David Makinster-- we're
continuing Plato's cosmology,
metaphysics, and epistemology,
talking about the divided line.
OK.
Plato is going to introduce
this metaphor of the sun.
And we'll talk
about that much more
when we talk about the cave.
But for now, understand
the sun gives light.
Light make sight possible.
And what is it that we see?
Anything that's
inherently visible.
It's the nature of some
objects that they're
susceptible to being seen.
The parallel is
that being, which
he calls the form of the good,
is the highest universal.
Being is what makes
truth possible.
Without being, nothing is real.
Without reality,
as we saw before,
there aren't truths,
because there's
nothing for the
truth to be about.
Without truths to be known,
there's no knowledge.
So what is it that we know?
Things that are by
nature intelligible.
Just as we see things that are
by nature able to be grasped
by vision, we know
things that are
able to be grasped
by the intellect--
in other words, universals.
Let's talk a little bit
about this notion of being,
or, if you will, the good.
The term the form of
the good is inscrutable
to many Western first
time readers of Plato.
What on earth is he talking
about, the form of the good?
This sounds like he's
talking about God.
Well, if so he's talking about
it in such an abstract sense
that it's not
something that's going
to be very familiar
to most traditions,
although his
conception of the good
was very influential on both
Christian and Islamic theology
in medieval times and,
to a lesser extent,
on the Hebrew conception
of God through philosophers
such as Philo.
So Plato says, look,
as you're going up
this pyramid of ever
more general universals,
you get to the final dyad, which
is identity and difference.
Dyad is a pair of
opposites in this instance.
So you get to the
primal dyad, as he said.
That's as high as you can go
with dielectric, as high as you
can go with investigation
that's based
on a language and concepts.
Identity and
difference-- everything
that can be said to be
this rather than that
must participate in or
embody the universals
of identity and difference.
It is this thing.
It is not that thing.
Language, Plato says,
is inherently dualistic.
We can't have language without
making distinctions and making
reference over time.
And that requires that
we split the world
into different
particular objects
based on identity
and difference.
Of course, you have
all of these mystics
from various different
traditions saying, actually,
beyond conceptual
level, we're all one.
It's all one.
And standing here on this
side of that conceptual level,
trying to understand it, it's
impossible to understand,
because it's like,
well, that's ridiculous.
You're you and I'm me
and we're different.
Yeah, but from this
side, we're all one.
Identity and difference are
not the ultimate universals.
They're as high as you can go
without abandoning language.
That means whatever is beyond
identity and difference
can only be
experienced directly.
It can't be grasped
with concepts.
As Socrates puts it, I can't
describe the good to you.
What I can do is turn your
head in the right direction,
clear the debris
of misconception
away from the
front of your eyes,
and then you have to
see it for yourself.
And he's going to repeat
that kind of language
when he talks about the cave,
the metaphor of the cave
and coming out of the cave.
The form of the good, as
it's usually translated-- you
can think of that as
the universal of being.
This is simply primal being.
Why is it called the good?
Because it is, if you
will, perfect being.
Just as the universal
of circularity
is perfect circularity, the
universal of triangularity
is perfect triangularity,
the universal
of being is going
to be perfect being.
Perfect being is outside
of space and time.
It doesn't come into
being and pass away.
Now it's calling it the form of
the good sounds more plausible,
right?
Also, the Greek idea of what
makes something good or bad
is based, usually, on the notion
of ergon, which is a function,
if you will.
For every ergon,
there's a perfection
and there's a defect--
[greek] and [greek].
The purpose of
the eye is to see.
The better your vision is,
the more perfect your eye is.
The more defective your vision
is the more defective it is.
You have good eyes.
You got bad eyes, whatever.
And this permeates the
whole idea of virtue.
What should we be able to do?
If we are good people, we should
be able to live very well.
The extent that we
live effectively,
causing suffering for ourselves
and for others inadvertently,
doing all kinds of destructive
and self-destructive things,
we're living defectively.
So this idea of
excellence and defect
permeates their notion of
what is good and what is bad.
Since universals are
exactly and perfectly
what they are-- they
don't come into being,
they don't pass away, they're
not approximate-- being is,
if you will, perfect being,
hence the form of the good.
