FEMALE SPEAKER: Good afternoon.
On behalf of Authors
at Google, it
was my privilege to welcome
philosopher and author Rebecca
Newberger Goldstein to
Mountain View four years ago.
She's back.
I think she enjoyed her visit.
[APPLAUSE]
Ms. Goldstein was trained
as a philosopher of science,
receiving her PhD from
Princeton University
and is the author of
10 prize-winning books
of both fiction and nonfiction.
She has received fellowships
from the MacArthur Foundation,
Guggenheim Foundations, the
American Council of Learned
Societies, and the Radcliffe
Institute, among others.
Since her last
visit, she has been
named Humanist of the Year, as
well as Freethought Heroine.
In her latest
book, Ms. Goldstein
asks us to accept the
one preposterous premise
that Plato could turn
up in 21st century
America, an author
on a book tour.
So here he is at
Google headquarters
in Mountain View,
California, discussing
with his media escort
and a software engineer
whether crowdsourcing can
answer all ethical questions?
So here we are at
Google headquarters
in Mountain View, California,
where Ms. Goldstein
will discuss her latest book,
"Plato at the Googleplex."
Please join me in welcoming
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.
[APPLAUSE]
REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN: Hi.
It's very good to be here.
Obviously, I was fairly
inspired four years ago when
I visited this place.
So in bringing Plato back,
I brought him here first
to Google.
That solved many
practical problems for me.
I didn't want to have
to waste a lot of time
bringing him up to speed
about everything that's
happened in the
past 2,400 years.
So he gets himself
a Chromebook here.
And he gets addicted very,
very quickly to the internet.
And by the last
chapter, when he's
in discussion with
a neuroscientist
and is about to have
his brain imaged,
he knows quite a bit of
neuroscience, he's taken a MOOC
and so he can translate
an ancient argument
that he put forth in
the "Phaedo," a kind
of nonreductive
argument that is there
in the "Phaedo," in
one of his dialogues,
he can translated it into
neuroscientific terms
and it's all thanks to the
first stop here at Google.
And he was very, very
intrigued by what was going on,
here particularly intrigued by
the whole notion of the cloud,
as he would be.
But this an odd book
to say the least.
It's divided up into two parts.
There are 10 chapters and
five of them are expository.
And they go back in time
to the ancient Greeks.
And what was it?
Well, it's a problem
I and many others
have tried to solve for
the past two millennia--
I think I solve it-- as to why
the Greeks, the ancient Greeks
did so much?
They not only discovered
philosophy, but in a sense
began science, protoscience,
certainly introduced
the study of
abstract mathematics.
Geometry existed in other
places, certainly in Egypt.
But the notion of proof, of
axioms, of deduction, this
really was discovered
by the ancient Greeks.
What else did they do?
I mentioned philosophy.
Democracy, right?
They discovered democracy, not
quite our form of democracy.
In fact, the
founders, the writers
of the American Constitution,
who were all classically
trained and knew their
Plato, in some sense
formed our form of
democracy knowing
Plato's criticisms of
Athenian democracy.
What else do they do?
Well, there's our art,
architecture, timeless poetry,
tragedies, comedies.
It's still studied
and still move us.
So this is an
extraordinary people.
And I'm particularly
interested that they discovered
this kind of peculiar question,
a philosophical question,
that it is my contention
still exists and is still
very alive in our society.
But it's even more
amazing that they
did what they did because
they did it so quickly.
They went from
anomie and illiteracy
to Aeschylus and Aristotle
in a matter of 200 years.
It had been an
illiterate society.
There had been literacy
under the Mycenaean culture.
Then it was destroyed
They imported the alphabet from
the Phoenicians, adapted it
to their language.
And then there's just this
explosion of achievement.
And what was it that
allowed that to happen?
I actually have an article
in "The New York Times"
today under "The
Stone," which is
where philosophers philosophize.
And it's a blog.
And it's about the way in
which our society is so very
similar to ancient
Greek society.
And it's very similar in ways
in which Socrates and Plato had
actually criticized
their society.
But there are many ways
we're living in a time
that makes us particularly
able to appreciate the value
system of the ancient
Greeks and what
allowed them to achieve so much.
So that's part of
what I'm doing.
Because I do think
that there are
such an interesting parallels
between our extraordinary age
and their extraordinary
age and some
of the same conditions
in place that
are promoting
explosive discoveries.
There's that.
But then I actually wanted
to bring Plato forward
into our time and have
him discourse with us.
Plato-- excuse me--
had used the dialogue
form and for a very good reason.
He actually said that
he mistrusted writing.
He thought that
philosophy is supposed
to be a lived discourse,
a lived conversation.
If you wrote down anything,
there was the danger
that it would become a doctrine.
