2020-12-06 - Socrates and the Quest for Wisdom

John Vervaeke on YouTube

> We are living in the age of confirmation porn - Leo Ferrara

When Socrates' students ask the Oracle at Delphi if Socrates is the wisest of men the Oracle says "Yes". They report the answer to Socrates who maintains that "the Gods cannot lie." But Socrates whose motto was "Know thyself" didn't think he was wise, so how can the Oracle be truthful? He went on a mission to find out, visiting people on all walks of life, particularly the natural philosophers and the sophists.

Natural Philosophers stemmed from Thales who sought to understand the world using reason rather than positing gods and myth. We have very little of Thales thought. It is summed up in:

all is the moist (i.e., everything is made of water)

the lodestone is psyche (a motive force is embodied in it)

everything is filled with gods (not in a mythical sense)

This is our earliest example of a scientific thinker.

Socrates rejected the Natural Philosophers on the grounds that their thought didn't teach him how to become a good person (truth without relevance).

The Sophists invented rhetoric, the art/science of teaching persuasion, used as a means to power, not truth. Advertisers are the modern sophists.

Lying depends on the targets commitment to the truth. Bullshit targets emotional triggers. You cannot lie to yourself, but you can bullshit yourself. Self deception works by misdirecting or capturing your attention. You lose your capacity to notice other things.

Natural Philosophers - Truth without Relevance

Sophists - Relevance disconnected from Truth

Aporia - A state of mind where you don't know what is going on.

We are driven by desires that are way out in front of our understanding of the truth in the situation.

Socrates solution to the Oracle's dilemma was that he was the wisest in that he knew what he did not know. The state ordered him to stop doing his philosophy (to stop rooting out bullshit). Socrates held that the life unexamined is not worth living. Reason and Love go together. Socrates loses at trial by a narrow margin. The state argues for the death penalty. Socrates pleads guilty and argues the punishment should be that the state support him for life. He is willing to be murdered by the state and is murdered by the state for his dedication to rejecting bullshit.

Eros means how to love well - not just sexual