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?

Both those quotes appear to be about Moore's realism with regard to the physical world, rather than about his intuitionism with regard to good. — Banno

From the article:

To say, as he did, that goodness is a non-natural property detected only by intuition, i.e. by thought and not by perception, is to treat it as a Platonic entity, inhabiting some transcendent realm of being.)

It means that it is not a product of the mind or a deduction or arrived at by analysis. It is known independently of all else.

Seems to me that introducing Plato only servers to add more fog. — Banno

It was a deliberate choice that does not add more fog but clarity. Moore himself said in a letter to a friend:

I am pleased to believe that this is the most Platonic system of modern times. (Hylton, p. 137)

I was not aware of this, I found it just now while looking for support. I found it here

From the same article:

Hence Moore's version of realism, as it claimed the constituents of reality to be unchangeable non-spatial non-temporal entities with which we are in contact only in thought, is a kind of Platonism.

Moore's "intuitionism" was only that moral truths are not derived from any other sorts of truths. That is, it is an error to ask for a reason to conclude that something is morally good.

So no, nothing much to do with the nonsense of Platonic forms. — Banno

To say it is a form of Platonism is not to say that there is a form the Good, but that it is a type of Platonism in that it consistent with Platonist claims, that is is something known in itself by themselves by the mind itself.

Is Moore's intuitionism a form of Platonism? What does it mean for goodness to be intuited? Noesis of goodness?

Don’t they have their colleagues to spar with? — Noble Dust

More often than not that sparing only occurs in a formal setting - via books, papers, and conferences. The free flow of ideas is stymied by the desire to establish and maintain one's territory and reputation. Professional jealousy is common. The number of contingent faculty is increasing. Adjuncts often feel isolated and are regarded as second class citizens.

That is why I said:

Plato argues against the claim that the man, that is, each person is the measure, and thus is able to refute it — Fooloso4

Plato himself made the 'man is the measure' doctrine sufficiently clear in the Theaetetus. “just as each thing appears to me, so too it is for me, and just as it appears to you, so too again for you” — magritte

But we do not know that this is what Protagoras claimed. Perhaps his point was not about "me" and "you" but about how things appear to us.

The meaning of 'appears' was and still is ambiguous because the ancients couldn't have a clear distinction between sensation, psychological perception or insight, and logical judgment based on memories of personal experience. — magritte

I think you underestimate what they were capable of. But yes, I agree that 'appears' is ambiguous.

... today's public scientific facts are not in the scope of subjective philosophy. — magritte

This is changing with cross disciplinary approaches such as cognitive science.

Plato argues against the claim that the man, that is, each person is the measure, and thus is able to refute it.
— Fooloso4
No he is not able to do any such thing. — magritte

If what each man says is true then if Protagoras says man is the measure and Socrates says man is not the measure, then according to Protagoras what Socrates says is true, in which case what Protagoras says is false.

Plato saddles his opponents with one or more absurd premises just for the purpose. — magritte

Yup, but not just Plato. On another thread on academic philosophers I just made a similar point with regard to commentary.

Unfortunately this scientific method in search of forms, occupying an intermediate position between knowledge and ignorance, does not come up in the Theaetetus. — magritte

@Paine made the point above that the forms play no part in the Theaetetus.

For a student of philosophy, sure. — SophistiCat

Aristotle, for example? This is not the whole of his work but still an important part.

Commentary has always been used as a rhetorical strategy. A way of minimizing resistance to something new and different or controversial. It is not uncommon for philosophers to misrepresent those who came before them.

Philosophy is self-reflexive and dialogic. What others have said is not separate from what one says about world, existence, reality and truth.

Original ideas and concepts have always been the exception.

A lot of academic philosophy is focused more on itself than on concepts of "world, existence, reality and truth." Much of what is taught and published is exclusively devoted to the study of philosophers and their texts — SophistiCat

It is for some the former via the latter.

You are responding to something I did not say. I did not say anything about a unity of mankind or uncontestable measurement. Whether it is Parmenides or Heraclitus or their followers or anyone else, whether they have different standards or not, the measure is always taken by man.

If Protagoras had been allowed into the argument at this point he would have thanked Plato for properly developing Protagorian subjective knowledge. The difference is that subjectively I can always be certain of my knowledge of this moment and thi — magritte

What the claim that man is the measure means is still a matter of dispute. Plato argues against the claim that the man, that is, each person is the measure, and thus is able to refute it. But if man means mankind a stronger argument can be made. If we are not the measure than who or what is? That man is the measure can be understood to mean that this is how things are for us human beings, in distinction for example from how things are for the gods.