It would become hardened.
You would have disciples.
Thinking would
become thoughtless.
It would be a matter
of interpreting
what the great man has said.
And that is the exact opposite
of what you want in philosophy.
And I think that
that's certainly true.
So he chose this form,
the dialogue form.
And he used a beloved
figure, Socrates,
who was already dead at the time
that Plato was writing, perhaps
to bring Socrates forward with
him as he developed philosophy.
And Plato really did
give us philosophy
as it exists, carved
out the landscape.
It's as if he almost raised up,
like the continent of Atlantis,
the whole submerged
field of philosophy
in all its different
subbranches.
And that's actually
a very good metaphor
to use because our
earliest allusion
to the myth of Atlantis comes
from Plato in the "Timaeus."
So that actually comes from him.
Anyway, he used Socrates
in these dialogues
and probed his own society.
And I thought, well, why
not do the same for Plato,
to bring him forward
into our day,
to put him into a
dialogues with our society?
And as many times as I could,
which turned out to be quite
often, to lift actual
passages from his dialogues
into contemporary dialogues, as
seamlessly as possible so that
my readers wouldn't know
that this actually came from
a 2,400-year-old man.
And every time I say that,
I think of a Mel Brooks,
Carl Reiner, 2,000-year-old-man
skit that probably most of you
are too young to remember.
But it's extremely funny.
You should goggle it.
And to seamlessly fit these
passages into our own dialogues
to show that there's a kind of
relevance still of this man,
in some ways, yes;
in some ways, no.
In many ways we've left
him in the dust, which
I believe he would have wanted.
If, in fact, there is any
philosophical progress made
at all, and I actually
tried to argue
that there is in
this book, then Plato
can't be completely relevant.
His answers can't
be completely right.
Plato himself was committed
to the possibility
of making
philosophical progress.
That is certainly the most
obvious interpretation
of the most famous
passage of his writings,
the myth of the cave.
You start in darkness,
staring at the shadows
at the back wall of the cave.
And then you're let
out into reality.
And he certainly was
committed to making
philosophical progress.
If Plato had all
the answers, there
is no philosophical progress.
And so Plato couldn't
been right about that.
Ergo, Plato can't be
right about everything.
That's just a syllogism.
It just follows directly.
So anyway, I bring Plato here.
He is constantly being
amazed by our society
and both its good points, what
he judges to be good and bad.
He's certainly amazed by
our science and technology.
But he's also amazed
at the progress
we've made philosophically,
ethically, politically.
And that is part of my
argument, that this process
that he started actually
has had an effect that
was partly due to
philosophical arguments
that Plato is so surprised
by what he discovers.
So I'm going to start
with the Google ones.
Oh, here are the five places
that I-- five dialogues.
He first comes here.
He is in conversation
with his media escort.
Very-- what is she?
She's a very annoying
woman I have say.
Very opinionated and she
has no use for philosophy.
She's a very practical woman.
And she's actually
able to enlighten
Plato about certain
things that she
thinks are intuitively obvious.
And that kind of opened his eyes
about certain ethical truths.
And there's also a software
engineer named Marcus.
And Marcus believes
that perhaps we
can rig up an ethical answer
search engine, acronym EASE,
by which we could
algorithmically-- crowdsourcing
algorithmically answer
ethical questions.
And Plato quickly
absorbs this idea.
He's very, very smart.
And he has arguments
against it and from things
that he said a long time ago.
The next place he
goes, Plato, he now
has his Chromebook cradled
constantly with him,
is to the 92nd
Street Y. And he's
on a panel of
child-rearing experts.
And the topic is how to
raise the exceptional child.
And his fellow panelist is
a woman named Sophie Zee,
author of "The Warriors' Guide
to How to produce Off-the-Chart
Children," a
national best seller,
and another woman who is
psychoanalytically trained
in Vienna.
And her book is-- oh, let me
see if I've-- title of her book?
OK.
Well, yes, here's the
invitation actually from the Y.
"Join us at the Y
for what promises
to be the highlight
of the season.
Zachary Burns, beloved columnist
for the newspaper of record,
will lead a discussion on "How
to Raise an Exceptional Child.
With Zach will be best-selling
author, Mitzi Munitz,
author of the
"Esteeming Your Child,
How Even the Best-Intentioned
Parents Violate, Mutilate,
and Desecrate Their Children";
Sophie Zee, best-selling author
of "The Warrior Mother's Guide
to Producing Off-the-Chart
Children"; and
Plato, best selling
author of the "Republic."
And they fight it out there on
the stage of the 92nd Street
Y."
The next thing I do with Plato
is I have him giving advice.
He's an expert
consultant to an advice
columnist about love and sex.
