Say What You Believe

John Mark writes that Hugh Hewitt's recent interview with Joel Stein is "one of the finest examples of Socratic questions leading to bewilderment on the part of the victim of Socratic reasoning I have seen in some time."

I want to point out that Hugh insisted on one of Socrates' rules of discussion: say what you believe.

The most important rule for a Socratic discussion (apart from being brief with your answers) is to say what you believe.

There are two reasons why Socrates requires his interlocutors to say what they believe. The first is to make sure the interlocutor is being honest with his argument and the second is to test the interlocutor's seriousness about pursuing the truth.

The elenchus has not only the philosophical objective of discovering the truth; it also has a practical one. It aims to discover how every human ought to live (the philosophical objective) and then to test that single human being who is doing the answering -- to find out if he is living as one ought to live. But unless the interlocutor has given Socrates his actual beliefs, the elenchus cannot meet the second objective.

In the Protagoras (trans. W.R.M. Lamb), Protagoras tries to get out of an argumentative jam by saying (331a-c):

I do not take quite so simple a view of it, Socrates, as to grant that justice is holy and holiness just. I think we have to make a distinction here. Yet what difference does it make? he said: if you like, let us assume that justice is holy and holiness just.

But Socrates replies:

No, no, I said; I do not want this "if you like" or "if you agree" sort of thing to be put to the proof, but you and me together; and when I say "you and me" I mean that our statement will be most properly tested if we take away the "if."

Compare with Hewitt and Stein:

Stein says,

And honestly, I think that all these . . . for people who don't believe in the war and are putting up these stickers saying they support the troops anyway, my fear is that it's prolonging the war and putting them in further danger they don't need to be in.

But Hewitt replies, in Socratic fashion:

But Joel, I'm talking about you. I'm talking about what you honor, and you obviously don't honor military service.

Later, we have this bit, where Hewitt reminds Stein to say what he believes:

HH: And the people who've died in Afghanistan. Have they died in vain?

JS: Well, if they haven't, what have they accomplished?

HH: I'm asking you, Joel. You wrote the column. You tell me. Have they accomplished nothing?

JS: Well, um, do I think that I, as an American, are safer because of what they did?

HH: That wasn't what I asked. I asked did they accomplish anything in going to Afghanistan.

JS: If I were an Afghani, I would probably . . . if I lived in Kabul, I probably would think that they accomplished something, sure.

Now Hewitt isn't Socratic in the sense that he does not point out directly to Stein that some of what he said contradicts other things he said, but, then again, if you do that too much you might end up like Socrates.

Meno 70a-c

In response to Meno's opening question, Socrates says,

Meno, before now the Thessalians were famous among the Greeks and honored for horsemanship and for wealth, but now, it seems to me, [they are to be honored] also for wisdom (sophia) and not least [of them] the fellow citizens, Larissians, of your companion, Aristippus. The cause of this [happening] to you all is Gorgias. For after coming into the city, he took from the Aleudai lovers both of the foremost kind, [lovers] of wisdom -- among them your lover Aristippus -- and other Thessalians. And in particular, this is the habit to which he has accustomed you all: to answer fearlessly and magnificently whatever anyone would ask, as is fitting of those who know, just as also he offers himself to whoever of the Greeks wishes to ask whatever anyone would wish -- and there is no one he does not answer.

Socrates is not done, but we'll pause here to note the importance of Gorgias. Is Gorgias's influence a good one? Perhaps not, though his reputation as one who answers any question posed to him is demonstrated in Plato's dialogue, Gorgias.

Meno 70a

Here begins my translation of Plato's Meno. (I will go back at some time and pick up my translation of the Republic.)

Meno: Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is taught, or not taught but had by practice, or -- neither had by practice nor learnt -- comes to men by nature or in some other way?

So begins Plato's dialogue on, among other things, teaching and learning.

Some Answers about Fishing at Night

Michael Gilleland has come up with a partial answer to my questions about what fishing at night in ancient Greece was like.

