I recently finished reading the sci-fi novel Blindsight by Peter Watts. I think I was led to it when searching for authors similar to Neal Stephenson, whose works I really enjoy. And it was bang on. Like Stephenson, Watts crams so many ideas into Blindsight. Blindsight is much more compact than Stephenson's later works, and I have to say Watts is better at tying everything together at the end.

Through the novel Watts explores the role of consciousness in life and challenges the psychocentric status quo. Somehow it is not totally ridiculous for vampires to exist in this world. The protagonist, Siri Keeton, lost his sense of empathy after an invasive brain surgery. His interaction with people is through a large and complex set of rules in order to react correctly. It reminds me of how some isolated internet autistics describes their experience in trying to communicate with neurotypicals in social situations, an impossibly large set of rules to memorize and apply that they were never privy to. The man is however not devoid of feelings, he is clearly touched by his interactions with other people. Though he does not always seem to recognize his feelings and how it affects him. The protagonists mode of social interaction extends to his vocation. Artificial intelligence and enhanced humans have taken research in Blindsight so far that their ideas have become impossible for the normal human mind to comprehend. Synthesists are tasked with translating these complex information structures into something their clients can understand, or at least be satisfied with in feeling as they understand it. Critically, the synthesists are not experts in the subjects they translate. Like a flatlander conveying the idea of 3 dimensions to their fellow flatlanders.

The protagonist compares himself to the Chinese Room. The concept describes how a system can have intelligence without a mind: There is a room with 2 slots, one receives papers written with Chinese and the other puts out responses. Inside is a man and a rulebook. The man has no understanding of Chinese but follows the extensive ruleset of the book to create responses. Any input to the Chinese Room will get an appropriate output, yet there is no mind ruling it (the man only follows the rules as a logical engine). The concept has been popular in recent times with the rapid advances of LLM AI, complex systems that without mind can create convincing outputs in all manner of fields such as text, video and audio.

Reading Blindsight and it's musings on intelligence sans consciousness, I came to think that there are some similarities with how Plato criticises sophistry in his writings. Some quick searching gave that no one else had made the connection, so I decided to make this blog post about it. I have not yet finished my project of reading through all of Plato's writings, the Sophist dialogue could perhaps have been handy here, but I will make my best attempt.

In Ancient Greece sophists were learned men which had gotten rich from taking money in exchange for lessons. They are frequently the eponymous "antagonist" of Plato's dialogues such as Gorgias and Protagoras. Some dialogues portray them as foolish such as Hippias Minor while Gorgias and Protagoras judge at least the masters to be wise and intelligent but misguided in their convictions. The fundamental critcism is that the sophists prize power and money above knowledge. The sophist Gorgias himself argues that an expert in the oratory art will be more convincing in a subject than an expert in the matter. For example an orator would be better at convincing a patient to take their medicine than the doctor. In short, translating complex ideas without understanding of them. In the grimdark future of Blindsight, the sophists have won.

There is the question of what unconscious intelligence is. We are not given much detail on how the synthesists work. The protagonists perspective does invoke techniques or theory in their approach beyond that they perceive personalities as "topologies". The other characters in the story are wary of the synthesist, but we do not see them disrespect their art as lesser. In the Gorgias dialogue the practice of rhetoric is defined not as an art based on knowledge but as a "knack" based on instinct and experience. The people in Blindsight are confounded that the extraterrestials have advanced intelligence without consciousness. But complexity is not contingent on self-awareness. Life on earth has achieved it without conscious design and LLMs can create very convincing results despite just being a network of weights. Complexity from self-aware decisions and knowledge is actually quite recent in the timespan of life on Earth.

One critical difference between the Chinese Room and sophistry is that the later has a moral component. In general we only attribute morality to conscious beings that can make decisions. The ant colony is not evil for invading my kitchen and it would be pointless to get upset if the Chinese Room instructed me to go fuck myself. Although morality can be extended to organizations of conscious beings such as the polis in Republic. One possible, if fringe, implication of that dialogue is pan-psychism where everything at every layer of reality has consciousness. But the whole premise of the Chinese Room is moot if pan-psychism is accepted. Morality itself gets confusing here if we are to apply it to everything and not just between equal rational entities. Blindsight raises the possibility that the existence of morality could be useless if consciousness merely self-identifies with the decisions that the body decided on before it was thought. You could make the case that intelligence without consciousness would still strive for truth as it would lead to better decisions, i.e fitness in it's environment. The hypothesis that math could be used for communcation with extraterrestial life is put to use in the novel, but it ultimately is unsatisfactory for answering whether it allows for communication. In a platonic framework a perfect Chinese Room might be naturally good by virtue of its perfection.

In short, there is some similarities between the concept of the Chinese Room in Blindsight and sophistry. They describe how intelligence can function without conscioussness or knowledge, but differ in their applications in ethics.

The Cratylus dialogue revolves around the meaning of words and whether they are decided by convention or if they have a natural independent of people. Hermogenes and Cratylus respectively holds these positions and each have to cede to the opposite view in dialogue with Socrates.

