Plato vs Diogenes: Dueling biographies

 At the Atlantic, Kieran Setiya reviews what is billed as the first full-length bio of Plato, and a new English translation of a relatively recent bio of Diogenes.

I agree at least in part, though not necessarily fully, with the main points on both philosophers.

Plato:

Dull;

Mixed and muddied Socratic ethical thrusts with metaphysics;

The ancient version of an academic theoretician.

Diogenes:

Man of ethical action and truer heir of Socrates;

Unlucky in philosophical history;

Allegedly learned about reinterpreting Delphi.

Note that I said I don't fully agree with either.

Aristophanes said Socrates was a Sophist; I agree, contra protestations of many philosophers, including friend Massimo Pigliucci. Setiya doesn't mention this. It's why Plato surely redefined Sophism in some ways. And, one doesn't need to learn Greek, unlike Izzy Stone, to see not just problems with Plato's portrayal of Socrates, but what was likely genuine to semi-genuine in that portrayal. Above all, re the "Wisest man in Athens" BS, Socrates was not what Plato cracked him up to be, and on this, I think Socrates was cracking himself up to be this, too. And, I remained unconvinced that Socrates was metaphysics-free. In fact, I think he had musings on the metaphysics of his ethical rhetorical questions that led Plato to his Forms.

Diogenes? The idea that Delphi told him to "debase the currency" and that he later realized that was meant to be metaphorical has struck as being more likely to be urban legend than truth. Setiya ignores that Diogenes was assisting his dad in this. It's a nice philosophical cover story, but probably no more than that.

Otherwise? Yes, sadly, Zeno of Kitium muddled Diogenes' ethical imperatives to live away from culture with Stoic metaphysics, even though he was a second-generation disciple. Setiya misses the issue that under Alexander's Diadochoi, then the Roman imperium, that this had to be trimmed to the sails.

Both books could be good in their own right. Or not so good. The end of Setiya's piece indicates that Plato biographer Waterfield appears to cut semi-blank checks, at least, to the fascism of The Republic.

American Humanists blow St. Anthony of Fauci an air-kiss

The American Humanist Association has named Fauci its Humanist of the Year. That's St. Anthony of Fauci the teller of Platonic lies. And, of further Platonic lies after that. And, not even a Platonic lie, just a National Institutes of Health definitional hair-splitting lie, about gain of function work at WIV.

In reality? Zeynep Tufekci, one of the first people to call out Fauci's original lie on masks, and to since then explicitly call out tribalism and also say the lab-leak hypothesis should be taken more seriously than BlueAnon will take it, is MUCH more deserving.

Humanism, especially good secular humanism, should be about honesty and integrity, among other things. Fauci lacks honesty and he lacks the integrity to admit these Platonic lies, too.

In addition to BlueAnon tribalism, I suspect that AHA sees this as a fundraising cash cow, more disgusting yet. Given the mix of gushing and wagon-circling at places like Tippling Philosopher, sadly, they're likely right.

I was worried about having nothing for this blog this week. Sadly, that's been solved.

And, beyond the disgust at Fauci, I'm not joking about Tufekci, whom I've "anointed" as a public intellectual, as being a better choice,

That said, I can list several previous recipients that underwhelm me as well. Some underwhelm a lot; some underwhelm moderately. They include:

• Rebecca Goldstein (crappy author, philosopher and critical theologian)
• Bill Nye (attention whore)
• P.Z. Myers (need I say more?)
• Steve Pinker (Ev Psych whore, crappy author, hasn't read his own book on writing thoroughly, let alone taught it to wife Goldstein)

The moderate underwhelmers include

• Jennifer Ouellette
• Jared Diamond

Contra Julian Baggini, on Hume, two wrongs don't make a right or justify a Platonic noble lie

Although already refuted by my piece on David Hume as racist, and refuted on presentism?

Julian Baggini goes in the tank for Hume. Undercutting him?

And? Undercutting even more Sir Tom Devine, the present-day Scottish historian he cites, claiming there was no push for abolition in Scotland in 1762, the time of his sugar plantation intervention, which he claims is in a "purported" letter?

In history we teach our students not to indulge in the intellectual sin of anachronistic judgement, i.e. never to impose the values of today on those of the past. In 1762, the year of David Hume’s reported letter on the plantations, there is no evidence that any groups in Scotland opposed chattel slavery in the colonies. The surge of abolitionism and widespread horror at man’s inhumanity to his fellow man only came later. In that sense, Hume was a man of his time, no better and no worse than any other Scot at the time.

Scotland was part of the UK, and was so for Hume's entire live. In addition, by this time, Hume had lived in London, and on the continent. (Amazing how the "world" of Enlightenment letters & ideas can be so selective.) Abolition was a happening thing in England; James Oglethorpe founded Georgia to be slavery-free, and for humanitarian reasons, before the original version of Hume's footnote.

