Philosophy 190: Plato
Fall, 2014
Prof. Peter Hadreas
Course website:
http://www.sjsu.edu/people/peter.hadreas
/courses/Plato
PLATO:
MENO
Probable date of dialogue:
402 B. C. E.
Three years later, Anytus, a democratic
politician, who’s also a character in the dialogue,
with Meletus and Lycon, will accuse Socrates of
impiety and corruption of the youth.
Who Was Meno? or ‘Menon’
“Menon was known to every reader at the time as one of the
most notable mercenary generals in the service of the
Persian prince, Cyrus, insurgent and pretender. If we may
believe Xenophon (Anabasis II 6 21), who looked at him
from close proximity with eyes of hatred, Menon’s was a
base nature.”
“A will-to-power and ambition served his avarice; he was a man without
conscience, without loyalty, and without a capacity for friendship; he
wasted his physical assets in debaucheries and exploited them for his
ambition, i. e., for his avarice. Plato looks at Menon from a distance and,
for this reason alone, sees him as a more resplendent and greater person,
more the type of an Alkibiades or Kallikles, youthfully handsome and
sensual, proud and greedy for power.”
_______________
1. Friedländer, Paul, Plato 2: The Dialogues, First Period, Meyerhoff
trans., (New York: Bollingen Series, Random House, 1964), p. 273-4.
What sort of person did Meno become?
From Xenophon, the Anabasis, Book II, Chapter 6
“As to Menon the Thessalian, the mainspring of his action
was obvious; what he sought after insatiably was wealth.
Rule he sought after only as a stepping stone to larger spoils.
Honours and high estate he craved for simply that he might
extend the area of his gains; and if he studied to be on
friendly terms with the power, it was in order that he might
commit wrong with impunity. The shortest road to the
achievement of his desires lay, he thought, through false
swearing, lying and cheating; for in his vocabulary
simplicity and truth were synonyms of folly.”
What sort of person did Meno become?
“ . . . his whole conversation turned upon the ridicule of
his associates. In like manner, the possessions of his foes
were secure from his designs, since it was no easy task, he
thought, to steal from people on their guard; but it was his
particular good fortune to have discovered how easy it is to
rob a friend in the midst of his security. If it were a
perjured person or a wrongdoer, he dreaded him as wellarmed and intrenched; but the honourable and the truthloving he tried to practice on, regarding them as weaklings
and devoid of manhood.”
Who Was Gorgias?
Ionian Greek. His native city is Leontini in Sicily. Tradition
is that he was born at 490 B. C. or a few years after. And all
authorities are agreed that he lived to a great age; their
report varies between 105 and 109 years.)1
“His [Gorgias’] rhetorical practices were based on, and justified by, a
relativistic philosophy similar to that of Protagoras. If there were any
universally valid truth which could be communicated to another, then no
doubt only that truth, backed by incontrovertible evidence, ought to be
conveyed.
If everyone had a memory of all that is past, a conception of what is
happening at present and a foreknowledge of the future . . . But as it is,
there is no easy way of either recollecting the past or investigating the
present or divining the future, so that on most subjects most men have
only opinion to offer the mind as counselor; and opinion is slippery and
insecure (Gorgias, Helen, II).
1. Guthrie, W. K. C., The Sophists, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 269.
Who Was Gorgias?1
“To express, with all the intellectual force at his command,
this thesis that we are all at the mercy of opinion and the truth
is for each of us whatever we can be persuaded to believe,
because there is no permanent and stable truth to be known . .
.
“Nothing is as Parmenides used the verb, that is, exists as at the same time an
immutable reality and the object of human knowledge. If there were such a
reality we could not grasp it, and even if we could, we could never
communicate our knowledge to others. We live in a world where opinion
(doxa) is supreme, and there is no higher criterion by which it can be verified
or the reverse. This leaves the Sophist-orator, master of the art of persuasion
both private and public, in command of the whole field of experience, for
opinion can always be changed. Only knowledge, based on unshakable proof,
could withstand the attacks of peitho, [persuasion, seduction] and there is no
such thing.”