Hermogenes position is that names decided by convention and that a thing can have as many names as people call it by. This communication by consensus is compared to the philosophy of Protagoras and Euthydemus. In Plato's interpretation Protagoras held that no objective truth existed and everyones perception was correct. Euthydemus is explained as holding that all things hold opposite properties in order to explain differing experiences. These viewpoints are rejected, objects must have properties independent of our perception.

Actions, in order to be succesful, must be in accordance with the properties of what they act upon. You can only cut a tree with a saw for example, recognizing the hardness of the tree with the sharpness of the saw's teeth. Not recognizing these properties would make the action impossible. Naming as an action must then adhere to the principles of the thing it names or else fail at communication. In a typical fashion of Plato's dialogues, Socrates asks Hermogenes for what the best tool is for a purpose and who uses it. E.g hammers are used by blacksmiths, but they are used by carpenters for construction and only they can judge its quality, not the maker. Naming is the act of dividing things according to their nature, their users are dialecticians and they makers must be rule-setters (not consensus). Makers use produce things to imitate the forms. Different makers can use different materials that will still be the same thing in imitation of the forms. This explains why there can be words spelled differently or synonyms.

When discussing the correctness of words Socrates brings up, as usual, comparisons to the works of Homer. In the Illiad gods and men have different names for the same things. The names by the gods must be correct. For a name to be correct it must reflect the nature of a thing, Hector's name means possessor and his son's name Astyanax means lord. But Socrates says there are exceptions, that "monsters" can be born without the nature of their progenitors. This can be why Cratylus says Hermogenes name is not his own. A major part of the dialogue is dedicated to finding the etymologies of words by Socrates. This can be seen as an example of the superior skill of the philosopher to employ any practice as in many dialogues like Menexenus. The etymologies were seen as legitimate in their day but do not live up to our contemporary standards. Words can be spelled differently but still have the same significance, as explained earlier with the makers using different materials to produce the same thing. As long as they express the essence of their object, and some words must be better at expressing the properties of this essence than others. Some words are actually phrases that have been corrupted to a single word. Others are foreign loan words. Many have become so mutated that they cannot be traced back to their origin. Primary words are those that do not originate in other words.

Eventually Socrates makes a discovery in Heraclitus, Homer, Hesiod and Orpheus both having the gods originate from ever changing waters. The idea that everything is in a permanent of change originates with Heraclitus, who Cratylus is a follower of. The original primary names were made by ancient wise men and since many of their origins is of motion, it suggests that everlasting change, becoming, is the nature of things.

Speech and writing is different from the imitiation of sounds in music. Speech attempts to imitate the properties of a thing, not the sound of it which is another craft, such as music. The words we use are only approximations, only the gods know the true names of things. Our perception of things is always changing, but is the nature of things also always changing as the Heracliteans would claim?

Cratylus holds the naturalist position that names have a natural origin independent of people. Names reflect the properties of things and are not a common agreement between people but are fundamental to the things they refer to. In fact, Cratylus does not even admit the possibility of misnaming. Words are likened to numbers where you for example you cannot call "one" anything but "one", because anything else would just be another number! Cratylus claims that Hermogenes's name is not his own and that he in fact does not know his own name, but Cratylus refuses to elaborate on it. When Cratylus is asked what he interprets of people using the wrong name for a person he calls it simply noise. But when he is confronted that he accepts words with slight differences in spelling or pronounciation, he says he still understands the significance because of "usage", which does not seem very far from convention! Opposite from Hermogenes, Cratylus has to cede that words are not perfect but approximations of the things they refer to. The nature of words from the Hermogenes discussion is reiterated: naming is a skill by rule-setters, and as skills of practitioners vary there must be better and worse names. The quality of names depends on how well they reflect the properties of the thing they refer to. But a name cannot be possibly reflect all qualities of a thing, then the name would be indistinguishable from the thing! Thus names are like images, inherently imperfect.

During the discussion it is discovered that the roots of words are in the consonants which reflect the properties of the thing the names refer to. But there is a problem, some etymologies are found to lie in stillness while some are in motion. The true nature of things cannot be both, it ought to be either or.

The dialogue ends with a discussion on how knowledge could be possible if everything is in permanent change as Heraclitus says. If one learns the nature of a thing in one moment, it will have changed in the next and one would no longer possess knowledge of it, almost like Zeno's paradox of motion. Can "knowledge" even exist if "knowledge" itself is always changing? Cratylus holds to the Heraclitean viewpoint and the nature of epistemology rests unsolved.

Overall the dialoague shows how Plato's synthesis of being and becoming approaches names, both extreme positions are reconcilled within the framework.

Notes: Cratylus is thought to have been a real person and the one who introduced Plato to the philosophy of Heraclitus.

Hermogenes is the brother of Callias, which has paid lots of sophists for wisdom and has gained a reputation for being wise. He appears in other dialogues.

Socrates posits that children inherit the names of their parents like with Hector and Astyanax. But he makes an exception for when "monsters are born". I'm a bit confounded as to what Plato means with this. That something can give birth to a thing not of its own nature, which might be horrific?

I think Hermogenes should not have cedeed so easily that communication is imitation of things. Naming by convention could be formulated as not making names resembling things but instead as working on the mind(s) of the subject. People have imperfect and divergent understandings of things and names work to bridge these differences between minds. Of course this would be unacceptable to Plato as this framework is inherently imperfect and nowhere near true knowledge of things.