And Plato has an awful lot
to say about love and sex.
He devoted two
magnificent dialogues
actually to the subject.
One is "The Symposium."
And that's the one from
which we derive our slightly
degraded idea of Platonic love.
And that's from
Socrates' speech there
about how the erotic
longing we direct
to beautiful young things,
which is our love of beauty,
ought to be
redirected, sublimated,
so that all that love
of beauty is directed
towards beautiful mathematics,
and beautiful laws of nature,
and beautiful laws of
justice, and eventually
to the idea of beauty itself.
So there, he's kind of down
on personal, romantic love.
He's trying to argue
us out of that.
And in the "Phaedrus," which
is a dialogue I like even more,
Plato shows himself
to be really torn
about this subject
of romantic love.
He has Socrates, who is
for the first time in any
of the dialogues,
outside the city walls.
He's walking in this
lush countryside,
and he lies down beside a
beautiful boy, Phaedrus,
beside a sparkling stream,
and they talk of love.
And Socrates' first
speech to Phaedrus
argues against the madness
of love, to be taken over,
to be possessed
by another person,
and to direct all of your erotic
energy towards him or her.
And then, Socrates, as
they're about to leave,
they're about to
step over the stream,
and he says, wait a minute.
I am ashamed.
I had offended the god Eros.
And he gives another speech,
completely reversing himself,
on the glories of
the madness of love.
He's in a very strange mood,
Plato, when he writes this.
This is really out of
character for Plato.
So much so that many
of us, including me,
believe he was in love.
He was in love
when he wrote that.
And we even think there's
etymological evidence
within the ancient Greek
pointing to whom he
was in love with, which
would actually makes sense,
the character that
we've arrived at.
But this is actually one
of the reasons I love Plato
because he philosophizes
with his whole soul.
If, in fact, he's
fallen in love and he
thinks this is a
good thing, he's
going to philosophically
reverse his ideas about it.
Philosophy for Plato is not
just a mind-- it's not a game.
It's not an intellectual game.
It's not a way of showing
off how smart you are,
which often happens
in the Academy.
Of course, he founded of the
Academy, the first Academy.
He founded the prototype
of the European university.
But for Plato, it
is all about trying
to figure out how to live.
And so we would reverse
himself if he was in love.
He would rethink his ideas.
In fact, Plato was constantly
rethinking his ideas.
When we teach Plato,
we say this is
what Plato said,
theory of forms,
division between the mind
and the soul and the body.
That's quite wrong.
Plato himself
subjects those views
to stringent,
rigorous criticism.
So much so, that
in later dialogues
he actually gets them up.
So anyway, he has a lot
to say about love and sex.
And what I did for
that is I am friends
with a professional
advice columnist.
She wrote I think
for "Slate" or maybe
"Salon" as "Dear Prudence."
And she is the daughter of a
very famous advice columnist,
Ann Landers, and the
niece of a famous advice
columnist, "Dear Abby."
And what I did is
I made up questions
that I knew Plato would have
something to say about because
of the "Symposium"
and the "Phaedrus."
And very, very
contemporary questions,
like I'm a graduate student
in a really hard-hit humanity
subject.
I'm a graduate student.
I about to get my PhD.
There are no jobs.
My professor has offered to
be my professor with benefits.
Should I do it?
He's a man of honor.
We're both involved
with other people.
So there's no danger of
getting really involved.
Should I do it?
And this is something
Plato had something to say.
A similar situation
arises in the "Phaedrus."
And I sent these
various questions--
I think there are about 12 of
them-- to my friend, Margo.
She gave her answer.
And then she consulted Plato.
And I give his advice, which
is often more liberal then
Margo's advice, which
was pretty surprising.
The next place I bring him--
he's on an author's book tour--
is to cable news.
And he's on a show
called "The Real
McCoy," the bombastic McCoy.
His name is Roy McCoy.
He begins the interview
by saying something
like-- where is that?
Roy McCoy.
"OK."
So they tell me you're a big
deal in philosophy, Plato.
I'm going to tell you
upfront-- because that's
the kind of guy I
am, upfront-- that I
don't think much
of philosophers."
Plato.
"Many don't.
The term attracts a
wide range of reaction,
from admiration, to
amusement, to animaadversion.
Some people think
philosophers are worthless,
and others that they are
worth everything in the world.
Sometimes they take on the
appearance of statesmen
and sometimes of sophists.
Sometimes, too, they
might give the impression
that they're completely insane."
This is actually a direct quote.
It comes from "The Sophist."
McCoy.
"Well, I'm going to
go with that last one,
just as long as you add that
it's the kind of insane that
makes right-thinking
Americans the world over want
to smack you upside the head."
It continues.
