• j0e
    443
    I thought I'd add some perhaps little-remembered thought from David Strauss to the quote above. A theme that continues to fascinate me is the emergence of humanism from the 'absolute religion,' which features the incarnation myth with which we are all (too?) familiar.

    Man being once mature enough to receive as his religion the truth that God is man, and man of a divine race; it necessarily follows, since religion is the form in which the truth presents itself to the popular mind, that this truth must appear, in a guise intelligible to all, as a fact obvious to the senses: in other words, there must appear a human individual who is recognised as the visible God. This God-man uniting in a single being the divine essence and the human personality, it may be said of him that he had the Divine Spirit for a father and a woman for his mother. His personality reflecting itself not in himself, but in the absolute substance, having the will to exist only for God, and not at all for itself, he is sinless and perfect. As a man of Divine essence, he is the power that subdues nature, a worker of miracles; but as God in a human manifestation, he is dependent on nature, subject to its necessities and sufferings—is in a state of abasement. Must he even pay the last tribute to nature? does not the fact that the human nature is subject to death preclude the idea that that nature is one with the divine? No: the God-man dies, and thus proves that the incarnation of God is real, that the infinite spirit does not scorn to descend into the lowest depths of the finite, because he knows how to find a way of return into himself, because in the most entire alienation of himself, he can retain his identity. Further, the God-man, in so far as he is a spirit reflected in his infinity, stands contrasted with men, in so far as they are limited to their finiteness: hence opposition and contest result, and the death of the God-Man becomes a violent one, inflicted by the hands of sinners; so that to physical degradation is added the moral degradation of ignominy and accusation of crime. If God then finds a passage from heaven to the grave, so must a way be discoverable for man from the grave to heaven: the death of the prince of life is the life of mortals. By his entrance into the world as God-man, God showed himself reconciled to man; by his dying, in which act he cast off the limitations of mortality, he showed moreover the way in which he perpetually effects that reconciliation: namely, by remaining, throughout his manifestation of himself under the limitations of a natural existence, and his suppression of that existence, identical with himself. Inasmuch as the death of the God-man is merely the cessation of his state of alienation from the infinite, it is in fact an exaltation and return to God, and thus the death is necessarily followed by the resurrection and ascension.

    The God-man, who during his life stood before his cotemporaries as an individual distinct from themselves, and perceptible by the senses, is by death taken out of their sight; he enters into their imagination and memory: the unity of the divine and human in him, becomes a part of the general consciousness; and the church must repeat spiritually, in the souls of its members, those events of his life which he experienced externally. The believer, finding himself environed with the conditions of nature, must, like Christ, die to nature—but only inwardly, as Christ did outwardly,—must spiritually crucify himself and be buried with Christ, that by the virtual suppression of his own sensible existence, he may become, in so far as he is a spirit, identical with himself, and participate in the bliss and glory of Christ.
    — Strauss
    http://www.gutenberg.org/files/64037/64037-h/64037-h.htm#s150

    We might think of this as the rationalization of Christian myth. What was once understood as a history of supernatural events is reinterpreted as a metaphor for the immanent transcendence of our petty selves.
  • j0e
    443
    Continuing, we get to the clear abandonment of the old theology.

    Though I may conceive that the divine spirit in a state of renunciation and abasement becomes the human, and that the human nature in its return into and above itself becomes the divine; this does not help me to conceive more easily, how the divine and human natures can have constituted the distinct and yet united portions of an historical person. Though I may see the human mind in its unity with the divine, in the course of the world’s history, more and more completely establish itself as the power which subdues nature; this is quite another thing, than to conceive a single man endowed with such power, for individual, voluntary acts. Lastly, from the truth, that the suppression of the natural existence is the resurrection of the spirit, can never be deduced the bodily resurrection of an individual.

