If the glimpses are very closely timed then he knows where his car is in between glimpses. — Janus

And if not?

Of course we can question whether he can be absolutely certain it is his car even when he stares at it. — Janus

Right, there is always the possibility of illusion or deception, but when you say that he is mistaken unless he is looking at it, such possibilities are precluded.

I prefer to accept less stringent criteria for certainty and I equate certainty with knowledge and uncertainty with varying degrees of doubt and belief. — Janus

My position is similar to yours, but I intentionally avoid the problem of certainty. I accept less stringent criteria for knowledge then some philosophers impose.

Follow up:

If instead hapless Al is on his way home and get stopped.

Cop: Where are you going?
Al: Home.
Cop: Where do you live?
Al: I don't know.

After all, Al does not know that the place he lives is still there.

what is the point to saying air is the arche when it's just water in a different form/state? — Agent Smith

Because they were not thought of as different states of the same thing.

Suppose the parking lot has a high fence that you can't see over but can see through the gaps between the boards. As Al walks he gets a glimpse of his car and then his view is blocked and the pattern repeats. Does he know where his car is and then not know where his car is and then know where his car is and then not know where his car is?

Al is stopped by a cop.

Cop: Where are you going?
Al: To get my car.
Cop: Where is your car?
Al: I don't know.

Things may not go so well for Al.

As for the arche, it seems beyond our event horizon. — Agent Smith

So the question then is where do we begin, with what do we begin?

The first word in Genesis is traditionally translated "in the beginning" but many scholars today give alternative translations such as "to begin" or "when God began ...". The difference is between God creating the formless void and the formless void already being there when he began.

But of course Genesis 2 tells a different story. In Genesis 1 there nothing is separate and distinct until God begins to separate things. In Genesis 2 things are separate and distinct but static. The question is, which is primary stasis or motion? It has been suggested that both accounts are included because we cannot make sense of things based on just one or the other.

.

I hit enter before completing the post. I resubmitted it.

neither had a justified belief as to the location of their car. — Banno

When Al returns and his car is still where he left it is his belief then justified? Is there any justification for him to look somewhere else?

Both Betty and Al know where their cars are when they exist them. When Betty's car is stolen it is no longer the case that she knows where it is, but did she continue to know it up until that moment? Or is there some moment when both Al and Betty no longer knew where their cars were? Is this moment when the car is no longer in sight? Suppose they round the block and are able to see their cars again. Did they know then no longer know and then know again where their cars are?

If someone asks Al where his car is and Al says that he does, is he mistaken?

As I see it, the Socratic philosophers accept the human condition. There are no Buddhas who transcend it.

Can the natural world be understood when natural beings are reduced to something else?

I think that this what @Paine is getting at.

Plato's Timaeus said:

With regard to everything it is most important to begin at the natural beginning. (29b)

The problem, of course, is where to begin.

For every natural beginning is there something that stands outside that beginning? Must the story begin: "In the beginning ..." or, perhaps more accurately translated, "To begin ..."? In this story the backstory is presumed to be beyond our reach. This beginning, and all others that begin with some agent that begins, begins at the end. It begins with the consequence of some cause, something without which things could not be or could not be as they are.

Timaeus introduces the divine craftsman he calls “poet and father'' of all that comes to be. (28c [correction])

He does not attempt to demonstrate or prove or defend the existence of the craftsman. We are led to ask how Timaeus knows of him. The suspicion is that Timaeus is the craftsman, the poet and father, of the divine craftsman.

The story of the divine craftsman is one of the many likely stories (ton eikota mython) he tells:

So then, Socrates, if, in saying many things on many topics concerning gods and the birth of the all, we prove to be incapable of rendering speeches that are always and in all respects in agreement with themselves and drawn with precision, don’t be surprised. But if we provide likelihoods inferior to none, we should be well-pleased with them, remembering that I who speak as well as you my judges have a human nature, so that it’s fitting for us to be receptive to the likely story about these things and not search further for anything beyond it. (29c-d).

His imprecision is seen here as well:

As for all the heaven (or cosmos, or whatever else it might be most receptive to being called, let us call it that) … (28b).

Why not be more precise? Isn’t it imperative to be precise in matters of metaphysics and cosmogony?

We are human beings, capable of telling likely stories, but incapable of discerning the truth of such things. In line with the dialogues theme of what is best, Timaeus proposes it is best to accept likely stories and not search for what is beyond the limits of our understanding.