And it gets into subjects
about American democracy,
whether or not there can be--
in this particular interview--
whether or not there can be
morality without religion?
Has science progressed?
Roy McCoy doesn't even think
science has progressed,
much less philosophy.
And one of the things
that really happens
is that there's so little
communication between them.
And Plato, when he
got his Chromebook
and he saw the amazing
discussions that are going on,
the discourse,
the dialogues that
are going on in the internet,
is very, very hopeful.
And hopes that this means that
we're constantly challenging
our own points of view
by speaking to so many
that we don't even have
to be face to face with.
And on this show,
"The Real McCoy,"
he becomes more despairing about
whether or not these new forms,
the chat rooms, the blogs, are
actually opening our minds up
or whether we're actually
speaking to those who already
agree with us and even
getting our news from sources
that already agree with us?
So he becomes a little
more despairing of us.
But he still thinks we've
made a lot of progress.
And the last place
I bring him to
is to this neuroscience
science lab.
And he's about to
have his brain imaged.
He's about to undergo an fMRI.
And he gets into a discussion
with two neuroscientists-- one
is a post-doc and
one is the head
of the laboratory,
Dr. Shokett-- one
whether or not neuroscience has
retired many of the questions
that philosophers
used to lay claim
to, free will,
personal identity?
And in fact, all notions of a
person choosing their own life,
making choices,
decisions intentions?
And standards of rationality,
whether it's all determined
and its determined on the
level of our 100 billion
neurons firing, or
100 trillion synapses?
Plato, by this time, knows
a lot of neuroscience.
And he has a discussion with
these two neuroscientists
there.
Anyway, so those are
the contemporary places
that I brought him.
There were many other places I
actually wanted to bring him.
He has a lot of things to say
about money and politics mixing
together and the
dangers of this.
I thought about
bringing him to Congress
to testify about
campaign finance reform.
And there were actually
a lot of things
I could have lifted it out of
the "Republic" and the "Laws."
I also thought about
having him give a Ted Talk.
And, yeah, that would probably
be a disaster for him.
Actually as I said, his mentor,
the man he loves so much,
Socrates, hung out in the
Agora, in the marketplace
of Athens, buttonholing
anybody he could
and asking them his
very peculiar questions,
and very high up people,
statesman, powerful people,
rhetoricians, sophists, who were
itinerant professors sort of.
But all the way down to
slaves-- it was a slave society.
And Plato, after
Socrates' execution,
after the Athenians
voted that he
was guilty of the
two charges that
were brought against him,
impiety and corrupting
the young-- I have a theory
as to why they killed him
when they did kill him--
that Plato left Athens.
And he might have thought
his own life was in danger.
But he was certainly
demoralized, disillusioned.
And he left Athens.
He traveled widely.
Very importantly
for the development
of his own point of view
as distinct from Socrates,
he traveled to Italy, which was
the center of the Pythagorean
community.
So this view that
mathematics presents
the key to
understanding the world.
The intelligibility of the world
is given to us in mathematics.
That had a very important
effect on Plato.
But when he came back to Athens,
he didn't go to the Agora.
That had proved to be pretty
fatal and futile he judged.
And he found the Academy.
He separated himself
from the mass of people.
He had a very low opinion
of most people's potential
for being rational, for
being able to think through.
As you know, he developed the
idea of the philosopher king
to make most of the decisions
for the masses of us.
And he didn't give
one public lecture.
And this is why I know he
would really bomb at Ted.
It was on "The good."
And apparently, the
Athenians flocked
to this one public lecture.
Here was the famous
Plato, founder
of their Academy, up
there on the mountaintop,
bringing the jewels of
his wisdom down to them.
It was called "The Good."
They all thought it was going
to give the secret of success,
how we can get ahead.
Because the Athenians were
obsessed with that as we are,
how to achieve, how to get
ahead, how to [INAUDIBLE] your
name abroad, how to acquire
what they called "kleos"
and what we might call
a high Klout score.
And one of the ways in which
we're very close to them.
And they flocked to this.
And Plato gave this talk
on "The Good," which
was mostly mathematics and a
way to convince them that they,
perhaps, that they really had
no business even going here,
that they were not capable
of understanding this.
So I think he would not
do very well at Ted.
But if he did want
to do well at Ted,
he should definitely start
with the death of Socrates,
and how moving that was, and how
that really tore him to pieces,
and influenced the
rest of his life.
So I know if he has
any savviness, which
I don't think he did have
that kind of savviness,
that's the way he should begin.
But he would probably
make it all mathematics.
Anyway, that is what
I do bringing Plato
into the modern world.
And I thought I might read just
a little bit of Plato-- yeah--
at Google.
Let's see.