In one passage Socrates explains that since desire is the strongest of any force, that must be what Hades uses to forever hold souls in his domain. There is no desire stronger than company with one that will better you. Hades is jokingly (?) refered to as a perfect sophist, but also a philosopher. It is only when souls are free from material influnce that he convinces them to embrace virtue with him. Is this just a humorous speculation? The souls in Hades do not seem very cheerful or virtous in the Oddysee for example, and Plato rarely contradicts Homer.

Parmenides:

Of the presocratic philosophers Parmenides might be among the most influential and yet divisively interpeted. We only know of one work by him, a poem of which only the introduction has survived in its entirety. Despite the sparse material there are many different interpretations of Parmenides, each and every word is weighed carefully and testimonies analyzed.

The poem starts with Parmenides being taken by godesses to a realm between night and day. As a man of knowledge he is above mortals and is taken to his hearts desire. The godesses tell him that he will learn two ways of seeking, the way of truth and the way of foolish mortals. The path of trust is the way that things are and cannot not be, attended by truth. The path of mortals is the way that it is not and it cannot be. This path is forbidden as it is unending, If A is, then not A is infinite. What is unbounded must be forbidden.

The way of trust posits that thinking and being can be the same. Not literally as something will physically exist if you think of it, but in an ontological and epistemological sense. You can think of something, reason about it, as it is and identify the limits that bind it. A square for example can be reasoned about the distance between its corners. There is nothing beyond the corners and we are only concerned about what is contained inside the limits.

There are further consequences of thinking. When we think of something, it must be, for we cannot think of something that is not. What we are thinking of exists before and after our thoughts. Parmenides asserts that for something to be it must always have been. Since there is no such thing as nothing it is impossible for things to start existing from nothing, and even then it would be absurd as there is nothing to influence when nothing would give birth to something. Parmenides also asserts that the thing that is must be indivisible, homogenously distributed and entirely unchanging. For if something is divisible it is not one thing, but multiple.

There is a division of interpretation whether the ontology of Parmenides is restricted to a singular one or if there can be multiples of it.

We know barely anything about the path of appearance as there is no substantial surviving fragments and what ancient accounts have survived put little attention to it. We know involves dualism of light and dark and warmth and cold from testimonies, but nothing substantial. It is confusing as to why this elemental system would be introduced after change and multiplicity has seemingly been eliminated logically. It is thought that these two separate systems respectively explain the static world of reason and the changing world of the senses. The later is imperfect and is not the real truth, but its the best possible explanation for the senses that Parmenides gives us. Testimonies from antique philosophers with access to Parmenides works seems to support that they at least did not see a puzzling conflict with Parmendides philosophy.

Notes:

Understanding being and why something that exists must always have been reminds me of an event in a fantasy setting that confuses many. In Warhammer 40k there is an immaterial dimension called the warp which is the realm of emotion and concept. After a catastrophic event Slaanesh, a chaos god of desire, is born. And since it exists in the realm of ideas, it must always have been and cannot cease to be. Thus this god influences events in time before its own birth. This is very puzzling for the fans of the series, but with Parmenides understanding of being one can explain it.

Both nothingness and infinity are banished by Parmenides. The infinity of negation and nothingess appear similar in their lack of bounds.

Of the presocratic philosophersi, Heraclitus has been characterised as creating a cosmogeny centered on fire as the base element of the world. All matter is a transition of fire in states of energy, decaying to air and vapor to water and to earth. On earth everything is held to this principle. Life and death, sleeping and awakening, nothing escapes change.

There is not a duality of earth and fire, stability and instability, in Heraclitus metaphysics. The highest energy state is never achieved permanently, but that abides it's very nature by applying instability to instability itself. In contrast stability is never achieved and never will be. Road up, road down, it is still the same road. But it is not mere chaos, for there is a unity and order to the changing. A man can never step into the same river twice, nor can the river have the same man step into it twice. The waters are ever changing yet the form of the river is retained. Fire is the same. This is the hidden principle Heraclitus speaks of. Thunderbolt guides everything and fire judges all.

A common theme in the fragments and testmonies of Heraclitus is the negative view of people. They are deemed ignorant of the truth that is in front of them and possessing falsehood instead of knowledge. One fragment puts aristocratically that one person can outweigh thousands by themself if good enough. Despite this however everyone is deemed to have the capacity for wisdom and reason. Souls are explained as fires animating the body. This ties into sleep and awakening being the soul's fire dying into embers and then renewing. Souls can be dry or moist which affect the virtue of the person. Dryer are wiser while the moist souls stuff themselves with their desires. The death of the soul is it becoming water. The afterlife is impossible to guess, but it will award the wiser people. Those who are fit enough to die in battle are more worthy than those dying of disease. Could the soul leave death behind and instead reach a higher state, like the philosophers final destination of Plato? We can clearly see here a link with the cosmology and goodness that must have influenced Plato.

Summary:

The final chapter. Morality has been proven to make man happier than immorality, even with appearances reversed and the gods silent. Plato now asserts that immorality is punished either in this life or afterwards and that morality is rewarded by the gods in addition to in itself. The myth can be compared to those on Symposium, Gorgias and Phaedrus.