1. Guthrie, W. K. C., The Sophists, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 269.
Isocrates, 436–338 BCE)
Isocrates
Itinerant sophists such as Protagoras,
Gorgias and Prodicus may be thought of
as a first generation of sophists.
Isocrates, a contemporary and critic of
Plato, was of a different type. Around
392-390 BCE he founded his own school
in Cius in what is now in Northwestern
Turkey in near Bursa.
Although often classified as a rhetorician, he contrasted his
educational program with the Sophists who taught political
debate techniques and the Eristics, who disputed theoretical
and ethical matters. He referred his own curriculum as
philosophy.
Isocrates
Isocrates accepted a few students, no
more than nine pupils at a time. Many of
them went on to be philosophers,
legislators and historians. Because his
fees were so high, he amassed a
considerable fortune. According to Pliny
the Elder, he could sell a single oration
for twenty talents. This is an enormous
amount of money since the Athenian
talent was equivalent to an object
weighing 26 kilograms. This amount of
silver today would today would be worth
approximately $28,000. So twenty talents
of silver would be worth (very)
approximately $500,000.
Isocrates
His school lasted some fifty years.
Isocrates’ school established the core of
liberal arts education similarly to the
way it is known today, including public
speaking, composition, history,
citizenship, culture and morality.
Isocrates promotion of the ideals of freedom, virtue and selfcontrol had longstanding influence. He was a primary
influence on the Roman orators Cicero and Quintilian.
Isocrates
Until 1988, 21 of his orations were
extant. Three more were found in a
single codex during a 1988 excavation at
Kellis, a site in the Dakhla Oasis of
Egypt. His autobiographical work
Antidosis, survived and he disputes there
the value of impractical, as he saw them,
disputes in metaphysics.
He criticized the practices of Plato’s Academy. The search
for necessary, as opposed to contingent truths, as we find
clearly distinguished in the Meno, Isocrates saw as possibly
useful preparation for the adult world, but no more than
exercises and not directly useful for life.
From Isocrates’Antidosis (351 B. C. E.)
“I do not, however, think it proper to apply the term
"philosophy" to a training which is no help to us in the
present either in our speech or in our actions, but rather I
would call it a gymnastic of the mind and a preparation
for philosophy.”
“It is, to be sure, a study more advanced than that which boys in
school pursue, but it is for the most part the same sort of thing; for
they also when they have labored through their lessons in grammar,
music, and the other branches, are not a whit advanced in their ability
to speak and deliberate on affairs, but they have increased their
aptitude for mastering greater and more serious studies.
From Isocrates’Antidosis (351 B. C. E.)
continued
I would, therefore, advise young men to spend some time on these
disciplines, but not to allow their minds to be dried up by these barren
subtleties, nor to be stranded on the speculations of the ancient
sophists, who maintain, some of them, that the sum of things is made
up of infinite elements; Empedocles that it is made up of four, with
strife and love operating among them; Ion, of not more than three;
Alcmaeon, of only two; Parmenides and Melissus, of one; and
Gorgias, of none at all. For I think that such curiosities of thought are
on a par with jugglers' tricks which, though they do not profit
anyone, yet attract great crowds of the empty-minded, and I hold that
men who want to do some good in the world must banish utterly from
their interests all vain speculations and all activities which have no
bearing on our lives.”
Sections of Dialogue
I. pp. 871-880; 70A-80E: Meno asks Socrates if virtue
can be taught. Socrates, in turn, asks Meno for a
general definition of virtue [arete]. This section includes
the paradox of analysis.
II. pp. 880-887; 81A-86E: Socrates’ response to the
paradox of analysis: knowing is a kind of recollection.
This section includes the episode in which the boy
doubles the area of a square.
III. pp. 887- 897; 87A-100B: Following the “regressive
method of analysis,” Socrates tries to establish if virtue
is knowledge for if it is knowledge, then it can be taught.
This section includes a questioning of Anytus.
In the first, second and third sections of the Meno,
Socrates seeks definitions involving hypotheses from which
necessary deduction may be drawn.
