Pain, Rage and Blindness

"I didn't see the light until I was already a man...
By then it was nothing to me but blinding"

   
       I love the allegory of the cave. Every time I have read it, it strikes me anew as a powerful analogy. This time, the thing that spoke to me the most was Plato's emphasis on the violence with which the Prisoners will resist their own liberation.

       In the allegory, men who have known nothing but the dark prefer the comfort of the familiar because they are ignorant of the good that comes from enduring the painful ascent and transition to liberation. This phenomenon is not difficult to understand, as it is common in both my own life and in my interactions with others. When confronted with something that challenges my perspective, my first instinct is rejection. If the threat persists, this rejection can become forceful and even aggressive, with my reason quickly falling by the wayside to be replaced by trite and unexamined dogma.

     It is insightful also, that the Liberator must fight the Prisoners if he is to help them. He recognizes the good that comes from enlightenment and the duty that it imposes on him to share with others. For this reason, the Liberator braves the resistance of the Prisoners. He knows that had someone not liberated him in the first place, he too would be in their place. This picture is remarkably similar to the Christian narrative of the Gospel, and, really, the savior archetype in general. Any time there is a story in which a character is chosen, granted more knowledge than they ever wanted, and saddled with the responsibility of saving people, there is often an accompanying theme of ignorance, ingratitude, or occasionally anger of those being saved. These people are characterized as lacking perspective or knowledge of the truth, and it is the hero's compassion, empathy and dedication to his or her duty that leads them to continue with their mission.

      This is an important observation. Not because I think all of these fictional or theological themes are the result of imitating Plato's work, but because I believe all instances of the Savior archetype, whether manifested in Socrates' philosophic analogy or the Wachowski brothers' The Matrix, are tapping into something that is true about humans, that we recognize our weakness, our complacent preference for an undesirable status quo, and our need for someone to pull us out of this suboptimal state.

The Manhattan Project, 400 BC

       The early atomists were onto something. They correctly stated that the world is composed of imperceptibly small, indivisible particles. Because of the indivisible portion of the theory, these particles were dubbed "a-tomos" or "uncuttable." The atomists understood that all matter was composed of atoms, and that matter is not capable of moving through other matter. In other words, when matter contacts other matter, it must displace it. As a result, for anything to be able to move, there has to exist something called "void." This void is empty space containing "what-is-not." They also observed that some matter, when mixed with other matter, would become inseparable. The early atomists referred to this as "entangling."

       It is amazing how much this resembles the modern scientific view of reality. Obviously, there are some imperfections to their theory, but with no way of testing it, they achieved truly remarkable accuracy. Now, some could argue that this similarity is merely coincidence, that the atomist theory was a response to the problems and logical insufficiency of the competing ideas of their contemporaries, and that no kind of modern scientific theorizing occurred. I would respond to this argument by critiquing the narrow perception of science and scientific methods.

       Why is it that a theory must begin with a hypothesis, then proceed to a period of investigation and then conclude with a communication of findings? The fact is, modern science is heavily biased toward deductive reasoning. The more I study of classical philosophy, the less I believe this bias is justified. Deductive reasoning is a luxury in which technology allows the modern world to indulge. The ease of data collection, data analysis, collaboration and dissemination of theories afforded by technology has certainly made the pursuit of "scientific" truth (for lack of a better term) more of a specific science than it ever has been before. That said, I repudiate the idea that this ease makes modern truth seeking superior to the efforts of the classical thinkers. Yes, the atomists had to take more of an inductive approach, and yes, inductive reasoning is vulnerable to different types of fallacies than deductive reasoning is, but, as we can clearly see, the atomists were able to use inductive reasoning with great accuracy.

      Inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning are both imperfect and incomplete. Inductive reasoning may be more of an art, while deductive reasoning may be more of a science, but neither one is more useful than the other. In fact, I would argue that the pursuit of the truth is at its best when these two types of reasoning are employed in concert.

       Our technologically granted advantages in deductive reasoning do not replace the art form of inductive reasoning. Knowing this, it should change the way we go about trying to explain the world, and should definitely challenge the "scientific arrogance" that pervades our society.

