The whole discussion started when others denied some sections of the text or attempted to read things into the text that are not there. — Apollodorus

You have the opportunity to explain the text as you understand it without regard to what others have said, including myself.

You claim an understanding of the texts that others have got wrong while gracefully extending the privilege to their false opinions to go unchallenged by you because the text belongs to you and your opinion of what is "there" or not. I am tempted to introduce a disparaging remark.

Leaving aside any other problems that such an approach may encounter, you have counted yourself outside of the problem of affirming or denying statements that us lesser beings must negotiate.

If Socrates' statements are your problem, then I'm afraid you will have to discuss that with him. I can't help you there. — Apollodorus

Is that to say that your many attempts to say what is being said can be struck from the record?
You, after all, has seen themselves fit to say what is Platonist or not. The role you afforded yourself in the past is not consonant with telling me to work out the texts by myself.

My position is simply that he is not as ignorant as some claim he is. — Apollodorus

The matter I brought up bears no relationship to any claim of ignorance than that made by Socrates himself. I am asking you to defend your view in light of a prominent feature of the text.

The whole "some people claim" groove is a lame form of argumentation. Who cares if you have won an argument in your own mind?

What definition of Deism are you working with? — hairy belly

This is, of course, the first question to ask. My first associations with the term was how it was used as a means to distinguish a "natural theology" as a way to recognize an organized creation as discussed by an number of thinkers ranging from Hume to Thomas Jefferson from standing before an angry god.

Your results may vary.

3) there is no knowledge of us by God. He only knows himself — Gregory

This assumes we are outside of God. We are not in a great location to affirm or deny the possibility.

See Spinoza for details.

Anyway, this is quite irrelevant. People agree on some issues and disagree on others, and that is that. — Apollodorus

Saying that I have an anti-Christian commitment falls well outside the bounds of reasonable discourse.

You may have suggested this, but I had no idea why as I had never claimed that "Socrates pretended to be ignorant". This has never been my interpretation of Socrates! — Apollodorus

I never claimed you claimed it. Your view amounts to assuming that to be the case when you do claim Socrates knew the truth. My bringing it up as a challenge is precisely for the reason that your interpretation does not explain the discrepancy. I am not putting words in your mouth. The logic that lead to my challenge comes from me.

But I was not defending myself from your claims regarding aporia. I went through many efforts to get your meaning of the word out of my mouth. The cowardice and despair I was referring to is the view you characterize as my view. The property is coming from you and is now something that belongs me.

I did suggest your unwillingness to explain why Socrates pretended to be ignorant was less than valorous.

I did not call you those names.

I only complained about your labels when you said this:

You hold identical beliefs.

You share the same anti-Platonist (and anti-Christian) commitment. — Apollodorus

Your inability to distinguish between your interlocutors is not a problem shared by said interlocutors.

For myself, I have made an effort to stay away from disparaging language or assigning labels. In the context of talking about the meaning of Plato's text, I have tried to defend my reading and challenge others without appealing to arguments or agents based upon authority. On the level of honest differences of opinion, the interest in putting forth one view as superior to another does not directly engage the beliefs any interlocutor may have. The dialectic requires a better form of demonstration than simple reports of what each think is true.

Now it can and has been argued that dialogue of this kind is really nothing other than the conflict of competing beliefs. The topic comes up a lot in Plato. Having accepted that this form of demonstration as being worthwhile, I am not presuming my argument affirms or denies a set of beliefs. Apollodorus puts forth a view of the text that does not include a central theme that appears in them. It is fair to ask what that exclusion means for his interpretation.

Do you think that because so many religious and other preachers make a point of airing their contempt for other people, this means that a response other than shaking one's head and going one's way is called for? — baker

I think that depends on whether that contempt remains as a purely personal register or is the basis of denying other beliefs through the claim of authority. When the Christian church, for example, declared a view to be a heresy, it was merely a difference of opinion until the Church acquired the power to hurt people.

I am more interested in the nature of that weapon than whatever opinions are being protected by the one who wields it. When Apollodorus calls me anti-Christian, he has picked up that weapon.

As noted by Pink Floyd: "careful with that axe, Eugene."

What I want to know is this: How come more people aren't like this man? — baker

That is a very good question.

The Buddha in the story did not follow up: " "I am the rightfully self-enlightened one" with "while you are an ignorant clod whose proximity to the temple of the only Truth is a stench in the nostrils of the Creator."

By deciding who is an anti-Platonist along with who is an anti-Christian, the mantle of authority donned by the Gift-from-Apollo involves a structure of judgement far broader than deciding Plato meant to say this or meant to say that.