So I'm going to just
start in the middle.
There's already been quite
a lot of discussion here.
Let's see.
Plato has brought up the
idea of ethical expertise.
That one needs a
kind of expertise
to be able to answer
ethical questions.
And he's used the metaphor
of-- if you have crooked teeth,
this is a metaphor
that suggests himself
because Marcus has
quite crooked teeth.
And so if you have
crooked teeth,
you go to the expert, who can
straighten out your teeth.
You go to the orthodontist.
And Cheryl has somebody
to recommend in town,
in San Francisco, who
did her children's teeth.
And similarly with
ethical questions,
that there's a
kind of expertise.
And one ought to go to the
experts who the philosophers.
The other thing I guess
that needs to be known
is he's also-- Cheryl makes an
allusion to the Charlie Sheen
level of ask-dumbness.
And Plato picks
that up right away.
Charlie Sheen being an actor
who behaved very stupidly.
So Plato picks that
up very quickly.
OK.
So I'm just going to
read a little bit.
Oh, and Cheryl,
the media escort,
is recouning this episode,
taking Plato around
to her friends.
So they're in a bar
in San Francisco.
And she's telling her
friend about this.
Plato's dialogue sometimes
are written like real plays,
with Socrates saying that--
you have the characters listed.
But sometimes it's one
person recounting the story.
And here, it's Cheryl
recounting the story.
OK.
I'm just going to
read a little bit.
"Oh.
And I ought to mention
that right around now,
there was a little commotion
because two Googlers had shown
up to take my
author on his tour.
And I could see that
he was really torn.
He was involved in the
kind of conversation
that you could see
he just lives for.
I mean you could see it
was his life's blood.
But he was also eager to get
an insider's look at Google.
The whole cloud idea had caught
his fancy for some reason.
Before I had wanted him to
skip the tour since I thought
it would be exhausting for him.
But then the kind
of conversation
he was intent on having was
every bit as exhausting,
at least for me.
He asked me if it would
be possible to take
the tour after he gave his
Authors at Google Talk?
No, I told him.
That's out of the
question since that's
when you're signing the books.
He was all for skipping
the book signing.
But obviously, that wasn't
going to happen on my watch.
When it comes to
that sort of thing,
then I'm the one who has
to be the tyrant since I
answer to the publishers.
And believe me, they keep
track of how their authors do
with the various media
escorts, comparing our sales
records with one another.
Marcus tipped the
balance by telling Plato,
again, that not only did he
want to challenge his view,
but he could also
explain the way
that Google works, the
way the search engine is
able to deliver the right
information to people
with such accuracy.
You're not going to get that
on the tour of the Googleplex
he told Plato, since
the answers you're
looking for lie in the sphere of
abstraction, which of course is
right up your alley.
With that, Plato was so
happy that he actually
allowed himself a real smile,
not just the hint of one.
And I sent the tour guides, who
seemed genuinely disappointed,
on their way.
Apparently, they were
big fans of Plato's too.
Go figure.
Plato got right
down to business,
asking Marcus what were the
points he wanted to challenge?
OK.
Let me just reiterate
the major points that
have emerged so far, at least
as I see them, Marcus said.
You assume that if
there's knowledge,
especially if it's a
nontrivial knowledge that's
difficult to come by, then
those who have the knowledge
are the few, the experts
in that knowledge.
Is that right?
Yes, Plato said.
That this is so seems to
me almost a tautology.
We shall see, said Marcus.
OK.
Then you also assume that
there is such a thing
as knowledge about how we
ought to live our lives,
that it's not just a matter
of personal preference
or cultural norms, say.
And that this knowledge is
nontrivial and hard to come by.
Am I right?
Yes, Plato said.
It must certainly be nontrivial
since so many people get
it wrong, living lives that
are almost at a Charlie Sheen
level of ask dumbness.
He didn't, I said to Cheryl.
He did, repeated
me word for word.
Even Marcus had to all-out
laugh, instead of snicker.
OK, then Marcus went on.
So then the implication
of these two assumptions
is that if anybody
has this knowledge,
and I suppose it's consistent
with your two assumptions,
that nobody has it.
But if, in fact, anyone
has this knowledge,
it can only belong
to those who have
managed to think
their way to it.
Am I right?
Yes, said Plato.
So according to
you, this knowledge
is something like
mathematical knowledge.
It's just as objective,
its truth not determined
by personal preferences
or societal norms.
And it's just as non-trivial
and difficult to access,
being a matter of reasoning.
Yes, said Plato.
I agreed to all of this.
In fact, I would go
further and claim
that it is not only like
mathematical reasoning,
but that mathematics itself
goes into the knowledge.
OK, Marcus said.
