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On Plato's Dialogue, "Gorgias" (380 BCE or so).
This is a short preview of our full-length, vintage episode, which you can purchase by itself, or get our whole catalog free, beamed to your mobile device, by becoming a PEL supporter: see partiallyexaminedlife.com/support.
Why philosophize? Isn't it better to know how to persuade people in practical matters, like a successful lawyer or business leader? Plato (speaking as usual through Socrates) thinks that the "art" of rhetoric (persuasive speeches) isn't an art at all, in the sense of something that requires an understanding of one's subject matter, but merely a talent for saying what people want to hear. Gorgias (and Socrates's other interlocutors) think that being able to persuade gives you power, so it's awesome, but Plato thinks that unless what you say is likely to improve your audience, then it's worthless. The argument is generalizable to all artistic endeavor: Do the arts aim to just give pleasure, and even if they do, is that bad?
Mark, Seth, Wes, and Dylan kick this one off with some discussion of how we pick topics, and then stroll through the this very entertaining dialogue, which you can also hear us read in "Not Episode 69." We consider Plato's doctrine that knowledge inevitably leads to virtue and his insistence that goods can't contravene each other, so that pleasure over an injustice can't be good just because it's pleasurable, and acting justly must always be in our long-term interest, by definition. We wrap up by joining Socrates in dissing those that would dismiss philosophy as a waste of time. Get the book and read more about the topic.
End song: "Fallen Sun" by New People, from the new album Might Get It Right (written/sung by Matt Ackerman).
Glen says
January 13, 2013 at 3:54 amGreat episode.
Laughed out loud in agreement with Seth’s tirade over the psych article.
You might as well read the Communist Manifesto along with the Ideology since it is so short.
Also, one thing people tend to not realize is how big of a contributor Engels was; his Principles of Communism or the Origin are highly interesting. So if you feel like ever doing Marx’s partner, they’re great reads.
My biggest request probably would be to do a podcast on anarchism (i.e. Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, etc.)
Khary Tafari Robertson says
January 13, 2013 at 1:13 pmIn reference to donations and guest speakers, is it out of the question to donate an organ to get in on the Marx discussion with you guys?
(This comment is only slightly tongue in cheek)
Seth Paskin says
January 13, 2013 at 9:38 pmWell, we’re recording tonight, so it’s a bit late, but we can certainly talk about doing a Not School group or a later recording. Send a note with your interest and background to pel@partiallyexaminedlife.com
Evan Gould says
January 15, 2013 at 2:02 pmThe song was really good. It was a pleasant and cozy feeling making ending.
Was it Christian themed? I thought I heard something about taking a stand on your knees. Which would go along nicely with all of your 2012 rebirths.
Mark Linsenmayer says
January 15, 2013 at 3:51 pmDefinitely not Christian themed… Just about disappointment.
david says
January 21, 2013 at 1:16 pmSeth, you magnificent SOB, I wanted to stand up and cheer when you reached the end of your brilliant denunciation that began around 1:45:30. Thank you for so passionately expressing that. Amen.
Lynda OReilly says
January 22, 2013 at 7:11 amHi, I’m just seconding David’s observation that Seth is a magnificent SOB.
Seth’s remarks on research, in less than a minute, crystallized the thoughts I’ve been having on the matter for years. Beautiful!
Jim says
January 22, 2013 at 10:49 amI certainly think there’s some truth to Seth’s claims regarding research, and I think it highlights a pretty big problem for science, but I think he over-stated his point. Yes, labs often have to compete for funding from outside sources (thus, being “touched by the hand of money”), potentially altering how and what research they conduct. However, I don’t think that necessarily prevents those labs from pursuing truth.
Maybe I’m naive, but from my experience, there’s a considerable amount of funding that labs can attain that comes with very few strings attached. So if I’m a researcher pursuing funding, I simply limit myself to applying for funding that allows me to pursue truth that mutually benefits the outside funding source. Thus, my virtue remains in tact while pursuing truth. I understand this type of funding can be harder to come by, but it’s definitely possible.
Am I being way too naive?
Seth Paskin says
January 22, 2013 at 12:44 pmI don’t think you are being way too naive, but we have to acknowledge that all funding comes from somewhere and that “where” has some agenda (even if it’s “pure” science). My response on the podcast was over-determined by an EconTalk podcast to which I had recently listened about the FDA, drug approval and big pharma. Super-depressing, shocking and like all stories of corruption, hardly acknowledged. Check it out here:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/11/angell_on_big_p.html
Medicine has only pretension to science, but the funding process is susceptible to corruption across all disciplines. Ultimately, everyone wants personal gain.