Perhaps this has already been discussed but it seems to that JTB is a case of the dog chasing its tail. That P is true is taken as a given, that it is known that P is true. But what does it mean to know that P is true? To say that it known because it means the criteria of JTB is tautological.

But the idea that man is endowed with any rights at all, inalienable or otherwise, is certainly wrong. — NOS4A2

There is a distinction between classical and modern natural rights theories. Fundamental to classical natural rights is duty and obligations to others. Classical natural rights did not include the concept of individual rights. Modern natural rights theories are unnatural in that man is by nature a social or political animal, Liberalism's "state of nature" is a fiction.

Everything about my supposed rights depends entirely on the will of those who offered them to me ... — NOS4A2

I suggest you have it backwards. It is not a question of what is given but the problem of what can be taken.The fact that someone can take your life does not mean that you do not have a right to live. The violation of a right does not mean that a right does not exist.

Only man can confer rights. — NOS4A2

If man can confer rights then man can deny rights. Is the choice to do one or the other arbitrary? Is it no more right than wrong to do one or the other?

Folk think philosophy easy, a topic for dabbling dilettanti. — Banno

I recently came across the term philosophunculist.

.. the Department had to attract more students, and so was to both accept students with less ability and offer less demanding courses. — Banno

And inflate grades. And be prepared to be held responsible when students fail. And go along with the pretense that you are not dumbing things down.

Who are you asking? — Banno

I was going to ask: prove to whom? What would be the point of trying to prove it to yourself?

A distinction should be made between what we know, based on what we are told, and what Al knows or doesn't know. What he does not know is if his car has been stolen. If by knowledge we mean infallibility, then he does not know where his car is. But knowledge about the world is never infallible. What we hold to as something known can change over time.

Why frame Betty's case in a parallel universe? There is nothing here that precludes it happening in the same universe or even same parking lot as in Al's case. Betty knows no more or less than Al does until she discovers that her car is missing.

This supposes that there is what we might call a categorical (as in unqualified) interpretation of Wittgenstein (Plato, Quine...). It's the existence of such that is being questioned. — Banno

It is not that there is a categorical or unqualified interpretation but rather that problems with a particular interpretation can be identified. That a strong case can be made that this or that interpretation is wrong. This does not mean that there is or ever will be an interpretation without problems. As I said above, there is always interpretive indeterminacy. There are also different interpretive practices. There is an attempt to understand what an author means, as well interpretations based on the assumption that this is not possible. There are interpretations based on what the text means for a reader. There is the attempt to situate the text in time and place or in response to something or other. There is deliberate appropriation in which the text is used to present the interpreters own story. There is the attempt to deconstruct or uncover the author's unspoken assumptions. Interpretation that points to the fact that an interpretation is itself interpreted. And so on.

There are various forms of skepticism and it is misleading to conclude that Wittgenstein either accepts or rejects it. In On Certainty Wittgenstein addresses examines claims about such things as knowledge and certainty. He denies certain claims and argues in favor of others.

... but still gives a purchase to the idea the philosophy should make progress. — Ludwig V

Good point. What are we to make of this?:

Philosophy hasn't made any progress? - If somebody scratches the spot where he has an itch, do we have to see some progress? Isn't genuine scratching otherwise, or genuine itching itching? And can't this reaction to an irritation continue in the same way for a long time before a cure for the itching is discovered? (Culture and Value)

Do we live in semi-darkness regarding ancient history? — Alkis Piskas

At one time there was an attempt to construct an accurate picture of the historical Socrates. I don't know if anyone today is still at it.

I am persuaded because my logic says so. — Alkis Piskas

The problem of misologic is addressed in Phaedo. Misologic is the hatred of logical argument. It arises, Socrates says, out of a love of logical argument, out of excess expectations for its ability to provide answers. The main question of the Phaedo is what happens when we die. This is one of those big questions that Socrates admits he does not know the answer to. In the Phaedo, when he is about to die, he chides his friends for their "childish fear of death". He presents several arguments that some today still find persuasive, but when looked at carefully all prove to be weak. Since logic cannot provide a clear answer logic cannot in this case be persuasive. So what is preferable, to accept a comforting answer or, as Socrates did, admit ignorance? The danger of the latter is nihilism.

In Plato's Second Letter he says that the Socrates in his dialogues is "a Socrates made young and beautiful". In other words,Plato does not give us a historical account of what Socrates said and did.