In the Meno, a dialogue with clear Pythagorean influences
that takes geometry as a model for good reasoning. It
alludes to a methodology us by geometers of Plato’s day
and after as the method of ‘(regressive) analysis’
Consider Two definitions of color
p. 875-6, 75B-76E
“SOCRATES: . . . Let us say that shape is that which alone of
existing things always follows color. . . .
MENO: But that is foolish Socrates.
SOCRATES: How do you mean?
MENO: That shape, you say, always follows color. Well then, if some
were to say that he did not know what color is, but that he had the
same difficulty as he had about shape, what do you think your answer
would be?
....
MENO: And what do you say color is?”
....
Consider Two definitions of color
p. 875-6, 75B-76E
....
“SOCRATES: Do you want me to answer after the manner of
Gorgias, which you would most easily follow?
MENO: Of course I want that.
SOCRATES: Do you both say there are channels through which the
effluvia make their way? – Certainly.
SOCRATES: And some effluvia fit some of the channels, while others
are too small or too big? – That is so
SOCRATES: And there is something you call sight? – There is.
SOCRATES: From this “comprehend what I state,” as Pindar said,
for color is an effluvium from shapes which fits the sight and is
perceived.”
Consider Two definitions of color
p. 875-6, 75B-76E
MENO: That seems to me to be an excellent answer, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Perhaps it was given in manner to which you are
accustomed. At the same time I think you can deduce from this
answer what sound is, and smell, and many such things. – Quite so.
SOCRATES: It is a theatrical answer so it pleases you, Meno, more
than that about shape. – It does.”
QUESTION
How does Socrates’ definition of color differ from the definition given
“after the manner of Gorgias” involving effluvia and channels.
Method of Analysis as understood in ancient and medieval
philosophy and mathematics
In its original sense, ‘analysis’ is a ‘lusis’ [releasing, undoing,
unravelling] ‘ana’ [upward], that is, seeking a solution by an
overriding higher principle from which the sought after truth
might be derived. Once the ‘releasing upwards’ to a
fundamental truth has been established, the argument may be
restructured so that the fundamental principle becomes first
principle from which the original question may be determined.
This traditional kind of analysis is often referred to as the
regressive model of analysis.
See Beaney, Michael, "Analysis", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward
N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/analysis/>.[my emphasis]
In the Second Section of the Meno, Socrates explicitly
recommends regressive analysis as a way to establish if
virtue can be taught.
p. 867, 87A “SOCRATES: However, please relax a bit for me and agree to
investigate whether it is teachable or not by means of a hypothesis, I mean
the way geometers often carry on investigations. For example, if they are
asked whether a specific area can be inscribed in the form of a circle, one of
them might say: I do not yet know whether that area has that property, but I
think I have, as it were a hypothesis that is of use for the problem, namely
this: If that area is such that when one has applied it as a rectangle to the
given straight line in the circle it is deficient by the a figure similar to the
very figure to which it is applied . . .”
The geometric illustration of the method of analysis
Socrates alludes to.
Question: Can a triangle with a specific area be inscribed
in a circle? p. 887;87B.1
The demonstration follows the explanation of T. L. Heath, A History of Greek Mathematics, (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1921), Vol. I., pp. 298ff.
The geometric illustration of the method of analysis
Socrates alludes to (continued).
Question: Can a triangle with a specific area be
inscribed in a circle? p. 887; 87B.
The demonstration follows the explanation of T. L. Heath, A History of Greek Mathematics,
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921), Vol. I., pp. 298ff.
The geometric illustration of the method of analysis
Socrates alludes to (continued).
Question: Can a triangle with a specific area be
inscribed in a circle? p. 887; 87B.
Proposal of regressive analysis in the Meno to decide if
virtue can be taught.
“SOCRATES: So let us speak about virtue also, since we
do not know either what it is or what qualities it possesses,
and let us investigate whether it is teachable or not by
means of a hypothesis, and say this: Among the things
existing in the soul, of what sort is virtue, that it should be
teachable or not, or, as we were just saying recollectable? .