But let's just stick with
the weaker proposition
for the purposes
of my refuting you.
Yes, agreed Plato.
That makes dialectical sense.
OK, Marcus said.
And then took several
moments to breathe.
He was, as my mother used
to put it, overexcited.
OK, he said again, what
all of this implies,
as Cheryl was
quick to point out,
is that only those who
are gifted in reasoning
can discover how
we ought to live.
There's no other way
to access these truths,
meaning that nonphilosophical
people who can't follow
philosophical arguments,
have to accept
the conclusions from
the philosophers?
Yes, said Plato.
Hence the enormous
obligations to others
the philosophers have.
Including, said
Marcus, obligations
to tell others how
they should be living,
to legislate morals for them?
No, said Plato, not
in every respect.
No, since as was also
pointed out by Cheryl,
there are many matters
that lie entirely
in the sphere of personal
or cultural preferences.
And many such decisions,
which are there for entirely
a matter for an individual to
decide for himself or herself."
He's already been corrected
about his sexist language.
So he overcorrects.
And it's all himself or herself.
Cheryl corrected him on this.
"So for an individual to
decide for himself, or herself,
or to let society
decide for him or her
will help to make for
a life worth living.
So that, for example,
if I am of such a nature
that I need to test my
manhood-- I hope it's not
sexist to mention
manhood in this context,
he asked, looking at me?
Cheryl said, why don't you
just say test your courage?
Women test their courage too.
Yes, you're right, he agreed.
If I say I am of
such a nature that I
need to test my courage
by taking repeated risks,
then I am free to do
so insofar as the risks
I take do not involve
any moral transgressions.
A great deal of the substance
of a life worth living
is made up of
decisions of this sort.
But not all of them,
Marcus prodded?
No, not all of
them, Plato agree.
And these are the contributions
to a life worth living
that a philosophically
unintelligent person can't
decide for themselves, but must
instead turn the decision over
to the philosophically
intelligent, Marcus said.
Not quite, said Plato.
Nobody, the
philosophically intelligent
any more than the
philosophically nonintelligent,
can decide these matters
for himself or herself
since there are objective
facts of the matter.
Those who can access
such knowledge
are no more able to
change the facts of how
we are to live
than anybody else.
Like everybody else,
they must abide by them.
The one difference
is that they are
able to discover, through the
special talents and training
that are theirs,
what the facts are.
So they are not imposing
their personal will on others,
any more than mathematicians are
imposing their wills on others
by informing
nonmathematicians what
the mathematical truths are.
They are simply sharing
their knowledge with others,
knowledge that others cannot
access for themselves,
lacking the requisite
cognitive skills,
a matter of both of
talent and training.
This seems to me no
more unfair than that
the mathematically
intelligent share
their knowledge of
mathematics with
the mathematically
unintelligent.
So, for example, you
as a software engineer,
possess considerable
mathematical intelligence
I would assume?
Yes, Marcus said, I
suppose you could say that.
And by working here
at Google, Plato said,
you are able to
provide the benefits
of your mathematical
intelligence
to others who are lacking
this kind of intelligence, who
make use of your
powerful search engine
while simply regarding
it as techno-magic.
The difference, Marco
said, is that not everybody
believes himself to be good
in math or even cares too be.
In fact, only those who
are in fact good in math
give a hoot about whether
they're good at it or not.
But everybody cares about
living his life well
and has strong views
about how best to do it.
And if you tell
him that he's just
lacking the cognitive ability to
figure it all out for himself,
he's going to have some
harsh words for you."
I'm going to stop here
because one thing I think
Plato got very right is
that discourse, dialogue
conversation, give and
take, Q&A, is essential.
So I am going to stop here.
Maybe you can anticipate
what Marcus's objection
to what Plato just
said would be?
Maybe you can even
anticipate what
Plato would say in
answer to Marcus?
Marcus basically is
trying to take down
the idea of ethical experts,
philosophical experts.
So, yeah, I'm going to stop
here and ask for your questions.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
AUDIENCE: My only
question is am I
expected to have read Plato
before I can enjoy this book?
REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN:
I do quote from him
or reference him.
And it's surprising how
often what he has to say
is actually relevant
to conversations
that we are having, that are
very current in our society.
But no, of course not.
You don't have to.
Although I am getting emails
from people saying that they've
opened up their
Plato books, that
haven't been opened since
they were freshman in college.
I'll tell you something.
And I think so much of Plato
is really terrifically boring.
And he's raising these
questions for the first time.
And that's magnificent.
That's amazing.
And philosophy is divided into
all these subspecialities.
For just about any area of
human inquiry or concern,
there's a corresponding
area of philosophy.
