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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1374 Posts |
 Posted - Jun 09 2010 : 10:51:19 AM
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This is our next big question. This time, I want to set the stage for the discussion with a lecture specifically on this question. So before you post anything here, you need to go read my lecture. You'll find it in the Reading Room under the title "Philosophy and Reality." Questions or comments regarding the lecture itself could go on its Discussion page, but this is the place where I want us to discuss our second big question: the question that lecture is designed to put clearly before us. So unless you're sure that your comment or question pertains to my lecture only and not to the question about whether philosophers are in touch with reality, post it here.
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Aaron Mund
Apprentice
37 Posts |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1374 Posts |
Posted - Jun 09 2010 : 9:59:28 PM
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However paradoxical it may seem, I think you can be in touch with something -- already have something in a certain way -- that you're trying to find. When you read the Meno for this coming week, keep an eye open for the context in which the following exchange occurs: quote:
MENON: And how will you try to find out something, Socrates, when you have no notion at all what it is? Will you lay out before us a thing you don't know, and then try to find it? Or, if at best you meet it by chance, how will you know this is that which you did not know?
SOCRATES: I understand what you wish to say, Menon. You look on this as a piece of chop-logic, don't you see, as if a man cannot try to find either what he knows or what he does not know. Of course he would never try to find what he knows, because he knows it, and in that case, he needs no trying to find; or what he does not know, because he does not know what he will try to find. (80d-e, Rouse 37)
I don't accept the theory of recollection developed in the Phaedo, which Sokrates cites again in the Meno as a way of explaining how this is possible, but I think that what that theory is an attempt to explain is a real enough phenomenon. This is a context in which we really do have what we're looking for. Long before people had discovered an intellectually satisfying way of saying just what triangularity consists in, they could recognize triangles as triangles when they came across them. Similarly, the fact, if it is a fact, that we still haven't found intellectually satisfying ways of saying what beauty is or what wisdom is doesn't keep us from using and applying those two words. I rather like the metaphor of chasing rainbows, actually, even though it's usually used -- just as Menon was drawn to that piece of "chop-logic" -- as a way of suggesting that a quest really is a pointless one. The rainbow is also something that we really have even if we can never "get hold" of it in quite the way we would like to when we are children. |
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Richard Mikel
Apprentice
32 Posts |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1374 Posts |
Posted - Jun 10 2010 : 3:26:41 PM
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Death certainly is a reality in the modern sense of the word! As for whether or not it's one of the realities in Sokrates' sense of the word, how could we tell? Answer: we simply have to ask the following question: is it the x-ness of some x, the being-what-it-is of a thing of a certain kind, the essence or nature of things of some particular kind? If the answer is "yes," then it's one of the realities -- unless it's the privation of one of the realities.
I didn't talk about this last little twist (privations) in the lecture, because I didn't want to complicate things too much right off the bat, but really, we can't ignore it. Triangularity is the being triangular of triangles; it really is the essence or nature of triangles. It's something that all triangles have in common. OK. Now consider things that aren't triangles. Is there something we could put into words that would capture what everything that isn't a triangle has in common? No, there's not. So non-triangularity isn't one of the realities. Similarly, ugliness isn't a reality, badness isn't a reality, coldness isn't a reality, and so on. What makes a non-triangle a non-triangle is its lack of triangularity, not its possession of non-triangularity. Such a lack is, by the time there's real clarity about this with Aristotle, called a privation. Plato never has Sokrates speak in just those terms (the term hasn't been invented yet), but implicitly, what Aristotle calls privations are generally not treated by Sokrates as realities.
The reason this is important in connection with the topic of death is this: one of the meanings of "death" is lifelessness, and the lifelessness of the lifeless (the being dead of the dead) looks superficially as if it would qualify. Surely, one might say, this is a case of the x-ness of some x. The language we're using here has the right grammatical form. True enough, but lifelessness is the privation of life. So the livingness of the living (the being alive of that which is alive) is one of the realities. The lifelessness of the lifeless is not.
Unless, of course, Joe and the Pythagoreans are right, and being alive is being dead and being dead is being alive -- a position far too paradoxical (if I weren't being polite, I'd say out-and-out contradictory) for my taste!
Just to go on the record about this in case it isn't already obvious, I myself don't think that doing philosophy should be seen as practicing dying and being dead. Do you take that idea at all seriously?
