Plato had it backwards
Saturday, December 17th, 2005
Categorized as Weishaarisms, Philosophy, Knowledge and Truth
Today I listened to the 84th and last lecture in The Teaching Company's series, Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition.
Although I'd taken a number of philosophy courses in college, they tended to concentrate on specific philosophers or schools or historical periods. At last I know enough about western philosophical thought over its entire history to be dangerous.
The theme that reappeared most frequently in the lectures was Plato's Allegory of the Cave from The Republic.
For those of you who missed it, Plato basically said that humans live in a movie theater and what we see on the screen is just a representation of the true reality, which is outside the theatre.
That's where the true forms of capital T Truth, to say nothing of capital T Tree and capital T Turtle are. The true forms are something most humans don't know anything about, Plato says, but they're what's real. The things we sense are just shadows of the True forms, in Plato's view.
This has always seemed perplexing to me. If there is a perfect form for a Tree, don't there also have to be perfect forms for an Elm Tree and for a Maple Tree? And if there is a perfect form for a Turtle, don't there also have to be perfect forms for Baby Turtles and Adult Turtles?
If you say no, the form for Tree can reflect both baby elm trees and adult maple trees, then what's the point of having a form for a Tree? Wouldn't just a form for Plants do?
Take that thought back a few more steps and you'll realize that Plato has to posit either one Form or infinite Forms; he can't have the limited set of Forms he suggests are the Truth in The Republic.
Forget Plato's movie theatre. What makes more sense is that humans are like movie cameras. We look out on the world and have instantaneous sensations of reality when the shutter is open, but otherwise all we have is strung-together memories of those sensations.
Moreover, the reality we're sensing scales from atoms we can't see because they're too small to galaxies we can't see because they're too far away. Even in our own scale our senses edit what "gets on film" by noticing some aspects of reality and ignoring others.
In other words, the Truth is out there, but it's exceedingly rich, complex, and scaled beyond our comprehension. All we have is a partial instantaneous view of the Truth and our memories of it.
We make sense of it all by constructing, learning, and memorizing theories and models that usefully represent reality. But that's all we have - mental maps. We can't ever get to the Truth because of its scale and movement.
Alford Korzybski, who is considered the father of general semantics, famously put it this way in his book, Science and Sanity:
A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. If the map could be ideally correct, it would include, in a reduced scale, the map of the map; the map of the map, of the map; and so on endlessly…
In 1933, we know that as words are not the things spoken about, structure, and structure alone, becomes the only possible content of knowledge, and the search for structure, the only possible aim of science.
Plato thought humans looked out and saw reflections of reality. In fact humans look out and see tiny bits of Truth at a very limited scale. But from what we can sense, we can construct mental maps, such as Plato's Allegory of the Cave. We judge the degree of truth in our maps by their usefulness.
So which map do you think is more useful? Plato's Allegory of the Cave, or Weishaar's Allegory of the Camera?
I have been listening to that very same set of lectures, although I'm a long way from the end. I've made more progress now that I load them on to my iPod nano.
Is that statement True?
I like your Allegory of the Camera, and completely agree that our grasp on truth is partial–that said, I do believe that there are absolute truths that we can know and even agree on. I'm not sure what you mean by "usefulness" in evaluating truth. Care to elaborate?
Randy - you'll get to concept of "usefulness" near the end of the tapes. It's the primary American contribution to philosophy. If want to skip ahead, listen to the lectures on James and Dewey.
One way to employ the philosophical concept of usefulness is as a defense against complete skepticism.
If someone argues that there's no way to know for certain that the world is real - that it could all be a dream - you can respond that they may have a point, but it's not a useful point. Whether or not they're correct, it's the world we have to live in and there's nothing useful about assuming it's a dream rather than real.
When I say we can't ever get to the Truth, I am talking about the natural world and the limits of science. It's basic to science that you can never prove that something is so, you can only prove that it isn't so.
The best scientific experiments are designed to disprove a prevailing scientific theory (or "map"). When a theory withstands numerous attempts to disprove it, it gains reliability and usefulness, but it can never gain Truth. Science always leaves open the possibility that there's a better explanation than the current one.
Science says there's never an ultimate explanation or an absolute truth because our understanding is limited by our experience so far and the sensitivity of our measures.
More poetically, all snowflakes are different. You can never get to know each one individually. But you can make useful maps - generalizations - about snowflakes that help you predict what will happen when you encounter one or billions in your driveway.
When I was a kid in elementary school, I had an interesting habit of bringing up counter examples to things my teacher said and was often told, "That's the exception that proves the rule."
As a kid, that was enough for me, but come on - exceptions disprove the rule. Exceptions force us to improve the rule. Exceptions are what it takes to get us to draw maps in larger scales with more details. But our maps never become the territory.
I know your interests include the supernatural as well as the natural world. Is that what you're referring to?
I'll probably keep going through the lectures in sequence, but thanks for the elaboration.
I agree that maps never become the territory. That's a useful concept.
Are you applying that across the board to all realms of knowledge in the natural world? For example, if you do not own a car and then you go purchase one, is it not safe to assert that you now own one car, and if you buy another, you then own two? The math will always work such that zero plus one will equal one, and one plus one will equal two.
I think we can agree on some ethical absolutes without necessarily appealing to the supernatural. I happen to be a Christian, and that certainly impacts my worldview, but I think most atheists would agree that it's always wrong to torture a young child for personal gratification, even though they may have insufficient grounds to warrant that belief.
Plato wouldn't agree, but I'm saying that Truth is the territory itself - the tangible, natural world.
We create maps of this world, trade them with each other through education and other means, and we say they're true to the degree that they reliably and usefully describe the structure of the natural world.