In the Apology what he denies is having knowledge of anything "πολλὰ καὶ καλὰ", very much or great and good or beautiful. (21d)

So,these sophisms-fallacies do not make for strong arguments. — Alkis Piskas

You are right. This is why I said the phrase is ambiguous. Stronger in what sense? By refuting them Socrates shows that although the arguments they make are weak, they make the argument seem stronger than it actually is.

There is a serious problem here that must be addressed. I may be persuaded by an argument because I think it is the stronger argument, but am I persuaded because it is stronger or do I think it stronger because I am persuaded? Someone skilled at making arguments may make an argument that is stronger than someone who is less skillful at arguing, but this does not mean they are right.

I don't think Kripke understood Wittgenstein. He took PI 201 and ran with it. He thought it was a new form of philosophical skepticism. In response to Kripke one might ask, given his skeptical solution, why he still maintains that there is a skeptical problem at all? If our ability to follow rules correctly and consistently is not dependent upon the application of a privately held conceptual understanding of the rule (the justified mental fact), but can be explained in terms of training and conformity to standard practice, then what remains of the skeptical problem?

The skeptical problem arises only as a result of the theory that there must be some fact which meets some particular set of conditions to which we must have access in order to justify that we are acting in accord with a consistent meaning for a particular term or rule. Far from introducing a new form of skepticism, Wittgenstein is calling to our attention the fact that in our actual practice of learning and using rules no such demand needs to be met.

Kripke intimates that Wittgenstein deliberately obscures his skeptical position that there is no fact as to whether I mean plus or quus ( On Rules and Private Language, 69-71). What Kripke fails to see is that by denying just such a fact Wittgenstein is not agreeing with the skeptic, but rather calling into question the very assumption that there is such a fact.

Is there a debate about whether Plato is an idealist or not? — Tom Storm

Probably, but I don't know if it is still at issue.

It becomes a carnival hall of mirrors to me. — Tom Storm

A play of images. How deep it goes and how pervasive it is is too often not recognized.

I arrived at the idea that the difference between Socrates and the sophists is good faith - a desire to uncover truth - via judgement, balance, the accumulation of wisdom. — Tom Storm

I think that this is on the right track. Although sophist became a term of condemnation, the term is derived from a cognate of sophia, that is, wisdom. The distinction between the philosopher and the sophist is not so clear cut. There are three connected Platonic dialogues Statesman, Sophist, and Theaetetus. Given the subject matter we might expect the third to be titled Philosopher. Why is there no dialogue Philosopher? Is the philosopher a sophist or a statesman or something else? If something else then what? The question is left open.

... do you have any 'go to' arguments you use as a rebuttal of idealism or platonic forms? — Tom Storm

I do not regard Plato as an idealist. The term is anachronistic. The Forms are said to be seen with the mind but are not the product of or dependent on the mind. Earlier in this thread I discussed why the Forms are hypothetical and why rather than being the reputed originals of which other things are said to be images they are themselves images. Forms

A more thorough rebuttal requires a detailed examination of the dialogues. I have provided links to my threads where I do this here.

In simplest terms Socrates calls them hypothetical because he has no knowledge of them. We only know what is said about them, the images we are given.

I'm not so much interested in his --and Plato's-- views about the immortality of the soul, or about Forms and Ideas, as much as his critical thinking, Q&A (maieutic) method, positive way of justifying ideas and resourcefulness in general. — Alkis Piskas

One issue that I find interesting is the relationship between reason and rhetoric. Socrates accuses the sophists of "making the weaker argument stronger". The ambiguity in this is that if the stronger argument is the most persuasive argument then the most reasonable argument can become the weaker argument. In other words, Socrates too makes sophistic arguments. The difference has to do with motivation. While the sophist seeks to profit, Socrates attempts to persuade his interlocutors of such things as it is better to be just.

Maybe from your studies in College/University? — Alkis Piskas

First as a student and then as a teacher before retiring.

the inability of many readers — Joshs

This is often the case.

I think that it is a mistake to assume he is deliberately hiding something. — Joshs

Prior to talking about something hidden he does say in the forward:

The book must automatically separate those who understand it from those who do not.

and then adds:

Even the foreword is written just for those who understand the book.

If those who understand are automatically separated then why go on to talk about locked rooms? He says:

Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it.

But isn't this what he is doing? Doesn't the text tell most readers that something they do not understand? And doesn't he say they will not be able to understand it?

The honorable thing to do is to put a lock on the door which will be noticed only by those who can open it, not by the rest.

I am reminded of something else he said:

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that’s unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it doesn’t occur to him to pull rather than push.