    We should thus have fallen back again to Kant’s point of view, which we have ourselves found unsatisfactory: for if the idea have no corresponding reality, it is an empty obligation and ideal. But do we then deprive the idea of all reality? By no means: we reject only that which does not follow from the premises. If reality is ascribed to the idea of the unity of the divine and human natures, is this equivalent to the admission that this unity must actually have been once manifested, as it never had been, and never more will be, in one individual? This is indeed not the mode in which Idea realizes itself; it is not wont to lavish all its fulness on one exemplar, and be niggardly towards all others—to express itself perfectly in that one individual, and imperfectly in all the rest: it rather loves to distribute its riches among a multiplicity of exemplars which reciprocally complete each other—in the alternate appearance and suppression of a series of individuals. And is this no true realization of the idea? is not the idea of the unity of the divine and human natures a real one in a far higher sense, when I regard the whole race of mankind as its realization, than when I single out one man as such a realization? is not an incarnation of God from eternity, a truer one than an incarnation limited to a particular point of time.

    This is the key to the whole of Christology, that, as subject of the predicate which the church assigns to Christ, we place, instead of an individual, an idea; but an idea which has an existence in reality, not in the mind only, like that of Kant. In an individual, a God-man, the properties and functions which the church ascribes to Christ contradict themselves; in the idea of the race, they perfectly agree. Humanity is the union of the two natures—God become man, the infinite manifesting itself in the finite, and the finite spirit remembering its infinitude; it is the child of the visible Mother and the invisible Father, Nature and Spirit; it is the worker of miracles, in so far as in the course of human history the spirit more and more completely subjugates nature, both within and around man, until it lies before him as the inert matter on which he exercises his active power; it is the sinless existence, for the course of its development is a blameless one, pollution cleaves to the individual only, and does not touch the race or its history. It is Humanity that dies, rises, and ascends to heaven, for from the negation of its phenomenal life there ever proceeds a higher spiritual life; from the suppression of its mortality as a personal, national, and terrestrial spirit, arises its union with the infinite spirit of the heavens. By faith in this Christ, especially in his death and resurrection, man is justified before God; that is, by the kindling within him of the idea of Humanity, the individual man participates in the divinely human life of the species. Now the main element of that idea is, that the negation of the merely natural and sensual life, which is itself the negation of the spirit (the negation of negation, therefore), is the sole way to true spiritual life.

    This alone is the absolute sense of Christology: that it is annexed to the person and history of one individual, is a necessary result of the historical form which Christology has taken. Schleiermacher was quite right when he foreboded, that the speculative view would not leave much more of the historical person of the Saviour than was retained by the Ebionites. The phenomenal history of the individual, says Hegel, is only a starting point for the mind. Faith, in her early stages, is governed by the senses, and therefore contemplates a temporal history; what she holds to be true is the external, ordinary event, the evidence for which is of the historical, forensic kind—a fact to be proved by the testimony of the senses, and the moral confidence inspired by the witnesses. But mind having once taken occasion by this external fact, to bring under its consciousness the idea of humanity as one with God, sees in the history only the presentation of that idea; the object of faith is completely changed; instead of a sensible, empirical fact, it has become a spiritual and divine idea, which has its confirmation no longer in history but in philosophy. When the mind has thus gone beyond the sensible history, and entered into the domain of the absolute, the former ceases to be essential; it takes a subordinate place, above which the spiritual truths suggested by the history stand self-supported; it becomes as the faint image of a dream which belongs only to the past, and does not, like the idea, share the permanence of the spirit which is absolutely present to itself. Even Luther subordinated the physical miracles to the spiritual, as the truly great miracles. And shall we interest ourselves more in the cure of some sick people in Galilee, than in the miracles of intellectual and moral life belonging to the history of the world—in the increasing, the almost incredible dominion of man over nature—in the irresistible force of ideas, to which no unintelligent matter, whatever its magnitude, can oppose any enduring resistance? Shall isolated incidents, in themselves trivial, be more to us than the universal order of events, simply because in the latter we presuppose, if we do not perceive, a natural cause, in the former the contrary? This would be a direct contravention of the more enlightened sentiments of our own day, justly and conclusively expressed by Schleiermacher. The interests of pity, says this theologian, can no longer require us so to conceive a fact, that by its dependence on God it is divested of the conditions which would belong to it as a link in the chain of nature; for we have outgrown the notion, that the divine omnipotence is more completely manifested in the interruption of the order of nature, than in its preservation. Thus if we know the incarnation, death and resurrection, the duplex negatio affirmat, as the eternal circulation, the infinitely repeated pulsation of the divine life; what special importance can attach to a single fact, which is but a mere sensible image of this unending process?
    — Strauss
    http://www.gutenberg.org/files/64037/64037-h/64037-h.htm#s150
    The surprising part here is that 'Christ' is or is becoming lord of this world thru science & technology, so that Christianity is blended with a myth of thisworldly progress. Schopenhauer might object that Christianity is being transformed here into an optimistic religion. We in 2021 might have more dread of technology and look back nostalgically on a time that believed in a Star Trek future.