He is certainly not avoiding persecution by not going into exile, which would have been a way of avoiding it. But can we say Socrates is not hiding something? — Leghorn

I agree that Socrates is hiding many things, that was what I was referring to when saying the place where he tries to persuade is different from where he looks at that activity from the outside, as it were.

What I read to be sincere in the passage was how his devotion to the city gave him the right to criticize and attempt to change it. He suffers the cruelty and ignorance of the city and his acceptance gives him the right to confront its decisions and standards. In that sense, the city belongs to him to whatever extent the city claims he belongs to it.

This obligation to what brought him into the world sees filial duty and that of the citizen together in the Crito dialogue. In the Republic, the relationship between those elements is brought into question. Can it be said that the obligation itself has been surpassed?

A lot of theology is invested in protecting whatever agent is proposed to have made stuff from facing charges of doing a bad job.

So, if I do ask for help from some divine agent, I will steer clear of any who have protection orders put out against them.

The reason Socrates conceals his true beliefs about the gods is because he wishes to avoid persecution by the city. This is the source of his irony. He wants that his hearers believe he believes as they do, while subtly expressing doubt through his questioning, to elicit those of his audience who might rise above the conventional opinion of the citizenry. — Leghorn

I do think Socrates works laterally in many exchanges to question a convention rather than declare something wrong outright. I am not sure of how cleanly the boundary between the realm of the city from the pursuit of philosophy is drawn. I don't think Socrates is hiding anything or avoiding persecution when he explains why he won't go into exile:

Or is your wisdom such that you do not see that your country is more precious and more to be revered and is holier and in higher esteem [51b] among the gods and among men of understanding than your mother and your father and all your ancestors, and that you ought to show to her more reverence and obedience and humility when she is angry than to your father, and ought either to convince her by persuasion or to do whatever she commands, and to suffer, if she commands you to suffer, in silence, and if she orders you to be scourged or imprisoned or if she leads you to war to be wounded or slain, her will is to be done, and this is right, and you must not give way or draw back or leave your post, but in war and in court and everywhere, [51c] you must do whatever the state, your country, commands, or must show her by persuasion what is really right, but that it is impious to use violence against either your father or your mother, and much more impious to use it against your country?” What shall we reply to this, Crito, that the laws speak the truth, or not? — Plato, Crito, 51a, translated by Harold North Fowler

The view of the city during attempts to persuade her of "what is really right" is different from attempts to see the city as itself. The staging of the Republic as taking place outside of Athens seems to point toward a tension between the two places but not that one cancels the other.

For their part, I'm not sure. It could be many things -- envy, feeling threatened, bewilderment. It's something I've been keenly trying to figure out. — baker

You did not list simply disagreeing with the interpretation.
Assuming that criticism is only a result of a bad reaction to a manifestly true account is the rhetoric of an apologist, not of a critical thinker who judges for herself.

In regards to Kierkegaard, his emphasis upon the life of the Single Individual should be seen together with his commitment to love his neighbor as commanded by Jesus Christ. See the Works of Love for details.

Also, in The Concept of Anxiety, the problem of guilt and responsibility happens because of our interactions with other people but requires choices we can only make for ourselves. From that perspective, the agency of a person is the most difficult pursuit, not an account for what is experienced.

I have no phobia regarding religion. On the contrary.
I am addressing the problem with your Socrates who pretends to be ignorant. How you rank the various components of your cosmogony is meaningless if one removes the central distinction in Plato's philosophy separating opinion and knowledge.

Maybe you are twins, after all — Apollodorus

Your fixation with this is keeping you from taking the challenges presented to you seriously.

I am the one who brought up this problem of a Socrates who pretends. I am the only who is arguing about it now.

What upset me was the way you characterized my arguments as "anti-Christian." You can trust that my efforts to undermine the criteria for your judgement will be coming from me and me alone.

It has been amusing to spar with you over your Karate Kid version of Plato. But now that you are using it to determine who is Christian or not, it is time to take the matter more seriously.

First of all, Socrates questions ideas and develops the best opinions he can in each of his inquiries. That is what he is saying in the Phaedo about what he calls true and what he calls false. He operates with those sets of opinions but doesn't say that operation is the equivalence of knowing the truth. He doesn't abandon his opinions from one day to the next but doesn't say they amount to the end of his inquiries.

The vision of a Socrates who cannot say what anything is from one day to the next is entirely an invention of your own making. He expresses a lot more certainty about some things than others. When he encounters sophistry, he doesn't agonize over whether his perception can be trusted or not.