By the way, this notion of privation has passed, as has so much else in ancient philosophy, into our science. Think about the way in which physicists think of darkness as the absence of light and of coldness as the absence of heat. The term "privation" (or the term "lack") gets at the very same thing we express by means of the word "absence" in this context. |
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Aaron Mund
Apprentice
37 Posts |
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Eliott Dimond
Fledgling
19 Posts |
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Cassie Vrooman
Apprentice
32 Posts |
Posted - Jun 13 2010 : 8:57:23 PM
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Tom, I am slightly confused. Are you saying that because death is the absence of life, the privation of life, death, itself, is not a reality?
If I can shed some light on where this is going for Eliott, I think we are trying to decide if death is a reality. This is relevant because I think Socrates seems to be "in touch" with death -- the idea of death -- in the Phaedo, but if this is not a reality, we cannot say that he is, in fact, in touch with a reality -- not, that is, in the case of death.
[Lightly edited to enhance readability -TT] |
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Eliott Dimond
Fledgling
19 Posts |
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Cassie Vrooman
Apprentice
32 Posts |
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Jenna Stimac
Apprentice
28 Posts |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1374 Posts |
Posted - Jun 14 2010 : 1:50:25 PM
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So many voices all at once! Let me take the questions raised in the last five posts up one by one. This may take a little while, so be prepared for this particular post to evolve.
First, yes to all three of you (and Katie too if she actually raised this question anywhere): I am saying that since death in the sense of the absence of life, the lifelessness of the lifeless, is a privation of one of the realities, namely being alive, it itself is not a reality -- not in the sense in which "reality" means what Sokrates means by the term.
Second, why should we see it this way around instead of the other way around and regard being alive as just the absence of lifelessness? Because that would be as strange as seeing motion as the absence of rest, heat as the absence of coldness, or light as the absence of darkness. Things can be more or less alive (closer to or further from being dead) just as they can be moving more or less (closer to or further from being at rest), more or less hot (closer to or further from having a temperature of absolute zero), more or less bright (closer to or further from emitting or reflecting no light at all). In the one direction, we have a zero point. In the other direction, we have variations in degree without its being the case that there's a maximum. A privation, lack, or absence can therefore be complete. Not so with a reality. Is this object absolutely cold? That question makes sense whereas the question "Is this object absolutely hot?" does not. The temperature scale has no other end. Is this plant completely dead? That question makes sense whereas the question "Is this plant completely alive?" does not. The scale of vitality or viability has no other end.
The next question I'll address is this one of yours, Eliott: "Is the lifelessness of the lifeless not a reality because we are using the word "life" to describe the lifeless?" The answer is "no"; I've just said why the lifelessness of the lifeless isn't a reality. We're not talking about language here. We're talking about things and the being of things.
Next, I want to address some assumptions that some of you have made, I think, no good reason.
At one point, Cassie, you say: "I think Socrates seems to be "in touch" with death -- the idea of death -- in the Phaedo, but if this is not a reality, we cannot say that he is, in fact, in touch with a reality -- not, that is, in the case of death." This makes sense only if we identify death with the idea of death, and these two things are not the same. The idea of a thing and the thing of which it is an idea are in general very different (the idea of triangularity, for example, certainly isn't the same thing as triangularity: being triangular), and ideas -- and indeed mental representations in general -- certainly aren't the things that Sokrates is calling "the realities." In any case, why is it that you want to say that Sokrates is in touch with the idea of death in the Phaedo? More importantly, what does this even mean?
Next, Eliott, you say, I assume because you think Cassie has said that Socrates is in touch with death and that she's right about this: "So we are saying that Sokrates is in fact in touch with death." You certainly mustn't assume that I'm saying this (I haven't said it, and feel no inclination to say it), and I don't even think you should assume that Cassie is saying this, since what she actually said was "I think Socrates seems to be "in touch" with death...in the Phaedo. Even she hasn't gone so far as to say that he is in touch with death. And now a question for you: what would it even be to be in touch with death?
Now for you, Jenna. First of all, I'll leave it to Richard to respond concerning the pertinence of that remark of his that you quote to our current topic. Second, when I said "The rainbow is also something that we really have even if we can never 'get hold' of it in quite the way we would like to when we are children," I did mean to liken the rainbow in both of the respects I mentioned here to the realities -- not to reality, but to the realities.