    How does this connect to the OP? Rationality is the Holy Spirit now.
  • Fooloso4
    5.4k
    it is clear that the argument employed here was of an Ad Hominem fallacy.god must be atheist

    On this we disagree. The argument obviously refers to the man but I do not see it as a fallacy.

    This is not a fallacy, but a huge and fatal omission of defeating the opponent's view. Socrates acts as if he won the argument, but he never did.god must be atheist

    In my opinion the best interpreters do just this sort of thing. Only they do not leave it there. Plato did not write dialogues to show Socrates winning an argument. What would be the point of that?

    If the person came back and insisted on the type of fact that the sum of a thing is greater than sum of its componentsgod must be atheist

    The Forms are not sums, they do not have components. They are each one, singular and unique.



    .
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    The Forms are not sums, they do not have components. They are each one, singular and unique.Fooloso4

    Absolutely. And that is based on the view that each thing that is of unique description, has a quality, a singular, real, existing something in it that gives it its unique quality. If this was not accepted, then the Forms would not have been born.

    But this was accepted only because Plato (and originally Socrates) had no argument to defeat the counter argument, that there are no unique qualities, but combination of qualities. Had this second "combination" argument been accepted, the idea and the world of Forms would not have been created the way they have.

    I don't know... why is this criticism so hard to accept? I think more than one serious thinker can get biassed and abandon logic due to the effect of cognitive dissonance. Nobody I know can accept when shown, that Socrates was a cheat and his theory crumbles once you alter the outcome of one of the unfinished arguments in which he had been partaking. This goes beyond logic for most thinkers; their basic assumption, namely, that Socrates could not have been wrong, is so strong, as to form an impenetrable an impervious bias against logical thinking. Especially when the proof is offered by a complete no-name, a despicable little Hungarian who has no business in dabbling with the "Big" thinkers' works in such light. He (i.e. I) should be docile, and shut up and accept the status quo, otherwise he, (i.e. I) should go and fuck myself.

    ----------
    On this we disagree. The argument obviously refers to the man but I do not see it as a fallacy.Fooloso4

    I don't know why you say this. This argument by Socrates is a school-case example of the clearest, most obvious case of Ad Hominem. A man was forced to change his opinion not by logic, but by force of an attack on his humanity. Seriously, what part of this argument fails in your mind to satisfy the criteria of Ad Hominem? I am curious, and I wish to read your precise analysis that proves this is not A.H. Without that analysis it stays merely your opinion, and not a proof. Clearly it is a matter of logic, so a proof may be possible.

    ---------

    There are three ways we can go about this if you insist that Socrates could do no wrong.
    1. You declare that I am not worthy of arguing against.
    2. You declare that I am insane and my argument is so out of whack, that it is futile to try to treat it with logical counter-arguments.
    3. You actually get down and prove me wrong.