And, Beattie and his mentor Thomas Reid? SCOT! 

AND? He's arguably wrong about "no evidence that any groups ..." Per that "happening thing" link from Wiki (which has a footnote, so shut up):

Some of the first freedom suits, court cases in Britain to challenge the legality of slavery, took place in Scotland in 1755 and 1769. The cases were Montgomery v. Sheddan (1755) and Spens v. Dalrymple (1769). Each of the slaves had been baptised in Scotland and challenged the legality of slavery. They set the precedent of legal procedure in British courts that would later lead to success for the plaintiffs. In these cases, deaths of the plaintiff and defendant, respectively, brought an end to the action before a court decision could be rendered.[8]

Also, per the same link, John Wesley, who created this organized group called "Methodism," started writing against slavery on moral grounds two years before Hume died. 

More here on those freedom suits and related issues. More at this link. Both of them mention three freedom suits, not two. The second link mentions how individual Scots helped fugitive slaves. I would suspect that there was at least word-of-mouth organizational effort behind this.

Both links also have more information about the profitability of slave trading and island plantation ownership to individual Scots and to Scotland as a whole. Given that Hume, in some ways a precursor to Adam Smith on modern economics, wrote a lot about economic issues, I suspect he knew all of this himself.

Related to this, Baggini wants to make "presentism" a non-absolute descriptor. I reject that. Even if I accepted that the idea of presentism, empirically, should be defined in majoritarian terms, per the logical side, specifically, psychological logic, I would reject his claim that the minority side in 1700s Scotland was so small that we can essentially ignore it.

I am tired of this. I've already told Baggini on Twitter that I'm going to do a new post. Basically, I see things like this as a version of Platonic noble lies, based on ideas that cancel culture or whatever is so evil all tools in opposition to it are fair game.

As for the British involved with the tower's de-naming not calling out China more? Two wrongs don't make a right. And, he either knows that, or if he doesn't, he's pretty appalling as a philosopher. The modern world would call this whataboutism or something.

That said, trying to do a Robert Wright on Jesus, in a book he wrote last year, and find that Jesus' calls to "renounce one's self" have secular value when removed from Jesus' metaphyics, makes me think he is at least in the vicinity of appalling.

==

And, per a discussion on MeWe, sorry, but this DOES, if not detract from Hume's (or Kant's, Locke's or Voltaire's) work in general, at a minimum, it brings it under heightened scrutiny. I'm sorry that it doesn't for you.

==

Update, May 28: Via Massimo, Baggini continues this by, to put it politely, offering an overly charitable interpretation of Hume's socio-political bigotry.

Update, March 3, 2022: In light of that brief update above, it should note that this time, Baggini has responded when poked with the Twitter stick.

And, yes, he may in this piece call Hume a "thorough" racist, but, given that in the Medium piece above, he also claims that this was "casual" racism and essentially a "one off,) and and that it's "presentism" to judge him by today's standards (and wrongly makes those claims, as shown)? 

"What the right hand giveth, the left taketh away."  

Or, to go Shakespearean in another way?

"Methinks you doth undercut yourself too much."

Seriously, how can one be a "thorough" racist and yet a "casual" or "one-off" racist???

Beyond that, in elsewhere discussing "Populousness of Ancient Nations," I note that Hume engages in deck-stacking on the issue of ancient vs modern slavery. There's nothing casual or one-off about that.

==

More here on Hume's racism, which also notes that Hume believed in polygenesis.

Platonic Noble Lie No. 2 from Fauci

I blogged this summer about Anthony Fauci's Platonic Noble Lie from the spring about how Americans didn't need to wear masks and worse, how he doubled down on it for motivated reasoning or whatever this summer.

Now he's at it again.

Fauci has admitted that 70 percent immunity is way too low for herd immunity on coronavirus, that the country needs at least 80 percent, maybe 90 percent.

Dr. Fauci said that weeks ago, he had hesitated to publicly raise his estimate because many Americans seemed hesitant about vaccines, which they would need to accept almost universally in order for the country to achieve herd immunity.

Now that some polls are showing that many more Americans are ready, even eager, for vaccines, he said he felt he could deliver the tough message that the return to normal might take longer than anticipated.

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”

Problem? His claim that this will make Americans more vaccine-desirous could backfire. One could easily argue the opposite side of the equation.

More on Wittgenstein, the overrated Platonist

Via Massimo Pigliucci, I saw a new piece from a British magazine — it appears to be some sort of magazine of "ideas," but not philosophy-specific — about the overrated (yes, he's on my list of overrated philosophers) Ludwig Wittgenstein.