. . Or is it plain to anyone that men cannot be taught
anything but knowledge.” p. 887, 87B
The ‘Paradox of Analysis’
as introduced in the Meno
“SOCRATES: I know what you want to say, Meno. Do
you realize what a debator’s argument you are bringing
up, that a man cannot search either for what he knows or
for what does not know? He cannot search for what he
knows -- since he knows it, there is no need to search – nor
for what he does not know, for he does not know what to
look for.” p. 880, 80E
The ‘Paradox of Analysis’
rephrased as a constructive dilemma:
1.For any x, one either knows, or does not know, x.
2.If one knows x, one cannot inquire into x.
3. If one does not know x, one cannot inquire into x.
4. Therefore, whether or not one knows x, one cannot
inquire into x.1
1. Reconstructed by Gail Fine, “Inquiry in the Meno,” in The Cambridge Companion to
Plato, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 207.
The ‘Paradox of Analysis’ -- Questions
1. For any x, one either knows, or does not know, x.
2. If one knows x, one cannot inquire into x.
3. If one does not know x, one cannot inquire into x.
4. Therefore, whether or not one knows x, one cannot inquire into x.
1. Statement #1 seems true, but what of statement #2? In what senses
of ‘knowledge’ might it be true, in what senses of ‘knowledge’ might it
not be true.
2. What about statement #3, if ‘one does not know’ means total
ignorance then it would seem to be true, but what in senses of ‘not
knowing’ might is not be true?
Example of Learning as Recollection:
the boy’s
doubling of a square
pp. 881-886; 82B-86A
8 square
feet.
2 ft.
First the boy doubles the side, making a 16 square foot area. Then he
guesses perhaps a side of 3 feet will work. But this produces a 9 square foot
area. Then he comes to an impasse. He is led to overcome his impasse as
Socrates has him draw the four diagonals. Then he can see the that
diamond area must be ½ of 16 feet or 8 square feet. pp. 881-886; 82B-86A.
The ‘Paradox of Analysis’
Plato answers the paradox of analysis with the theory of knowledge as
recollection and the demonstration of the boy doubling the area of a
square:
“Socrates: as the soul is immortal, has been born often, and has seen
all things here in the underworld, there is nothing which it has not
learned; so it is in no way surprising that it can recollect the things it
knew before, both about virtue and about other things.” p. 880, 81C.
QUESTION
What does the boy’s ‘solving’ how to double a square show that he
knows, if anything?
Excursion: The term ‘analysis’ in philosophy and science
often presumes a second type of analysis
Along with philosophical and mathematical analysis being
‘regressive’ there is a second analytic methodology that
become prevalent in the during the Scientific Revolution,
by scientists and philosophers of the 16th and 17th century.
This second model of analysis is sometimes called the
Decompositional Model of analysis. The model, for
example, is offered first in the Oxford Dictionary of
Philosophy. In the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy,
‘analysis’ is defined as “the process of breaking a concept
down into more simple parts, so that its logical structure
is displayed.”
Philosophical Analysis
as “Decompositional”
Consider the methodology Descartes articulates in
Rules for Direction of the Mind (written in 1628, but
published posthumously in 1684):
“If we perfectly understand a problem we must
abstract it from every superfluous conception,
reduce it to its simplest terms and, by means of an
enumeration, divide it up into the smallest possible
parts.”
Rule XIII, in Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Rene Descartes, trans. by
Elizabeth Anscombe and Peter Thomas Geach in Descartes Philosophical
Writings (1954).
The dominance of the Decompositional Model of
analysis in the Scientific Revolution
The Decompositional Model especially well fits the
development of chemical analysis as knowledge of
chemical reactions between elements and the
development of the infinitesimal calculus – known
still in mathematics as ‘analysis.’ The infinitesimal
calculus presumes breaking quantities into
infinitesimally small parts.
Plato uses the decompositional model of analysis
implicitly in the Meno in the analysis of knowledge.
He explicitly discusses this method which is calls the
‘Method of Division’ in the Sophist and Statesman.
