Is Socratic Philosophy Possible?

[The Grey Man]

The truth is this: none of the gods loves wisdom or desires to become wise for they are wise already. Nor does anyone else who is wise love wisdom. Neither do the ignorant love wisdom, or desire to become wise, for this is the harshest thing about ignorance, that those who are neither good nor beautiful nor sensible think that they are good enough. No one desires what they are lacking when they do not think themselves lacking.

Plato's theory of forms, in its various forms, has been one of the most, if not the most persistent school of metaphysical thought in the history of Western civilization. Ever since its systematization and synthesis with nascent Christianity by the Church Fathers in the early centuries of our era, it has been a mainstay of the conceptual arsenal of theologians and theistic apologists of all stripes. The notion that this visible, temporal world of Becoming in which we all live is a distorted representation of an occult, changeless world of Being has ever served as a means of theoretically reconciling the multiplicity and corruptibility of concrete things with the eternal, undivided goodness of God. With the rise of empiricist metaphysics in the wake of the scientific revolution inaugurated by Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon, and, above all, Newton, we may now ask, What residual relevance does the old Platonic way of thinking about the world retain, if any? With this new emphasis on the observable and the testable, is there any room for thinking about things as they are independently of human experience?

The answer to this question will, I think, become clear to anyone who understands just what Plato is talking about when he talks about "forms." In one of his dialogues, he has Socrates explain them rather poetically to the aristocrat Meno as the features (perhaps the hills and clouds) of a world of truth that his soul used to inhabit before she took up residence in this false one. According to Socrates, the soul has forgotten about this prenatal world, but can "recollect" certain features of it by recognizing in the particular objects of everyday life certain universal forms. Now, it is common to pay lip service to Plato, to say that, though his theory of forms was a spirited "early attempt" at acquiring knowledge, he could provide only the semblance of a solution using metaphorical language because he lacked the sophisticated hypothetico-deductive method that modern scientists use to produce meaningful statements about the world. This narrative, however, ignores the fact that Plato's forms are not theoretical posits the causal agency of which is a hypothesis to be experimentally tested. They are not the cause of any specific natural phenomenon, but the conditions of the representation of phenomena in general. It was not for no reason that the sign above the entrance to the Academy read: "Let no-one ignorant of geometry enter here."

Indeed, Socrates illustrates his notion of "recollection" by showing that one of Meno's slaves, who lacks any knowledge of geometrical concepts, is nevertheless capable of perceiving geometrical necessities. Socrates draws a hollow square on the ground and asks the slave how the size of the area on the inside of the square can be doubled. The slave betrays his ignorance by guessing that the lengths of the sides must be doubled but, when Socrates extends the sides to be equal to the diagonal distance between any two opposite corners of the square, the slave immediately agrees that this is the correct procedure, not just for the square in front of him, but for all squares—and herein lies the difference between scientific knowledge and mathematical knowledge. We can easily imagine the discontinuation of any apparently exceptionless dynamical pattern (e.g. the failure of the sun to rise tomorrow morning), but we cannot imagine any breach of mathematical law. Hence why so many scientists are empiricist thinkers and so many mathematicians Platonists.

This is all well and good, but if Socratic recollection is going to be of practical use to us, we must be able to "remember" not only mathematical laws, but moral ones as well. We must somehow already know what is good without knowing that we know it; we must be ignorant in our wisdom and wise in our ignorance.* What do you think? Are we in possession of ethical knowledge without knowing it? Is Socratic philosophy possible?

*

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries.

Could it be...?

 

[Cognisant]

The devil's in the details.

Machinists strive to create perfect platonic parts but every machinist knows perfection, true absolute perfection, is impossible. A scratch imperceptible to the naked eye is a colossal canyon when viewed under and electron microscope. Indeed even if you were to create something by placing individual atoms each of those atoms has it's own charge, spin and could decay at any moment.