It reinforces my idea of a few years ago that part of Wittgenstein's problem is that he is a Platonist. Beyond that link, part of what "triggered" me into this was his work on Haus Wittgenstein. Click that link and Wittgenstein's fussiness seems to me to smack of Platonism.

It also seems to smack a small bit of bipolar disorder, and I wonder how much the two issues are connected. I do not think bipolar disorder causes a tendency toward Platonism in the philosophically minded, but, per genetics in general, might it be a "nudge" of some sort for those already leaning that way? I think so. I also think that the Haus Wittgenstein issues also hint at obsessive-compulsive disorder. On the psychology side, I think there probably some at-least tenuous ties between bipolar and OCD. On the philosophy side, as OCD is in part a quest for perfectionism, I certainly see how it would be a "nudge" for Platonist beliefs.

Now, beyond the non-philosophy issues?

First, look at the "early" Wittgenstein. Abstract logic, as in the Tractatus, is about as idealistic as you get. Imagine the consternation when he found "holes" in his system, and that he had no more shown an "end to philosophy" than Fukuyama had shown an "end to history."

Imagine even more, though I've never read about his reactions, what consternation he might have had when he read Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorums, then Alfred Tarski's expansions of them with his undefinability theorum. (I certainly would appreciate comment from anybody who knows what sort of reactions he had, if any that have been recorded.)

Imagine more yet, if the flood of late 20th century work in things such as multi-valued logic had hit a century earlier. Wittgenstein might have had yet another nervous breakdown.

Now, the "late" Wittgenstein. (It's a British mag, so it wouldn't pick up on this, but I think now of "early" versus, or allegedly versus, "late" Nixon.)

Note that the late Witty's work on linguistic analysis, to pick up his criticizing Moore's "hand" illustration, was ultimately about language in the abstract, not everyday linguistic claims. Again, that's ... Platonic.

It's also part of why modern linguistic philosophy has largely passed him by.

In addition, to also tie this back to the top link, rather than wanting to improve linguistic clarity and related issues, I think that, vis a vis his peers, he wanted to shut down discourse. He was trying to have an ordinary language end to philosophy, or at least to philosophy of the past.

Socrates moves further down the overrated philosophers list

I've blogged before about overrated philosophers, and why Socrates' earns his place on the list. And I've explained that there's the myth vs. the reality, and my moniker is based on the myth.

Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci, in the latest installment of his Book Club extended blogging series, is tackling Plato's early dialogues in the Penguin Classics series. Well, in this intro to the book initial post in the series, he's sharpened exactly what I think about Socrates and why, therefore, he's overrated.

First, we have the problem of the "historic Socrates." Just like the historic Jesus. I disagree with the likes of Gregory Vlastos as to just how much Socrates can be untangled from Plato, just like it's questionable how much we can untangle a historic Jesus from a New Testament and early Christianity as it evolved down to us today largely based on the weighty shadow of Paul.

To the degree we can disentangle, I think the Socrates of the middle dialogues is already pretty much a Platonic mouthpiece.

Next, what about the other people who sketch him? Throw away Xenophon, but I'm still half convinced or more than Aristophanes was at least half right in depicting him as a semi-Sophist himself. Certainly, in many of his dialogues, Socrates does little more than eristic type arguments designed to refute Sophists – or strawmen versions (remember, other than Gorgias, we have almost no extant writings of them) — without saying "I therefore say virtue is Y," rather than just letting them appear to founder.

I told Massimo about that, too;

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I know that in many cases, Socratic answers are implied from Socratic questioning. But, I think Plato doesn’t spell this out so that Socratic reasoning doesn’t get subjected to its own elenchus. 

It’s like a trial, per the parallels, where you don’t have one attorney do a formal closing statement — so that the other one can’t make his or her own closing statement! And, yes, I mean that, too. Because, if Plato as the author gave the ancient equivalent of a semi-formal, stipulative closing argument to Socrates, in some cases, his straw men would look too obvious. While, among the Sophists, we only have writings from Gorgias today, except for scraps, circa 2400 BCE, all the major Sophists had their own books and pamphlets out, of course. In other words, holding a thumb on the scale might work, but three whole fingers would be overkill. Doing it this way? “Made the stronger argument the better,” at least for Plato’s students.

It's very convenient. And, to extend a biblical parallel, that may be part of why Mark, like Philostratus' "Life of Apollonius," doesn't have actual resurrection appearances.

I then realized more about Socrates as an elitist. I do think Izzy Stone projected too much 20th century America into his take on Socrates as an elitist, and didn't look at Athenian, or Hellenic, context.

First, Athens wasn't the only Greek city, or colony, to at least dabble in democracy at this time. Corinth and Syracuse are two other examples. Take note that all three were cities with large revenues from trade.

Note second that Sophists claimed to be able to teach one how to succeed well at "all things polis."