    --------
    (Attacking the person): This fallacy occurs when, instead of addressing someone's argument or position, you irrelevantly attack the person or some aspect of the person who is making the argument. The fallacious attack can also be direct to membership in a group or institution.

    I grant that it is not easy to see the Ad Hominem in this instance. But it is there, and can be seen if you extrapolate validly from the unuttered insinuations in Socrates' argument. To show what I mean, I transliterated the argument, and you can tell me where I went wrong in the transliteration. I guess one of the ways you you can do to tell me where I went wrong in the transliteration, is finding instances in it that make the two utterances (the two being Socrates' actual argument and my transliteration) contain corresponding parts that are incompatible with each other in scope and meaning. That is, when parts are compared, corresponding parts, and I claim comparative equality between the two, then a contradiction can be shown between the two.

    Socrates argument can be transliterated as this:

    "You value pleasure, gaiety, rapturous joy, etc., over thought and love of wisdom. This is what a sea urchin does, not a human. Therefore if you stick with this opinion, you yourself reduce your opinion to that worthy of a sea-urchin, not to that of a human. Do you want to be known in the community as a person whose opinions are worthy of no more than to be those of a sea urchin? And do you want to exist with the knowledge that your level of essence as a living being goes not to that of a human's, but can't get above the level of a sea-urchin's?"

    I am willing to break down this transliteration and Socrates' actual argument, to point out the corresponding parts, should you ask for it.
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    Plato did not write dialogues to show Socrates winning an argument. What would be the point of that?Fooloso4

    I don't know... to give validity to the theory of the Forms, the Men in the Cave, to make sense of what Socrates was trying to show and say? These are wild guesses.

    Yes, you're right, I believe. To show that Socrates won his arguments, would lead to a futile case of proof or acceptability of his ideas. That obviously Socrates was not trying to achieve, and Plato, faithfully to his teacher's legacy, also wanted to avoid doing.

    (Please notice the sarcasm.)
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    Another, much simpler way of transcribing Socrates' argument against TH...US, would be this:

    "If that is your opinion, you are a sea-urchin, not a human. And since that is your opinion, you are a sea-urchin."
  • Fooloso4
    5.4k
    Plato (and originally Socrates) had no argument to defeat the counter argument, that there are no unique qualities, but combination of qualities.god must be atheist

    But what about those qualities that they are combinations of? Are they just combinations of qualities too?

    Although many, perhaps the majority of scholars and all textbooks treat the Forms as Plato's ontology, in my opinion, the Forms are themselves images, part of Plato's philosophical poesis. He takes over the cave and the images and their images, the shadows on the cave wall.

    This argument by Socrates is a school-case example of the clearest, most obvious case of Ad Hominem.god must be atheist

    Socrates calls himself a physician of the soul and a midwife to ideas. In this case he helps Protarchus give birth to his idea regarding his preference of pleasure over wisdom and memory (Why memory? After a night of drunkenness one does not remember.). The analogy to a sea urchin certainly is not flattering, but a life of intemperate pleasure does not make a pretty picture. Socrates argument is not simply against this person but all those who would choose a life of unbridled pleasure. For Socrates philosophy is about the examined life. It is not about abstract valid logical arguments but a way of life.

    "If that is your opinion, you are a sea-urchin, not a human. And since that is your opinion, you are a sea-urchin."god must be atheist

    It is not the opinion but the way of life that is analogous to that of a sea urchin. He was not against pleasure but against a life of unchecked pleasure.
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    But what about those qualities that they are combinations of? Are they just combinations of qualities too?Fooloso4

    Again, originally I did not express myself well.

    There are kernel qualities. Qualities that have no component parts.

    There are combined qualities. Qualities that comprise component qualities, that essentially are kernel and / or combined qualities. Some combined qualities together make up a quality that is not equivalent of any of the component qualities.