It's the best thing
that you can be it.
It just perfectly is.
I had a professor who used
refer to it to it as "is-ness."
To the extent that anything
embodies the universal being,
it's real.
To the extent that
it embodies being
only imperfectly or
temporarily, it's unreal.
Just as to the extent that this
lid or lip, rather, of the cup
embodies circularity,
it's circular.
To the extent that
it doesn't it isn't.
Well, if you take that all the
way up the pyramid to being,
the most primal of universals,
the extent to which something
embodies being is
the extent to which
it has reality and is knowable.
The extent to which
it doesn't, in which
it fails to embody
being, is the extent
to which is it impermanent
and not really knowable.
This is another innovation of
Plato that is very important.
The idea that metaphysics
or, if you will,
reality and epistemology--
or if you will,
knowledge-- run in tandem
to each other and they
are matters of degree--
this is not dualism.
There is only one world.
But it's populated,
if you will, by things
that are of varying
degrees of reality.
The degree to which
something is real
is the degree to
which it's knowable.
If it robustly embodies
being, such as a universal,
it's very knowable.
If it is a fleeting,
imperfect appearance,
it has only very
limited knowability.
This is how Plato's
going to deal with it.
It's not all or nothing.
It's not black and
white, real or unreal.
We don't always
mean the same thing
when we say something is
real, and so we don't always
mean the same thing when
we say we know something.
Understanding, getting more
exact, more clear, more precise
about what we're seeing
requires that we understand
that there are
degrees of reality
and corresponding
degrees of knowability.
And that's what the
divided line is all about.
The lowest rung of the
divided line is illusion.
This is the mode of
knowing, illusion.
And the object of illusion
is confused appearances.
We don't know what
we're looking at.
And that can be a chaotic
dissolution of self.
It could be that we just have
no idea what we're looking at.
Say, a person who's
blind from birth and then
that has an operation and
suddenly see as an adult--
very often, they say,
take these eyes back out,
because I'm going to go crazy.
I have this whole new
category of sensation
that's completely alien
to me and it's completely
disorganizing my world.
We're now smart
enough to realize
that if we're going to
give vision to an adult who
has never seen before,
we bloody well better
put them through some
extensive training as to how
to figure out all
this visual input.
People sometimes to experience
this level of confusion
when their concepts about how
the world works fall apart.
They have a problem where,
say, their culture has
been overrun by another culture.
Or people they believe
in have been discredited.
Or you've had the same
job for 40 years--
it's all you know how to
do-- and you get laid off.
It's like my world
has fallen apart.
I honestly don't understand
what I'm looking at.
I can't make sense of it.
There are two things we can
do, basically, Plato says.
We can make up
stories, which he says
is the lowest
counterfeit of knowledge.
I don't know what I'm looking
at, so just make up a story,
because I can't stand the
anxiety of saying I don't know.
Or I can say I don't know.
And if I say I
don't know, then I'm
beginning to look
for explanations,
and I'm moving up on the divided
line, to the level of belief.
Beliefs may have
degrees of reasonability
or unreasonability, depending
upon how conscientious you
are about holding your
beliefs up to scrutiny.
Our beliefs concern
objects of perception,
the things that are presented
to us by the senses.
We begin to form, as David
Hume puts it, mental habits.
I never sat down and thought
about inductive reasoning
or the laws of nature.
But I just have certain habits I
form because my experiences had
certain regularities in it.
And we'll talk
about that more when
we talk about the
problem of induction.
But at least I'm
able to form beliefs.
It may be very difficult to
dislodge me out of those habits
if I don't realize that
they are simply habits,
that they are simply opinions--
opinions based on consistencies
in my experience.
And those consistencies
may, in fact,
be due to the limitations
of what I've experienced.
This is the whole realm of
becoming-- the realm of things
that come into
being and pass away.
It's the sensible realm,
sensible in the sense
of meaning that it's
what's presented
by the senses-- sensation and
perception, the things that
come into being and
pass away and are
imperfect and impermanent.
We can only have
opinion in this realm.
We get to that point,
and in fact, we
are now doing
something differently.
There's not a divided
line here because there
are two separate worlds,
but rather, at this point,
we realize that we want to
do something differently.