My original posts on this matter are here, here, and here.

Aside: After Dr. Gilleland linked to me, my ranking in the TTLB ecosystem went up to a "Wriggly Worm" and then "Crunchy Crustacean," two fine specimens for fish bait. Coincidence?

Learn Something New Every Day

I was going to write this post on what I thought was a grammar mistake on the front page of CNN's website. Under a picture of travelers at LAX, the caption reads, "Travelers cue up at Los Angeles International Airport today." I was going to say that the proper word is "queue" not "cue," but then I double checked with Merriam-Webster. Sure enough, "cue" (main entry #5) is an alternate spelling for "queue."

Logic Lesson: The Four Forms of Propositions

In Aristotelian logic, there are four forms of propositions: universal affirmative, universal negative, particular affirmative, and particular negative. All declarative sentences can be properly characterized as one of these four forms.

For brevity, we may refer to each of these forms by a system of abbreviation, which was codified during the Middle Ages. The abbreviations are as follows: A = universal affirmative, E = universal negative, I = particular affirmative, and O = particular negative.*

If we use the letter "S" to stand for the logical subject and the letter "P" to stand for the logical predicate, the forms of the four propositions can be given as follows:
A: All S is P.
E: No S is P.
I: Some S is P.
O: Some S is not P.

Some examples: "All men are mortal" is in A form; that is, it is a universal affirmative proposition. "No ravens are white" is in E form. "Some politicians are corrupt" is in I form. And "Some politicians are not corrupt" is in O form.**

When we say a proposition is universal or particular, we are describing its quantity; when we say it is affirmative or negative, we refer to its quality. So, for example, how do we know that "All men are mortal" is a universal affirmative proposition? It is universal because it refers to all men, and it is affirmative because it says that all men are such and such, as opposed to saying that all men are not such and such. "Some politicians are not corrupt" is in O form because it talks about some politicians and says that they are not corrupt.

There are other finer details to go into, but we will put them off until later. Try your hand at some exercises given in the post below. Answers to the exercises appear when you click "Read more."


* The reasoning behind the abbreviations is that the Latin affirmo has as its first two vowels "a" and "i", and the Latin nego has as its first two vowels "e" and "o".

** More on the O in the answer to exercise 12.

Logic Exercises: The Four Forms of Propositions

These are excercises to accompany this post. Identify the form of each proposition. Answers appear when you click "Read more."

Easy ones:
1. Some pens are blue.
2. All cows are brown.
3. All philosophers with a PhD are poor.
4. Nobody is worth talking to.
5. Some books worth reading are worth buying.
6. All those who shop at Trader Joes are gourmands.

A little more difficult:
7. Most academics are liberal.
8. Most academics are conservative.
9. Everyone from New Jersey loves Bruce Springsteen.

Still more difficult:
10. Some wise guys are unwise.
11. All gods are immortal.

Tricky:
12. All ravens are not white.
13. Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee.

Answers
1. I
2. A
3. A (This is universal even though the "all" is qualified by "with a PhD." A proposition is universal if it refers to all the members of the class with which it is concerned. So even though "all philosophers with a PhD" does not include every philosopher (e.g., Richard Swinburne, who is a philosopher, does not have a PhD), the quantity is universal because with respect to philosophers with a PhD, it refers to all of them.)
4. E
5. I
6. A
7. I ("Most" still falls short of being all, and so logically indicates a particular quantity.)
8. I (Don't want to be accused of inserting bias into logic examples.)
9. A
10. I (You might think that since the predicate is "unwise" the quality would be negative, thus giving us an O. But the quality of the proposition is not negative -- it says that some wise guys are such and such -- even though the quality of the predicate is negative. Distinguishing between a negative proposition and a negative predicate is one of the trickiest parts of Aristotelian logic.)
11. A (Same reason as above.)
12. E or O. (The English in this sentence is ambiguous. In English, when we say "All ravens are not white" we could mean that there are no ravens whatsoever that are white. This would be consistent with the E form: No S is P. If we were trying to weasel out of something, we could also take "All ravens are not white" to mean that there are some ravens that are white. In other words we would emphasize the "all" in "All ravens are not white." It is because of this ambiguity that we give the E form as "No S is P" instead of "All S is not P," which is what one might have expected given the form of A, "All S is P."
13. E. (In logical form, this sentence would be "Nobody [is] [that which] doesn't like Sara Lee." For reasons discussed in answer 10, this makes the answer here E.)