The old, landed gentleman had the time to learn this on his own. The equivalent of "nouveau riche" did not. But, since money can be timelike at times, to reverse a cliche, they would certainly pay for a crash course on operating in the ekklesia, the boule and the court – even if as part of a group rather than one-on-one.

Note that the Sophists weren't teaching in Athens alone. They were visiting other cities. They probably targeted cities like Corinth and Syracuse that were having similar large socio-political shifts.

Sure they were teaching how to make the stronger argument better. Don't tell me that most of Socrates' peers in Athens' "ancien regime" didn't do similar. Socrates' elenchus just has a better press.

Socrates, in this sense, strikes me as a mid-1800s British Tory landed gentleman caviling against Whig merchants seeking more political, and social, power. Remember that Britain passed its first political reform bill in the 1830s AND started shifting toward free trade at that time, both of which benefited these Liberal-leaning merchants. Disraeli's bid to further expand the electorate in the 1860s was a direct bid for more everyday voters to join the Conservatives to offset this.

Finally, there's the broad picture of Socrates that Plato paints. In a different way, he looks like as much a strawman as most of his Sophist (and other) opponents. That's especially true when you factor in what Plato said about how he was Athens and why – and the Oracle of Delphi saying that.

Add in Socrates' claim to have been motivated by his personal daimon since childhood, and you get someone who comes off as smarmy at a minimum and sanctimonious at a max.

Here's my take on that, befitting for an Existential Comics strip, of a boiled-down version of Socratic dialog:

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Socrates: Hey, Gorgias, do you know what the oracle at Delphi said about me?
Gorgias: No, what?
Socrates: That I’m the wisest man in Athens.
Gorgias: Really?
Soc: Of course, I’m far to humble to believe that, at least not without testing it.
Gor; Of course not.
Soc: So, I figured I would ask others, people whom I and society deem wise, what they know about things like virtue and goodness.
Gor: I see.
Soc: So, that’s why I’m talking to you now.
Gor: OK, so what would you like to talk about.
Soc: Can you tell me what you understand virtue to be?
Gor: Virtue is A.
Soc: Nope.
Gor: Virtue is B.
Soc: Nope.
Gor: Virtue is C.
Soc: Nope.
Gor: Virtue is D.
Soc: Nope.
Gor: I give up.
Soc: You know, I’ve talked to 14 other philosophers, Sophists and non-Sophists alike. You know what else, Gorgias?
Gor: NO, I don’t know what else, Socrates.
Soc: Glad you asked back. Every conversation has ended this same way.
Soc; You know what that means, Gorgias?
Gor: NO, I DON”T know what that means, Socrates.
Soc: I guess I am the wisest man in Athens. I at least admit what I don’t know.
Soc; And you know why?
Gor: NO, I DON”T know why, Socrates.
Soc; Because, from childhood, I’ve been guided by this wonderous inner daimon, to whom I owe my ultimate authority.

Smary at the least? Sanctimonious? Insufferable even? At least somewhat, and at times?

If the Platonic caricature is halfway close to reality, I don’t understand why Socrates wasn’t hauled up on charges earlier. Perhaps he was tolerated ‘on sufferance,’ to be mocked by an Aristophanes and others, until the loss of the Peloponnesian War and the two coups made people finally admit they were that tired of him.

Wittgenstein, linguistic games-playing, and analogies

The later Ludwig Wittgenstein is known for his philosophy of linguistics, summed up in the “Philosophical Investigations.” A common metaphor for what he did was that he worked to treat language, or at least sub-uses of it, like a game. More here on Wittgenstein, language games, and rules.

That leads to analogies galore, and regular readers of my philosophical posts should know that I love analogies.

These analogies fork into two large classes, as I see them.

The first?

Often, we talk past each other. That’s basically a lack of realization that we’re not quite playing the same game.

To use common board and card games, we can be far apart, or pretty close.

I may think we’re playing chess, and you think we’re playing Monopoly. A bit closer, but not too much, would be chess vs. checkers.

Or maybe you think we’re playing pinochle and I think we’re playing euchre. Or, closer yet, I think we’re playing contract bridge and you think we’re playing auction bridge.

Or, closer yet. We’re playing Monopoly, at your linguistic house, as you initiated the conversation. I think we’re playing Monopoly straight-up as written in the rule book, and you’re playing with added house rules. (Technically, this is not a private language, especially if you make clear that you have some added house rules, but, even if you initially don't, if I deduce that and you admit it.)

The early examples are usually no problem. The differences are recognized and hashed out. But, when most differences are eliminated, especially if the conversation is serious, the differences may get heated.

There’s four ways of responding.