    This is of course conjecture, complete conjecture, but not any more of a conjecture than to claim that each displayed quality is a unique kernel quality, like Socrates claimed. Furthermore, Socrates claim seems to suggest that there are no combined qualities -- each displayed quality is the effect of a distinct unit of a quality source.
  • Fooloso4
    5.4k
    There are kernel qualities. Qualities that have no component parts.god must be atheist

    How do these differ from forms?

    Socrates claim seems to suggest that there are no combined qualitiesgod must be atheist

    They are found in combination in the world we live in, the world of our experience.
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    The analogy to a sea urchin certainly is not flattering, but a life of intemperate pleasure does not make a pretty picture.Fooloso4
    You just replaced one Ad Hominem argument with another. I don't think your claim is included or even insinuated in the quote, but since you argue that it is, it is easier to show that it's a sideways-shift of Ad Hominem, and not an eradication of it.

    1. You can have all the pleasures and joys and gaiety.
    2. But you can do this without attaining wisdom and deep thought. (So to speak.)
    3. The result will be that you will be a despicable drunkard, a pleasure-seeking old goat, a narcissistic person whom everyone despises, even your own self.

    This is practically indistinguishable from
    3. you will be ugly and despicable

    ...and that is a hallmark of Ad Hominem.

    Did Socrates give logical reasons, that make a narcissist repulsive? No, he gave visual images. (And he did not even give those... your fantasy and pulling in ideas and event and opinions from other parts of the book did this, which were not part of the argument.) TH...US could not have comprehended this argument, which you claim were part of Socrates' stance, because Socrates did not say them. TH...US is not a mind reader. No, Socrates stopped TH...US on purely emotive effects.

    That is what helped Socrates achieve an Ad Hominem fallacy that was remarkably effective on TH...US.

    Whatever Socrates' values were, are immaterial in this argument. Everyone has values, and they are personal emotive stuff. They can be different or the same, between two people, but if they use only logic, then the values' differentness or sameness will not affect the strength of their arguments. Fine, Socrates valued these things, and I am not going to try to take it away from him.

    But this debate between you and me is not about Socrates' values. It is about Socrates employing an Ad Hominem argument. You failed so far to refute that. Socrates' values may have been displayed for the readers of the book; but the actual debate between TH...US and Socrates turned around on an Ad Hominem argument.

    That's how far I am willing to take this, because that was my initial proposition: Socrates did not shy away from fallacious reasoning to win arguments.

    .
    Socrates argument is not simply against this person but all those who would choose a life of unbridled pleasure.Fooloso4

    This is obvious, not need to mention this.

    He was not against pleasure but against a life of unchecked pleasure.Fooloso4

    Fine. This I accept site unseen. And again, my claim has not been or contained the notion that Socrates was against pleasure... you are this near to uttering a Strawman. But I accpet your claim, because I never made any counter-claim to it, and because you are much more widely read of Plato than I. By light years. But this still does not prove that a human being who has attained pleasure, gaiety, joy, etc., needs retrospection, wisdom, etc. This is the preference of Socrates. He can't prove, and does not even attempt to prove, that this is actually true for every human. But here I am going out of the scope of this debate. The scope of this debate between you and me is whether Socrates used fallacious reasoning or not.
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    Socrates claim seems to suggest that there are no combined qualities
    — god must be atheist

    They are found in combination in the world we live in, the world of our experience.
    Fooloso4

    Yes, yes, yes!! Now you are starting to understand. But Socrates DENIES that.

    There are kernel qualities. Qualities that have no component parts.
    — god must be atheist

    How do these differ from forms?
    Fooloso4

    Forms depend on every quality to have a kernel quality. Forms do not contain combination qualities -- you said that yourself.

    Yet qualities exist -- you admitted it in the second part of your post here -- that are not dependent on kernel qualities for a one-to-one correspondence.