It's all well and good to design parts on a computer where absolute mathematical precision is not only possible it's the default state of being. But those parts aren't real and they can never be real indeed they can never be entirely modeled for they exist not as things in of themselves but rather as defined sets of parameters.

Likewise god who exists only in people's heads can only exist as an abstraction because he too is nothing more than a defined set of parameters.
All good, all knowing, all powerful.
Oh and they contradict each other.

Edit: I'm amazed nobody gave me shit for "platonic parts"

 

[DoIMustHaveAnUsername?]

Platonic forms seemed to be getting somewhere to the idea of forming a generic concept and abstraction. One may say the generic idea of chair is in-itself somewhat platonic. But I don't think there is much more to it; nothing to warrant a literal metaphysical plane of existence to ground abstract entities.


The Socratic idea of finding perfect definitions and thus getting closer to form of the idea can also be misdirected. For example, as Wittgenstein argued (IIRC), there is no definition of game that can include all objects that we consider as game. Language and concepts are tricky, we may have started from some rough idea of what we want to mean with 'game', and we have kept on adding other objects based on similarities and resemnblances with some subset example of games - in the end, ending up with a set of games with no true common feature. Concepts are often fuzzy and rough - perhaps the sophists providing 'examples' as definition had the correct idea in the end.

About our ability to abstract and generalize, it seems possible to potentially explain how we do this with neuroscience, and why we can do this through evolutionary explanations. And that some objects can be generalizable or abstractable can be due to real concrete non-platonic features sharing similarity that make similar impressions on the mind. It's not clear where ever is the need of a Platonic realm for our ability to abstract and deal with abstract features.

In case of Meno, all it seems to demonstrate that we have a innate mathematical-geometrical intuition or an innate predisposition to develop the intuition. While in Socrate's contemporary times 'recollection' may have been a plausible explanation, now we can have alternative explanations - evolution. Learning to perceive the world in regular and mathematical manner could have been selected by natural selection - not too different that innate instincts we can find on other animals.

Even in case of mathematics, I don't see a need for a metaphysical platonic world, or 'real' abstract objects. That doesn't mean I think mathematics are JUST random formalisms. I don't believe in the dichotomy that if something is objectively true it must exist in some sense OR if it does not exist as 'real' abstract entity, it is not objective true or just mere arbitrary formal rules. Mathematical facts can be objectively true while not existing as anything at all. In fact, it is due to their very necessary nature that they don't need to be grounded in some existence. Logical truths can be considered close to mathematics. X=X - the law of identity may be said to be a necessary truth where X is any logically possible object. Yet it seems rather strange that the abstract fact that X=X must 'exist' somewhere in someway to be true. It is true not because the abstract fact exist in some platonic realm or some mind of god, but because nothing that may come to existence can violate the relation - and everything that may come into existence has to maintain the relation. It is true simply because it can't be false. Parfit's metaphysical cognitivism (as argued in philsurvey) seems to be close to it.

Ethical rules can be similarly innate as mathematical intuitions, or we can shave a predisposition to develop ethical intuitions early on. But it may be similarly developed due to evolution or something. However, even still, some of the developed intuitions may have a normative force just like mathematical intuitions. Nevertheless, I don't think we really innately possess all the necessary ethical intuitions or even the correct ones.
I suspect much of our intuitions are contradictory and inconsistent which is reflected when we try to codify different aspects of the intuitions and compare it in thought experiments. But similarly, not all of our initial mathematical intuitions were correct, or exhaustive. We also have a socio-cultural and memetic evolution guiding the evolution of our thinking tools including mathematics. Similarly our grasp on ethics may improve too.

Reflection on our intuitions may enable us some 'recollection' - allowing us to put the intuitions under a linguistic structure to concsciously reason with it. But I am not sure about seriously considering it as a recollection, but merely an activity of mind engaged in making certain intuitive despositions more explicit. Sometimes reflection may result in finding counter-intuitive ideas. But that can still be just that - finding new knowledge through reflection even if it's in an a priori space - it doesn't have to be 'recollection'.