One is to double down on talking past each other while continuing to play — or trying to — the same language game. The second is to double down on negotiating the differences as part of playing. The third is to stop playing, while starting a sidebar conversation to negotiate the differences. The fourth is to recognize an impasse and simply stop playing.

The fifth is something that one really can’t do in most actual board or card games. And, that is to pull a Husserl-like move and “bracket” the areas of the language game which are in disagreement.

As I mentioned, there are two main analogy forks.

The second?

Rather than talking past each other, it’s to quickly recognize that you’re saying the current game is, and needs to be, Monopoly, while I say it is, and needs to be, chess. We both double down on our starting positions, and soon accept that we’re not going to be playing together.

That often is a better move than to try to keep playing a game, or going through the motions. To take the first set of analogies, let’s say we’re pretty close on our language game — it’s straight Monopoly vs house-rules Monopoly. But, I refuse to play by your house rules from the start. Maybe it’s a matter of metanarratives, or something a bit like that; I’m generally predisposed against “house rules” versions of languages. Maybe you’ve earned distrust from me in the past for a linguistic version of an Overton Window with previous house games.

The neo-Cynic part of me says that a false agreement, or even a false partial agreement with bracketing, has unspoken signification for the future, too.

That said, when the differences are bigger, the simple answer is to state up front that I believe you’re either mistaken about your game, or, if it’s come to that, that I know you know you’re wanting to play the wrong game, and there’s reasons behind that.

==

Beyond that, I disagree with part of Wittgenstein's take. I don't believe that linguistic rules are purely abstract. He, of course, wrote before Chomsky and many others. However, I think some hard-core Wittgensteinians will still defend his version of linguistic games. 

I don't. Even with some of Chomsky's claims overstated, as those of some early follow-ups on him, he is wrong, and on philosophical grounds, not just science of mind ones. His abstract, idealized rules and family resemblances bear more than the smallest of whiffs of Platonism about them. And, in that sense, the Wittgenstein of the Investigations is the same as the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, at least in mindset.

And hence I don't think he would have written differently had he lived 30 years later, and seen Chomsky's work, or even had Chomsky written first. The style of the two books is, of course, different indeed. The psyche behind the Tractatus and the Investigations seems quite continuous, though, or even almost unchanged in many respects.

I also think the idea that the rules of a linguistic game, or the rules (Platonic capitalization intended) of Language as Game, with their abstraction beyond individual games, conflict with the idea of meaning as use.

I agree with the idea that the use of language is in general gamelike, and with different games in different situations. Most of the rest of Wittgenstein's thought, the older I get, the more I distance myself from it in particulars.

==

I've not yet talked much about Wittgenstein's theory of meaning as use, also expressed in the PI. It was, as readers of that book know, expressed in seeming opposition to Augustine's definition of meaning.

But, that's not quite right. I see Wittgenstein as attempt to reconstruct a better version of some of Augustine's ideas, rather than deconstructing them, and this reconstruction as being driven in part by Platonic thought.

Why do I say this?

I think an unspoken idea behind meaning as use parallels that of games. Sometimes we disagree. And, with the use of words, and the meaning behind them, I think Wittgenstein is hinting at Platonic ideals as the ultimate dictionary. Because grammar, sociological conventions and other such things aren't covered by Platonic theory, Wittgenstein, in talking about rules as abstract, or abstracts perhaps even more, can't hat-tip to Plato in the same way.

I think Wittgenstein related to Augustine more broadly as one tortured soul to another, including, per Wiki, via the influence of Otto Weininger. Certainly, the fact he thought Weininger wrong in an "interesting way" reflects issues with sexuality and more.

Say "mu" to Camus on meaninglessness

Albert Camus famously or infamously said in "The Myth of Sisyphus" (summary and Wikipedia) that there is one ultimate issue in philosophy:

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

Of course, that relates to, and cornerstones, issues in his absurdist philosophy, and in the related existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre and others.

Theists, especially Christian apologists, have used this as a cudgel, whacking secular existentialists over the head with the idea that they, or we, claim that life is "meaningless" and that there is therefore no recourse at end but suicide.

Well, a new essay at Massimo Pigliucci's Scientia Salon, by John G. Messerly, deals with this issue in part. And, it's stimulated me to yet further thought, reflected in part, and starting with, my second comment on the essay.

That said, let's unpack this issue a bit further. I'll then get to the second half of that second comment and go from there.

Camus, of course, said suicide was not the answer — revolt was. Which might be true. Revolt while accepting the modern absurdity of life.

Modern humanistic psychologists of a secularist mindset say that meaning is what we bring to the table.

But, beyond that, what if "meaningless(ness)" as traditionally defined in philosophy and psychology isn't exactly the issue?

And now, to that comment.

I think Camus was asking the wrong question. 

 Life is neither meaningful nor meaningless, if we take “meaningless” to be the opposite of “meaningful.”  

