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P321—The Philosophy of Plato
CYA
On Socrates: Induction & Definition
Induction
Aristotle says that Socrates is to be accredited with induction and general definition (metaph.1078b27). Induction is defined by Aristotle as moving from the particular to the general (Top. 105a13); EG. if the best driver is the expert, and the best navigator the expert, then we infer in general that the expert is in every occupation the best. The mind is led on (epagoge) from the observation of particular instances to grasp general characteristics shared by all members of a class. It could be a class of people, things or events. Socrates did not involve himself in systematic logic and was therefore not described as concerning himself with the problem of moving from instances to general truths in this way. But the problem of induction puzzled Aristotle and many after him. Rational justification of induction could be a) complete enumeration, that is a general statement that is made with the knowledge of every case falling under it (all students in this class are in the age-group 18-25). There is no inference here, but to make the general statement explicitly is a useful step towards drawing further conclusions and combining it with similar information to make wider generalizations. It is in these cases that Aristotle says that induction can be reduced to valid syllogistic form.; b) to admit that the conclusion is only probable and subject to review in the case of negative instances; c) to claim that the human mind has the faculty of intuition enabling it to “see” the universal only after examination of a sufficient number of individual cases. Complete enumeration at the individual level is impossible, but it is possible at the species level so Aristotle thought. So in treating induction as a part of formal logic, Aristotle operates with species units. Aristotle did believe in b) namely that the mind has the faculty of intuition to justify the initial leap from particulars to the first, lowest universal and in this he was assisted by the belief that specific forms as substantively existing essences, a legacy from Socrates and Plato. If specific form is something fixed in nature it is reasonable to suppose that it may be detected and defined after only a partial examination of the particular instances what share it.
Induction and Definition
Induction leads to definition because definition consists of a collection of these general characteristics selected with certain requirements in mind a) they must be essential to the class not accidental attributes and b) they must be collectivelysufficient to mark the class objects off from all other classes of objects; e.g., to call man a two-legged creature is to name an essential characteristic but it does not constitute a definition since it does not mark it off from say birds. The definition was called the form (eidos) of the class. But the use of this word (induction) is post-Socratic since there was no science of logic before Plato, and it was only systematized with Aristotle. But eidos is one of the names used by Socrates for the essential nature he was looking to define. In popular use the word designated outward shape or appearance. Note that Socrates did not use the word eidos in the same metaphysical sense that Plato used it.
Induction, definition and Socrates’ Moral Aims
Socrates’ motive for using definition was not scientific but practical. Socrates believed that the popular view that general terms of morality are not God-given virtues but only by convention varying from place and age. If these terms corresponded to any reality at all, then one meaning must be true and the others false. But if the sophists were right, and their content was purely relative and shifting, it must be wrong to go on using the same words for different things and they ought to go out of use. Socrates believed the first, and so believed that for discourse to get underway with any success the meaning of the terms must be agreed upon in advance. To restore order to thought then, by Xenophon, Aristotle and Plato’s account, Socrates believed that inquiry must pass through 3 stages: 1.) to collect instances that both parties agree that the name can be applied and 2.) then for the collected instances to be examined in order to discover the common quality in them by virtue of which they bear the name. The common quality or nexus of common qualities is their nature, essence or form. It will provide a definition, say of piety, abstracted from accidental properties of time and circumstance that differentiate the individual cases falling under it. This, as a scientific method, is the necessary basis of any study like botany or zoology where the chief task is one of classification. But Socrates wanted to do so in the case of human conduct. (Euthyphro 6d, Tht. 146e). When an interlocutor would propose certain characteristics Socrates would introduce counter-examples that he was sure that the interlocutor would accept. In this way, Socrates would show that the agreed upon definition is insufficient to account for only and all of the members of a given class. Of course, the process of falsifying a generalization may also be deductive of the following form: the general assumption demands that all x’s are y; but a, which is an x, is not a y; therefore the assumption is false. The best exposition of the method is found in the Meno.
Examples
Example of the elenchus From the Theaetetus (Part III On Knowledge) 201d-203e
Primary Q: What is Knowledge?
Primary A: (2nd attempt) knowledge is true belief plus an account (Tht. 201d).
Secondary Q: How are the knowable things distinguished from the unknowable things then?
Secondary A: the elements that make up all other complex things can only be named, whereas their compounds can be accounted for. For in the case of simples nothing else belongs to it (goes back to the problem of Parmenides to qualify is to attribute the being of the predicate term to the subject term), whereas in the case of their compounds it is made up of the being of other things (the simples).
Secondary Q: examples of syllables and letters as prototype that the dream argument had in mind whereby an account is asked of first SO (namely, S and O) and then whether it is right to say that syllable can be known but not the letters (simples) that make them up.
Secondary A: Yes compounds or syllables can be known in virtue of the letters that make them up, but the letters themselves can not be known.
Secondary Q: So we know the compound because we know the letters or the simples that make it up?
Secondary A: Yes
Secondary : So if you know the first syllable of my name SO, then you know both the letters S and that make it up?
Secondary A: Yes.
Secondary Q: But then has he no know of each letter, so that he knows both without knowing either?
Secondary A: This is a monstrous absurdity.
Secondary Q: This requires that we must first know the simples or the letters before we can claim that we know the syllable, and yet if this is so then knowledge can not be true belief plus an account. For that we mean that I know and do not know at the same time: I know the syllables (TB & Account) but I do not know the syllables since this knowledge relies on the knowledge of the simples which I can not have since simples can only be named. (Tht. 203e).
An example of induction and the elenchus From the Meno 70a-77b
Primary Q: Meno starts with the question “can virtue be taught?” and Socrates says to answer that question I must first determine what virtue itself it. So, What is Virtue?
