[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 19 KB, 220x293, socrates.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
12045077 No.12045077 [Reply] [Original]

Has anyone ever successfully refuted any of the reasoning in the socratic dialogues?
I’ve read quite a few dialogues and some sound a bit iffy or selective in reasoning. I’ve been searching for detailed analysis and interpretation of some of Socrates’s reasoning, but it’s never as good as I’d like.

>> No.12045094

Aristotle BTFOs The Republic in about 2 paragraphs in the opening of the Politics.
Plato was wrong and delusional about nearly everything.

>> No.12045103

>>12045077
The Euthyphro argument has been shown to be inadequate. To summarise it, in the Euthyphro dialogue, Socrates says that something is pious either because the gods like it, or the gods like it because it is pious. There are options Socrates doesn't explore in the dialogue, such as the gods (or God) exhibit piety by their very nature.

>> No.12045110

>>12045077

Which of the dialogues do you have in mind?

The arguments shouldn't be overly distilled or formalized, nor should they be taken at face value. Their dramatic context should always inform your reading. Consider where the character making the argument is coming from and what he's trying to accomplish, or perhaps even what Plato is trying to get across through the interplay of characters.

>> No.12045112

>>12045077
by zeus you must be right

>> No.12045116

>>12045103

You could argue that Socrates opens the way to this third more unitary option and that the reader is implicitly invited to pursue this line of reasoning. I simply caution against finding fault in Plato for what may have been deliberate and calculated omissions.

>> No.12045135

>>12045110
Euthyphro. >>12045103 has already mentioned that there are other options which Socrates doesn’t explore.

And Alcibiades I. The argument about all ’just’ things being ’advantageous’. I think he doesn’t show that. I think something can be ’not advantageous’, ’just’, ’admirable’ and ’good’ at the same time. If you follow the argument in the dialogue and draw a Venn’s diagram, Socrates’s exclusion of ’not advantageous’ seems incorrect.

>> No.12045164

>>12045135
>I think something can be ’not advantageous’, ’just’, ’admirable’ and ’good’ at the same time.

You may be using the word 'advantageous' in a way different from that of Socrates.

>> No.12045174

>>12045116
but if he deliberately omitted some reasoning, then the dialogue is meaningless. It implies that there may actually be a way to show what a certain thing really is (e.g virtue, piety,..)

>> No.12045212

>>12045164
From the context it seems he’s using the word in the same manner as we do now.

>"Actually, Socrates, I think the Athenians and the other Greeks rarely discuss which course is more just or unjust. They think that sort of thing is obvious, so they skip over it and ask which one would be advantageous to do. In fact, though, what’s just is not the same, I think, as what’s advantageous; many people have profited by committing great injustices, and others, I think, got no advantage from doing the right thing.
>many people have profited (this explains the meaning of advantageous)

And a few pages later in the dialogue Socrates says that "people who do things well live successful lives". He uses this preposition to show that advantageous, just, admirable, and good are connected to one another. As I understand it, inseparably.

>> No.12045564

>>12045103
Of course there are unexplored options, do you expect everything to be explored in a dialogue? This does not affect the validity of the argument he presents. Socrates' intent is simply to demonstrate the flaw in Euthyphro's own position, and that's what he does. The conclusion of his argument is that if pious things are loved by the gods, then it is absolutely not the case that the things which are loved by the gods are what is definitive of piety.

>> No.12045619

>>12045564
what’s the point of showing one is ignorant? Wouldn’t the dialogue be a lot better if Socrates/Plato included other options? (Socrates excelled at that anyway).
Rather than showing one is ignorant, it might have been better to get closer to the real answer, if there even is one.

>> No.12045631

>>12045077
have you read Parmenides? Plato btfo himself

>> No.12045646

>>12045619

It's written to suck you in. If you find yourself thinking 'wait a second that's not quite right' Plato has succeeded.

It's like when you're listening to a conversational podcast and you start thinking of really great points and counterpoints that you wish you could add to what's being said. This isn't a design flaw of the podcast.

>> No.12045771

is there a list of all logical flaws in socratic dialogues somewhere?

>> No.12045781

>>12045646
please die

>> No.12045800

>>12045771

Plato doesn't have flaws

>> No.12045803

>>12045781
that's a given

>> No.12045806

>>12045800
>being this new

>> No.12045895

>>12045077

>Implying the Meno or the Apology are right about metempsychosis.

>> No.12046017

If you're approaching the Dialogues as tightly reasoned arguments to be proven/disproven, you're kinda missing the point. The role Socrates plays in the Dialogues is more teacher than dialectician.

If you'll permit me the rather on the nose metaphor, he is first and foremost the Philosopher returning to The Cave to instruct his fellows, bringing Philosophy to the Sophists. The Dialogues are exercises in provocation - they are invitations to the study of what the good life is, not a definitive manual of how to get there. This is, arguably, why Socrates wrote no books or treatises expounding some great theory, and all we have are the dialogues written by Plato.

>> No.12046037

If you insist on analyzing the arguments as they are written, at least try to improve on them.

Simply finding holes is baby mode.

>> No.12046302

>>12046037
why is it that many (most?) papers that analyse the dialogues don’t discuss the flaws in arguments, nor do they try to improve them?

>> No.12046378

>>12046302
>why is it that many (most?) papers that analyse the dialogues don’t discuss the flaws in arguments

There was a fifty year phase of obnoxious analytical philosophy in England and America where all they did was pick apart the arguments.

>nor do they try to improve them?
I don't fully understand it myself.

>> No.12046538

>>12045619
Socrates himself said that he knows nothing.