What you have done, in your version of Plato, is to take this realm of better opinions and equate them with knowledge that requires no further verification. What it means for Socrates to question everything is that having the best opinion one can establish does not mean it is free from the need for verification. If any opinion did rise to the level where it could stand above all the contingencies that went into forming it, that starts to sound like knowledge.

One of the many problems that appear after collapsing the two realms into one is that it turns Socrates' declarations of ignorance into a pretense. Now if it is a pretense, does that mean it works like the "noble lie" in the Republic? That would be a nefarious vision I can scarcely imagine. It would turn Socrates' demand for righteousness, based upon seeking the Good, into some agenda he is hiding from us.

When I challenge you to defend your idea that Socrates is only pretending to be ignorant, you reply by insisting that Socrates is not a skeptic who is unable to affirm or deny anything. My previous efforts to explain that such a character is not my understanding of Socrates' endeavor has fallen upon deaf ears. But the problem with your view is not addressed by your definition of my view. Your version of Plato turns the distinctions Plato is making into a meaningless puree of theological goo.

You have no idea what I believe. That you think I have revealed that because I support one reading of Plato over another is the height of authoritarian fancy. Who fucking made you in charge of assigning identities instead of letting people decide for themselves who they are or what they think?

Calling me an "anti-Platonist" is a judgement you have made about my intentions because you are not able to defend your reading of Plato when I challenge it. There a number of ways to read Plato. From my point of view, you are the one who is trying to turn it into something it is not. That doesn't make you an "anti-Platonist." You are just another person who has a mistaken understanding about what is being discussed.

As for the rest of your paranoid account, I will only remark upon the relationship between primary texts of authors and the secondary texts that wrestle with their meaning. A sincere study of primary text can and is helped by looking at secondary texts. The way you describe it makes it sound like a reader is infected by ideas upon learning about them. If somebody is going to defend a certain reading by appeal to a secondary source, one still has to make their own stand about what is meant. Otherwise, one has deferred the discussion to other people and assumed the position of an interested bystander. Your emphasis upon the differences among secondary texts is not going to help you establish credibility as someone who is capable of reading the text on their own.

.

If you make a statement, and two people notice the contradiction between that statement and others you make, does that turn the two persons into a single being? What a peculiar idea! But your thought experiment bears no relation to engaging in the contradictions involved in any particular discussion.

You brought the Phaedo passage into our discussion to support your view that we can experience divine truth through proper training in our lifetime. I observed that the text does not support your thesis. Fooloso4 has pointed out other contradictions between your statements regarding the passage you refer to and other statements you made in other discussions.

The reason for this similarity between your statements being challenged in different discussions could be explained by the fact that Fooloso4 and I are Siamese twins who were separated at birth.
He went on to become the Dean of Oxford University while I am an inmate in a Texas penitentiary, quarrying limestone under a relentless sun. The similarity of our language comes from the lullabies our nursemaid sang as we suckled upon our respective breasts.

Or maybe that is all an accident and the reason for the similarity is that we both have read enough Plato to notice the contradictions in your statements independently of the other.

All I can say for sure is that my question of why Socrates talks so much about his and our ignorance when you say he actually knows the truth has been left untouched by you.

You once again resort to opposing what you purport others to mean rather than engage in statements as they are presented to you.

The passage of the Phaedo you quoted is an essential element in the method he employs when questioning things and opinions.

He did not perpetually question whether to take poison. — Apollodorus

How could that observation possibly inform the discussion we are having about the accessibility of ultimate truths?

I think there is a marked difference between Socrates' hunt for intelligible realities and the obsessive-compulsive disorder of the skeptomaniacs and aporeticists. :smile: — Apollodorus

I suppose there is a marked difference between the hunt for intelligible realities and the toy soldiers you have put on the grass to stop the hunt. But you aren't making any distinctions between that hunt and statements made by actual interlocutors. You have built a box where you deposit all challenges to your view. Socrates would not have been impressed by such avoidance to risk and error.

I think we are more likely to arrive at truth by actively hunting for it than by perpetually questioning things — Apollodorus

But isn't the life of Socrates one of actively hunting for the truth by perpetually questioning things?

The passage of the Phaedo you are referring to is part of an argument that the soul can only know the truth after the death of the body. To that extent, it does not support your vision of a school where one is trained by the Sifu to learn inner secrets for daily life.

Platonism offers something to everyone, including materialists. And those who like to find their supreme satisfaction in doubt, “aporia”, and similar things are at liberty to do so. — Apollodorus

Perhaps you could provide support for this statement. It seems to run counter to the very method of inquiry by means of division that Socrates insists upon.