Correct Opinion versus Knowledge of the Way to Larissa
p. 895, 97A-97E
“SOCRATES: But that one cannot guide correctly if one does not
have knowledge, to this our agreement is likely incorrect. – How do
you means?
SOCRATES: I will tell you. A man who knew the way to Larissa, or
anywhere else you like, and went there and guided others would
surely lead them well and correctly? – Certainly
SOCRATES: What if someone had had a correct opinion about that
of which the other has knowledge, he will not be a worse guide than
the one who knows, as he has a true opinion, though not knowledge.
– In no way worse.
SOCRATES: So true opinion is in no way a worse guide to correct
action than knowledge. It is this that we omitted in our investigation
of the nature of virtue, when we said only knowledge can lead to
correct action, for true opinion can do so also – So it seems.
Correct Opinion versus Knowledge of the Way to Larissa
p. 895, 97A-97E
[continued]
SOCRATES: So correct opinion is no less useful than knowledge.
MENO: Yes, to this extent Socrates. But the man who has knowledge will
always succeed, whereas he who has true opinion will only succeed at times.
SOCRATES: How do you mean? Will he who has the right opinion not
always succeed, as long as his opinion is right?
MENO: That appears to be so of necessity. and it makes me wonder,
Socrates, this being the case, why knowledge is prized far more highly than
right opinion, and why they are different.
SOCRATES: Do you know why you wonder, or shall I tell you? – By all
means tell me.
SOCRATES: It is perhaps because you have paid no attention to the statues
of Daedalus, but perhaps there are none in Thessaly.
...
SOCRATES: For true opinions, as long as they remain, are a fine thing and
all they do is good, but they are not willing to remain long, and they escape
from a man’s mind, so that they are not worth much until one ties them
down by (giving) an account of the reason why.
Socrates/Plato does provide an analysis of knowledge
in the exchange. As a type of analysis it is
decompositional:
“Socrates: . . . For true opinions, as long as they
remain are a fine thing and all they do is good, but
they are not willing to remain long, and they escape
from a man’s mind, so that they are not worth much
until one ties them down by (giving an) account of the
reason why.” p. 895, 98A
knowledge ≡ true opinion + account of the reason why
As portrayed in the Meno, Socrates further suggests that
Anytus would not mistakenly believe that Socrates’ slanders
Pericles and Thucydides if he had even provisional analysis
of what slander is.
“SOCRATES: I think, Meno, that Anytus is angry, and I am
not at all surprised. He thinks, to begin with, that I am
slandering those men, [Pericles, Thucydides (the statesman,
not the historian)], and then he believes himself to be one of
them. If he ever realizes what slander is, he will cease from
anger, but he does not know it now.” (p. 893, 95A)”
Appendix
The adoption of the term ‘analytic
philosophy’ in 20th century AngloAmerican philosophy.
In early ‘analytic’ philosophy.
The work of the logician Gottlob Frege (1848 - 1925) and
Bertrand Russell (1872 –1970), in particular, came to establish
that in order to adequately consider philosophical issues, the
philosophical questions and issues had to first to be translated
into their ‘correct’ logical form. This method had elements of
what we are calling regressive and decompositional analysis.
Not too surprisingly, the new procedure came to be dubbed
loosely ‘analytic’ philosophy.
This paradigm of a useful philosophical analysis was an logical analysis of
how words referred to proper names or definite descriptions. The
celebrated case of analysis was first presented by Russell in ‘On
Denoting’ in 1905.
The classic example turned on the question of the ontological status of the
‘king of France’ in the sentence “The present king of France is bald.”
Russell drawing upon Fregean logic transformed the sentence into its
implicit logical form, namely
“There is one and only one King of France, and whatever is King of France
is bald.”
Or in symbols: ∃x [Kx & ∀y(Ky → y = x) & Bx].
This logical analysis, so it was thought, overcame philosophical postulations
of the property of non-existence, or subsistence, which might be attributed
to the present king of France. The logical form of the sentence shows that
the property of being the one and only king of France is simply not
instantiated.