    Now, take a Form. A chair. The ideal chair, that is 1. True, 2. Everlasting, and 3. A form of only one quality. It is an image. Yet chairs have legs; depend on gravity for their operating condition; they must have the quality of comfort; they must be pleasing to the eye. These are all kernel qualities, if you ask Socrates, because he denies that kernel qualities can combine to bring to life qualities that are reminiscent of none of the kernel qualities.

    Therefore the Form of a Chair is impossible, in the sense Socrates imagines them. The chair is the manifestation of a kernel quality; yet it has component parts that are kernel qualities themselves: legs, comfort, visual appeal. One can't both be one and not one at the same time. Yet Socrates insists, if you follow through with his reasoning, that it is possible. He does not say that, but it is unavoidable to realize that, once you follow through the reasoning he presents.
  • Fooloso4
    5.4k
    You just replaced one Ad Hominem argument with another.god must be atheist

    Socrates is talking to and about Protarchus. So again, yes it is about this person, about what he says and does, but this is not to engage in a fallacy. If he objects to being likened to a sea urchin then there must be something more to him then just pleasure.

    you are this near to uttering a Strawman.god must be atheist

    No, I am attempting avoid one, that he is anti-hedonist. That is not an assumption that you made. Good.

    But this still does not prove that a human being who has attained pleasure, gaiety, joy, etc., needs retrospection, wisdom, etc. This is the preference of Socrates. He can't prove, and does not even attempt to prove, that this is actually true for every humangod must be atheist

    The argument begins at 21a:

    Socrates
    Would you, Protarchus, be willing to live your whole life in the enjoyment of the greatest pleasures?

    Protarchus
    Of course I should.

    Socrates
    Would you think you needed anything further, if you were in complete possession of that enjoyment?

    Protarchus
    Certainly not.

    Socrates
    But consider whether you would not have some need of wisdom and intelligence and power of calculating your wants and the like.

    Protarchus
    Why should I? If I have enjoyment, I have everything.

    Socrates
    Then living thus you would enjoy the greatest pleasures all your life?

    Protarchus
    Yes; why not?

    Socrates
    But if you did not possess mind or memory or knowledge or true opinion, in the first place, you would not know whether you were enjoying your pleasures or not. That must be true, since you are utterly devoid of intellect, must it not?

    Protarchus
    Yes, it must.


    And likewise, if you had no memory you could not even remember that you ever did enjoy pleasure, and no recollection whatever of present pleasure could remain with you; if you had no true opinion you could not think you were enjoying pleasure at the time when you were enjoying it, and if you were without power of calculation you would not be able to calculate that you would enjoy it in the future; your life would not be that of a man, but of a mollusc or some other shell-fish like the oyster. Is that true, or can we imagine any other result?

    Protarchus
    We certainly cannot.

    Socrates
    And can we choose such a life?

    Protarchus
    This argument, Socrates, has made me utterly speechless for the present.

    Socrates
    Well, let us not give in yet. Let us take up the life of mind and scrutinize that in turn.

    Protarchus is not as skilled at arguing as he imagines himself to be. He agrees that he does not need anything other than pleasure, but is led to see that pleasure absent all else is not enough. Socrates then turns to the life of the mind. It is not about proving but persuading him to look beyond pleasure. The reasoning is not fallacious, it follows from the premise that pleasure without anything else is sufficient for the life of a human being. Now having said that, I do think there is a bit of manipulation on Socrates part when he gets Protarchus to agree with the premise that he needs nothing else.
  • Fooloso4
    5.4k
    Yes, yes, yes!! Now you are starting to understand. But Socrates DENIES that.god must be atheist

    He does not deny it. Plato makes it quite clear. He says that we find the Forms in the world of our experience unalloyed but mixed together.

    Now, take a Form. A chair.god must be atheist

    The Greek term for Form is eidos. It means the kind of thing something is, the look or shape of a thing. Eidos is closely related to idea. So when you say "chair" and not some particular chair you are referring to its form, that which all chairs have in common.