So philosophy of
language; philosophy
of science, which is my
own particular interest;
philosophy of
mathematics, I'm also
quite interested in that;
philosophy of history;
philosophy of religion;
philosophy of art;
ethics; political philosophy;
philosophy of knowledge itself,
epistemology.
I'm leaving things out.
And now, applied
ethics as well So
applied ethics is applied to the
environment, to medical ethics,
to minority concerns.
So for every area, there's
a corresponding area
of philosophy.
What's amazing is Plato actually
carved out that entire terrain.
He really asked the
paradigmatic questions
in philosophy of mathematics,
in philosophy of language,
in philosophy of
religion, epistemology.
Certainly ethics,
but that he had
gotten from Socrates,
that concern with ethics
and, well, perhaps to some
extent, political philosophy
he had gotten from Socrates.
But he asked these questions.
And what else is so interesting,
philosophical questions
are very peculiar.
A lot of the questions that
were first asked by philosophers
were protoscientific questions.
As science progressed,
they were taken out
of the domain of philosophy.
The empirical methodology caught
up and they were answered.
So all of physics
and cosmology started
in the domain of philosophy.
It was called
natural philosophy.
And it really pretty much
remained as philosophy
until the 16th,
17th century, when
the scientific method really--
this beautiful marriage
of empiricism and mathematical
description-- that part Plato
got right-- were
brought together
and we really started
making headway
and overturned the
Aristotelian/Ptolemaic system
that had dominated in
science until the reemergence
of science, or real
science I would say,
with Copernicus,
Kepler, Galileo.
By the way, Kepler
and Galileo, who
so valued mathematical
description,
always referred to Plato
as the Divine Plato.
And if you read the "Timaeus,"
you'll understand why.
Because that notion
that it's math--
he's pretty much given
up on the theory of forms
by the "Timaeus"--
and it's math.
And it's, in fact, the
most beautiful math.
So if we have two
theories and they're both
adequate to explain
what we're observing,
go with the mathematically
beautiful one
and you'll go towards the truth.
Kepler, Copernicus, that's
what they were saying.
In fact, Kepler-- I'm
sorry, Galileo had said,
he wouldn't even have
bothered with experimen--
because the math, the
beautiful math was enough--
if his critics weren't
so stupid so that he
had to actually demonstrate
to them with experiments.
So this kind of notion of the
beautiful math leading the way,
this is Plato.
But in any case, a lot
of scientific questions
first belonged to philosophy.
And then the
empirical methodology
catches up; psychology,
same thing; linguistics.
Logic, which belonged to the
sphere of philosophy, now
it takes place in
mathematics departments.
So as science
progresses, it is true
that the set of philosophical
questions somewhat shrinks.
But I actually think that
there's a conservation because
of philosophical
questions because science
itself presents so many
philosophical questions to us,
trying to make sense
of the science.
That's why philosophers always
have to keep up with science.
But why am I saying all
of this in answer to you?
Because I didn't say it before
and I think it's important.
But no, you don't know to Plato.
As much as I can,
I bring him in.
I know I why I was
saying it to you.
Because what philosophers
are often-- you know,
we're often
defending ourselves--
especially if you're a
philosopher like me who
hangs out mostly with
scientists-- we're often
defending ourselves
against the charge
that, look, the
history of philosophy
is the history of contraction.
As science expands,
philosophy shrinks, contracts.
Here is an equation, the
fate of philosophy equation,
as t goes toward infinity, the
set of philosophical questions
goes towards the null set.
I mean that, in fact,
eventually science
will answer all of
these questions.
I think that's wrong actually.
And Plato-- this is the
extraordinary thing--
Plato, even though
he really lived
before there was any
real science to speak of,
had some of the best of
antireductive arguments
against that sort of reduction
of all philosophical questions
to scientific ones.
The other place where
you often hear this
is not science, that philosophy
has no right to exist,
but religion.
And that used to be an argument
you would get much more
often in the bad old days.
But you still get it actually.
And Plato also has, in the
youth of Rome, the best argument
against those who would reduce
philosophical questions,
in particular ethical
questions, or why is there
something rather than nothing,
to religious questions,
but particularly
moral questions.
He has an incredible argument,
which is still repeated,
even into our day by the
so-called "new atheists,"
as to why religion can
never ground morality.
So he has these two very
prescient arguments,
on the one side against
scientific reductionism,
and on the other
side against sort
of theological reductionism.
And that's really all you have
to know about Plato, I think.
That is the most
interesting thing about him.
He had such a nose
for this peculiar kind
of philosophical
question, that not
only did he raise this
submerged continent
of philosophical questions,
he had the prescience
to see that some
of these questions
would never be answered, either
by religion or by science,
but yet could be answered
through human reason
or we could make
progress with them
through human reason,
an ongoing process.
