Transition to the Sophists
As a consequence of the
pre-Socratic belief that the
natural world can be fully
explained in terms of matter
in motion, philosophers were
left with two main questions:
(1) What is the basis or
nature of morality?
(2) What factors account for change?
To explain #1…
If only material elements & motion exist, but no
abstract entities,
such as values, then there is
no objective basis for morality.
Rather, morality must be regarded
as a purely human invention.
But such a ‘conventional’ view
of the nature of morality has some disadvantages, and also seems to
be inconsistent with the fact that people argue about moral issues.
To explain #2…
If only material elements &
motion exist, then we cannot adequately explain how an
object changes.
For change ≠ gain or loss
of material parts of an object.
An item can change in certain respects without gaining or losing any material
parts. So there must be factors in
addition to matter and motion that explain change.
For example…
One item can “become” two without its gaining or losing
any parts.
The one item can, so to speak, “become” two items, if we
think of the item in relation to another item.
So to explain how one item “becomes two items” we need to
make reference not only to the item in question but also to the abstract
property of being two.
These two topics (the nature of morality and the nature
of change) were of interest to philosophers after the pre-Socratics.
We shall first examine the topic
of morality by considering the Sophists, who were among the
first philosophers to reflect on
the nature of morality.
We shall come back to the
topic of change.
Sophists
§Were
professional teachers
of rhetoric or public speaking.
§Lived during
the 5th c. BC
and frequently visited
§Were the first
to be professional teachers or
professional providers of wisdom.
That is to say, they were the first people to be paid to teach.
§Derived their
name from sophia, which means “wisdom”.
Sophists
§Were viewed by
Plato, and
many of his contemporaries,
as exploiters, whose defining interest lay in teaching people
how to argue both sides of an issue for material advantage.
§On Plato’s
authority, the word “sophist” came to connate
shallow and mercenary trickster.
Sophists
§Included
Antiphon, Hippias, Thrasymachus, & Prodicus.
§Who are
represented in Plato’s dialogues are not, in the view of some scholars, all
depicted in a negative way. In
particular, Protagoras & Gorgias are perhaps shown to be accomplished,
serious, and high-minded.
Protagoras
§Born in
around 490 BC.
§Was in
& there, became a friend of Pericles.
§Protagoras 310e
may contain
a reference to a time when
Plato heard him speak.
Plato was 12 or 14,
Protagoras about 70.
Protagoras famously
states Man-Measure
Principle
§Protagoras
states it in a
lost book, “On Truth.”
§It runs:
“Man is the measure
of all things, of what is,
that it is, of what is not,
that it is not.”
The Man-Measure Principle
§MMP is the
first statement
of the relativism of truth.
§It holds that
what is true is
whatever a person judges to be true.
§That is, on MMP
truth arises from
a relation between a person and
a belief.
§Hence, on MMP
the truth of the
belief is relative to the person who holds the belief.
So as I read the
Man-Measure Fragment…
§“Man” refers to
a
particular person.
§“Measure” means
“judge or final authority”.
§“All things”
denotes
“whatever is true”.
So the Fragment is saying:
“The individual (the particular person) is the
judge/final
authority of what is true:
§Of truths about
what is,
that it is (i.e., that a thing
exists or has a certain property),
§Of truths about
what is not,
that it is not (i.e., that a thing does not exist or does not have a certain
property).”
MMP can apply to
(at least) 4 kinds of
judgment…
§Judgments
of perception,
like “The wine is sweet.”
§Moral
judgments,
like “Suicide is wrong.”
§Judgments
about a
‘technical’ subject matter,
like “2 + 2 = 4” or “Water is H2O”.
§Judgments
of future advantage, like “Drinking fluids will be good for you,” and “We will
win this battle.”
MMP is most plausible in
cases of judgments of perception, and moral
judgments.
With respect to judgments
of perception, the MMP is plausible because…
Judgments which directly
express the content of one’s perception depend not only on
the environment, but also on the perceiver’s condition.
So their truth is relative to the perceiver.
However, a caveat…
Normal perceivers under
standard perceptual
conditions should generally
make similar perceptual
judgments.
So the judgments of these perceivers are, by convention, regarded as being
true, period.
With respect to
moral judgments, the MMP is plausible because…
No satisfactory proof of an
objective standard for
right/wrong has been given.
So moral judgments are generally regarded as being true
relative to the standards of a social group.
With respect to
judgments about a
‘technical’ subject matter, MMP is not plausible because:
Judgments of the expert are conventionally regarded as
being true, period; and, they are usually backed up by evidence.
With respect to
judgments of future
advantage:
Socrates, in Plato’s
Theaetetus, argues that
such judgments are not in accordance with Protagoras’
Man-Measure Principle.