We have formed habits
of belief, but now I'm
going to ask questions.
If there are regularities
in my experience,
how do I know what
is a regularity, what
isn't a regularity, whether it's
a special case, whether it's
not a special case?
Both common sense
and science require
us to look beyond our simple
habits of what we expect
the world to be like
and ask, what kind
of lawful relationships
underlie those regularities?
We do mathematics.
We do experimental science.
We do all kinds of things.
We study logic.
We look for patterns.
We start looking for
the patterns themselves
and trying to
describe the patterns.
We're doing something
different now.
We've moved from the
realm of the senses
to the realm of the intellect.
And we're saying, you know what?
The senses are
very good sailors,
but we need to put the
navigator in charge.
I hope you remember all
that material at this point.
We're looking for
lawful relationships,
because that allows us
not only to understand
but also predict what
may be coming up.
It allows us to
have more ability
to navigate our lives, to steer
our lives, because we can say,
you know what?
This pattern leads to
these results very commonly
in my experience.
Maybe I should do
something different.
There is a poem that I
used to give to my class
when I taught a class on
Socrates that someone gave
to me that was part of
her recovery program.
And I can't recite it verbatim,
but essentially, it says,
I walk down the street.
I fall in a hole.
I feel sorry for myself.
It's everybody else's fault.
It takes a long time to
scramble out of the hole.
I walk down the same street.
I fall in the same hole.
It's still not my fault,
but I stop complaining,
and I climb back out.
I walk down the same street.
I see the same hole.
And yet, I fall into it.
And I realize I
chose to do that.
I climb back out of the hole.
I walk down the street,
and I step around the hole.
And it ends with, I decide
to find a different street.
pretty good, huh?
Well, that's essentially
a very good illustration
of what we're doing when we
moved from simply having habits
to inquiring about what
lawful relationships underlie
the things that we experience.
And once we understand what
lawful relationships underlie
what we experience,
we realize that there
are other possibilities.
We can make choices.
At some point, we may, if
we continue to be curious,
ask ourselves what
are these laws about?
What are these laws of?
We're just saying
there are patterns.
But why are there patterns?
How do we understand--
what is the subject
matter of mathematics?
What is the subject
matter of logic?
That's how some people,
including Russell,
like to put it.
And the answer
that is universals.
I read an amazing
book by Roger Penrose,
who's actually the
person who developed
the idea of black holes prior
to Stephen Hawking doing it.
And then the two of
them worked together
to elaborate the theory.
I believe he still is the
head of mathematical physics
at Oxford University.
The book was called
The Emperor's New Mind.
And actually, the main
thrust of the book
is that Penrose thinks it
is mathematically unlikely
that consciousness
can be reduced purely
to a system of algorithms
because of the limitations
of what algorithms
can and can't do.
A good deal of that
book, Penrose is saying,
you know what?
Actually, the thing
we need to understand
is that mathematics
and physics are really
all about universals.
And he says, point
blank, and the person
who really understood
that was Plato.
And like many mathematicians
and many physicists
who have ever really wondered,
what really ultimately
is the subject matter
of what I'm doing,
suddenly, we see Plato
in a whole new light
and say, oh my god,
this guy was onto it.
This guy hit a bull's eye.
At some point, if you pursue
the notion of universals,
you come to, as Plato puts it,
the experience of the good.
That pyramid of universals
reaches its peak in being,
which is beyond language,
beyond conceptualization.
It simply has to be experienced.
The degree to which different
levels of reality, if you will,
participate in that
universal being
is the degree to
which they are real.
And the degree to
which they are real
is the degree to which
they are knowable.
This is amazing stuff.
If you stop and
analyze it in detail,
Plato has made
probably half a dozen
major intellectual
breakthroughs in just this piece
The Republic, things that would
change the way Westerners think
about the world and
how we understand
it right through modern times.
But ever the student
of Socrates, Plato
gets to this point and
says, you know what?
We're not done.
What's the point of all of this
metaphysics and epistemology
if we don't turn it around
and go back and say,
so what difference does this
make in how I live my life?
And that's where he introduces
the allegory of the cave, which
we'll talk about next.