Perhaps in his attempt to help the philosopher escape what goes unnoticed is something quite different.

But it was always clear to me that Socrates --and Plato, of course-- believed that the soul was immortal. — Alkis Piskas

I have reached the opposite conclusion, but I think that the myths support the immortality of the soul. The arguments also appear to support it as well unless they are followed closely. But of course not everyone agrees. I attempt to show why the arguments fail here: Phaedo

The supposition here is that there is a something that is the real meaning of Wittgenstein's work, that we might try to understand. — Banno

When Wittgenstein says, as quoted above, that he has been frequently misunderstood, it is clear that there is something that he means, otherwise there could be no misunderstanding. We may never be able to establish a definitive interpretation, but that does not mean we should not attempt to determine what it is he means.

I do not regard interpretation as merely a way of determining what someone else is thinking but as a way of thinking. As Wittgenstein says in the preface to PI:

I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking.

And in Culture and Value:

No one can think a thought for me in the way that no one can don my hat for me.

For Wittgenstein philosophy is an activity not a theory or doctrine or set of principles that we must find the meaning of.

Work on philosophy -- like work in architecture in many respects -- is really more work on oneself. On one's own interpretation. On how one sees things. (And what one expects of them.) (Culture and Value)

The only way forward is to write for an imagined kindred spirit, which will have the secondary effect of alienating a wider audience. — Joshs

An interesting thing about Wittgenstein is that he has always attracted an audience and that audience over time has been quite diverse.

There are various reasons why an author might be or seem to be deliberately obscure. But there is a difference between an obscure writing style and deliberately hiding something.

I don’t interpret him as meaning that he deliberately hides things from readers ... — Joshs

While there is always interpretative indeterminacy, when he says:

If you have a room which you do not want certain people to get into, put a lock on it for which they do not have the key.

I take putting a lock on the room that they do not have the key to to be a deliberate act.

if one isn’t ready to recognize what he is saying, no amount of explication will help. — Joshs

I agree.

The last thing he wants is to limit beforehand who has access to his thinking. — Joshs

It is not that he selects the reader but that the readers are self-selective, they are able to understand it or not. It is for the benefit of these readers who cannot that certain things are kept from them.

On the contrary, he was desperate to share his ideas with as many as possible, and to write in such as way as to achieve this goal . — Joshs

In the preface to the Tractatus he says:

—Its purpose would be achieved if it gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it.

In the draft for Philosophical Remarks he says:

For if a book has been written for just a few readers that will be clear just from the fact that only a few people understand it. The book must automatically separate those who understand it from those who do not. Even the foreword is written just for those who understand the book./quote]

What is written for just a few readers is not something written to desperately share with as many as possible.

In the preface to the PI he says:

Until recently I had really given up the idea of publishing my work in my lifetime. All the same, it was revived from time to time, mainly because I could not help noticing that the results of my work (which I had conveyed in lectures, typescripts and discussions), were in |x| circulation, frequently misunderstood and more or less watered down or mangled. This stung my vanity, and I had difficulty in quieting it.

...

I make them public with misgivings. It is not impossible that it should fall to the lot of this work, in its poverty and in the darkness of this time, to bring light into one brain or another a but, of course, it is not likely.

He doubts he will be understood by most. But his concern is not simply that he will not be understood, but that he will be misunderstood, his thoughts will be watered down or mangled. I don't think he writes despite the fact that he will be misunderstood but strategically so that what is most important will not even be noticed.

a relationship between you and the soul — Alkis Piskas

Good point. Socrates addresses this in the Phaedo. The overarching question of the dialogue is what will happen to Socrates. The concern is that the unity that is Socrates will be destroyed. In order to address this Socrates divides his unity into a duality, body and soul.

On the other hand, if body and soul are one then the destruction of the body is the destruction of the soul. Socrates attempts to separate them in order to save the soul, but can only do so by blurring the distinction between the Form Soul and a soul. If Soul is imperishable it does not follow that Socrates’ soul is. The human soul is átopos, literally, without place, unclassifiable,. It is not a Form and not a physical thing. If there is no distinction between Soul and Socrates’ soul, then it would not be Socrates’ soul that is undying. The fate of Socrates in death is not assured by the fate of Soul.

He mentions a metaphor and passes on, as if it was transparent. Then elsewhere, you find another metaphor from which he passes on. And another and another... — Ludwig V

I think he wants us to see and draw the connections, or not. In an early draft of a forward for Philosophical Remarks he wrote:

For if a book has been written for just a few readers that will be clear just from the fact that only a few people understand it. The book must automatically separate those who understand it from those who do not. Even the foreword is written just for those who understand the book.

Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it. (That so often happens with someone you love.)

If you have a room which you do not want certain people to get into, put a lock on it for which they do not have the key. But there is no point in talking to them about it, unless of course you want them to admire the room from outside!

The honorable thing to do is to put a lock on the door which will be noticed only by those who can open it, not by the rest. (Culture and Value, 7-8)

The fact that there are things he deliberately hides is deserving of our attention. That there are locked rooms hidden in the pages of his work is an intriguing confession and interpretive challenge. The question of where these rooms are and what is hidden in them, is not something that is even asked in the secondary literature that I am aware of.

Is there a translation other than Anscombe's around? — Ludwig V

The 4th Edition translates it this way.

I see at least two related issues here. One is the idea of "the sins of the father". The other is societal responsibility and reparation.

Inherited sin is used in the sense of the consequences of the acts of one's ancestors, and in Paul's sense that we are born in sin. The former is also used in the sense of "like father like son" or "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree".

Reparation raises questions such as what is the goal of reparation, who is to be compensated, and how is it to be done?

That fits with his idea that what he is looking for is an “oversight” (Übersicht) which I take to mean something like a map. — Ludwig V

At PI 122 Wittgenstein talks about an übersichtliche Darstellung, a surveyable representation, (alternatively translated as perspicuous representation):

A main source of our failure to understand is that we don’t have an overview of the use of our words. - Our grammar is deficient in surveyability. A surveyable representation produces precisely that kind of understanding which consists in ‘seeing connections’. Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate links.

The concept of a surveyable representation is of fundamental significance for us. It characterizes the way we represent things, how we look at matters. (Is this a ‘Weltanschauung’?)

It is surprising how little he says about it, given that he says that a representative overview is of fundamental significance.

A few key ideas touched on at PI 122:

‘seeing connections’
the way we represent things
how we look at matters

At PI 126 he says:

The name “philosophy” might also be given to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions.

and at 90:

… our investigation is directed not towards phenomena, but rather, as one might say, towards the ‘possibilities’ of phenomena.

Elsewhere he says:

I am not interested in constructing a building, so much as in having a perspicuous view of the foundations of possible buildings. (CV 7)

An additional key idea:

possibilities

A representative overview helps make it possible to see connections, to look at things in a new way:

What a Copernicus or a Darwin really achieved was not the discovery of a true theory, but of a fertile new point of view. (CV 18)

But the texts we have clearly show a keen interest in the phenomena that we face in our natural world. — Paine

This is the basis for Socrates criticism of Anaxagoras in the Phaedo. Anaxagoras said:

it is Mind that directs and is the cause of everything. I was delighted with this cause and it seemed to me good, in a way, that Mind should be the cause of all. I thought that if this were so, the directing Mind would direct everything and arrange each thing in the way that was best. If then one wished to know the cause of each thing, why it comes to be or perishes or exists, one had to find what was the best way for it to be, or to be acted upon, or to act. On these premises then it befitted a man to investigate only, about this and other things, what is best.” (97b-d)

But this is not what Anaxagoras did. He gave explanations in physical terms.It is clear as the dialogue progresses that Socrates is not able to do without physical causes either:

If you should ask me what, coming into a body, makes it hot, my reply would not be that safe and ignorant one, that it is heat, but our present argument provides a more sophisticated answer, namely, fire, and if you ask me what, on coming into a body, makes it sick, I will not say sickness but fever. (105b-c)

They wouldn't have understood our distinction between religion and science, and so it's a mistake to project that into what Plato says. — frank

They would have understood both religion and and science in ways that differ from what someone today might understand. That does not mean the ancients did not make such a distinction. Someone today might understand science differently than someone at the time of Newton.

Anaxagoras belonged to this school. In identifying mind as the prime motive force in the world, he was in keeping with the a worldview that goes back to the end of the Bronze Age. — frank

Newton's mechanistic "natural philosophy" intended to demonstrate the hand of God at work.

What's missing from this view to make it what we would think of as science, is the "clockwork" conception of the universe — frank

What is missing from contemporary science is the "clockwork" conception of the universe.

They wouldn't have understood our distinction between religion and science, and so it's a mistake to project that into what Plato says. — frank

I think you have got it backwards. It is not so much that they would not have understood but that we should not attempt to understand the distinctions that they made in contemporary terms.