Russell’s logical analysis of denoting spawned an enormous literature
which in various ways followed Russell’s lead. Although theories of
reference, as offered perhaps most famously by Ludwig Wittgenstein and
John Searle, varied as to proper names referred, with Russell that all
were descriptivist. Whether by an implicit existential quantifier or the
suggestion of a cluster of meanings, the referent of the proper name was
singled out by a description.
This paradigm of reference became controversial if not shifted by Saul
Kripke’s work dating from his John Locke Lectures at Oxford in 1973. In
these lectures, and later in the book Naming and Necessity, published by
Oxford University Press in 1980, Kripke argued that descriptions, in
whatever form, would not suffice to model how the reference of proper
names operates. Suppose Aristotle died at the age of two. Any description
of the infant could not single out Aristotle. Yet that infant was nonetheless
the infant Aristotle. Kripke propose a causal theory of reference. A
proper name operates through the mediation of a community of speaker,
present historically typically some time shortly after the birth of a person
who name the person.
There were a multitude of variation theories on reference of proper
names in Anglo-American ‘analytic’ philosophy that continues into the
21st century.
For example, since Kant it had been presumed that anything that is
necessarily true will be known a priori. But if proper names operate
causally, as Kripke argued, then there are necessary truths that were
not a priori. According to Frege’s well-worn example, the the Morning
Star (Phosphorus) and the Evening Star (Hesperus) have difference
meanings but the same reference, i. e., the planet Venus. That the
Evening Star is identical with the Evening Star is a contingent truth.
But if those two locutions name the planet Venus, causally, their
identity is not contingent but necessary. Other standard example were
Cicero and Tully or H2O and water. We have then a necessary a
posteriori truth.
Kripke’s work in the 1970s and 1980s serves reopenned the domain of
necessary truths as applied to objects, not epistemologically but
metaphysically, for it was not only mathematical objects and logical
inferences that had claim to necessary truth, but also objects that were
known a posteriori. Since Kripke the door has been opened again to
necessary truths which are not true a priori.
Recommendation: We are very fortunate that one of the U. S. experts on
the subject of necessary is on the SJSU, Prof. Anand Vaidya. For a full
discussion of the topic see his entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy:
Vaidya, Anand, "The Epistemology of Modality", The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/modalityepistemology/>.
In sum, the current analyses of what constitutes necessary
truth has bearing on the Meno inasmuch as Socrates/Plato in
this dialogue seeks necessary truths. In the dialogue, Socrates
introduces distinctions that are fundamental to the topic.
Plato’s pursuit of this topic, among other things,
distinguishes his school and philosophical approach from
Isocrates and his school, who saw interest in such matters
drying up minds through “barren subtleties.”
Conclusion of the Meno
Since Pericles and Themistocles could not teach virtue, they
had right opinion without ‘an account of the reason why.’ So
Socrates concludes:
“Socrates: It follows from this reasoning, Meno, that virtue appears to be a
gift from the gods. We shall have clear knowledge of this when, before we
investigate how it comes to be present in men, we first try to find out what
virtue in itself is. But now the time has come for us to go. You convince your
guest friend Anytus here of these very things of which you have yourself
been convinced, in order that he may be more amenable. If you succeed,
you will also confer benefit upon the Athenians.” p. 897, 100B
How does this final statement:
1. discount the doctrine that knowledge is recollection.
2. respond to Plato’s critic Isocrates that the proper training of Athenians is
rhetoric.
3. suggest a reason why Anytus accused Socrates’ of corruption of the
young at his trial.
References to pictures used in this powerpoint
slide #3, picture of first page of the Euthyphro, from the Clarke Plato (Codex Oxoniensis
Clarkianus 39), 895 AD. The text is Greek minuscule. :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato#mediaviewer/File:Clarke_Plato_page_1_recto.jpgslide #3, vase
painting of the slide #4, slide #4, bust of Gorgias: http://vietsciences.free.fr/timhieu/trietlygiaoduc/socrateschongtaoluudugiao1
slide #9, bust of Isocrates: http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/isocrates/
slide #14, second bust of Isocrats:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isocrates#mediaviewer/File:Isocrates_pushkin.jpg