    I agree that there are problems with the idea. The dialogue Parmenides discusses them.

    One can't both be one and not one at the same time.god must be atheist

    This is what is know as the problem of the one and the many.
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    Yes, yes, yes!! Now you are starting to understand. But Socrates DENIES that.
    — god must be atheist

    He does not deny it. Plato makes it quite clear. He says that we find the Forms in the world of our experience unalloyed but mixed together.
    Fooloso4

    I have to differ again, sorry. The things in our world are mixed objects that contain Forms. A plant that can cure people of a disease, is both a plant and a curative device. A doctor who uses this plant is both a person and a healer. But the forms in and by themselves are unit-ideals. They don't have sub-components. They each represent a kernel form. The Forms are true, everlasting, perfect. The objects in our world lack in each of these qualities.

    So indeed Socrates denies that forms have more than one qualities or essences. I know I am mixing concepts and mixing adjectives with nouns. If this is objectionable, I can rewrite my opinion to make the naming structure uniform, but that would lead to some awkward constructs along the way, awkward language constructs. If you can close an eye to my calling the forms sometimes unique essences, and sometimes of unique qualities, and sometimes of kernel qualities, then please let me know and I'll try my best to get rid of this failing in my text.

    At any rate, I misunderstood your statement that I referred to as "yes, but Socrates denies that." And with some tact, I must let you know it was not entirely my fault that I misunderstood you. Let's put it this way: 90% my fault, 10% your fault. You said, "They are found in combination in the world we live in, the world of our experience." I was momentarily lost in finding the antecedent to the first word in this quote by you, "They". I figured those were the kernel qualities, not the forms. And by continuing my faulty line of understanding, I somehow -- entirely my mistake -- figured the combination refers to the contents of the Forms. The things in our world are combined, and they are found in the Forms. What a major mistake I made! My only defense is that I am not so apt at matching antecedents with pronouns. My language processing is faulty in this aspect.

    So now I get you. The objects of the world we live in contain Forms, which are not forged, or alloyed, together, but are mixed, and the operation of them is a resultant of their community of qualities, so to speak.

    This is a claim by Socrates. But it does not negate my claim, which I quote here for ease of reference:

    This is of course conjecture, complete conjecture, but not any more of a conjecture than to claim that each displayed quality is a unique kernel quality, like Socrates claimed. Furthermore, Socrates claim seems to suggest that there are no combined qualities -- each displayed quality is the effect of a distinct unit of a quality source.god must be atheist

    You say Socrates did not claim this, which is true. But it does not contradict the claim of Socrates. While we accept (both of us) that Forms can combine but not forge to produce new qualities, different from those of the forms, it is equally possible (whether likely or not) that the objects found in our experiences are indeed representations of nothing but one single solitary Form, in a somewhat bastardized version of it.

    How can the version be bastardized if it is a replica of the Form? And how can it be bastardized if the parts are only of a single Form, and not mixed with the qualities of other Forms? To which I would answer, Why does or why should the mixing of the Forms bastardize their effect, when represented in our world? The problem is that Forms are perfect and atomic. Mixing them with other perfect and atomic essences or qualities, that is, mixing them with other Forms, should not take away neither from the perfection, nor from the truth and its being everlasting.

    So there is an effect in our world which bastardizes the Forms. It is not the mix of Forms, because that alone should not affect the objects in ways that take away from the quality of forms. There is a substance in the world we observe, which "dirties" up the Forms, so they lose their everlasting quality, their perfection, and their truth. What is this thing, matter or otherwise, that dirties up the Forms? Well does Socrates name it, or describe it, the dirtying thing? I don't think so, but you may know of one or more.

