The Sophists

Early Greek philosophy, before the Sophists, primarily focused on

understanding the natural world. Philosophers speculated about fundamental
realities that went beyond direct observation but had no systematic method
for deciding between conflicting theories on topics like substance and
change. This led some to adopt a skeptical view, doubting that reason could
uncover truths beyond our immediate experience. However, reason still had
practical uses, as skilled arguers could use it to promote their own interests.

The Sophists were the first professional educators. For a fee, they taught
students how to argue for the practical purpose of persuading others and
winning their way. While they were well equipped with and taught the
theories of philosophers, they were less concerned with inquiry and
discovery than with persuasion.

Pythagoras and Heraclitus presented some views on religion and the good
life. Social and moral issues began to occupy the center of attention for the
Sophists. Their tendency to doubt the capacity of reason to Understand truth,
and their cosmopolitan circumstances, which introduced them to various
social customs and codes, led the Sophists to adopt a relativist stance on
ethical matters. Due to their lack of interest in pursuing truth for its own sake
and their business-like interest in teaching argumentation to best serve their
clients’ interests, Plato mockingly labeled the Sophists as “shopkeepers with
spiritual products.”

One of the better known Sophists, Protagoras (481-411 B.C.), authored

several books including, Truth, or the Rejection (the rejection of science and
philosophy), which begins with his best-known quote, “man is the measure of
all things, of those that are that they are, of those that are not that they are
not.”

It reflects the idea that human beings, or individual perspectives, determine

the truth or reality of all things. In essence, Protagoras is suggesting that
there is no objective truth independent of human perception; rather, what is
“true” or “real” is shaped by each person’s viewpoint.

Knowledge, for Protagoras is reducible to perception. Since different

individuals perceive the same things in different ways, knowledge is relative
to the knower. This is a classic expression of epistemic relativism.
Accordingly, Protagoras rejects any objectively knowable morality and takes
ethics and law to be conventional inventions of civilizations, binding only
within societies and holding only relative to societies.

Socrates
Socrates is widely regarded as the founder of philosophy and rational inquiry.
He was born around 470 B.C., and tried and executed in 399 B.C.. Socrates
was the first of the three major Greek philosophers; the others being
Socrates’ student Plato and Plato’s student Aristotle. Socrates did not write
anything himself. We know of his views primarily through Plato’s dialogues
where Socrates is the primary character. Socrates is also known through
plays of Aristophanes and the historical writings of Xenophon. In many of
Plato’s dialogues it is difficult to determine when Socrates’ views are being
represented and when the character of Socrates is used as a mouthpiece for
Plato’s views.

Socrates was well known in Athens. He was eccentric, poor, ugly, brave,
stoic, and temperate. He was a distinguished veteran who fought bravely on
Athens’ behalf and was apparently indifferent to the discomforts of war.
Socrates claimed to hear a divine inner voice he called his daimon and he
was prone to go into catatonic states of concentration.

The conflicting views of the Ionian and Eleatic philosophers of nature

encouraged skepticism about our ability to obtain knowledge through
rational inquiry. Among the Sophists, this skepticism is manifested in
epistemic and Moral Relativism. Epistemic relativism is the view that there is
no objective standard for evaluating the truth or likely truth of our beliefs.
Rather, epistemic standards of reasoning are relative to one’s point of view
and interests. Roughly, this is the view that what is true for me might not be
true for you (when we are not just talking about ourselves). Epistemic
relativism marks no distinction between knowledge, belief, or opinion on the
one hand, and truth and reality on the other. To take a rather silly example, if
I think it’s Tuesday, then that’s what’s true for me; and if you think it’s
Thursday, then that’s what is true for you. In cases like this, epistemic
relativism seems quite absurd, yet many of us have grown comfortable with
the notion that, say, beliefs about the moral acceptability of capital
punishment might be true for some people and not for others.

Moral Relativism is the parallel doctrine about moral standards. The moral
relativist takes there to be no objective grounds for judging some ethical
opinions to be correct and others not. Rather, ethical judgments can only be
made relative to one or another system of moral beliefs and no system can
be evaluated as objectively better than another. Since earlier attempts at
rational inquiry had produced conflicting results, the Sophists held that no
opinion could be said to constitute knowledge. According to the Sophists,
rather than providing grounds for thinking some beliefs are true and others
false, rational argument can only be fruitfully employed as rhetoric, the art of
persuasion. For the epistemic relativist, the value of reason lies not in
revealing the truth, but in advancing one’s interests. The epistemic and
Moral Relativism of the Sophist has become popular again in recent years
and has an academic following in much "post-modern" writing.