Socrates, in the Theaetetus, criticizes the MMP on
the grounds that it conflicts with judgments of future advantage. He does this as follows…
Socrates begins by asking Protagoras whether it is not
the case that everyone
w/o exception holds that in some respects, he is wiser than his neighbors, and
in others, they are wiser than he. I.e.,
In moments of danger, men look to someone who can take control of the situation
because of knowledge. (Theaetetus 170a-b).
In this objection, Socrates’ first main objection to MMP,
Socrates is saying:
People generally acknowledge
that some persons have more
expertise than others in certain
technical matters.
Two kinds of cases are relevant here:
§Judgments about
what course of action will be advantageous for a person; and,
§Judgments about
future events.
Protagoras
responds to this objection... “One set of thoughts is better,
not truer.” (Theaetetus, 167b)
Protagoras’ responds, saying that the expert’s judgment of
advantage for a person is better, not truer, because . . .
He thinks that the parties involved are likely to agree
at the finish that the recommended course of action was better for the
person in question.
Socrates can then maintain that the expert’s judgments
about what course of action will be advantageous for a person …
Does indirectly conflict with the MMP because it depends
on the fact that people have objective needs and interests that an expert can
promote, like the need to have an operation or to lose weight.
So even if Socrates were to grant that such a judgment is
better, not truer—which he would not grant—this kind of judgment does not fully
accord with the MMP.
For it implies that there are some objective features of
reality, not just features that people believe to be features of reality.
With respect to judgments about future events:
Socrates says that the truth of this kind of judgment is
NOT relative to a judger. For example,
the judgment “
Socrates’ second main objection to the MMP is:
Protagoras cannot put forth the principle as a general
truth. This is because if his opponents
dispute it, then Protagoras has to admit the correctness of that judgment for
them.
If, however, for Protagoras
the principle is not an
objective principle for other
people, and yet also is
for him a truth
for everyone, then he has committed himself to a contradiction… namely, that
for him, his principle is both a truth for everyone and not a truth for
everyone.
In addition to the dispute
over the nature of truth,
another debate arose
between the Sophists
and Plato/Socrates.
This debate is referred to as the Nomos-Physis controversy.
Nomos-Physis Controversy
This disagreement arose
from a possible opposition
between:
§What people
believe
(nomos: custom, established practice or law).
§What is the
nature of things (physis: what there is and what characteristics things
have).
Nomos vs. Physis
§Nomos
refers to a
belief, practice, custom,
established law.
§Physis
refers to the
basic nature of a thing.
Nomos-Physis Controversy involved 2 main questions:
§Is there such a
thing as
natural justice?
§If there is
such a thing as
natural justice, do the laws
and conventions of society
mirror the essence or nature of natural justice?
Many Sophists adopted
the position that…
§There is a
‘natural justice’ according to which the
strong should rule the weak.
§Law and
convention do not
mirror ‘natural justice’.
Therefore, the strongest should seek to get more, if they can get away with it.
For example…
Both Thrasymachus and
Callicles, speakers in
Plato’s dialogues, claim that
the unrestrained pursuit of one’s own advantage is by nature just for a human
being. And Thraysmachus, in particular,
maintains that law and convention unfairly restrict the stronger person’s
pursuit of what is by nature just for him to have.
By contrast, according to
Socrates and Plato…
§The rule of
reason in the
service of harmony and cooperation, is by nature
just for a human being.
§Law and
convention do
not mirror this, because they
mainly reflect people’s desires,
not their rational assessments.
So Plato & Socrates disagree with those sophists who
believe that natural justice favors the stronger.
§Plato &
Socrates believe that reason, not the appetites, is the ‘natural’ ruler in a
human being.
§So ‘natural
justice’ favors cooperation, not unrestrained competition, since that would be
reason’s way of achieving a good life for a human being.
Socratic dialogues take up
this issue of whether there
are objectively better
ways for a person to live
(seeking more material goods
or seeking inner harmony),
and how, if it all, this can be incorporated into the laws
of a political society.
An Example of Sophistry
Here is an example of how
a sophist shows that two
opposite answers to the
question of who learns,
are both wrong…
1st Answer:
The wise learn.
P1. The wise
learn.
P2. You learn
what you
don’t know.
P3. People who
don’t know
are ignorant.
C4. So the ignorant, not the wise, learn.
2nd Opposite Answer:
The ignorant learn.
P1. The ignorant learn.
P2. The
teacher who dictates,
dictates letters.
P3. The wise
know their letters.
C4. So the wise
learn.
These two opposing
‘answers’ (namely,
the ignorant learn and
the wise learn), depend on
omitting from the description of the one who learns the qualifier “in some
respect.”
To see this, notice how
one correct answer
follows from premises
that include the qualification.
Revision of 2nd Answer
P1. Those who
are ignorant
in some respect, learn.
P2. The
teacher who dictates, dictates letters.
P3. The people
who are wise in
some respect, know their letters.
C4. So people
who are wise in
some respect, and ignorant in another respect, learn.