So I think that's the
most important thing
to know about Plato
and not to have
to wade through so much that's
not terribly interesting to us
anymore.
AUDIENCE: I'm actually
interested in the relationship
between Plato and what he might
think of modern technology.
And specifically, for
example, what would
he think about our
extreme preoccupation
with Facebook and Google?
Like would that,
for example, make
us sink deeper into the cave
or allow us to leave the cave?
REBECCA NEWBERGER
GOLDSTEIN: Yes.
Actually, yes, this thing that
I have in the "New York Times,"
"The Stone," is
exactly about this.
It's exactly about
what would Plato tweet?
I had never tweeted and
I'm not on Facebook.
I had never been interested.
But my daughter, who
is much more savvy
than I am, suggested
to me, how would you
like to tweet as Plato?
And I have been tweeting
as Plato for like the past,
I don't know, three
weeks or something.
And the handle is platobooktour.
So Plato is with us now.
I often have him tweeting about
the events that I've gone on.
And I was just with
a writer last night.
And he said to me, oh, did you
lie in bed afterwards thinking,
oh, this is how I should
have answered the question?
And I said, well,
of course I do.
I mean it's always
very hard to give
an adequate answer outright.
But now, I could have
Plato saying, regarding
capital punishment question
at Harvard bookstore,
Goldstein flubbed it.
Here's what I say.
So this is just wonderful
for me because I can actually
answer them much better,
what Plato would have to say.
Plato, I think,
would be quite struck
by the way in which we're trying
to answer the questions of how
to live a life that
matters and that we're all
preoccupied with that question.
For a very long time,
religion answered that for us,
we mattered in the universe
in a very large way.
God, we mattered to God.
God was keeping track
of everything we did.
I was brought up very religious.
And I believed as a little
girl that if I took a nibble
from a Hostess, Twinkie
bar, which do not
have the right
rabbinical symbol on it,
that the Lord of the Hosts
would take note and punish me.
I had to do my repentance,
which was terrifying.
But it certainly gave one a
sense that you really mattered.
Every single thing
you did mattered.
For many of us that
kind of confirmation
of our mattering coming
from that kind of worldview
no longer resonates.
And so this question
that actually
was there in Plato's
society-- his society
was premonotheistic.
We are more and more
postmonotheistic.
And we're going
towards the same kind
of answer, which is we want a
lot of people to know of us.
If God's not watching, we
want as many Twitter followers
as possible.
We broadcast everything.
If you're in a
restaurant, people
are taking pictures of their
food to put on Facebook.
That sense of giving our
life a "moreness" using
our social media, now that
Jehovah's no longer watching.
It's very similar to what
the ancient Greek society,
especially Athens, was about.
And it was against that Socrates
was arguing in the Agora.
That's what he was saying.
When he says the unexamined
life is not worth living, which
Plato has him saying
in the "Apology," which
was Plato's version
of Socrates' trial,
which did not end
well for Socrates,
that when he's saying
that, he is antagonizing
the Athenians so that
his execution is almost
a foregone conclusion because
they were so concerned
with feeling that they
mattered and believing
that their high achievements--
and for those who couldn't
achieve, just being
an Athenian, being
a member of that exceptional
society-- if there
was Athenian
exceptionalism, just as
American
exceptionalism-- to just
be a member of that society
would do it for you.
You mattered.
But they had this
notion of kleos,
which meant to claim
and to do something, be
an Olympic victor,
be a great warrior,
be smart, be a good philosopher,
be a sophist, be very rich,
be beautiful.
They worshipped beauty
because anything
that would blow your life
up so that many people would
be paying attention satisfied
their notion of mattering.
Because you
certainly didn't look
to the Greek gods for your
affirmation of existence.
The last thing you
wanted was the attention
of the Greek gods.
Something terrible always
happened if they paid attention
to you, at the very
least a rate or worse.
And so you didn't look there.
You looked to your
fellow citizens
and you tried to
do something big.
This obviously
promoted a society
of extraordinary, explosive
ambition and achievement, also
havoc.
But Plato, and Socrates before
him, thought that it's shallow.
That's not what's
going to do it.
So Plato is struck
by similarities
and the way we're falling
back on social media
to fill the vacuum that
monotheism has left,
to create a society that's very
much like the one that forced
philosophy in the first place.
Which is why he thinks
that our society is
a ripe for again recognizing
the value of philosophy.
That's what he thinks.
I sort of think so too.
FEMALE SPEAKER:
Thank you, Rebecca.
So we need to wrap up.
But she'll be here
for a few more minutes
for those of you who'd like
to come on up and chat.
Thank you.
REBECCA NEWBERGER
GOLDSTEIN: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