Socrates was not an epistemic or moral relativist. He pursued rational inquiry

as a means of discovering the truth about ethical matters. But he did not
advance any ethical doctrines or lay claim to any knowledge about ethical
matters. Instead, his criticism of the Sophists and his contribution to
philosophy and science came in the form of his method of inquiry.

As the Socratic Method is portrayed in Plato’s Socratic dialogues, interlocutor

proposes a definition or analysis of some important concept, Socrates raises
an objection or offers counter examples, then the interlocutor reformulates
his position to handle the objection. Socrates raises a more refined objection.
Further reformulations are offered, and so forth. Socrates uses the dialectic
to discredit others’ claims to knowledge. While revealing the ignorance of his
interlocutors, Socrates also shows how to make progress towards more
adequate understanding.

A good example of the Socratic Method at work can be found in one of

Plato’s early Socratic dialogues, Euthyphro. Here is a link:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1642.

In Plato’s dialogues we often find Socrates asking about the nature of

something and then critically examine proposed answers, finding assorted
illuminating objections that often suggest next steps. In this dialogue,
Socrates and Euthyphro are discussing the nature of piety or holiness.
Socrates and Euthyphro never conclusively discover what piety is, but they
learn much about how various attempts to define piety fail. The dialogue
works the same if we substitute moral goodness for piety. Understood in this
way, Euthyphro provides a classic argument against Divine Command
Theory, a view about the nature of morality that says that what is right is
right simply because it is commanded by God.
Socrates would not have us believe our questions have no correct answers.
He is genuinely seeking the truth of the matter. But he would impress on us
that inquiry is hard and that untested claims to knowledge amount to little
more than vanity. Even though Euthyphro and Socrates don’t achieve full
knowledge of the nature of piety, their understanding is advanced through
testing the answers that Euthyphro suggests. We come to see why piety
can’t be understood just by identifying examples of it. While examples of
pious acts fail to give us a general understanding of piety, the fact that we
can identify examples of what is pious suggests that we have some grasp of
the notion even in the absence of a clear understanding of it.

After a few failed attempts to define piety, Euthyphro suggests that what is
pious is what is loved by the gods (all of them, the Greeks recognized quite a
few). Many religious believers continue to hold some version of Divine
Command Theory. In his response to Euthyphro, Socrates points us towards a
rather devastating critique of this view and any view that grounds morality in
authority. Socrates asks whether what is pious is pious because the gods love
it or whether the gods love what is pious because it is pious. Let’s suppose
that the gods agree in loving just what is pious. The question remains
whether their loving the pious explains its piety or whether some things
being pious explains why the gods love them. Once this question of what is
supposed to explain what is made clear, Euthyphro agrees with Socrates that
the gods love what is pious because it is pious. The problem with the
alternative view, that what is pious is pious because it is loved by the gods,
is that this view makes piety wholly arbitrary. Anything could be pious if piety
is just a matter of being loved by the gods. If the gods love puppy torture,
then this would be pious. Hopefully this seems absurd. Neither Socrates nor
Euthyphro is willing to accept that what is pious is completely arbitrary. At
this point, Socrates points out to Euthyphro that since an act’s being pious is
what explains why the gods love it, he has failed to give an account of what
piety is. The explanation can’t run in both directions. In taking piety to
explain being loved by the gods, we are left lacking an explanation of what
piety itself is. Euthyphro gives up shortly after this failed attempt and walks
off in a huff.

If we substitute talk of God making things right or wrong by way of

commanding them for talk of the gods loving what is pious in this exchange
of ideas, we can readily see that Divine Command Theory has the rather
unsavory result that torturing innocent puppies would be right if God
commanded it. We will return to this problem when we take up ethical theory
later in the course. While we don’t reach the end of inquiry into piety (or
goodness) in Euthyphro, we do make discernible progress in coming to see
why a few faulty accounts must be set aside. Socrates does not refute the
skeptic or the relativist Sophist by claiming to discover the truth about
anything. What he does instead is show us how to engage in rational inquiry
and show us how we can make progress by taking the possibility of rational
inquiry seriously.

