A Conversation with a (former) Student

A former graduate student, Danny Rodriquez, sent me this e-mail. I thought it belonged in the blog. 

Let us know how your own experiment listening to the dialogues goes, Danny. (By the way, I don't claim Plato/Socrates is an elitist because he claims to know the truth, but because rather than leading those in the cave out into the sunlight, he proposes teaching them in the darkness. That reading is, admittedly, unfair to Plato, and pushes his analogy way beyond what he intended. But, I'm not above a little sophism myself.)    

Danny's e-mail:

"I've been reading your blog but I'm starting from your older posts. One of your posts has my attention -- the one about listening to Plato. I want to put your claim to the test and listen to the Republic on audio. I'm convinced that there wouldn't be a difference but I will gladly admit when I'm wrong.

"Allan Bloom calls The Republic the true apology of Socrates, because it is a more detailed account of what Socrates was indicted for. I'm only on book 3 and I don't feel comfortable enough making any significant commentary on it except that the different turns of his argument make it rather easy to overlook its holes. I consult three different translations whenever I get stuck on something, which includes translations from Joe Sachs and Shorey. What surprised me was his willingness to censure books if they didn't meet a particular representation of the gods as to make the city better, and that any story that didn't meet this standard wouldn't be read by any youth. 

"I shook my head as I read your "Out of the Cave" post where you call Socrates elitist because he doesn't seem to claim to know truth. He concedes that he knows very little, but that very little is more than anyone else in Athens; truth, therefore, is an admission to knowing little at all and that admission becomes a starting point to strive to know more.

"But your comparison of the cave to running is sick!(sick being urban slang for fucking awesome). It's a shortcoming of language that it is devoid of sensory experience when received by the decoder despite the flood of sensory experience(from memory of course) that inhabits the encoder."

My Medal Wall

I like my medal wall. (Actually, it's the end of a bookcase.) I like hanging my finishers medals on a hook. I like the sound of them clanging against each other as I hang a new one. After I hang a medal up, I hardly ever look at it.

I hang these medal up for the same reason I run races, not to win-- which is fortunate, since I never win, and seldom even place in my age group--but to motivate me to run. There's something about pushing yourself in a race, especially a race that's at the edge of your ability, that you wonder when you hit those last few miles if you are going to finish as well as what in the world you were thinking when you registered for it. Those races motivate you in those cold morning and muggy afternoons when you're just putting in miles.

Sometimes when you're training, you wonder whether you should put in an extra two-tenths of a mile or start your cool-down walk. You think about that last race, how the adrenalin felt at the starting line, the

camaraderie you felt with all the other runners. You think ahead to the next race. You think about the medals you've hung on your wall--and that tells you which to choice you'll make. 

Plato the Pragmatist or Utlilitarian?

In  The Apology, Socrates cross examines Meletus, who claims Socrates has been corrupting the youth. Socrates catches Meletus in logical irony if not fallacy, and states that irony this way: “if a man with whom I have to live is corrupted by me, I am very likely to be harmed by him.” Syllogistically, his argument goes something like this—if I cause someone to become an evil person, and if I live in proximity to that person, he is as likely to do harm to me as anyone else. This sounds on the surface like a James’s “cash value” metaphor, that for us to identify something as true we must get something out of it. Here’s James’s longer version of that simple idea:

"The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to any one if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing and all dispute is idle. Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to show some practical difference that must follow from one side or the other’s being right" (James Pragmatism 26). 

One of the reasons we tend to identify such logic as Socrates is showing here as pragmatism hinges on the single term “practical,” a term rife with meaning--and ambiguity. At question, however, is the type of consequences--in this case, material or moral consequences. That's an important distinction, for on it depends not only the question of whether Socrates was being pragmatic, but whether pragmatism is worth our attention at all. If all we get out of pragmatism is a clear reason to choose the easier route, then it is nothing but self-serving rationalization—which is how Russell saw it.

I would argue, however, that what Socrates is arguing here isn’t pragmatism, but utilitarianism. In utilitarianism, the consequence is assumed to be entirely material, the greatest good for the greatest number, an assumption that allows for all sorts of consequences that most of us would see an morally bankrupt: euthanasia for those with handicaps that use too many resources that could be used elsewhere. This is only one example of the all too simple solutions of utilitarianism.

Later in his apology, Socrates will wander onto firmer pragmatic footing when he asks, “O my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all?”

Over and over again, we see that the improvement of the soul is the “cash value” Socrates seeks. What is true and wise is what improves the soul. That is why he is not a willing to actually defend himself in The Apology. He thinks that it is more important that he keep his soul intact than that he go free. Had he been a true utilitarian, he would have known that the greatest good for the most people would have been for him to go free and continue being Athen’s “gadfly.” He chose not to take that route because he realized, as I think any pragmatist would, that the effect of his actions on his own character, his soul if you will, is more important than any other result, no mater how practical. 

Socrates and the Scientific Method

I listened to the first section of the LibriVox recording of The Apology. As Socrates begins his defense—a defense that it will turn out is nothing of the sort—he shows tendencies toward one aspect of pragmatism, one that tends to be overlooked by its critics. 

He tells the story of Chaerephon, who asked the Oracle at Delphi if there was anyone wiser than Socrates. The Oracle answered no, there was no one wiser. Socrates, unable to accept the Oracle’s assessment, since as he told his judges, he did not think himself wise, decided to test the oracle. He went to those with a reputation of wisdom—a politician, a poet, a craftsman—and found each of them had the reputation for wisdom without the thing itself. He concluded that the only reason the Oracle said that there was no one wiser than he was because at least he knew he was not wise. These others all thought they were. Thus, none was wise, but at least he was not deceiving himself.

How does this demonstrate pragmatic tendencies? Notice that for all intents and purposes, Socrates’s method was scientific. Develop a theory; test the theory; come to a conclusion. If the test gives a clear conclusion, then you can take that conclusion as fact. For James, facts, scientific facts are not subject to philosophical musings. They are established, and as James says, ““simple come and are” (Pragmatism 32). This is the conclusion Socrates came to. He decided that it was a clear fact that he was not wiser than anyone else because no one was wise. (In other dialogues, when he talks admirably about others, he refers to them as "seekers after wisdom.")

Admittedly, the idea that what can be scientifically tested becomes fact and is no longer subject to metaphysical speculation is only a small part of pragmatism. But, we are not looking for a systematic theory in Plato’s Socrates, merely the possibility that he applied pragmatic principles where they are useful.  

I know, that italicized phrase, “where they are useful” doesn’t sound Socrates at all, does it? In fact, that is precisely Socrates’s complaint against the Sophists, that they did what was useful instead of what is true.  But in both Plato’s Socrates and pragmatism, truth is a stickier word than fact. 

As I said earlier, pragmatism's lack of concern with fact has been misinterpreted by its critics. Thus, when Bertrand Russell writes that "ironclads and Maxim guns must be the ultimate arbiters of metaphysical truth" for pragmatists, he mistakes the pragmatist's acceptance of scientific fact for indifference, and does not notice that for a pragmatist, facts (confirmed, tested, IE scientific) trump metaphysics.