I have demonstrated previously that your use of "aporia" is a part of your private lexicon which means it cannot be affirmed or denied by others.The arc of your use of the term resembles the following:

Ralph: Unlike you, Alice, I do not fall into a coma when I finish reading Jane Austen novels.

Alice: I don't fall into comas after reading Jane Austen novels.

Ralph: You were in a coma, how would expect to remember it?

I suspect that the first music made by early humans was improv. — Tom Storm

I wish I could attend some of those concerts. I imagine that they scared themselves.

I haven't got a thesis. — Apollodorus

Noted.
I mistook your claim that Socrates actually knows what he claims not to know to be your thesis.
An easy mistake to make, under the circumstances..

You still haven't explained what the purpose is for emphasizing how ignorant we are if Socrates actually knows the truth.

I gave examples of the aporia Socrates encountered in the Republic. I have no idea what you think the word means. It seems to be an imaginary condition you imagine other people to be experiencing rather than a description of uncertainty about what is being said.

The topic was raised in the context of asking you to explain why Socrates put so much emphasis on the limits of knowledge when you suggested that something else was the intent of the enterprise.
Your efforts fail to support your thesis.
I have no idea what you mean by aporia if it is something that is supposed to exist outside of arguments where the term has a role.

My question was, if philosophical inquiry leads to aporia, then why would anyone engage in philosophical inquiry? — Apollodorus

Before you ask that as a general question, what is the role of difficulty in any particular inquiry? In the Republic, Socrates expresses uncertainty if he has adequately depicted the Good. He expresses doubts about whether Justice has been properly represented. The problems he marks out are boundaries he cannot get past at that moment.

How do those expressions of doubt relate to your question about the motivation to pursue questions?

I fail to see on what basis you can do that when you never care to answer my questions. — Apollodorus

I answer your questions when they are directed to comments I make. I don't when they refer to arguments you are having with others. The paucity of the former has come to my attention.

Plato's discursive environment simply aims to encourage readers to examine their beliefs and accept those that make most sense when placed under rational scrutiny. — Apollodorus

How does that encouragement relate to the insistence that we know much less than we think we do? Is the emphasis upon ignorance a ruse being employed by someone who knows the answers?

There are certain sets of opinions Socrates did not want other people to keep having. He made great efforts to undermine the basis for them. He was killed for questioning some traditional points of view. Your description does not capture the element of struggle on display in many dialogues.

I can accept that some readers may see dialogues like Euthyphro as ending in "aporia", but where is the "aporia" in other works like the Republic or Laws??? — Apollodorus

As discussed before, we have not established a shared meaning for the term. I agree that different dialogues end very differently. The term is only useful if it compares one kind of statement to another. If we cannot agree upon that difference as matter of description, then insisting upon its meaning will not help illuminate the differences of how the dialogues are read.

In the context of my challenge, that issue returns to asking what the point of all these differences amount to.

You only see my comment through the lens of your ongoing argument with Fooloso4. I am not talking about that.

Your comments about ignorance relate to how to make sense of what Socrates is doing when he talks about ignorance. You have made a number of comments that emphasize a mystical experience in relationship to reality. If the ubiquitous discussion of ignorance in Plato is not really an admission of ignorance, what is one to make of all that talk? It is not about what Socrates knew or not. We will never know. But your model of Plato does not explain the discursive environment Plato was trying to create.

I challenge you to answer my question without reference to what other people might have said.

But nothing beats those who imagine that Plato wrote books for the sole purpose of teaching ignorance and "aporia" .... :lol: — Apollodorus

The only one who is imagining that view is you yourself. Nobody that I know of characterizes the unfolding of the Dialectic to be antithetical to contemplation of an ultimate reality. Plato's many profiles of how we are bound by opinions involves comparing it to an experience of knowledge that we wish for. Nowhere is it claimed by Socrates that seeking knowledge while recognizing the difficulty of doing so is stupid.

Socrates does, however, argue strenuously against those who do. The objection to Thrasymachus frames the scope of the Republic. The call to not accept ignorance as a final condition are the closing words of Socrates in the Gorgias:

For it seems shameful that, being what apparently at this moment we are, we should consider ourselves fine fellows, when we can never hold to the same views about the same questions--and those too the most vital of all--so deplorably uneducated are we! Then let us follow the guidance of the argument now made manifest, which reveals to us that this is the best way of life--to live and die in the pursuit of righteousness and all other virtues. Let us follow this, I say, inviting others to join us, not that which you believe in and commend to me, for it is worthless, dear Callicles. — Plato, Gorgias, 327d, translated by W.D. Woodhead

Now that we have properly located your vision of cowardice and despair as coming from you, and not from any of your interlocutors, you can also take ownership of your claim that the life of discourse, so eagerly enjoined by Socrates, is actually a front for a group seeking mystical communion with the real. Because, if Socrates is only pretending to be ignorant, the entire process of the Dialogues is a sham.