Apology
This dialogue by Plato is a dramatization of Socrates’ defense at his trial for
corrupting the youth among other things. Socrates tells the story of his friend
Chaerophon who visits the Oracle of Delphi and asks if anyone in Athens is
wiser than Socrates. The Oracle answered that no one is wiser than Socrates.
Socrates is astounded by this and makes it his mission in life to test and
understand the Oracle’s pronouncement. He seeks out people who have a
reputation for wisdom in various regards and tests their claims to knowledge
through questioning. He discovers a good deal of vain ignorance and false
claims to knowledge, but no one with genuine wisdom. Ultimately, Socrates
concludes that he is wisest, but not because he possesses special knowledge
not had by others. Rather, he finds that he is wisest because he recognizes
his own lack of knowledge while others think they know, but do not.

Of course people generally, and alleged experts especially, are quite happy
to think that what they believe is right. We tend to be content with our
opinions and we rather like it when others affirm this contentment by
agreeing with us, deferring to our claims to know or at least by “respecting
our opinion” (whatever that is supposed to mean). We are vain about our
opinions even to the point of self identifying with them (I’m the guy who is
right about this or that). Not claiming to know, Socrates demonstrates some
intellectual humility in allowing that his opinions might be wrong and being
willing to subject them to examination. But in critically examining various
opinions, including those of the supposed experts, he pierces the vanity of
many of Athens’ prestigious citizens. Engaging in rational inquiry is
dangerous business, and Socrates is eventually brought up on charges of
corrupting the youth who liked to follow him around and listen to him reveal
people’s claims to knowledge as false pride. The Apology documents
Socrates’ defense of his of behavior and the Athenian assembly’s decision to
sentence him to death anyway.

You will find the Apology in several formats here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1656
Study questions for the Apology:
1. What are the ancient and the more recent charges brought against
Socrates?
2. How does he answer the ancient charges?
3. According to Socrates, why would he not intentionally corrupt the
youth?
4. Suppose Socrates unintentionally corrupted the youth. Should he be
punished anyway for the negative impact of his actions? Explain
your answer.
5. Explain the mission Socrates sets himself on in response to the the
pronouncement by the Oracle at Delphi.
6. Socrates argues in a couple places that the worse man can not
harm the better man. How does that argument go?
7. What does Socrates’ defense reveal about the values he lives by?
What matters most to Socrates in life?
8. How does Socrates argue that the fear of death is irrational?
9. How could Socrates have avoided the death penalty?
10. Was his choice not to evade death an honorable one?
11. How did Socrates see his critical questioning of Athenians as
beneficial to his city and its citizens?
12. Do you think Socrates was too hard on his fellow Athenians
before his accusers came forward? Was he too hard on them during
the trial and after the verdict?

Plato
Plato (429-347 B.C.) came from a family of high status in ancient Athens. He
was a friend and fan of Socrates and some of his early dialogues chronicle
events in Socrates’ life. Socrates is a character in all of Plato’s dialogues. But
in many, the figure of Socrates is employed as a voice for Plato’s own views.
Unlike Socrates, Plato offers very developed and carefully reasoned views
about a great many things. Here we will briefly introduce his core
metaphysical, epistemological and ethical views.

Metaphysics and Epistemology

Plato’s metaphysics and epistemology are best summarized by his device of
the divided line. The vertical line between the columns below distinguishes
reality and knowledge. It is divided into levels that identify what in reality
corresponds with specific modes of thought.
 Objects Modes of Thought

The Forms Knowledge

Mathematical objects Thinking

Particular things Belief /Opinion

Images Imaging

Here we have a hierarchy of Modes of Thought, or types of mental

representational states, with the highest being knowledge of the forms and
the lowest being imaging (in the literal sense of forming images in the mind).
Corresponding to these degrees of knowledge we have degrees of reality.
The less real includes the physical world, and even less real, our
representations of it in art. The more real we encounter as we inquire into
the universal natures of the various kinds of things and processes we
encounter. According to Plato, the only objects of knowledge are the forms
which are abstract entities.