 If we instead, talk about “without meaning” or “meaning-less” (sic) we can hopefully understand this not as an opposition to “meaningful” but simply that the issue of “meaning” is, if not a category mistake, one of those issues about which we should be silent, or even more, per logical positivism, a question that is itself … without meaning!

 It’s true that, as part of our attempts to control our surroundings, we probably have “meaning seekers” as well as “pattern detectors” and “agency imputers” halfway hardwired into our brains. 

 But, per Hume’s is ≠ ought, that doesn’t mean that we have to follow them in falsely looking for agency — or falsely imputing meaning where it doesn’t exist, or falsely looking for it when it’s not part of the issue.

Let's go a bit further.

"Meaning" and "meaninglessness" also seems to be one of those polarities, like "free will" vs. "determinism," that's wrong in other ways.

First, it's presuming that a polarity should exist.

Second, it assumes that one should, in some degree at least, "reduce" to the other, rather than both be "unified" in a larger theory, just like general relativity and quantum theory will surely "unify" rather than having one reduce to the other.

Third, like the free will half of that first duality, a desire for meaning — or, a desire to frame ordering one's life around meaning, and trying to justify how to frame it without meaning — seems based in part on religion. I've said that this seems true to some degree of many secular defenders of classical free will, on religion and guilt connecting to free will.

Indeed, the Sparknotes summary, on the first link, puts this in is vs. ought terms, as far as how Camus treats Sisyphus:

As his starting point, Camus takes up the question of whether, on the one hand, we are free agents with souls and values, or if, on the other hand, we are just matter that moves about with mindless regularity. 

 Camus is interested in finding a third alternative. Can we acknowledge that life is meaningless without committing suicide? Do we have to at least hope that life has a meaning in order to live? Can we have values if we acknowledge that values are meaningless? Essentially, Camus is asking if the second of the two worldviews sketched above is livable.

But, just as I have repeatedly, most  notably here and in my own essay for Pigliucci, said that we should say “mu” to the traditional “free will versus determinism” polarity, I think we need to similarly “unask” Camus here.  (And Monty Python.)

So, per my pull quote from my comment at Massimo's, if life should not be viewed though a "meaning versus meaningless" filter, what should we then do?

Well, the reference to Farmville, Candy Crush and other Facebook games aside, in this issue of Existentialist Comics, keeping an intelligent Sisyphus happy is probably harder than this. That's especially true for those like Camus and other professional and amateur philosophers who wrestle with these questions. We are "cursed" with intelligence, and speculative intelligence in general.

That said, where do we go from here, to find a better, more authentic contentment than Sisyphus?

To me, the original existentialism, or the Zen of the east from which I get my "mu" to Camus' question, is our starting point.

Recognizing that life simply "is," not in the scientific sense, but in a philosophical and a psychological sense, is the lodestar.

From there, finding contentment comes next. Contentment, to me, is both "deeper" psychologically and less ephemeral than "happiness." The likes of Daniel Kahnemann and other modern psychologists strongly agree.

And, it's not necessarily based on old ideas of how we "have to" find meaning, or create meaning, to be happy.

Second, per the essay that I linked that sparked these comments, as one other commenter noted, "progress" is usually defined in teleological terms. People often define meaning in the same way, which of course is another problem, and one recognized in part by existentialist and absurdist philosophers.

If your meaning is defined from achieving a goal, then you are doomed to frustration in never achieving it, or, like Sisyphus, having your "achievement clock" reset, or new layers added to it, or whatever.

And, what if you do achieve a goal of teleologically-based progress? What then? In the modern West, often, "emptiness," followed by chasing after some new goal.

"Revolt" might be one way of achieving this. But, I think it needs to be somewhat more comprehensive, maybe even somewhat more Cynical, as I discuss in calling for a neo-Cynicism, than Camus realized. The revolt has to include a revolt against teleology.

Even "authenticity" must be put under our Cynical microscope. Too often, "authenticity" is seen in a quasi-Platonic sense, as in "There's some ideal Me out there, and that's what I want to be."

Well, no there's not.

Each one of us is the result of massive contingency in a materialist universe. There's no way any ideal Me or You exists.

So, authenticity means rejecting the strictures of society that don't agree with deeper layers of our selves — before they become part of those deeper layers.

At the same time (heads up, Black Bloc!) it means questioning the idea of "revolt for revolt's sake" (sorry, any hyper-Camuseans) or any other "X for X's sake."

I'm not a process theologian, or anything close.

But, I will call myself a sort of "process psychologist."

As such, meaning is created, not found. And, it's created on an ongoing, not a static basis. It's part of a dialogue between a changing self, a current moment, and a current moment that is part of a larger stream of time.