Immortality of the soul:

Like in Phaedo the immortality of the soul must be proven. All things have one thing which causes them to degenerate from good to bad and eventually be destroyed. Immorality has been identified as harming the mind, but it has not been proven to destroy it. Thus the soul must be indestructible since its only affection cannot destroy it. Death does not destroy the mind. The number of souls is constant, as immortal entities cannot deplete or replenish. Incarnation makes the soul tripartite, otherwise it is a unity.

Myth of Er: With immortality of the soul prove, Socrates tells a tale outlining how souls are judged after death for their actions and also outlines a cosmological model. Er, son of Armenius and of Pamphylia went to the afterlife and returned to tell the tale of what happens after death. The souls of the deceased gather at a place with two openings in the earth and two openings in the sky. Judges separate moral souls to the skyward route to the right and immoral souls to the earthward route to the left into the earth. The most exceptionally evil souls are thrown into Tartarus, never to return. Aside from the recently deceased, souls arrrive from the sky and the earth. The first had a wonderful journey, the second is happy to be done with their terrible experience. Crimes in life are punished times ten.

Er arrives at the spindle that holds up the heavens. The spindle holds several whorls, each contained in the next. There are eight in total. Each whorl has different properties such as rotational speed, color etc, many are in relation to other whorls. On each whorl circle stands a Siren singing a note. «Harmony of the spheres.» The spindle serves as a cosmological model. The spindle turns in the lap of Necessity. Around the spindle sits the daughters of Necessity, the Fates: Lachesis, Clotho, Atropos. Lachesis sings the past, Clotho the present and Atropos the future. They each turn turn the whorls.

The souls pick their personal deities. «Ancient Greeks believed that everyone had a personal deity or daimon. Socrates famously would be warned by his daimon and forbidden from entering politics.» The souls also get to pick their next life from a sample. The goodest souls get to pick first, the bader last. However the order everyone will get to pick a life that suits them and will not have to choose one they would't have otherwise. Thus learning to discern good from bad in order to live our life as good as possible is critical to become happy. The choices made by the souls can be surprising. The good souls arriving from the heavens are naive and can pick bad lives such as dictatorships. The bad souls are scarred from their experience and are careful to pick better lives. «It is not enough to be theoretically good, practice is necessary to get experience with goodness. People of good backgrounds can still make good decisions if they are inexperienced with life.» People from various legends pick lives based on their earlier experiences. We see characters from the Illiad and the Oddysey make choices that suit their fates. However the choice of live one can still decide to act good.

Afterwards the souls drink from a river that makes them forget their choices. Some drink whats necessary, others excessively that they forget everything. «Do the souls from the skies drink more than those from the earth or the opposite?»

Observations:

Immortality of the soul:

The argumentation here avoids confronting that the decay and destruction of the soul can be slower than noticeable for us, as brought up in Phaedo. There is also no reason that things cannot have multiple affects that result in their degeneration and that there can only be one. Neither does it address whether the soul is destroyed with the body.

The Greeks used the same word for mind and soul, psukhe. The translation has untill now translated it as mind, but here it takes the form of soul when the discussion goes into the afterlife.

This myth should be exemplary of the poetry that would be permitted in the moral society. Representation is minimal and only goodness is praised. Badness is punished and bad people are led to become better.

What is the significance of the skyward route being to the right and the earthward route to the left? Was the association with left as bad and right as good a concept in Ancient Greece?

The myth of Er has more Pythagorean numerology with the number 10 being featured often.

Summary:

Earlier it was established that represantational poetry must be close to banned from the moral community. This chapter further develeops the case against poetry and representation.

A much harsher tone is employed against poetry this chapter. It is directly harmful to it's audiences, of the irrational and rational parts of people's minds it nourishes the first one. Not only does poetry portray immoral behaviour, but it encourages the audience to lose control and be emotionally overwhelmed. Even good people are vulnerable to these effects, which is why poetry is so harmful.

A craftsmen can create things based on their knowledge while a painter can create any thing without knowledge of them. The creations of the painter are apperances. A joiner can create beds, but not the type of bed. Only God can create a type. There cannot be two of the same type, then they would both just be of a third type. Particulars and universals. The painters creations, representations, are two steps away from reality.

A good poest must understand what they write about. Homer is claimed to be wise in the numerous subjects that his works contain but that would be extraordinary for him to be wise in so many subjects. Is it wisdom or representation? Homer serves as an example of poets to examine. No great accomplishments are ascribed to Homer's expertise. No wars have been won due to his guidance, patients healed nor do any laws claim provenance from him. Poetry is made without knowledge of what it portrays. The works are embellished to flatter the senses of the audience.

The user of a thing has the ultimate knowledge of what makes it good or bad, not the maker. A maker is not intimate with function. «Deeper interpretation of user vs maker?»

Socrates is still open to reconcillation with poetry if it could be proven to be harmless or beneficial. Until then it is restricted to only representing and praising goodness.

Observations:

The previous chapter attacked false pain and pleasure, now false things, representations, are in focus.