If we dismiss the Forms as abstract nonsense then which way should we look for an answer? — magritte

I don't the alternative is abstract nonsense. Socrates describes his "second sailing" (Pheado 99d-100a). Rather than looking at things themselves:

So I thought I must take refuge in discussions and investigate the truth of beings by means of accounts [logoi] … On each occasion I put down as hypothesis whatever account I judge to be mightiest; and whatever seems to me to be consonant with this, I put down as being true, both about cause and about all the rest, while what isn’t, I put down as not true.”

In the dialogue Parmenides, after his criticisms of the Forms Parmenides says that one who does not “allow that for each thing there is a character that is always the same" will “destroy the power of dialectic entirely” (135b8–c2).

Something like the Forms underlies (hypo - under, thesis - to place or set) thought and speech.

Since the dialogue takes place when Socrates was a young man the implication is that whatever Socrates says in other dialogues is informed by this. This is not a historical claim but a literary one.

Rather than refute the claim that man(kind) is the measure it supports it. This is how we human beings make sense of things.

In contrast, it is often said that Platonism posits a higher, real world and deprecates what we nowadays take to be the real world i.e. the sensory domain. — Wayfarer

This is a good reason to separate the works of Plato and Platonism. Just as Socrates spoke differently and said different things to different people, Plato manages to say different things with the same words. He presents a salutary teaching and a philosophic teaching, an exoteric teaching suited for most and an esoteric teaching suited to a few, an image of truth and the truth that such "truths" are not available to us.

In pointing elsewhere Plato is at the same time pointing us back here. It is against the backdrop of an imagined world in which all things are fixed, seen clearly and unambiguously that we turn to the reality of our ignorance, our not knowing, and the indeterminacy of life. The famous turning of the soul is both a turn to and a turn away from this imagined other world. The move is dialectical. Socrates' claim that philosophy is preparation for death works in the same way. In death he says there is knowledge, but in truth we know nothing of death. In death is the promise of rewards and punishment for how we live, but he also says that death may be nothingness. In either case we are turned back to an examination of how we live.

Trust and hope in a transcendent reality is one option, one that I held at one time. Accepting that this world here and now is beyond our limited comprehension is enough. No need to imagine a true world beyond this one.

This is clearly derived from or descended from Parmenides, is it not? — Wayfarer

He is referring to what we know as Parmenides fragment three:

A couple of translations:

... for this is the same, to think and to be

... for it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be

I think the argument in the Republic goes in a different direction. It points to the limits of what can be thought and known and said.

I was stunned to learn how prevalent this interpretation is. — Paine

I think there are two reasons for this. The first is, as you point out, a deliberate attempt to separate readers. The second, which you hint at, is that many academics do not bother to do the painstaking work of careful interpretation. Questionable claims get passed on, and sometimes, as is the case here, these things become a subject of interest in and of themselves. JTB is argued about, and whether or not this conclusion is supported by the dialogue is not even questioned.

Because the dialogue is given through the form of a drama, perhaps this has a double nature. — Paine

Too little attention is given to the function of dialogue. Things have improved but there are still some who regard it as being a matter of style with little or no philosophic importance. The argument is abstracted from the character of the person making the argument.

Perhaps nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the Meno. He asks whether virtue is taught, acquired by practice, or comes by nature or in some other way. The question becomes more significant if we know something about him. Meno's question can be rephrased to ask whether he can be taught virtue, that is, whether an ambitious and ruthless young man can be taught to be virtuous. Further, Meno thinks he already knows what virtue is. In line with his ambitions he thinks it is the ability of a man to manage public affairs for the benefit of himself and his friends and harm his enemies.

Asking whether someone like Meno can be made virtuous is not the same as asking whether anyone can be made virtuous. It is against this that Socrates introduces the myth of recollection. There must already be something in us that "recognizes" virtue, if one is or is to become virtuous. Of the options given by Meno I think "by nature" comes closest to the matter. The answer to the question depends on the kind of person you are. Given Meno's lack of virtue together with the fact that he thinks he already knows what it is and that he is already virtuous, the answer in his case is no. But others can be taught to be virtuous. As in the case of the slave boy being led to solve a complex mathematical problem, some can be led to virtue.

He once said:

“You see the mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”

Edit: I'm slow. I didn't pick up that you were quoting him.

Trump pleaded the 5th more than 400 times for the New York AG deposition a couple of days ago. A prudent move given that anything he said would likely confirm his guilt.

I’m going to allow myself to take exception to Plato’s notion of “the good”, preferring to relegate the idea to the irreducible ground for a specific moral philosophy. — Mww

Socrates Argument For Why the Good Cannot Be Known

The argument is not easily seen because it stretches over three books of the Republic, as if Plato wanted only those who are sufficiently attentive to see it.