Will Yate says
January 22, 2013 at 1:05 pmAnother super-depressing example is economics. Matt Taibbi recently described the scene in the movie “Inside Job” that brought this to my attention. It involved an interview with Glenn Hubbard, the dean of Columbia’s business school:
“In the movie, renowned filmmaker Charles Ferguson pointed out that, among other things, Hubbard had co-authored a paper with former Goldman chief economist William Dudley in which he praised credit derivatives as having improved the “allocation of risk” and helped produce “enhanced stability.” It was fair to ask how much Goldman’s “Global Markets Institute” had to pay one of the Ivy League’s leading minds to endorse the giant daisy chains of credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations that led to the crisis – it was quite a coup, after all, like getting the Dean of Harvard Medical School to pose in public smoking a pack of Kools.
“Anyway, when asked if he did consulting work for big banks, Hubbard refused to answer. And when asked if he just didn’t remember who was writing checks to him when he wasn’t overseeing the education of American youth, he fumed.
“”This isn’t a deposition, sir,” he hissed. “I was polite enough to give you time, foolishly I now see. Give it your best shot.””
Daniel Horne says
January 22, 2013 at 9:00 pmHi Jim,
While I agree with Seth that you’re not being “way too naive,” it’s good to be aware of all the myriad ways scientists can succumb to bias of some sort, whether acknowledged or unacknowledged. Professional scientists themselves have expressed this kind of skepticism to me. There are other ways in which bias can creep into scientific research as currently practiced, besides the obvious string-pulling from those funding research.
Simply put, many scientific researchers are rarely pursuing “truth” for its own sake. The nature of the game is such that they are first and foremost pursuing their own career. And certain types of papers tend to promote careers, and other types of papers often don’t. I wrote a half-baked post on this a while back, which you should probably only read for its link to a very good New Yorker article:
http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2011/01/14/when-keeping-it-real-goes-wrong/
Seth linked to a very good EconTalk episode about the outright corruption that can taint scientific research. To my mind, a more devastating–if more nuanced–critique appears in an earlier episode of EconTalk with Brian Nosek. It discusses some of the institutional incentives / disincentives to a truly unbaised approach to “truth,” and leaves you wondering just how much scientific literature can really be relied upon. :
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/09/nosek_on_truth.html
Here’s the blurb from the episode:
“Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about how incentives in academic life create a tension between truth-seeking and professional advancement. Nosek argues that these incentives create a subconscious bias toward making research decisions in favor of novel results that may not be true, particularly in empirical and experimental work in the social sciences. In the second half of the conversation, Nosek details some practical innovations occurring in the field of psychology, to replicate established results and to publicize unpublished results that are not sufficiently exciting to merit publication but that nevertheless advance understanding and knowledge. These include the Open Science Framework and PsychFileDrawer.”
b brock says
September 2, 2013 at 4:40 pmWhy doesn’t Plato have Socrates convince Callicles? Does Plato want us to see that Socrates’s position is in some sense just as extreme as Callicles’s? When Socrates reduces Callicles to the admission that the best life is that of a catamite, is it surprising that Callicles considers Socrates’s taunting and disregard for his own safety a position which is just as ridiculous? It seems to me that while Socrates (certainly) and Plato (almost certainly) believe that the good life is not necessarily the pleasant – what is after all easily shown by Socrates over and over again – Plato, unlike Socrates, is presenting a problem to us, not a simple answer for how to live.
Plato portrays Socrates as a sort of sadist, almost, doesn’t he? Relentlessly running over the argument again and again, disregarding that his flummoxed “friends” nonetheless have no intention to change their profitable ways, portraying Callicles as a pervert, performing a pretend dialogue with the unresponsive Callicles, Socrates is pleasuring himself at the expense of his “strange friends”. He seems to get off more and more the less willing they are to succumb.
Why doesn’t Plato simply end the dialogue after Gorgias and Polus? Or better yet, Plato could have a reasonable person ask Socrates this: “given the fact of widespread conflict and injustice, and given that while you have shown that we ought to prefer to suffer rather than commit injustices, we still intend to commit rather than suffer them, what society can you imagine which would best develop our souls toward perfection?” (The Republic…) Clearly, a society with only “one true statesman”, in the form of Socrates, is not entirely succeeding given that these very gadfly-stung men are on the verge of putting him to death…
It seems to me that Plato wants us to see Socrates’s dialectic coming up against Callicles’s stubbornness in order that we ask with Callicles: “And you are the man who cannot speak unless there is some one to answer?”