I did not expect the Ion dialogue to be so relevant. The attitudes towards in Homer in that dialogue are very relevant to what Plato is arguing against here. Homer was taken to be genuinely wise in the subjects he portrayed in his works.

This is an attack on poetry and Homer, yet Plato clearly holds Homer in high regards as he quotes him constantly. Is there a deeper message on this being a fault of Plato, of compromise, or when logic is taken too far? Does Homer actually have a redeeming attribute? If so then why not tell us? Or perhaps it was only Socrates that quoted Homer frequently, while Plato disproves of him?

Summary:

This chapter finally traces back to the original goal of proving that a person living a moral life is happier than one living an immoral life without consequences.

So far it has been proven that the mentality of the moral community is the best. The most immoral mentality is that of the tyrant which was determined to be the worst. Socrates and his discussors determine that they need an expert on tyrants and decide to pretend to be so. «But did not need one before when commenting on them? What is the significance of "pretending" here? We know Plato had experience with tyrants in Syracuse.»

Like earlier the structure of the dictatorship is reflectd in the dictator. A majority ruled by a minority. Unwilling dictators are more unhappy than willing dictators. «No compensation as in chapter 1.» Wealthy people own plenty of slaves and resemble dictators. Society keeps the slaves from rising up and the rich would be terrified of their servants if they were to act freely. Dictators are terrified of the people they rule over and their paranoia restricts them from truly experiencing all pleasures in the world. The succession of governments and mentalities goes from happiness to unhappiness.

Each mental facultiy has it's own pleasure. The desirous part wants many things, some necessary, some unnecessary. The passionate part wants power, success and fame. The intellectual part wants the truth. For each faculty there is a corresponding person: philosophical, competitive and avaricious. Each type swears their way is the best and disregards the other's pleasures. The intellectual person has the greatest claim to the truth, for only they can access the pleasures of truth and can access the other's pleasures. The competitive person comes second.

The intellectual pleasures are not only the greatest, but they are also the most real. Pain and pleasures are opposites, there is also the intermediate where none is present. Pain from the absence of pleasure. Pleasure from the absence of pain. Remission appears at both and seems to both be painful and pleasant. But things cannot simultaneously have opposing properties. Thereforce these absences are false, or less real. Some pleasures can happen without anticipation or regret at their parting, such as smells or importantly learning. These experiences also give a false perception of the range of experience. Only learning lets one reach the global maximum. What is real is more satisifed from real pleasures. Knowledge is being and is more real pleasure, while the becoming pleasures of food and sex are less real.

Socrates proves how much more miserable the tyrant is with esoteric mathematics again.

Law is to cultivate passion and temper desire in the populace.

Observation:

Minds have a tripartite strucutre, the cities they compose also has a tripartite structure. Does everything on every scale have a tripartite structure, meaning panpsychism? What are minds evem? Why are they? Maybe Timaeus will answer.

Weak argumentation around philosophers having superior pleasures. Other mentalities can use reason to for their purposes and also discover knowledge.

The argumentation around philosophers having exclusive access to their pleasure is a bit weak. The avaricious and competitive people can certainly use reason to attain their pleasures and therefore encounter the pleasures of learning.

This chapter explains how the moral society will, with enough time, decay and stray from it's principles of goodness. There are 4 modes of government that follow in degeneration, each with a corresponding person and mentality.

Moral community declines eventually, 4 succesive forms of governments explained. Each government also has a corresponding mentality in their people. First comes timocracy then follows oligarchy, democracy and finally tyranny. The succession of society follows the divided line while the people of each government mode follow developments in the tripartite mental model.

The starting point is the furthest right of the line with aristocracy having real knowledge and is in the category of "Being". Reason is the supreme ruler of this society and together with Passion it controls the Desirous part.

The timocracy, now without true knowledge and instead based on thought that while closer to the truth than belief is methodologicaly flawed. Passion now rules alone but Desire is still controlled. Reason is present but not supreme.

Oligarchy is where "Being" is left behind for "Becoming", society is now based on "Belief" of what goodness. Wealth had become the greatest objective of society, but Desire is still controlled so that no desire can jeopardize the accumulation of wealth. Desire is now in control but order is still present.

Democracy is where "conjecture" is the guiding principle of society. Ideas and thoughts are freely exchanged and flowing with no order to separate or guide them. Desire is in control and goes from one pursuit to the next.

Tyranny is another stage of "Becoming", I can't give it it's own spot on the divided line as previously, it shares "Conjecture" with Democracy. Desire here is fully enthralled with one single desire above all others and will expend any resource to satisfy it.

Timocracy:

The aristocracy is the most stable and least changing government, but everything in our world decays eventually. Earlier chapters established that the guardians must be united in reason foremost, the other castes are less significant in terms of preserving the community. The downfall occurs within the gold and silver caste.

The likely culprit will be the auxilliaries introducing children of inferior quality. Socrates backs it up mathematically, but it is incomprehensible without substantial background knowledge. Feedback makes each generation further inferior and the mental and cultural studies become neglected. The metals will mix and the level of guardianship declines. Private ownership is introduced and the communal aspect of the guardians ceases. People no longer limit themselves to their function and needs, specialization ceases. Passionate people come to rule instead of complex characters, war becomes the focus of the community. The governments of Crete and Sparta are purported to have this form, militaristic and more concerneted with honor than wealth.

