(February 1, 2018 at 9:49 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote:(February 1, 2018 at 9:22 pm)Brian37 Wrote: Oh do not get me started on Plato.
Two very smart and wise people soured me on Plato. Not all of his works, but he got knocked down a few pegs when I understood the implications of why on one topic Plato really fucked things up.
BACKSTORY..... A few years ago I bought "The Greatest Show On Earth" by Richard Dawkins. To be honest, the nitty gritty was lost on me, but the preface was not. I do understand the DNA stuff, but the classification stuff I still have a hard time with.
ANYWHO, one day I began reading that book. And in Dawkins preface, at first, I didn't get why he was slamming Plato. It frustrated me knowing what I had learned in College about his advocating of questioning. His Allegory Of The Cave and His Apology, where Socrates challenged everyone. I loved that promotion of questioning.
BUT Dawkins in his preface kept talking about Plato's idea of "essence", and I didn't quite get it. Perplexed I ran this by my friend Bob, the guy I am going to fly to Australia on Tuesday. Bob, explained to me that Plato's idea was that questioning was simply about thinking, in that if you just simply thought about something long enough you could find the "essence" of that thing, like "essence of rabbit" or "essence of chair" that perfect thing. Dawkins placed blame on that idea as leading for a chase for political and religious utopias. I look back at what Dawkins wrote, and how Bob explained it to me and I agree.
With all the good some claim Plato created, the one thing Plato really had no benefit of back then, was our modern scientific method, our system of control groups. Point being as smart as Plato was, and as much as he liked questioning everything, he did not have the benefit of our modern quality control
I think Plato would HATE Trump, but at the same time, Plato sold the idea of "essence' which has become that chase for a utopia which Trump panders to.
A lot of interpretations of Plato don't render him as Socratic as he actually is. To read Plato's works carefully suggests that they were more about searching for the truth than finding it. If anyone else throughout history took it otherwise, Plato can hardly be blamed for that. We can learn a lot from figures like Hereclitus, even though he was blindly grasping for knowledge which we take for granted. Hereclitus, and Plato, are best understood as clear thinkers, not reliable sources of knowledge.
You might be missing my point. It was "essence" that lead them to search for the truth sure, but the lack of quality control of control groups and compare and contrast, undermined that idea
You cant square in the modern world with what we know now "clear thinkers" and "not reliable".
Today we have the methodology that can, when applied neutrally and ethically, that acts as a good filter that weeds out personal bias. Plato was only "clear" in the idea of challenging social norms. But he still did not have modern ideas of control groups or peer review. If you chase an "essence" you are only chasing your own idea of what you think should be, not a neutral observation.