I begin by collecting the releverent statements. Bloom translation. Bold added.

"So, do we have an adequate grasp of the fact—even if we should consider it in many ways—that what is entirely, is entirely knowable; and what in no way is, is in every way unknowable?" (477a)

"Knowledge is presumably dependent on what is, to know of what is that it is and how it is?"
"Yes."
"While opinion, we say, opines." (478a)

"If what is, is knowable, then wouldn't something other than that which is be opinable?" (478b)

"To that which is not, we were compelled to assign ignorance, and to that which is, knowledge."

"Opinion, therefore, opines neither that which is nor that which is not." (478c)

“... although the good isn't being but is still beyond being, exceeding it in dignity (age) and power."(509b)

"You," I said, "are responsible for compelling me to tell my opinions about it." (509c)

“... in applying the going up and the seeing of what's above to the soul's journey up to the intelligible place, you'll not mistake my expectation, since you desire to hear it. A god doubtless knows if it happens to be true. At all events, this is the way the phenomena look to me: in the knowable the last thing to be seen, and that with considerable effort, is the idea of the good …” (517b-c)

He makes a threefold distinction -

Being or what is
Something other than that which is
What is not


And corresponding to them

Knowledge
Opinion
Ignorance



The middle term is somewhat ambiguous. What is not is something other than that which is, but to what is not he assigns ignorance. Opinion opines neither what is nor what is not. Between what is entirely, the beings or Forms, and what is not, is becoming, that is, the visible world. Opinion opines about the visible world. But the good is beyond being. It is the cause of being, the cause of what is. It too is something other than what is and what is not.

What is entirely is entirely knowable. The good, being beyond being, is not something that is entirely. The good is then not entirely knowable. As if to confirm this Socrates says that he is giving his opinions about the good, but that what is knowable and unknowable is a matter of fact. As to the soul’s journey to the intelligible and the sight of the idea of the good, he says that a god knows if it happens to be true, but this is how it looks to him. He plays on the meaning of the cognate terms idea and look, which can be translated as Form. A god knows if it “happens to be true” but we are not gods, and what may happen to be true might also happen to be false.

The quote at 517 continues:

… but once seen, it must be concluded that this is in fact the cause of all that is right and fair in everything—in the visible it gave birth to light and its sovereign; in the intelligible, itself sovereign, it provided truth and intelligence —and that the man who is going to act prudently in private or in public must see it. (517c)

But it is not seen, for it is not something that is and thus not something knowable, and so no conclusion must follow. In order to act prudently, he says, one must see the good itself. Whether one is acting prudently then, remains an open question. The examined life remains the primary, continuous way of life of the Socratic philosopher. A way of life that rejects the complacency and false piety of believing one knows the divine answers.

If having a PhD in philosophy and teaching philosophy courses counts as an academic philosopher then I am or was an academic philosopher before I retired. But the logic and philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science is not my area of interest.

A few comments in support of what you said:

In the Apology Socrates says:

Finally I went to the craftsmen, for I was conscious of knowing practically nothing, and I knew that I would find that they had knowledge of many fine things. In this I was not mistaken; they knew things I did not know, and to that extent they were wiser than I. (22d)

Note how often knowledge and its cognates are used in the text I bolded. Far from denying knowledge he says that he and others have knowledge. What he denies is having knowledge of anything "πολλὰ καὶ καλὰ", very much or great and good or beautiful. (21d)

With regard to justified true belief, this is a long standing but, in my opinion, incorrect interpretation of the Theaetetus. The question is: what is knowledge? The first thing to be noted is that one must have knowledge in order to correctly say what knowledge is. The proposed answer, justified true belief, is Theaetetus', not Socrates. It proves to be inadequate. It faces the same problem. What justifies an opinion? After all, the Sophists were skilled at giving justifications for opinions, both true and false. In order to determine if an argument is true, to have the ability to discern a true from a false logos, requires knowledge. But this knowledge is not itself a justified true belief.

I am hesitant to discuss Aristotle for two reasons. First, I simply do not understand him. Aristotle Hides (see section on Aristotle in the link) and I have not done enough work to adequately sort things out. Second, although both Plato and Aristotle use the term eidos or Form there are significant differences. There is for Aristotle no "equal itself" existing by itself timeless and unchanging.

But, as I have argued elsewhere, Plato's Timaeus points to the inadequacy of a world of static Forms.

I don't think we have any common ground from which to proceed, so vaya con dios! — frank

The common ground is Plato's texts. Something you have avoided citing. The real problem seems not to be that there is no common ground but that the dialogues do not give you grounds to support your claims.