Money will be hoarded but not spent openly as the people still put up the façade of following the moral education they were forced to learn.

The timocracy person will be eager for status and glory. They focus more on physical exercise and neglect cultural studies, but are not dismissive of culture. Though good by nature, those around them will taint their soul, urging them to pursure status. Torn between reason and desire, they let passion steer them.

Oligarchy:

After timarchy follows oligarchy. The transition occurs as the pursuit of wealth overtakes the ambition and competition of the timarchy. Goodness finally leaves the community as wealth is prized above it and all others. Meritocracy is further eroded as only those with enough wealth can hold political positions. The unity of the previous government is gone as society is bitterly divided between rich and poor. The rulers are few ("oli") and terrified of arming the poor, weakening the military prowess of the community. The few good people that remain in the community are ridiculed for not pursuing wealth.

The meek die in poverty while the bad steal and rob themselves wealth. The oligarchic person is formed from the instability of the timarchy. Scarred after losing everthing in a failed ambition scheme, they hoard wealth and property. Reason and passion only serve to gain further wealth, not for goodness. All desires does not serve wealth accumulation are repressd. But this is not true self-control, when wealth is not threatened their most evil desires are unleashed, such as when spending other's money.

Democracy:

From oligarchy follows democracy. The rich ruling class is weak and few, eventually the poor will overwhelm them. Where wealth previously guided and restricted society now any form of desire is free to manifest. There is a grand diversity of thoughts and ideas in the society. Plenty of short term pleasures. Translator notes that democracy in Athens was much more restrictive than Plato portrays it here. External vs internal influence. The ideas and desires that best flatters the population succeeds.

The democratic person is born of the oligarchic mindset and starts with control of their desires for the purpose of moneymaking. The desires that are necessary for wealth are allowed while those that deplete wealth are repressed. Drones are a category of people in this society that are completely controlled by their desires, criminals for example. The transition to democracy occurs as the oligarchic person is lured by the drones to embrace the other desires.

Tyranny:

The final state after democracy is tyranny. All structures break down in equality. The oligarchy excluded criminal drones from seeking wealth solely, but in democracy they are free to be elected into power. The masses enlist champions to rob the rich, causing internal strife. Eventually the champions become dictators. The absolute rule of one desire above others, without any reason or passion or the restraint of the oligarchy. The dictator provokes warfare to make their leadership necessary. The people are taxed to poverty to make them unable to resist. « Mental equivalent of war? Strife that prevents you from introspection». The more unpopular the dictator is the harsher the repression becomes. The worst of the drones are enlisted to serve them.

Good people leave the rational faculties awake when sleeping instead of indulging in the lawlessness of dreams. Passionate and desirous parts are passive. Everyone has terrible desires, some just have better control of themselves.

The tyrannic person abandons the egalitarian freedom of democracy for one single desire. Everything is expended for the desire. Once resources run out they resort to depravity to sustain it. If these people gain critical mass they will infest and corrupt any society.

Observations:

Goodness and the circular structure of Plato's metaphysics:

There is a circular or recursive structure in Plato's idea of goodness. The good society is governed by the silver and gold races that make sure the people are good and ordered. The guardians represent reason, the auxilliaries passion while the iron and bronze races are necessary desires that must be regulated. The people in these races themselves also have the tripartite mental model of reason, passion and desire. The guardians mental model is ruled by reason with the assistance of passion to control desire. Establishing self-control, the guardians then take part in society control of itself, which also controls the guardians. Self-control to control society that controls them.

Goodness as a concept permeates every layer and structure of the world. The good city is good as its own internal structure follows goodness to establish goodness in the people who can then establish goodness in the city.

Plato emphasized that nental cultivation cannot be forced like physical education, but must be voluntary. Republic, with its layers of meaning under the dialogue, can only be understood by those willining to dissect it and really thinking about what is presented to them on multiple levels and not just at face value. The message is buried to encourage the reader to use their own reasoning skills. I think there is a parallel with how Socrates discusses how external influence grows on the modes of governments as it descends from aristocracy. Tyrrants prop themselves up with foreign mercenaries and can infest other societies. The aristocracy is a closed society that prohibits foreign influence, but as it becomes more open the greater the potential for external malign influence. But goodness cannot be forced upon a society? Is this an advantage of badness that gives degeneration an advantage over regeneration?

The philosophers that leave the cave eventually return to establish order and goodness. They ascend to the world of being, but then return to the world of becoming with their knowledge of goodness to establish order. Goodness demands a call to action to improve the world and not stay in the lofty realm of being. Though Plato is disenchanted with engaging with politics.

There are plenty of explanations for degeneration, the aristocracy declines from eventually having children at the wrong time, but what explanation is there for regeneration? The odds are stacked against goodness, only if raised properly can a person's nature and mental constitution reflect it, but they can still fall to the influence of others. Is it simply unexplained that every now and then people of good enough nature appear to change things for the better? Decline is the focus since we start from the most possibly good. There is some hinting of the small chance of a philosopher rising out of the badness of the world and establishing the imagined moral society. I wonder how this influenced Abrahamic thought. Everything decays but also strives to return to goodness?