How St. Nicholas Became Santa Clause

Here's one theory on what happened to the bishop of Myra.

Faith & Philosophy: A Short Spiel

What is a philosopher? A philosopher is a person who has an interest in studying the really permanent things, things that will last more than a few hours or days or years. So studying philosophy is time well spent because you know the subject matter really isn’t going to change in the next few years. And not a lot of other areas of study can actually say that.

Now being a philosopher doesn't make you boring. You might think otherwise because when you think of "philosophy" you think of old guys in tweed jackets talking in long, confusing sentences about whether the table really exists. No, no, no. That's a caricature of philosophy. It's what Susan Pevensie is like at the beginning of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. She wants to be realistic about everything and think things through, which are good things in and of themselves, but in trying to be grown up she's also become boring. Lucky for Susan, she realizes this and sees that she can be both realistic and jolly. As Aslan says in The Magician’s Nephew, "Jokes as well as justice come in with speech."

So a philosopher is not necessarily boring. But a philosopher is necessarily curious -- about the world and what it's really like.

Christians have always been interested in philosophy, not only for its own sake but for what it can help us understand about our faith. Many of the great philosophers have also been Christian, and many of these Christian philosophers have also been great Christians. In fact, in not a few cases, these Christians were great Christians -- real heroes of the faith -- not in spite of but because they were good philosophers: St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Pascal, even C. S. Lewis.

Philosophy is known in the Christian tradition as the handmaiden to philosophy. What's a handmaiden? A handmaiden is a person who serves another, greater person. In the case of philosophy, philosophy is a servant to theology. Philosophy helps us to understand theology -- our Christian faith -- better. So for Christians, studying philosophy is a way of helping us increase our knowledge of God. And why is that important? Because knowledge and love go hand in hand. The more you know about God, the more you are able to love him. You can't increase in love without increasing in knowledge.

But why would you want to study Plato? After all, he wasn't a Christian, and doesn't the apostle Paul tell us to avoid vain philosophy?

We have to keep in mind that the same apostle who asked the Colossians to avoid vain philosophy is the same one who also eloquently and knowledgeably addressed the best philosophy of his time when he visited Athens. So Paul was no stranger to philosophy, and he most likely knew some Plato, too.

And as for Plato, a twentieth-century philosopher has said that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato. Plato is the real beginning of philosophy. There isn't much in philosophy that Plato didn't intelligently comment about. So if we want to follow in the footsteps of the great philosophers, we'll want to begin with Plato.

Thirty or forty years ago, a common attitude of Christians to philosophy was "Bah, philosophy." But then some Christians began to realize that the alternative to philosophy was not to not have a philosophy at all, the "alternative" to philosophy was to have a bad philosophy. And studying philosophy doesn't necessarily make you proud. As Christians we want to develop the virtue of humility, but the opposite of humility is pride, not ignorance. Lewis says in one of his most famous books that God requires us to love him with all that we are, and that includes our mind. The command to be good requires that we be as intelligent as we can.

In college, almost all of the criticisms you'll hear about Christianity will be philosophical ones. It might seem otherwise but it's not. Has science really shown that Christianity is false? Well, that's a philosophical question, not a scientific one. Can we really understand the text of the Bible because, after all, don't we have biases when reading the Bible? Again, that's a philosophical question, not a literary one. Is there such a thing as the soul, or can I be just reduced to my brain and nervous system? A philosophical question, not a psychological or neuroscientific one.

