual claim. Second, while part of philosophy depends on what philosophers are actually saying, a good part of doing philosophy is figuring out what our response to a particular claim is, how we ourselves would support that claim (if the inference is invalid), and what claim we would put in its place (if the claim is false). If we do little more than dismiss a claim as absurd, then we are not really doing philosophy. So I guess what I am saying here is that making the assumption "Plato is a smart guy" is actually not a bad start for one taking a serious study of what he has to say. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

westoncb 8y ago
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.
- ianai 8y ago
  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!
abecedarius 8y ago
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.
- curious_yogurt 8y ago
  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.

pmoriarty 8y ago

"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 to govern? What is true? Where does knowledge come from? Why should any of this matter? Most people without any philosophical training go around acting like they have the answers to all of these questions, or that they're self-evident, or that they don't matter. Plato helps us to see that we and various self-styled experts might not know as much about these as we thought. Later philosophy tends to get more and more technical and jargon-filled, and (at least in Western philosophy) tends to assume a familiarity with Plato. In many important ways, you would be either lost or missing an important piece of the puzzle were you to try to dive in to later philosophy without a knowledge of Plato, as philosophy to a large extent is a dialogue with earlier philosophers, of whom Plato is a seminal figure. Plato is also a good sparring partner for when you're just dipping your feet in to the waters of philosophy. A boxer shouldn't expect to knock out the reigning heavyweight champion the first time he puts his boxing gloves on. Similarly, you should really have a go at Plato before you have a go at later philosophers, who themselves have engaged with Plato and tried to answer Plato or have another go at issues first raised by him. A familiarity with philosophers from every historical period is just part of a well-rounded philosophical education. Skipping to contemporaries would just leave huge gaps in your education, especially if you skip some of the greatest and most influential philosophers of all time, like Plato.

westoncb 8y ago
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 on his continued relevance, it makes me think either I'm missing something or they're faking something. But then again, I'd answer the questions you mentioned in a way I feel that most philosophers would find to be 'missing the point'. For example: > What is justice? A concept useful for regulating human societies. It's based on ultimately arbitrary heuristics that are effective for satisfying an approximately maximum number of people. > 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. Ultimately there are constraints placed on the values we're capable of selecting which are imposed on us by our evolved biology, but we do have a good amount of freedom, so by studying human nature we can figure out which values are the most effective for creating the sort of lives we're interested in. > What is the best way to govern? We don't know yet. There probably is no best. If there is, we'll probably find it algorithmically. > What is true? There is too much ambiguity here to really answer, so I'll just choose one interpretation and say: whatever it is, it's highly unlikely that human minds would be capable of 'understanding' it ('understanding' being a human faculty, and not likely something important to the nature of the universe). > Where does knowledge come from? Brains. > Why should any of this matter? Because experience is real.

nmg 8y ago

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 outdated, but the mode of thinking required to challenge those ideas does not. Plato was not only conveying his thoughts, he was trying to teach us how to think.

westoncb 8y ago
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 part because of Plato's lasting influence—but that still sums up to me as: read out of respect or curiosity about history, not because you should expect to uncover some magical idea contained therein which will change your whole viewpoint on life and reality.
- curious_yogurt 8y ago
  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 arguments for different topics. I do agree with you that you should not expect to uncover some magical idea in Plato's works. But this is certainly not what Plato intended us to do. Instead, what Plato is trying to do is encode philosophical practice. This entails not a collection of ideas (magical or not), but rather an approach to philosophical discourse and hence to the world. Curiosity and scepticism, as you correctly point out, are important and are recurrent themes. But this just scratches the surface.

coldtea 8y ago

>This is not starting off well. The first rule is to interpret him in the most favorable way possible... That should be something people should strive for in every discussion. It's called the Principle of Charity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

supersrdjan 8y ago
Or what they call steelman as opposed to strawman, right?
- coldtea 8y ago
  I guess so, though I haven't heard the first term!

noncoml 8y ago

> 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

westoncb 8y ago
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.
- noncoml 8y ago
  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.

Tomte 8y ago

> I'd already run into them in other contexts. But that‘s exactly the point behind the footnotes remark that you seem to dislike. Plato owned philosophy so completely that everyone, even centuries later, still referenced him. You coming across ideas first via some more recent source does not invalidate him any more than Wordpress invalidates the importance of Movable Type.