    But again, I digressed. My only job here is to show that Socrates committed an Ad Hominem fallacy.
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    The reasoning is not fallacious, it follows from the premise that pleasure without anything else is sufficient for the life of a human being.Fooloso4
    But if you did not possess mind or memory or knowledge or true opinion, in the first place, you would not know whether you were enjoying your pleasures or not. That must be true, since you are utterly devoid of intellect, must it not?
    Here's an invalid point, it's not a fallacy, but invalid nevertheless. To feel pleasure you don't need to know you are feeling pleasure. In modern times this is easy to explain, but in the times of Socrates, this may be a bit more difficult.

    Does one need to know he feels pleasure in order to feel that pleasure? It is a mind that feels pleasure, and it is a mind that knows it feels pleasure.

    Cogito ergo sum. Sensato ergo sum. I think therefore I am. I sense, therefore I am.

    The mind's capacity to have self-awareness can be triggered by thought, or by sensation. Socrates strongly (and wrongly) suggested that self-awareness can only be triggered by thought, by intellectual activity: memory, comparison, collection of experiences, etc. It never occurred to him that sensations can also trigger the same effect. "If I had no mind, I could not think; therefore because I think, I must have a mind." "If I had no mind, I could not sense (pleasure, for instance). Therefore, because I feel pleasure, I must have a mind." This is not the proof that there is an Ad Hominem argument. It is a proof that Socrates made a mistake in the thought-experiment. However, this mistake carries on; it renders his final argumentation into an Ad Hominem fallacy.

    your life would not be that of a man,but of a mollusc or some other shell-fish like the oyster.
    Because Socrates transferred his faulty reasoning about the mind's self-awareness, it was easy then for him to degrade Protarchus, to render him to the level of an ugly and senseless sea animal from the level of a human being, should Protarchus insist on the truth of his claim. This is an Ad Hominem fallacy, because the reasoning failed, so the only convincing power is not logic, but a strong negative-image psychological effect: "If you stuck with your argument, Protarchus, you would not be a man but a mollusc or an oyster." To which Protarchus had no response other than "Oy."

    Granted, Descartes coined his mind-thought thought experiment thousands of years after the fact. However, if Socrates came up with the idea that self-awareness can be obtained by cognitive functioning, he ought to have also realized that self-awareness can also be obtained by sensing. He failed to see this, or else he knew this, and altered the truth he believed in, in order to win an argument. I say he couldn't have failed to see this, as to his probable knowledge a sensation was FELT, not something that happened without any trace, without any detection of it by the sensing individual. By feeling pleasure, there is a level of registering the pleasure. Socrates said, it can only be registered by intellectual activity. Was he just too hasty, or he really believed that? Well, then does pleasure not have an entity by itself, is pleasure, the sensation, not something that can be effected on an individual? Intellect can detect many things, and when it detects pleasure, it does not detect something else. So pleasure is a real, existing feeling. As it is real and existing, it is a feeling, and as a feeling, which is real and existing, it is NOT dependent on the cognitive mind for the individual to feel that pleasure.
  • Fooloso4
    5.4k
    I have to differ again, sorry. The things in our world are mixed objects that contain Forms.god must be atheist

    They do not contain Forms, but this is generally correct. I don't see what you are objecting to.

    So indeed Socrates denies that forms have more than one qualities or essences.god must be atheist

    Qualities and essences are not the same thing. The Form man or plant does not preclude those particular qualities essential to them.

    This is of course conjecture, complete conjecturegod must be atheist

    If you mean something he made up then I agree. That is why I called it philosophical poesis - that is, the poetic making of images. I do not want to defend the Forms because I do not think they exist. I do not think Plato is doing ontology. His favorite trilogy of Forms is the just, the beautiful, and the good. He wants to inspire the would be philosopher to seek them out, to discover them, and not just take them to be a matter of opinion.
  • Fooloso4
    5.4k
    Socrates is trying to persuade Protarchus to change his way of life. It is not likely that he would persuade him using a rigorous logic argument. The argument should serve the purpose.
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