The sense in which we really have the rainbow is that we can see it. The sense in which we can never "get hold" of it in quite the way we would like to when we are children is that we can never touch it, never walk under it, never climb up on it or slide down one side of it: it's not a substantial physical thing of the sort it may seem to be at first glance. Similarly, the sense in which we really have the realities is that we understand them well enough to be able to recognize things as things of the kind they are even when we have enormous difficulties putting their essences into words. The sense in which we can never "get hold" of them in quite the way we would like to when we first wish we could grasp them from what they are is that they themselves aren't concrete, describable beings. Indeed, they're not beings at all. But now, of course, I'm just repeating things I've already said in "Philosophy and Reality," and it may be that you've got questions about one or another of those particular claims. |
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Cassie Vrooman
Apprentice
32 Posts |
Posted - Jun 14 2010 : 9:04:22 PM
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I have always thought that to be in touch with anything a person must be in a state of understanding and acceptance of that thing. Concerning what I said previously, I am referring to the idea of death. After much thought on this I would like to clarify, or rather, rephrase what I said previously.
We have said that life is, in fact, a reality. And there is a general consensus that dying and the idea of death, not death itself, is a part of life so it would follow that the idea of death is a reality. So to rephrase, I think Socrates seems to be in touch with the idea of death in the Phaedo. What I mean by that is that Socrates seems to understand that dying is a part of life and more importantly, he has accepted that it is something we all must face. So concerning dying and the idea of death, Socrates is in touch with that particular reality.
I hope, Tom, that this makes sense and answers the questions you posed for me.
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1374 Posts |
Posted - Jun 14 2010 : 10:10:54 PM
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| Cassie, all that makes eminently good sense -- provided that you're using the word "reality" to mean what we usually use it to mean and not to mean what Sokrates uses it to mean when he speaks of the realities. |
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Cassie Vrooman
Apprentice
32 Posts |
Posted - Jun 14 2010 : 10:24:23 PM
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| If we have agreed that dying is part of life, would dying not be part of the "livingness of living"? In which case it would fall under the realities that Socrates speaks of, specifically the reality of living. |
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Joseph Haag
Moderator
172 Posts |
Posted - Jun 15 2010 : 2:21:12 PM
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If I may ask, there has been a great deal of talk so far about the "blank-ness" of "blank" (fill in the blank with whatever term you like.) In other words, there has been quite an emphasis on such things as "the livingness of living" (Cassie) or badness, coldness, or ugliness (Tom.) The list could go on ad infinitum, but what I would like to know is this: if we are not concerned so much with the particular concrete things that exhibit a given quality or contain a given attribute (for example, I am not so much concerned with this particular good cup of coffee here at my desk right now) but instead we are concerned with the goodness of that cup of coffee then the following question arises in my mind: where does the goodness of the good coffee dwell? Where does the badness of the bad fast food burger dwell?
It seems to me we are almost setting ourselves up for a third realm in which the goodness and badness of things must dwell. For we are not concerned with the objects that surround us, nor can we say that the goodness or badness just dwell in our minds. So we really are setting up a third realm, almost like the one Hegel set up that contains spirit. Am I wrong to say that the goodness and badness of things does not dwell in the objects nor in our minds but must dwell in a third realm?
In other words, what is the realm in which reality dwells? |
Edited by - Joseph Haag on Jun 15 2010 2:25:43 PM |
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Joseph Haag
Moderator
172 Posts |
Posted - Jun 15 2010 : 2:22:42 PM
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| And if I am wrong (which I probably am) could someone please tell me where the goodness and badness of things dwells? |
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Aaron Mund
Apprentice
37 Posts |
Posted - Jun 15 2010 : 3:28:29 PM
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Joe, I have to say that is a intriguing question as to where _____ness is. We can taste goodness of food or hear badness of music. But it is not like the keyboard under my hands that I can touch. But then how do we hear, touch, or taste the thingness of something?
I have had the idea for a while now that we build our own realities. What any of you see as a reality I may not see as a reality. If reality is in a third realm within our minds then wouldn't my idea have some weight behind it? Our minds are comprised of many experiences from eating, to sitting in a class, to where ever we have been. All being imputed into our super computers. Out comes wisdom, opinions, and- realities? Anyone else have thoughts on this?
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Richard Mikel
Apprentice
32 Posts |
Posted - Jun 15 2010 : 5:38:20 PM
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Jenna, it was in reference to the idea of chasing rainbows. Maybe you aren't ever able to reach or obtain the rainbow (or in this case realities), but along the way you're likely to learn something. As a child it may not seem relevant that you'll never actually get a hold a it, but it sure is entertaining gives you some sort of experience.