In saying that the forms are abstract, we are saying that while they do exist,
they do not exist in space and time. They are ideals in the sense that a form,
say the form of horse-ness, is the template or paradigm of being a horse. All
the physical horses partake of the form of horse-ness, but exemplify it only to
partial and varying degrees of perfection. No actual triangular object is
perfectly triangular, for instance. But all actual triangles have something in
common, triangularity. The form of triangularity is free from all of the
imperfections of the various actual instances of being triangular. We get the
idea of something being more or less perfectly triangular. For various
triangles to come closer to perfection than others suggests that there is
some ideal standard of “perfectly triangularity.” This for Plato, is the form of
triangularity. Plato also takes moral standards like justice and aesthetic
standards like beauty to admit of such degrees of perfection. Beautiful
physical things all partake of the form of beauty to some degree or another.
But all are imperfect in varying degrees and ways. The form of beauty,
however, lacks the imperfections of its space and time bound instances.
Perfect beauty is not something we can picture or imagine. But an ideal form
of beauty is required to account for how beautiful things are similar and to
make sense of how things can be beautiful to some less than perfect degree
or another.
Only opinion can be had regarding the physical things, events, and states of
affairs we are acquainted with through our sensory experience. With physical
things constantly changing, the degree to which we can grasp how things are
at any given place and time is of little consequent. Knowledge of the nature
of the forms is a grasp of the universal essential natures of things. It is the
intellectual perception of what various things, like horses or people, have in
common that makes them things of a kind. Plato accepts Socrates’ view that
to know the good is to do the good. So his notion of epistemic excellence in
seeking knowledge of the forms will be a central component of his
conception of moral virtue.

Ethics
Plato offers us a tripartite account of the soul. The soul consists of a rational
thinking element, a motivating willful element, and a desire-generating
appetitive element. Plato offers a story of the rational element of the soul
falling from a state of grace (knowledge of the forms) and dragged down into
a human state by the unruly appetites. This story of the soul’s relation to the
imperfect body supports Plato’s view that the knowledge of the forms is a
kind of remembrance. This provides a convenient source of knowledge as an
alternative to the merely empirical and imperfect support of our sense
experience. Plato draws an analogy between his conception of the soul and a
chariot drawn by two horses, one obedient, the other rebellious. The
charioteer in this picture represents the rational element of the soul, the
good horse the obedient will, and the bad horse, of course, represents those
nasty earthly appetites. To each of the elements of the soul, there
corresponds a virtue; for the rational element there is wisdom, for the willing
element of the soul there is courage, and for the appetitive element there is
temperance. Temperance is matter of having your appetites under control.
This might sound like chronic self-denial and repression, but properly
understood, it is not. Temperance and courage are cultivated through habit.
In guiding our appetites by cultivating good habits, Plato holds, we can come
to desire what is really good for us (you know, good diet, exercise, less cable
TV, and lots more philosophy - that kind of stuff).

Wisdom is acquired through teaching, via the dialectic, or through

“remembrance.” Perhaps, to make the epistemological point a little less
metaphysically loaded, we can think of remembrance as insight. A more
general virtue of justice is conceived as each thing functioning as it should.
To get Plato’s concept of justice as it applies to a person, think of the
charioteer managing and controlling his team; keeping both horses running
in the intended direction and at the intended speed. Justice involves the
rational element being wise and in charge. For a person to be just is simply a
matter of having the other virtues and having them functioning together
harmoniously.

Given Plato’s ethical view of virtue as a matter of the three elements of the
soul functioning together as they should, Plato’s political philosophy is given
in his view of the state as the human “writ at large.” Project the standards
Plato offers for virtue in an individual human onto the aggregate of
individuals in a society and you have Plato’s vision of the virtuous state. In
the virtuous state, the rational element (the philosophers) are in charge. The
willing element (the guardians or the military class) is obedient and
courageous in carrying out the policies of the rational leadership. And the
appetitive element (the profit-driven business class) functions within the
rules and constraints devised by the rational element (for instance, by
honestly adhering to standards of accounting). A temperate business class
has the profit motive guided by the interests of the community via regulation
devised by the most rational. The virtuous business class refrains from
making its comfort and indulgence the over-riding concern of the state. Plato,
in other words, would be no fan of totally free markets, but neither would he
do away with the market economy altogether.

