Socrates and Plato

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Socrates and Plato

• Socrates uses reason to find moral reality
• Same rationalist assumptions
• One, unchanging, knowable, rational, real
• Plus Knowledge ? virtue
• Death at the hands of democracy
• Becomes the hero of Plato's dialogues
• Dies ignorant--method ?doubt no solution
• Hard to prove a contradiction from moral premises
• Plato combines with Parmenides rationalism
• Ultimate reality is value/meaning (definition)
• Intellectual reality idealism (optimism and
  ideas)

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Define PhilosophySemantics

• Basis of all knowledge
• Needed to know the truth of sentences
• Because needed to know meaning?
• Vicious circle--must be some we learn without
• In fact most are learned without definitions
• But important to logic (Geometry)
• Allows logical analysis, reveals structure of
  arguments
• Realityconcepts, meanings, Ideos, Forms
• One, unchanging, knowable, rationalreal
• Sense experience is unreal, belief, change etc.

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Working with Definitions

• Rules to ensure we get the right kind
• No lists, vagueness, circularity (synonym)
• Must give an analysis species and difference
• Biology model of scientific knowledge
  (classification)
• No hearsay (only expert insight) test by reason
• Real v nominal definitions
• Things real naturewhat makes it of that kind
• Shared in things of that type.
• Result Theory of Forms
• The ultimate reality (metaphysics) distinguishes
  knowledge from belief, meaning/logic, value

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Questions

• Give a formal analysis of the Analects ??
  argument for the social-political importance of
  rectifying names ??. Is it valid? Is it sound?
  Explain why or why not.
• Coffee Tutorial today at 1 pm

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Difficulty Famous Analogies

• Cave sensible appearance v reality
• C.f. taking hallucinatory drugs
• Meditation or rational insight
• Analogy shadow/object as object/form
• Equal difficulty in getting you to accept them
• When you "see" them, you will need no more
  convincing
• The character of the object determines your
  knowledge

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Line Analogy

• Links metaphysics and epistemology
• Knowability depends on nature of object
  (Parmenides)
• Rival view true belief plus an account (the
  modern analysis)
• X knows that P df.
• P is true
• X believes that P
• X has justification for believing that P

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The Sun Analogy

• Rule for identification of forms
• Logic there must be a form of forms
• More real than the forms
• The form of the good of all value
• Form of the truth/beauty/good
• Mystical ResultAbsolute one/being
• No mental grasp
• It would blind us (our intuition)
• But necessarily there
• (or nothing exists)

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Key Political Doctrines

• The Republic a political plan
• Justice in political structure in individual
• Rule of the correct rulerintellect
• The Philosopher King
• Anti-democratic and manipulative
• Education and classes
• Social ranks intellectual, spirited, body-like

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End Plato Greek Rationalism

• Ancient Chinese idealism next!

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On To China!

• Same approximate time
• Axial age hypothesis because of lack of contact
• Socrates, Buddha, Confucius
• Contrast
• First philosopher the most famous
• Starts out with politics and ethics
• Geography and Shang Culture
• Navigation v landlocked agriculture
• Geometry v cycles

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Chinas Uniqueness

• Non-Indic religious base
• No immortal soul but spirit ??
• No creation God or anthropomorphism
• Oldest continuous religionancestor veneration
• Political organization first
• Shang society and Zhou nature ?
• Social religion and Emperor on High
• Oracle bones and conquest
• Beginning of deliberate history

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Mandate of ?tiannaturesky

• Duke of Zhou political justification
• Moral divine right of kings
• With right to revolution built in
• Mandate/duty ? to rule/care for ??
• Society in nature
• Lost when fails or loses? devirtuosity
• Mandate goes to another
• Revolution and success (rain, luck, etc.) sign of
  ? ? tians selection

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Confucius

• Traditional political view
• Controversy education first
• Dreams of Duke of Zhou ??
• ? tiannaturesky names (?mingdestiny) the ruler
• Moral merit ? not pure religion
• Is?God? (Like Western "divine right of kings")
• ? ? was anthropomorphic ancestor
• Place of dead spirits above
• ? Tian also above, but only destins things

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? Tiannaturesky Natural Process?

• Organic" or anthropological authority (?)
• Constant patterns
• Corrupting power of evil
• Confucius minimally religious but starts a
  philosophical process
• Agnostic about spirits and afterlife
• Little talk about ? tiannaturesky (??)
• Natural moral social/political hierarchy--not
  hereditary

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Purpose Of Hierarchical Society

• Naturalist realist
• We could add premises (evolution)
• Moral education, not institutions
• No legislature, bureaus or courts
• Education by models
• Like father in the family
• Ruler responsible for our moral character
• No law
• Motivation and linguistic arguments

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Penal Codes Publish Punishments

• Not a list of general commands
• (universal sentences creating legal duties)
• Thought of as naming the punishments
• Then specifying when to use them
• Texts call them ? xingpunishments

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Confucius' Argument Against Law

• Lead them with ?zhengcoercion, order them with ?
  xingpunishment, the people will avoid
  wrongdoing? but will have no shame. Lead them
  with ? devirtuosity and order them with?liritual
  and they will have shame and learn to fit in.
  (23)

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Psychological and Interpretive Grounds

• Psychological argument Human sociability and
  weak selfishness
• ?li ritual exercises the natural impulse to
  conform to social expectations

• Interpretive argument public codes invite
  disputation and encourage people to be
  argumentative
• "In litigation, I am as the others are, but the
  point is to eliminate litigation"

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Human Nature

• Natural social animals that have traditions
• Language and ritual ?liritual
• Conventions df. Shared coordination patterns
  that persist because cooperation is more
  important than alternative actions
• Confucius' ethics seem conventional
• ?liritual for training morality
• Transmitter not a creator

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Philosophical Content

• ?? zheng-mingrectify names
• Father-ruler example conflict of rules
• Abortion case
• Never kill an innocent person
• A fetus is an innocent person
• A fetus is not yet a person
• Never kill a fetus
• Intuition about instance helps us rectify names
• Judgment about abortion