You're confusing the Athenian state for a religious authority. — frank

You are making the same mistake that you are warning us about. They did not make the church and state distinction. Atheism was an offense against the city.. The city states were religious states. Athens is the city of the goddess Athena. It is clear that Socrates was charged with impiety. Whether this was the motivating concern of his accusers, is another matter.

In some ways, yes. — frank

You miss the point. The question of human nature is still relevant. It is not a quant ancient idea that was of interest long ago but no longer is.

... a mechanistic outlook which underpins our conception of physicality and science. — frank

See above. If by "our conception" you mean the outlook of contemporary science, this is simply wrong.

We are the recipients of a worldview in which mental and physical appear to be in different dimensions. This conflict pervades the philosophy of our time. The emotional generator at its heart is a conflict between religion and science. There is no evidence that this conflict existed during the iron age — frank

The presocratic philosophers discussed the relationship between phusis (nature, from the root to grow) and nomos (law, custom). [Added: What is by nature vs what is by convention.]

The divided line in the Republic separates the visible from the intelligible realms. This includes the distinction between physical objects seen with the eyes and intelligible objects seen with the mind.

Socrates criticizes those who cite the authority of the poets because they are unable to give an account. Mythos without logos. Since the poets, most notably Homer and Hesiod, are the source of the teachings about the gods, there is seen in Plato a conflict between religion and science. In the Apology, Anaxagoras' claim that the sun is a stone and not a god, is falsely attributed to Socrates and is used as the basis of the charge of atheism against him. It is at its heart a conflict between religion and science.

... the psyche turned inside out, with motivations being generated by external forces instead of within individual minds and hearts. — frank

On the one side we find in Homer human motivations such as rage and shamelessness, and other the other the work of the gods. On both sides individual minds and hearts are influenced by a hierarchical order.

So Plato inherited a worldview in which (what we call) ideas were cast about the world around and within us. — frank

What is entailed by "inherited"? Plato wrote in response to those of his time and those before him, but this response is in no way a simple acceptance or agreement. Rather than simply inheriting a worldview he created one.

So as opposed to imagining that Plato is talking directly to you (which is easy and enjoyable to do), if we want to understand how it would have been taken at the time, we should imagine Plato speaking to an iron age resident. — frank

An alternative is to read the dialogues as if, on the one hand Socrates (or in a few cases Timaeus or a Stranger) is talking to both a particular person and to those present, and on the other, that he is addressing a question or issue. In the latter case the reading audience is also being addressed. I see no reason to assume that he intended for this larger audience to be limited by time and place.

When Socrates says that the image of the cave is:

an image of our nature in its education and want of education (514a)

does "our nature" refer to human nature or the nature of Greeks or Athenians at that time? Are there different human natures? Does human nature change over time? Many today would argue that the is no human nature but even then the question of phusis vs nomos was raised. Clearly, there is no expiration date.

However we might imagine the dialogues were taken at that time, and we should not imagine it being taken in only one way, it would be wrong to assume that any way in which they were taken is the way in which Plato intended for them to be understood. In addition, Socratic philosophy (and Plato was a Socratic philosopher) is dialectical, that is to say, dialogical. The dialogues are not doctrines frozen in time. In the Seventh Letter Plato says:

There is no treatise (suggramma) by me on these subjects, nor will there ever be. (341c)

Quoting you from the link:

Iris Murdoch's idea of metaphysics more like that of Plato than like Aristotle's referring to what she called "the inner life" of imagining The Good (love) instead of as a logical demonstration of "The Absolute" (truth) ...

I agree with the importance of the imagination for Plato. I also agree that it cannot be determined by logical demonstration. If it is known it is known noetically not via reason or dianoia. But I have argued why the good cannot be known

I would add that Plato is a political philosopher. As important as the inner life is, so is the shared life of friends and the public/political.

Ok, other folk have shared that interpretation. But did Moore? — Banno

I don't know. The truth is, I have not read him. More than once I tried. Reading through the posts here it occured to me that it sounded a lot like noesis - something known by direct intellectual apprehension.

at odds with Moore's rejection of idealism. — Banno

Yes, that is the point. What is and is not rejected in his rejection of idealism?

From the article:

Moore simply denied that "fundamental presupposition of any sort of Idealism" by asserting that "the objects of knowledge [are] completely independent of us."

Plato's Forms are completely independent of us.

I have read some of her novels but not her work on ethics.

What are your thoughts?