Aaron and Joe, are we going along with the idea that one thing may be a reality to some and nothing to another? For example, a certain type of food being a delicacy in one country and something people would dream of eating in another? |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1374 Posts |
Posted - Jun 16 2010 : 10:01:08 AM
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OK, Cassie first: I don't think that we have agreed that dying is part of life. You've said that a number of times in this thread. Has anyone else? I don't see that anyone else has agreed that this is so. Also, I've just got done doing a search of the entire wiki, and I don't see signs there of any discussion of whether or not dying is a part of life that could have resulted in anything like an agreement that it is.
My own view is that dying is actually the whole of life -- living -- for a human being. Similarly for being born (coming to life) in the sense of starting to live. Why? Because I think that dying is getting closer and closer to the end of one's life and that each of us is doing that as long as he or she is alive. No sooner are we born than we begin to die. We don't like to admit it, of course. We like to say to ourselves: "that part will come later." But we like to put everything off as long as possible -- at least everything that's painful or distasteful. How many of us even put off living? Be that as it may. As for coming to life, I think that that's getting started in life, moving away from the beginning, and I think that each of us is also doing that as long as he or she is alive. For as long as we live, we are just getting started. Of course we also don't like to believe that we're beginners till the very end, but we are.
God, as He is understood in mainstream traditional Christian theology, is unborn and undying, a being that does not even exist in time. His eternity is to be distinguished absolutely from sempiternity. Well, whether God exists or is Himself a purely mythical being, we are most certainly not the least bit like God in this respect. We are mortals. And mortals are born and die. Their being mortals is being born and dying through and through because their time has a beginning and an end. That's what I think at least. So I certainly wouldn't say that dying is a part of life.
But we weren't talking about living. We were talking about livingness -- being alive. And by "death" what we meant was not dying but being dead. My claim is that being alive is one of the realities and that being dead would be one of the realities if it weren't simply the privation of being alive. One is never dead while alive (even if one is always dying for as long as one lives). Being dead is: not being alive. So being dead is not even a part of being alive.
* * *
Now, Joe and Aaron: "Where is it?" or "Where is it to be found?" is not always a sensible question (for example: there's something fundamentally wrong with the question: "Where is the 14th century?"), so I worry that perhaps the questions "Where are the realities?" or "Where do they dwell?" may themselves not be sensible questions. Still, I'll play along for the moment just to see where this might go....
I trust you won't put up with such "cute" answers as: "323 McKee on the UNC Campus," or "3400 W. 4th St. Rd. in Greeley, Colorado," or "Over at my place in Athens" (signed: Plato), or "in the class forum," or "in the realm of pure being." I certainly wouldn't put up with them if I were you. Does Sokrates help us here? I don't know. You may recall that in the Phaedo, he says: "is it not clear that in reasoning, if anywhere, something of the realities becomes visible...?" (Phaedo 65c, Rouse 558). Could this be the answer: "The realities dwell -- are to be found -- in reasoning"? (The phrase "in reasoning" translates the Greek phrase: "en tôi logizdesthai"; here's the full entry from Liddell-Scott. What the word really means is something like "doing what we do when we speak in the way that we speak when we're figuring things out." We're talking about a particular kind of logos here, a particular kind of talk. It's this that might well incline one to say the sort of thing Martin Heidegger has said about this very matter: "Language is the house of being.") The thingness of things certainly isn't anything that can be heard, touched, or tasted. It can't be smelled and it can't be seen with the eyes either. It doesn't show up in our purely sensory experience at all. So I'm going to be a crafty old fish and refuse to take the bait in the question "But then how do we hear, touch, or taste the thingness of something?" We don't. That's not how we become aware of the realities. It's not in or among the data of the senses that we become aware of the realities. It's in philosophical conversation of the Sokratic kind that one becomes aware of the realities. As for the goodness and badness of things: that certainly doesn't show up in our sensory experience. Surely the goodness of good food isn't something one can taste. One can taste flavors, some of which are pleasant. Bad food may taste good. Think about it.
My thought about whether or not we build our own realities is that if we do, then the realities we're talking about here aren't the same at all as the realities that Sokrates is talking about.
Revised a bit and tidied up by - Tom Trelogan on Jun 15 2010 8:27:50 PM
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Aaron Mund
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Are Philosophers in Touch with Reality?