In addition we've learned to make useful maps of other, intangible worlds. Your examples of arithmetic, ownership, and ethics are all useful maps, but they have no correlates in the natural world. Consequently, there's no territory, no Truth, to test them against.
Some of these intangible worlds get mistaken for territories. Arithmetic, for example, is so useful and has so much internal consistency that it's a map that we all learn and all agree on. It seems to be tangible, but it's not.
In terms of ethics, I agree with you that humans share a cross-cultural, cross-religion ethical map with identical major features. But there will be minor features in your map that are either totally blank or somewhat different on my map, and vice-versa.
Moreover, I suspect that the major features of ethics that we agree on are based on enlightened self-interest. By enlightened I mean a broad, mature viewpoint - not just individual self-interest. Imagine layers of self-interest moving outward from the individual to family, close friends, other people we know, other people we don't know but are aligned with somehow, all other people, all other mammals, and so on.
This explains how people can say, despite the internal inconsistency, that it's immoral to kill another human and that it's honorable and patriotic to go to war and kill people.
Whoops, sorry for that tangent into ethics.
My disagreement with Plato is that he says the natural world is just a shadow of the Truth. Philosophers, he says, can leave the cave and see the Truth.
I think the natural world is the Truth - the Territory - but all that us philosophers can do is make maps of it - we can't know the Territory, we can only know the maps. Science can help us make these maps more accurate, more detailed, and more useful.
Later in the tapes you'll learn about some philosophers who doubt there's any Truth at all. Others think that the concept of human progress is nonsense. In part what I'm saying here is a reaction to those ideas. I think the Truth really is out there and that humans can make progress in our understanding of it.
We also make maps of intangible worlds. These maps can be tested for internal consistency, which is a kind of truth. And there are other tests we can apply to these maps - for example, the number of us who agree with the map, how well the map agrees with other maps from different times or places, or the usefulness of the map in our day-to-day affairs.
But with intangible worlds there's no territory to test a map against. Science can't be applied, progressive understanding is impossible, and we are doomed to perpetual disagreement over whose map is the right one.
I'm saying that Truth is the territory itself - the tangible, natural world.
Restricting Truth to the natural seems somewhat novel. Are you asserting a materialistic reductionism, or just relegating the intangible to another category?
Your examples of arithmetic, ownership, and ethics are all useful maps, but they have no correlates in the natural world. Consequently, there's no territory, no Truth, to test them against.
So how do you determine their validity? Pragmatism?
Arithmetic, for example, is so useful and has so much internal consistency that it's a map that we all learn and all agree on. It seems to be tangible, but it's not.
I take it you're assuming a primary definition of "tangible" only, rejecting one like "Capable of being possessed or realized; readily apprehensible by the mind;"
In terms of ethics, I agree with you that humans share a cross-cultural, cross-religion ethical map with identical major features. But there will be minor features in your map that are either totally blank or somewhat different on my map, and vice-versa.
Agreed. Consistent relativists would have to deny the major features.
Moreover, I suspect that the major features of ethics that we agree on are based on enlightened self-interest.
This explains how people can say, despite the internal inconsistency, that it's immoral to kill another human and that it's honorable and patriotic to go to war and kill people.
Or that it's immoral to go to war but it's okay to have abortions.
I think the natural world is the Truth - the Territory
So is the spiritual nonexistent?
Later in the tapes you'll learn about some philosophers who doubt there's any Truth at all.
And yet they expect to be paid for their lectures…
I think the Truth really is out there and that humans can make progress in our understanding of it.
I agree, provided that we don't limit ourself by relegating Truth to the physical only.
And there are other tests we can apply to these maps - for example, the number of us who agree with the map, how well the map agrees with other maps from different times or places, or the usefulness of the map in our day-to-day affairs.
I agree that maps must be coherent. Sheer numbers can lead us astray, although the level of support should be considered. Pragmatism can be helpful, but many variables come into play. A bully can find that stealing lunches is quite useful, but hopefully the majority disagrees.
But with intangible worlds there's no territory to test a map against. Science can't be applied, progressive understanding is impossible, and we are doomed to perpetual disagreement over whose map is the right one.
I believe the ultimate map is the Bible, but I'm fully cognizant that many will disagree. However, I also believe tests such as coherence must be applied to belief systems such as Christianity. You might enjoy hearing Ravi Zacharias speak at Georgia Tech on The Search for Absolutes in a Pluralistic Society.
wrt forms as correspondance, Plato made the same objections in another dialog (Philebus, I think); like most of the dialogs it's an intentional misunderstanding juxtaposed with another misunderstanding such that if the active reader corrects both, then s/he gets a true understanding (combining exoteric and esoteric transmission). In the Republic the pattern of the truth - seen in the cave and the math (pythagorean theorum) analogy and the frame story seeking to understand individual justice (happiness) by inspection of public justice - is meant to be decoupled from each context in order for its application in each context to be properly used for teaching and self-understanding. The most explicit rendering of a response is Aristotle's presentation of primary being (ousia) v. categories/characteristics in the book before the one on nature (i.e., metaphysics) and the one on categories/logic, particularly as understood in the context of the nicomachean ethics (obviously, I'm doubting that American pragmatism is really new by suggesting that good Greek philosophers always applied their stuff pragmatically, either in dramatic/dialog/teaching form (plato) or by subject matter (Aristotle)).
Btw, 99% of the bible is simply culturally-bound lunacy (while only 80% of plato is culturally-bound, and most of it sane). I believe in God and Christ, but not in the Bible which is nothing more than the work of a committee of old male bureaucrats violating the commandment to not take the name of the lord in vain.