So can studying Plato help you in your Christian walk? Yes, most definitely. Will an understanding of good philosophy help you become a better disciple of Jesus Christ. Yes, most definitely. And that will be a very exciting thing; it won't be boring at all.

Martyrdom

Why is a martyr not guilty of suicide? The Christian church has approved of the former but not of the latter. Is it inconsistent?

No.

In the case of the suicide, the person committing suicide is violating directly the moral maxim to not harm oneself. Generally, the person committing suicide wishes to bring about something (peace, relief of burden to others, etc.) and so acts in such a way to attempt to bring those things to pass. But the suicide's justification is not sufficient, for in attempting to bring certain goods to be he is directly violating a moral maxim, or as some would say, a "basic value."

In the case of the martyr, the martyr does not directly violate the moral maxim to not harm oneself. The martyr does not directly bring about his or her own death. Rather, the martyr is responsible for, say, defying the wishes or commands of the tyrant to deny the Christian faith. It is the tyrant who brings about the death of the martyr.

I Know It But I Can't Prove It, Really

Over at Joanne Jacobs, a commenter (the first one) claims:

In this forum, I once said that one of the two dumbest lines in detective stories is "I know he's guilty but I can't prove it." If you can't prove it you don't know he's guilty, you only suspect it. (There is at least one special case exception: if the proof depends on knowing you are telling the truth.)

Well, I don't know what exactly is meant by the "one special case" mentioned, but there's one very special case that wasn't mentioned, probably because it undermines the commenter's claim: Goedel's incompleteness theorem.

In short, one thing Goedel proved is that there are propositions that can be known but not proved.

Then the commenter goes on to say:

religion teaches making real-world decisions based on feeling and faith even if it means ignoring strong evidence. Christianity is harmless when confined to Sunday mornings. Base your schooling on it, and you have a disaster.

Two things. (1) This comment betrays a woefully inadequate account of what Christians have historically meant by "faith." (2) If you base your schooling on Christianity, what you get is not a disaster but the university.

Irony: Found in Translation

It is often remarked that the translation of a book from one language to another can never capture the author's genius. Something is always lost in translation.

While reading Richard Polt's translation of Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols; or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer, I came across an irony that seems to have been added by the translation. In "What I Owe to the Ancients," Nietzsche says that "One will recognize in me, even in my Zarathustra, a very earnest ambition for the Roman style . . . .

In trying to emphasize the word "Roman," the translator has removed it from the roman style (of the typeface) and set it in italics. If I may equivocate on "Roman" and "style," the translator has frustrated Nietzsche's preference for the Roman style by removing his word from the roman style. I find this ironical; I'll forgive you if you don't.

A Quiz!

What do these topics all have in common? (Answer when you click "Read more")

AGRICULTURE, ALGEBRA, ALLIGATION, ANATOMY, ANNUITIES, ARCHITECTURE, ARITHMETICK, ASTRONOMY, BLEACHING, BOOK-KEEPING, BOTANY, BREWING, CHEMISTRY, COMMERCE, CONIC SECTIONS, ELECTRICITY, FARRIERY, FLUXIONS, FORTIFICATIONS, GARDENING, GEOGRAPHY, GEOMETRY, GRAMMAR, HORSEMANSHIP, HYDROSTATICS, LAW, LOGIC, MECHANICS, MEDICINE, METAPHYSICS, MIDWIFERY, MORAL PHILOSOPHY, MUSICK, NAVIGATION, OPTICS, PERSPECTIVE, PNEUMATICS, RELIGION, SHORT-HAND, SURGERY, TANNING, and TRIGONOMETRY

They were all covered in the first edition (1768-1771) of the Encyclopedia Britannica. In fact, these were the only topics covered in the first edition. Does the selection of topics seem strange (in a possibly good sort of way)? Some topics are expected, e.g., agriculture, chemistry, law. Others not so much, e.g., bleaching, brewing, horsemanship, midwifery, short-hand, tanning.