And thus, meaning changes throughout life. Why wouldn't it?

Plato sells his soul to Google at the Googleplex

Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away by Rebecca Goldstein

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I finally went with a 2-star rating for this book. I will note that Goldstein did stimulate my thought at times, albeit half the time to take notes on how she was wrong, and did get me to modify somewhat the harsh take I’ve had on Socrates since reading Izzy Stone, but, the book is still not that good.

First, a couple of overarching issues.

I am discomfited by a professional philosopher diving into the tank of commercial toutery. Plato can’t just have a laptop, he has to have a Chromebook. He can’t just like the Internet, he has to like Google for searches rather than using a generic term for Internet search. He has to like Google’s cloud-based services. He has to like Google so much that, per one chapter that gives the book its title, he does indeed visit Google’s Googleplex, where much of the chapter’s dialogue is taken up by a Google PR flak.

Frankly, it made me want to vomit. Strangely, even among “negative” reviewers, I’m seemingly the first to hit that much on this issue.
The second overarching issue, is despite all the puffery on the blurbs and on some five-star reviews, Goldstein is not that good of a writer in my opinion. The book lacks some coherence, including exactly how she’s trying to make Plato relevant for today and why. Plus, some specific writing tricks do not float my boat.

On page 192, she says in a footnote: “I’m not sure whether Plato is just managing Munitz here or is really implying that she’s guardian material.” Bulls***. Don’t go Stanley Fish on me. You know full well what your conscious intention was with the passage you footnoted.
I'm skipping around a bit, in part to get more feel for the book, and in part because it hasn't floated my boat that much so far, despite all the advance touts it's gotten.

First, Goldstein, while noting Whitehead's observation about all later philosophy being but footnotes to Plato and Aristotle, then noting many modern philosophers disagree, doesn't explain why she, essentially, comes down on the side of Whitehead. And, as a philosopher, she knows that for a philosopher not to “argumentatively” justify one’s decision or stance on something like this is …. Unphilosophical!

Second, some of her specific stances related to Platonism are ones that are also contentious. The idea that there’s no single character in Plato’s dialogues that truly represents him? I know that’s nowhere unanimous. One need not believe that Socrates is Plato’s sole voice to nonetheless believe that he is his primary one, and certainly so in his early and middle dialogues.

Third, she buys wholeheartedly and blindly into Plato’s description of who the Sophists were. Plenty a critic of this position has noted that the elitists like Socrates, and arguably, Plato, disliked the Sophists not because they proposed to teach “sophistry” in its modern English terms, but because they proposed to, relatively inexpensively, teach the basics of rhetorical tools that would help level the social and legal playing field between the rich and the non-rich.

Related to that, even if Plato's description of Socrates isn't the be-all and end-all of who Socrates was, she certainly seems to take at face value Plato's presentation of Socrates as a straight shooter, never engaging in sophistry himself. Nor does she ever entertain the idea that, if Plato is a mouthpiece or tool of Socrates at times, in turn, his "opponents" are just straw men for positions they never actually held.

Fourth, she’s not proven at best, possibly wrong at worse, on the background of “Ivriim,” which may be the root the Hebrew word for “Hebrew.” Yes, it does mean “pass over,” or “pass through,” in its verbal root, but, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Hebrews applied it to themselves as “over the Jordan.” First, no ancient people are likely to define themselves this way, in terms of another culture or nation’s geographic point of view. Nor are the Jews likely to have said this about themselves because their mythical ancestor came from Transjordan and beyond. And, her interpretation starts with the noun form.

Better understandings of the root of this word are that as people “passing through,” it can mean immigrants, without geographic reference. Again, though, would a people likely refer to themselves that way? Interestingly, the verb is used in Genesis 15, where the torches pass between the cuts of meat during the Abrahamic covenant ceremony. That is one possible alternative etymology.

Another? “Hebrews” may well instead be a patronymic from alleged ancestor Eber (same consonantal Hebrew). And, the older attempts to connect them to the Egyptian “Hapiru,” while left by the wayside today, may not be totally dead.

Anyway, the fact that Goldstein, in a book about Plato, feels the need not just to talk about “Hebrews,” but the Hebrew etymology more than once, and possibly getting it wrong each and every time, is also disconcerting.

That’s from the first chapter.

On talking about the Republic, she made me realize that, of course, Plato’s ideas for youth education founder on Piaget’s stages of development. Pre-adolescents wouldn’t have been ready for his program. Surely, somebody else has mentioned that somewhere. But, she doesn’t.

Related?

I just realized that Plato's Allegory of the Cave has two holes in it as an analogy. First, if all we see our shadows, each of us has to be in our own cave; we can't be in one common cave because, of course, other people have to be shadows, too. Of course, to write it that way would wreck some of its force. Second, Plato talks about one person being freed then compelled to re-see things. Plato doesn't mention a personal agent, but the language sure implies one. And, of course, no other person can compel new knowledge. Even if an agent is not intended, the passivity of the allegory, the "being freed," is just wrong.