Passion is our innate sense of justice and goodness, but without knowledge of them and is more like "thought" of goodness.

What is the mental equivalent of the golden caste having births out of order? That eventually even a sound mind can slip up and permit bad thoughts to fester?

Goodville - Kalliopolis

In Phaedo desires are connected with the body and the material world while the mind seeks knowledge, but here we dont see a purely material vs immaterial distinction in regards to desire. Though we could still categorize desires as becoming versus the reason of being, but isnt that the same as a material vs immaterial distinction?

Curiously Socrates remarks that in democracy structure breaks down that men and women get on equal standing (not a thing in Athenian democracy), but we already accepted women as potential guardians earlier. Perhaps the distinction is that Plato recognized that women can be great, but men and women in general are not equal. Good people are equal, not genders.

Summary:

This chapter gets into greater detail on the education of the guardians such as what activites and studies will bring desired qualities in them. What subjects will arouse their curiosity and taste for the truth? The physical and cultural education mentioned earlier is not enough.

Math is identified as crucial for war and a field that stimulates intellect. The most important things for stimulating intellectual curiosity is not when things are clear but actually when they are contradictory. If a thing is found to simultaneously hold two opposing qualities, then it encourages you to further think about what these qualities really are and improve your understanding.

The discussion yield five subjects that the prospective guardians must study: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music and dialectic. The first two subjects are beneficial as anything pertaining with math leads one to ponder timeless truths. We cannot make true circle in reality, but we can think about perfectly round ones. Music is specifically of the intellectual kind where you think about ratios and harmony, not the kind where you depend on your ears to solely. Dialectic is the most important subject as it teaches one systematically understand things and not take things for granted. However it will be the last subject that the students take on as it can lead to them questioning their moral codes and engaging in sport to tear down arguments for entertainement. Dialectic is critical for understanding goodness and separating good from bad. Reiteration of the necessary unity of physical and mental education. Students must excell at both and not focus on one. Physical education can be forced upon a person and be beneficial, but mental education will not have the same effect if not done willingly.

The levels of understanding like the divided line returns. In order of reliability there is knowledge, thought, confidence and conjecture.

Confidence and conjecture can be likened respectively to seeing objects themselves and seeing shadows and reflections of them. In common parlance and other dialogues the term "experts in fields of knowledge" has been used, i.e experts in medicine and so on. But this is incorrect as only philosophers can possess knowledge through dialectic. But belief is not the correct attribution, Socrates decides to call it "thought" as it is more reliable and closer to the truth than belief, but not knowledge. Knowledge and thought constitute intellect and "is concerned with real being". Confidence and conjecture form belief and "is concerned with becoming".

The chapter ends with speculation on how the community could be practically realized. If genuine philosophers could seize power and expel all the adults they could start from a blank slate with the children. Not very probable to occur.

Education programme of the guardians (after finishing the cultural and physical education earlier at around 17):

2-3 years of physical exercise solely. Mental studies while young.

At 20 years of age the brightest must systematize the subjects they learned while young.

At 30 years a further selection is made for those that will start studying dialect.

Then 5 years of dialectic follows.

15 years of practical experience, then if they have not been lacking and lived up to the demands, they enter the guardians truly and will alternate between administration and philosophy.

Observations:

Being and Becoming; The concept of being represents what is and does not change, including the forms and our knowledge of them. The realm of the forms is the realm of being. static, unchanging. Originates in Parmenides. The concept of becoming represents what constantly changes. The visible world that we perceive through our senses shifts and changes. Originates in Heraclitus. From other discussions I have learned that being and becoming are assigned respectively to Parmenides and Heraclitus, in opposition to each other. Im a bit irritated that the translators notes and introduction did not tell me, but ChatGPT tells me that the metaphysics of Plato can be seen as a reconcillation and synthesis of these two worldviews. The changing becoming of Heraclitus occupies the visible world of belief while the static being of Parmenides occupies the intellegible world of forms and knowledge I will need to revisit Parmenides, Zeno and Heraclitus after Republic.

Summary:

This is probably one of the most important chapters. The famous devices of the sun simile, the divided line and the allegory of the cave appear here. The previous chapter described why philosophers are prevented from living up to their potential. Here we see that the process itself of searching for the truth alienates people from society.

Plato puts forward the fundamental principle of his metaphysics: knowledge of goodness. «Knowledge, not belief.» All wisdom, intellect and knowledge are of no use without knowing goodness. Goodnes comes before morality, self-discipline and other qualities. «Goodness is the one intrinsic value, all the rest are instrumental.» Goodness is not pleasure. Everyone desires goodness, it must be identified before any goal can be accomplished.

However, Socrates cannot define goodness. «Adeimantues or Glaucon call him out on criticising others without stating his own position, like Thrasymachus did in chapter 1.» Instead he will explain it with likeness, the Simile of the Sun.

Things are visible while characters/types are intellegible. In order to see things we require light from the sun to illuminate them first. The sun enables sight with its light, but the sun _is_ not the light. Goodness is similar to the sun in that it lets us perceive truth and have knowledge, but it is not truth nor knowledge and not the ability of possessing knowledge. As light and sight comes from the sun, truth and knowledge comes from goodness.