Primary A: Manly virtue is managing the city affairs capably, woman’s virtue is being a good house wife, careful to her stores and obedient to her husband and so on.
Secondary Q: I wanted one virtue and have got many. I want the common character which makes them virtues.
Use of an example of health, size, and strength in order to explain his meaning to Meno
Secondary Q: You said that manly virtue is directing the city well and womanly virtue is directing the affairs of the home well, so can one who is virtuous direct anything well without doing so with temperance and justice?
Secondary A: No.
Secondary Q: So everyone is good/well in the same way since they become good by possessing the same qualities?
Secondary A: Yes.
Secondary Q: …general terms are now being used to say what virtue itself is, like justice, but again Socrates will say that I do not want a list of instances of virtue, but virtue all by itself. He gives examples of the kind of general definitions he is after, like shape (is that which a solid terminates or it is the limit of a solid) and colour (in accordance with Gorgias and Empedocles’ theory of effluence, colour is an effluence from shapes commensurate with sight and perceptible by it). Now that Meno understands the question, they go back to the original question, what is virtue?
A 2nd attempt at defining virtue Meno 77b-78b
Secondary A: Virtue is in the words of the poet “to rejoice in the fine and have power” and define it as desiring fine things and being able to acquire them.
Secondary Q: Desiring fine things? Do you mean it is good things he desires? (the things/objects desire are good).
Secondary A: Yes
Secondary Q: Then do some desire evil things and others good things? Or do all men desire the good?
Secondary A: No, all men desire the good.
Secondary Q: Do some suppose evils to be good, or do they desire them although they recognise them as evils?
Secondary A: Both.
Secondary Q: What? Do you think that anyone who recognises evils for what they are, nevertheless desires them?
Secondary A: Yes.
Secondary Q: Desire in what way? To possess them?
Secondary A: Yes.
Secondary Q: In the belief that evil things bring advantage to their possessor or harm?
Secondary A: Both.
Secondary Q: And do you believe that those who suppose evil things bring advantage understand that they are evil?
Secondary A: No.
Secondary Q: So those who you say desire the evil knowing them to be evil, in fact don’t desire evil things but what they think is good, though it is in fact evil: those who through ignorance mistake the bad things for the good obviously desire the good?
Secondary A: Yes, I guess so.
Secondary Q: As for those you say may desire the evil in the belief that they do harm to they possessor, do they know that they will be injured?
Secondary A: I guess so.
Secondary Q: And don’t they believe that whoever is injured is unhappy and unfortunate?
Secondary A: I guess so.
Secondary Q: Does anyone want to be unhappy?
Secondary A: I guess not (78b).
So if these last implications are true then Meno’s 2nd attempt at defining virtue must also be wrong because it is internally inconsistent.
p1 desiring fine things and being able to acquire them; p2all men desire the good; p3Some men desire evils for what they are, others who do not recognise the evils for what they are desire them; p4Those who recognise the evils for what they are and still desire them, desire them sometimes because their possession will bring advantage to their possessor and other times because they bring harm;p5Those who believe evil things bring advantage do not understand the thing to be evil;p6 someone that is ignorant of the fact that something is evil and desires it, does not actually desire the evil but what they think is good;p7Those who desire evil knowing that its possession may do harm also know that injury to them would make them unhappy/unfortunate;p8No one desires to be unhappy;thereforeno one can desire the evil thing since he who knows the evil things also knows that it brings injury and the injury brings unhappiness which no one desires. The contradiction is first between p3 and p6 and then between p3 and p7, p8. He can not believe all these things at the same time.
The eristic Method of the sophists
The eristic method of the sophists is expected to be rather different both in ambition and form from the elenctic method of Socrates. The objective of eristic argument is victory at any cost! Indeed the sophists are said to be able to argue both sides of a debate with equal precision. The Dissoi Logoi—an essay written at the end of the 5th century which may be taken as representative of the typical eristic form of argument—arguments are presented on two opposite sides of a series of standard themes (e.g. good and bad are the same and different (plays on the relativity of such terms), wisdom and virtue can be taught and can not be taught, etc.). The two forms of argument usually adopted are 1) the presentation of a series of rhetorical arguments (usually rather lengthy as noted in Plato’s Gorgias and Protagoras) for or against a standard theme; 2) by way of question-and-answer technique whereby, like Socrates, the result would be to get the interlocutor caught in a reduction ad absurdum. That is, from the thesis put forth by the opponent two contradictory conclusions would be drawn. This is mainly accomplished by playing on the ambiguities in the meaning of words. Indeed many eristic arguments turn out to be common sorts of fallacies (egs. equivocation, amphiboly, composition/division) The interlocutor would, of course, having conceded to believing the thesis he put forth, have to admit defeat. In the case of the eristic method that his opponent is the victor whereas in the case of the elenchus that he, like Socrates, now as good reason to commit himself to the pursuit of truth since it is clear that he does not possess knowledge.
Plato’s Euthydemus (many believe) provides a good example of eristic method:
Ctesippus says that it is possible to say what is false. Euthydemus proceeds to refute this, gaining from Ctesippus a string of admissions, which lead to the contradictory of his original thesis. This to say what is false is to say something. So what is said is something. So to say something is to ‘say what is’. And ‘he who says what is says the truth’. Ctesippus tries to counter this by maintaining that to say what is false is to say what is not. The answer to which is, ‘what is not is nothing at all’. And no one can speak and yet say nothing. So ‘no one says what is not’. So no one says what is false. If a person says anything ‘he says what is true and what is’. Thus all statements are true.
QUESTION: Identify the ambiguity in the text and try to set things right. Is this really very different from what Socrates does?