History

The hell is this article?

For one, he really fails to prove his main argument

on virtually every point that mattered he was disastrously wrong, and his errors entrenched fundamental mistakes that would hamper philosophy and intellectual culture forever more

Proceeds to critique the concept of the duality of mind and body as if its some kind of settled science rather than an open question. Which is really annoying considering he is trying to hammer Plato for being too rigid in thought.

Plato also established the method of defining terms by necessary and sufficient conditions (although that terminology came later). So, for example, he considered the idea that knowledge is justified true belief, meaning that for a belief to count as knowledge it is both necessary and sufficient that it is true and justified. This kind of search for strict definitions has dominated western philosophy but we now know that this is not how language works. In different ways the psychologist Eleanor Rosch and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein both described how words are far more indeterminate and that the only way to understand their meaning is to understand how they are used. The philosophers’ search for precision in meanings is like trying to draw a clear line around a fuzzy object.

It feels like this author, despite writing about philosophy, has never taken a basic course on logic. Their conclusion is hardly relevant to the argument. Could the use of words not be a fundamental perspective of what definitions it can have? In some Latin countries they have a phrase “cutting dicks” which is like “coming in hot”. Obviously there is a literal and a metaphorical interpretation to the idea of cutting dicks. The contextual use of the phrase would convey the meaning. Either way, that leaves us with no confusion as to the very clear definitions of the phrase. Despite the fact that the literal and metaphorical use are completely different, the coexistence of the different meanings does not undermine Plato’s perspective of knowledge in any way, as far as I can see.

If we wait until we all agree on precisely what justice means before trying to create it, we’ll be here until doomsday. Nor should we expect there to be one, single ideal of justice anyway. It has many dimensions, not always compatible with each other. But although we may not agree on what perfect justice looks like, we can easily agree on what counts as manifest injustice here and now. And that’s what we should focus on.

Again, this guy is killing me here. If we can “easily agree on what manifest injustice” looks like in the moment, then ipso-facto we can easily agree on what manifest justice looks like as well. I dont even agree that it is so simple for everyone to agree on what manifest injustice looks like, which would actually further his original point. But instead he shoots his own argument in the foot by not considering the inverse statement he is implying must be true. He ends up arguing basically in favor of Plato’s rigid perspective of justice. Ill also note its frustrating that he again is overly rigid in his own criticism of someone else’s logical rigidity. Did Plato argue we should sit around arguing over justice ad infinitum and never do anything, or did he argue that we can define, at least momentarily, and ideal of justice by which to enact decision making right now?

The original Socratic method is for Socrates to dictate the terms of the debate, explicitly or by cunning orchestration of the discussion, with the merely destructive goal of shredding whatever hypotheses his interlocutors propose.

While this is a fairly dramatic interpretation, a more common perspective would see the intense scrutiny of arguments as beneficial, considering it very quickly exposes logical inconsistencies. Although it is quite clear that the author is not a fan of logical consistency, so I can see why he detests a method renowned for rooting it out.

This dude should sue for a refund on his PhD program or whatever. Maybe he is better in long format, idk. But this article would hardly make good toilet paper, let alone any decent arguments