Also, one need not agree with Izzy Stone’s attributing Socrates’ death entirely to legitimate politics to nonetheless say that it was part of it.

What I got from all of this is a Goldstein who largely believes in the largely idealized picture of Socrates that Plato has handed us.

So, I guess she stimulated my mind to reject the Whitehead idea that the rest of philosophy is but footnotes to Plato and Aristotle.

Besides the Googleplex chapter, one other one rings very false. That’s the one about Plato appearing on a would-be Fox News with an ersatz Bill O’Reilly.

It all adds up to the fact that she is NOT a skilled writer, period and end of story, despite the fluffy touts from A.C. Grayling and many another. She needed an editor with a good understanding of both philosophy and classics, and a firm and heavy hand, and got none. (Sic semper the decline of the modern book industry.)

Finally, from all this, no matter my interest in philosophy, I won’t be reading another book of hers.

I'm not sure which bothers me most — the commercialism itself, the commercialism without warrant (philosophical or otherwise), the failure to defend the modern relevance of Plato before jumping in to chapters, or the failure to justify her interpretation of Plato.

In any case, it's a failure. There's also, in a Gertrude Stein sense, no "there" there. There's not a lot of unification between chapters.

Update: Now I know more of why it's bad: Goldstein is Steve Pinker's wife.

View all my reviews

Non-ideal, non-Platonic, ideas and bodies

I roll over in bed

And my arm touches

My slightly pudgy, definitely non-Platonic stomach.

My mass of human flesh

Feels vaguely warm, vaguely bland

On a semi-sleepless early night of sleep.

I feel detached from my self,

Reflected by being detached from my body.

More than detachment from my body,

Or from my self, in general,

I feel detached from life.

I feel burned out by the world.

It is of little help

To read that I am not alone

In modern America,

Or in the modern West.

Misery, when the psychological level

Of a low-grade, chronic toothache,

Cares little for company one way or another.

The world of Platonic ideas

Usually as currently dressed in Christian drag

Is thereby appealing for many.

But it is the ideas

That are shadows on the walls of the cave

And not the reality.

PLATONISM AS PSYCHOLOGICAL BALM

When I was younger,
I believed in the Platonic ideal.
I especially believed in the ideal of myself;
Perfect, and so, incorporeal.
The Platonic equivalent
Of the Pauline spiritual body.
Why?
Was it a love of Platonic philosophy,
Or rather a Pauline loathing of the physical?
I believe the latter.
Not only had I internalized
Augustinian angst about concupiscence,
I also had been buffeted by childhood slings and arrows.
Bullying by neighborhood acquaintances,
Abuse of various types at home,
Asthma, allergies and other breathing problems,
A bit of a lisp,
Late growth and skinniness.
What shy, quiet, lonely, hurting boy
Wouldn’t harbor Platonic thoughts
As a secret dream of salvation
From the curse and burden of the physical,
Deliverance from a body
That brought nothing but pain?

The reason one or two particular versions of early Christianity has some appeal to me

But not enough realism, for the most part, to be usable

Whether or not there even was a Jesus of history, one of the earliest Christianities, and the first to impute words to a historical Jesus, was the Cynic-shaped “Galilean Christianity.”

Combining the maxims and convention-rejecting emphasis of Cynicism with the prophetic preaching of late-Israelite proto-Judaism was a potent mix. For a person wanting a foundation for personal and spiritual growth that transcended the materialism of its day just as much as ours, why wouldn’t a quasi-idealist like me be attracted?

And, speaking of idealism …

The middle Platonism of the early Christian philosophers has some appeal. Defining a heaven or afterlife as a progression into a Platonic ideal self and locale, without the mysticism or worse of later Neoplatonism has some appeal, especially if one does so with a non-Greek emphasis on a physical, yet somehow Paulist spiritual, body, and rejects the existence of an immaterial soul.

Of course, that’s not a key tenet of Platonism.

As for the other aspects of Christianity in its development, the jealous tribal God Yahweh of the Torah and Former Prophets has zero appeal. Neither does the dripping vengeance of Iranian apocalyptic dualism, wedded and welded to Judaism beginning with Daniel. Certainly the religious mysticism and the philosophical mumbo-jumbo of Paul’s adaptation of eastern Mediterranean mystery religions doesn’t, either.

Alas, though, there’s no indication of a divinity of any sort, let alone one powerful enough to recreate physical bodies into some Platonic ideal.

As for Cynic maxims and Israelite outcries, well I can, and hope I continue to, get better and living that from a secular background.