Plato’s vision of social justice is non-egalitarian and anti-democratic. While

his view would not be popular today, it is still worthwhile to consider his
criticism of democracy and rule by the people. Plato has Socrates address
this dialectically by asking a series of questions about who we would want to
take on various jobs. Suppose we had grain and wanted it processed into
flour. We would not go to the cobbler or the horse trainer for this, we’d go to
the miller. Suppose we had a horse in need of training. We obviously would
not go to the miller or the baker for this important task, we’d go to the horse
trainer. In general, we want important functions to be carried out by the
people with the expertise or wisdom to do them well. Now suppose we had a
state to run. Obviously we would not want to turn this important task over to
the miller, the cobbler, or the horse trainer. We’d want someone who knows
what he or she is doing in charge. Plato has a healthy regard for expertise.
As Plato sees it, democracy amounts to turning over the ethically most
important jobs to the people who have the least expertise and wisdom in this
area. There is very little reason to expect that a state run by cobblers,
millers, and horse trainers will be a virtuous state.
Aristotle
Aristotle is a towering figure in the history of philosophy and science.
Aristotle made substantive contributions to just about every philosophical
and scientific issue known in the ancient Greek world. Aristotle was the first
to develop a formal system of logic. As the son of a physician he pursued a
life-long interest in biology. His physics was the standard view through
Europe’s Middle Ages. He was a student of Plato, but he rejected Plato’s
other-worldly theory of forms in favor of the view that things are a composite
of substance and form. Contemporary discussions of the good life still
routinely take Aristotle’s ethics as their starting point. Here I will offer the
briefest sketch of Aristotle’s logic and metaphysics. We will return to his
ethics later in the course.

Logic
Aristotle’s system of logic was not only the first developed in the West, it was
considered complete and authoritative for well over 2000 years. The core of
Aristotle’s logic is the systematic treatment of categorical syllogisms. You
might recall this argument from Chapter 2:

1. All monkeys are primates.

2. All primates are mammals.
3. So, all monkeys are mammals.

This argument is a categorical syllogism. That’s a rather antiquated way of

saying it’s a two premise argument that uses simple categorical claims.
Simple categorical claims come in one of the following four forms:

 All A are B
 All A are not B
 Some A are B
 Some A are not B

There are a limited number of two premise argument forms that can be
generated from combinations of claims having one of these four forms.
Aristotle systematically identified all of them, offered proofs of the valid
one’s, and demonstrations of the invalidity of the others. Beyond this,
Aristotle proves a number of interesting things about his system of syllogistic
logic and he offers an analysis of syllogisms involving claims about what is
necessarily the case as well.
No less an authority than Immanuel Kant, one of the most brilliant
philosophers of the 18th century, pronounced Aristotle’s logic complete and
final. It is only within the past century or so that logic has developed
substantially beyond Aristotle’s. While Aristotle’s achievement in logic was
genuinely remarkable, this only underscores the dramatic progress of the
20th century. The system of symbolic logic we now teach in standard
introductions to logic (PHIL 120 here at BC) is vastly more powerful than
Aristotle’s and while this system was brand new just a century ago, it is now
truly an introduction, a first step towards appreciating a great many further
developments in logic. Reasonably bright college students now have the
opportunity to master deductive reasoning at a level of sophistication
unknown to the world a mere 150 years ago. The methods and insights of
modern symbolic logic are already so thoroughly integrated into
contemporary philosophy that much of contemporary philosophy would not
be possible without it.

Metaphysics
While Aristotle was a student of Plato’s, his metaphysics is decidedly anti-
Platonist. The material of the world takes various forms. Here it constitutes a
tree and there a rock. The things constituted of matter have various
properties. The tree is a certain shape and height, the rock has a certain
mass. Plato accounts for the various forms matter takes and the ways things
are in terms of their participating in abstract and ideal forms to one degree
or another. Plato’s metaphysics centrally features an abstract realm of
eternal unchanging and ideal forms. Plato’s forms are not themselves part of
the physical spatio-temporal world. Aristotle rejects the theory of abstract
forms and takes everything that exists to be part of the physical spatio-
temporal world. It might thus be tempting to think of Aristotle as a
materialist, one who thinks all that exists is matter, just atoms swirling in the
void. Some pre-Socratic philosophers could accurately be described as
materialists. But this would miss key elements of Aristotle’s metaphysics.
While Aristotle denies the existence of an abstract realm of eternal and
unchanging ideal entities, his account of the nature of things includes more
than just matter. Aristotle holds the view that form is an integral part of
things in the physical world. A thing like a rock or a tree is a composite of
both matter and form. In addition to matter, the way matter is gets included
in Aristotle’s metaphysics.