Help Andre

My friend Andre was seriously injured in a car accident a week ago. If you have some time, and perhaps a few dollars, take a look at his story. Clicking on the above picture will take you to a site where you can donate. Clicking here will give you a blog with updates on how he's doing.

Veteran's Day

Today we remember the veterans of our country's armed forces. My dad is one of them. Thanks, dad. He'll tell you that lots of guys his age were joining, and he was just going along with them. But just because lots of guys were doing a good thing doesn't make it any less good.

If Lincoln Had Used PowerPoint

The Gettysburg Address in PowerPoint.

"Rove remains his Machiavellian self "

Dymphna, who blogs at "Gates of Vienna" (see the blogroll) and "Neighborhood of God," thinks that Harriet Miers's nomination and subsequent withdrawal was orchestrated by Rove.

So what did her time at bat accomplish? Well, it sure galvanized the base didn't it? George W got the message: people are paying attention. So he paid attention back and gave them what he'd planned to give them anyway: a decent nomination. So now they like him again. And by nominating Harriet, he got his licks in for the evangelical base, too. And Laura could give us the party line about "needing to have a woman on the Supreme Court." Everybody's happy and now Harriet can go back to obscurity as the White House Counsel. Or whatever.

Meanwhile, the Dems are looking longingly backwards at Ms. Miers. They could have had a field day bashing her for weeks. And then they'd have passed her and she would have "grown in office" -- i.e., moved left.

I think she's right about this. That Rove is a sneaky fellow, and for all the ridicule Bush receives, he is, too. As Machiavelli says,

The choice of ministers is of no small importance to a prince; they are good or not according to the prudence of the prince. And the first conjecture that is to be made of the brain of a lord is to see the men he has around him; and when they are capable and faithful, he can always be reputed wise because he has known how to recognize them as capable and to maintain them as faithful. But if they are otherwise, one can always pass unfavorable judgment on him, because the first error he makes, he makes in this choice. (The Prince, ch. 22, trans. Manfield)

Games!

Don't click if you've got deadlines. You've been warned.

Planarity.

Gridgame.

My high score on the grid game is 1524.

UPDATE: The Bourgeois Dad e-mails that he got 1807 on the grid game.

UPDATE 2: Thorgerson, who should have been grading essays, got 1867.

UPDATE 3: Mark, who should have been testing software, got 2138. He claims he was "testing" the grid game.

When It Rains, It Pours

We've received a glut of bathroom reading material lately. It seems we went for a month or two without anything new. Here's what we've gotten recently.

1. University alumni magazine.
2. Bourgeois Wife's undergraduate honors program newsletter.
3. JCPenney home catalog.
4. Church archdiocesan magazine.
5. Pottery Barn catalog.
6. AAA magazine.
7. California special election information guide.
8. Graduate school quarterly magazine.
9. Intercollegiate Review.
10. Crate and Barrel catalog.
11. Vision Forum catalog.
12. Touchstone magazine.

Quite a goodly supply of material to keep one occupied while taking care of business.

Caring about Moral Problems

I noticed (or remembered) today that many students in my class on moral problems do not care about moral problems. "Abortion? Whateve." (Some students cannot be bothered to complete their words.) "Animal rights? [Shrug.]" (Some cannot be bothered to use spoken language.)

What is surprising, perhaps, is that these are not typical slacker students. They are not apathetic about other aspects of their lives, even other aspects of their academic lives. They are very interested in, say, biology or chemistry. They just do not care about moral problems.

Such apathy is also not to be confused with moral relativism. That I can respond to. Apathy, however, is difficult to respond to. The student is asleep and needs to be woken up. Since apathetic students often appear to not pay attention in class, the teacher may try some antics to get their "attention." But this is just to send a jolt through their bodies.

What needs to be awakened is their soul. How is that done? Socrates tried to wake up the soul by refuting the person's opinions. Sometimes this is easy to do, but then the problem reasserts itself when the one who is refuted refuses to admit it. What do you do in that case? Antics?