Saying that an inquiry leads to aporia does not constitute proof that Plato's statements are not in the dialogue or that he preaches atheism, skepticism, and nihilism, does it? — Apollodorus

The double negative combined with the rhetorical question is confusing. Are you saying that saying an inquiry that leads to aporia amounts to atheism, skepticism, and nihilism?

If so, I repeat my previous statement that such a view is at odds with Socrates' willingness to pursue ideas despite such difficulties.

I recommend reading more authors who use the quality of "aporia" as an element of discourse. From Aristotle to Proclus, the term refers to how far one can advance in making distinctions. It is not a cry of meaningless despair at the sight of the abyss.

But you can't do that hence you profess "aporia" and insist that this is all that Plato has to say — Apollodorus

Saying that an inquiry leads to aporia is not equivalent to stating that the purpose of it has been cancelled. So when you say that I am claiming that "I insist that this is all that Plato has to say", that is a limit you have applied to yourself, not an accurate description of my view. The words you put in my mouth are not very interesting.

But you can't do that hence you profess "aporia" and insist that this is all that Plato has to say .... — Apollodorus

I never said anything of the kind. You are a Sophist.

You have gone back to characterizing other peoples' views in place of defending your own.

In contrast, the assumption that Plato spent all his life writing books, and even founded a school, for no other purpose than to preach ignorance and "aporia", seems rather unfounded and far-fetched to me. — Apollodorus

I don't get any images in my mind when I say "preach ignorance and aporia" out loud. It sounds like a kind of surrender; a reason to stop trying to do something. Socrates did not exemplify a retreat from what is difficult to understand. Did Plato set up a school to learn what wasn't known or tell everybody about what he had found out?

It seems like you want to cast the limits of our understanding, that Plato brings to our attention, to be actually some sort of catechism to something else. That is unfounded and far-fetched.

Well said. the notions of a common good and the pursuit of happiness do not appear or disappear if one supposes or denies divine agency.

I think there must have been some form of training as this was the whole purpose of a school. — Apollodorus

The purpose of Plato's academy certainly was about training thinkers. It was a specifically discursive endeavor with the express goal of improving discourse. Perhaps it included an esoteric element of instruction as you described here::

This is the point where the mind's contemplative faculty, the nous, takes over from language and discursive thought, and leads the philosopher to a direct experience of the realities in question. — Apollodorus

But it is difficult to perceive the school that stands at the center of the City as serving an entirely personal experience. The rigor of rational thought practiced in such schools is at odds with your description given here:

The way I see it, Plato's works provide a number of general guidelines, not a system of water-tight theories, for the simple reason that any unclear matters would have been clarified in conversation with the teacher of your particular school. It was a living tradition based on personal practice and experience, not an academic endeavor in the modern sense. — Apollodorus

One thing that puzzles me about this last statement is that it doesn't square with your efforts in other places to see Plato presenting a unified theory of the soul.

What is missing from this account of behaviorism is the context of childhood development. Skinner claimed he could produce any sort of individual through controlling the environment of the child, thus the term "Skinner Box." As a matter of reference in the linguistic sense, the biggest problem is that the claim eliminates any method to check if the claim is true or not.

The natural antagonist to Skinner is Vygotsky. Vygotsky takes an environmental approach in noting that psychology has to go beyond the sphere of what any individual reports about their experience. But that experience is what an individual must be. In developing his idea of "zones of proximal development", Vygotsky says:

"Our analysis alters the traditional view that at the moment a child assimilates the meaning of a word, or masters an operation such as addition or written language, her developmental processes are basically completed. In fact, they have only just begun at that moment" — Vygotsky, Interaction between Learning and Development

I had the view that the early gnostics were most like the Indian yogis and sages who had appeared and taught in the West, but that they had been suppressed by the mainstream Church. And this was for the political reason, that belief is a much easier thing to control than knowledge — Wayfarer

I agree with your description. I would qualify it with two observations:

The Gnostics saw themselves in relation to "non-believers" in ways that do not conform to an idea of a group only practicing for themselves.

The form of life in early "Pauline" groups is an experience that the formation of dogma also hides from our view. The complaint of some early Church Fathers was that the Gnostics were too "intellectual."