Among the ways things are, some seem to be more central to their being
what they are than others. For instance, a tree can be pruned into a different
shape without the tree being destroyed. The tree can survive the loss of its
shape. But if it ceased to be a plant, if it got chipped and mulched, for
instance, it would also cease to be a tree. That is to say, being a plant is
essential to the tree, but having a certain shape isn’t. An essential property
is just a property a thing could not survive losing. By contrast, a property
something could survive losing is had accidentally. Aristotle introduces the
distinction between essential and accidental characteristics of things. This
was an important innovation. When we set out to give an account of what a
thing is, we are after an account of its essence. To say what a thing is
essentially is to list those ways of being it could not survive the loss of. My
hair length is not essential to me, and neither is my weight, my having four
limbs, or a given body/mass index. But my having a mind, perhaps, is
essential to being me.

How a thing functions is a critical aspect of its nature in Aristotle’s view. As

an organism, I metabolize. As an organism with a mind, I think. These are
both ways of functioning. For Aristotle, what makes something what it is, its
essence, is generally to be understood in terms of how it functions.
Aristotle’s account of the essential nature of the human being, for instance,
is that humans are rational animals. That is, we are the animals that function
in rational ways. Functioning is, in a sense, purposeful. Aristotle would say
that functioning is ends oriented. The Greek term for an end or a goal is
telos. So Aristotle has a teleological view of the world. That is, he
understands things as functioning towards ends or goals, and we can
understand the essence of things in terms of these goal-oriented ways of
functioning. We still understand people’s actions as teleological or goal
oriented. We explain why people do things in terms of their purposes and
methods. Aristotle similarly understands natural processes generally as ends
oriented. Even Aristotle’s physics is fundamentally teleological. So water
runs downhill because it is part of its essential nature to seek out the lower
place.

Explanation: The Four Causes

What does it mean to explain something? If we’d like to have some idea what
we are up to when we explain things, giving some account of explanation
should seem like an important methodological and epistemological issue. In
fact, the nature of explanation continues to be a central issue in the
philosophy of science. Aristotle was the first to address explanation in a
systematic way and his treatment of explanation structures and guides his
philosophical and scientific inquiry generally. According to Aristotle, to
explain something involves addressing four causes. Here we need to think of
“causes” as aspects of explanation or “things because of which . . . .” Only
one of Aristotle’s four causes resembles what we would now think of as the
cause of something. Three of the four causes, or explanatory principles, are
reflected in Aristotle’s metaphysics and will be familiar from the discussion
above. Part of explaining something involves identifying the material of
which it is made. This is the material cause. Thales account of the nature of
the world addressed its material cause. A further part of explaining
something is to give an account of its form, its shape and structure. The chair
I am sitting on is not just something made of wood, it is something made of
wood that has a certain form. A complete explanation of what this chair is
would include a description of its form. This is the formal cause. Pythagoras
and Plato introduce the explanation of formal causes. The idea of a final
cause refers to the function, end, or telos of a thing. What makes the chair
I’m sitting on a chair is that it performs a certain function that serves the end
or telos of providing a comfortable place to sit. Again, Aristotle sees final
causes as pervasive in the natural world. So part of explaining what a tomato
plant is, for instance, will involve giving an account of how it functions and
the goals towards which that functioning is aimed. Bear in mind Aristotle’s
interest in biology here. A complete biological account of an organism
includes both its anatomy (its material and formal causes) and physiology
(which involves functioning and final causes). The remaining cause
(explanatory principle) is the one we can identify as a kind of cause in our
normal sense of the word. The efficient cause of a thing is that which brings
it into existence or gives form to its material. So, for instance, the activity of
a carpenter is the efficient cause of my chair.