The next device is The Divided Line that separates sight and truth into separate realms of the visible and the intellegible. The visible realm can only deal in belief, while the intellegible realm is knowledge. The visible is divided into two parts, one of likeness where we see shadows and reflections, and one of concrete things. Goodness is what gives people the capacity for knowledge. «Without knowledge we would only be able to conduct our actions based on belief and not knowledge. Truly good acts can only come from knowledge.» As likeness and objects stand to each other in the visible realm, so does the two types of reasoning in the intellegible realm. The first part is methods where one reasons from a starting point to an end point, a deduction of facts to support a conclusion, i.e justification. The second method is the dialectic where instead of reasoning to reach an end point, ideas are continually refined until they can be used as starting points in a framework. The first method is an example of what experts of other branches of knowledge use, while the later is the method of the philosophers. Justification versus refinement. «Justification stands to dialectic as likeness stands to objects in the visual realm.»

The cave allegory: People are held captive in a cave for their entire life. They are shackled so that they cannot move or face away from the wall in front of them. Behind them is a fire in which effigies pass by, projecting their shadows onto the wall. These shadows form the world and culture of the prisoners as it is all they perceive. One prisoner is freed and can see the fire behind them. The firelight hurts his eyes that were habituated to only seeing shadows. The pain discourages him from leaving the shackles and seeing the origin of the shadows. Eventually his eyes recover and he realizes his whole life he has only seen the shadows of the effigies that were passing by the fire. If he was dragged up to the surface he would be in tremendous pain from seeing the sun for the first time and be blinded. Eventually he would acclimatise and see more of reality. The effigies were in turn only derived from the objects on the surface. Being closer to reality would make him happier. But he would be alienated from his fellow prisoners, who based their entire culture around recognizing the shadows on the wall. If the freed prisoner returned to the cave he would be again blinded by the darkness. He would utterly fail at recognizing the shadows and be seen as a fool by the prisoners. If anyone tried to drag the prisoners to the surface by force they would kill them. Those who see the truth are discouraged from involving themselves with public affairs and trying to change the beliefs of society.

The analogy ends with an encouragement to not outright dismiss people who seem confused, they could be descending from a higher clarity and be temporarily unable to interface with the beliefs of lower reality.

The philosopher-king guardians have conflicting natures. Their pursuit of truth makes them aloof and uninterested in the society they must administer. They would personally benefit more from only engaging in truth seeking, but the society is not interested in maximising the happiness of any specific class. They must come down and govern for the benefit of the community. The more truth oriented and reluctant to rule the better fit they are. The guardians will govern out of a sense of duty to their community and fear that someone less competent would govern instead (referencing the compensation for power in chatper 1).

Observations:

Cave Allegory and the divided line:

The progression from shadows to effigies to the sun-lit surface represents the mental progression from conjecture to belief to knowledge. Though I'm unsure where the methodological divide is present in the cave allegory. Present at each transition point is pain. When we critisize our current beliefs we destabilize our worldview and even our sense of self. This discourages us from truly trying to get closer to the truth when its more comforting to believe in things as you always did. Society might not appreciate what we discover that goes against convention and might even be hostile against it. Only someone truly motivated to find the truth can go through the pain the get closer to reality. Thus philosophy is a lonely endeavour as most of society are not motivated strongly to look for the truth despite the pain and discomfort. You become alienated from your culture as the established structures are distant from the reality you see. Finally leaving the cave represents the final mental development of becoming a philosopher. Once the prisoner sees the sun as it really is they can now become truly good and discern the types of the intellegible realm.

Infinite regression of shades and effigies:

How do we know we have actually reached the surface and can know of things as they really are? What if the sun us just another effigy that the prisoner is seeing?

Elitism:

The cave analogy can be critised as being pompous and condescending. A common caricature of someone so full of themselves and their self-perception as being above everyone in their intellect. Though Plato would most likely insist that a real philosopher necessarily must be humble.

Collectivism and individualism:

The translator remarked initially that Ancient Greece and pre-modern societies left much less room for individuals. Socrates explicitly states that his objective is to create a moral society and is not creating the greatest happiness for one class or individual. Individuals in the moral society are restricted in what functions they can perform and what information they can consume. But this chapter breaks the untill now collectivist perspective with the individual experience of seeking the truth. While happiness is a communal objective the truth can only be pursued individually.

Conflict between free will and the unchanging nature of goodness:

I see a conflict in the philosophers quest to assimilate himself with the ultimate reality of goodness and the types. The types are timeless and unchanging, as any perfect (good) thing would not change or degrade. Free will is necessary for goodness in order to choose to do moral acts. Reason and the intellect are so critical to Plato that I cannot imagine him accept goodness without free will. But free will is by itself changing, it necessitates non-determinism and unpredictability and not blindly following necessity. How can a person assimilate themself with goodness when it also requires free will that cannot be timeless and unchanging?

Goodness:

The forms/types are good by necessity of being timeless and unchanging. Thanks to goodness we can gain knowledge of the types and in act on knowledge of goodness instead of the belief of what is good.