Mind Over Matter

According to Phaedo, Anaxagoras thought that the arche was the Mind. In Anaxagoras' view, the Mind directs the world and everything in it. Socrates found this idea engaging because it elevated the value of reason and wisdom to the very highest possible stature. If the Mind directed the universe, then all things that exist would exist with a rationally determinable purpose and function. Beyond this individual functionality, all things would be arranged in relationships to each other that can logically be defended as the "best."  In this way, Anaxagoras reasoned that the Universe must be rationally ordered into a comprehensive, rational system, and that each component in that system must be imbued with a rational order.

According to Plato, Socrates likes this idea, concluding that for rational judgement to be made regarding the universe and the individual, there must be some recognition of what is good, both in a general sense and in a more finite, individual sense. Socrates goes on to critique Anaxagoras' arguments on the grounds that his examples do not address the true cause, the good from which the Mind can recognize a rational order. Instead, Socrates indicts Anaxagoras for merely describing the mechanisms by which the good is pursued, instead of the origin point, the recognition of the good.

One way to think of this is to describe the cause of a car's motion as the rotation of the axles on which the tires rest. One could argue that, in reality, the combustion of fuel in the engine is the cause of the car's motion, and the rotation of the axle is the mechanism employed to execute this cause. The interesting thing here is that this logic can be continued for quite some time. The cause of the combustion is the introduction of gasoline into the gas tank. The cause of the gas tank being filled was the delivery of gasoline from the refinery.

This chain goes on indefinitely. Socrates recognized these connections and desired an investigation of a cause that linked and bound all other causes and effects together, but unfortunately Anaxagoras neglected to address this link in a way that Socrates found satisfactory. It is entirely possible that Socrates and his successors were erroneously imposing a concept of reason onto a chaotic, irrational and inexplicable world. Even so, it is much more appealing to believe that our world is rationally ordered, that everything has a purpose, pattern, and place that it fits into. Anaxagoras may not have explained what exactly that purpose or pattern is, but his thoughts opened doors for his intellectual successors to continue the investigation.

Because if it makes sense, you haven't thought about it...

Zeno's paradoxes are interesting brain benders with even more interesting implications. Originally created to defend Parmenides' idea that the universe is unitary and unchanging, Zeno's paradoxes tap into much broader questions regarding reason, epistemology and the nature of our sense experience. For instance, the Millet Seed paradox demonstrates that what we can logically expect about the world is not always reflected in our experiences. Combine this with the lesson of the Arrow in Flight, a paradox demonstrating that time is made up of indivisible "moments" or "instants," and you are presented with sufficient premises to make the argument that what we experience as the passing of time, motion or change is an illusion that does not reflect what is actually happening in the world. This generalizes from a metaphysical argument to an argument about all of human life, casting doubt on those things that are viewed as true, and even on our capability to determine if something is true or not.

So often, complex philosophical arguments come in the form of lengthy treatises or allegorical works of prose or poetry. It is refreshing to have an argument presented like a puzzle, demanding the audience engage the model in order to reap the understanding that the author wishes to communicate. I find this style of presentation to be more engaging and more helpful for the audience than other forms that rely on lengthy digressions to present every facet of one's point more thoroughly than is ever practically necessary. Something about the mental images created by these paradoxes makes their investigation fun. They neither hold the audience's hand, coddling and patronizing them with diluted versions of a complex thought, nor pretentiously assume that the audience has dedicated their entire adult lives to reading every scrap of literature in existence regarding a certain idea. They expect the audience to be smart, but they present their argument in such a way that expertise level in a field is irrelevant to understanding the point being made.

Even though his metaphysical teachings leave something to be desired, the pedagogical methods by which he communicates them are impressive. I am a large fan of Zeno, and I look forward to witnessing how both his thoughts and his methods impacted those thinkers that came after him.

"Cite your sources like you mean it!" -Parmenides

   Artists and academics today seem burdened with the task of being original, or innovative. To be a breath of fresh air in a world with the approximate attention span of a goldfish is the dream. Yes, there is always a bibliography at the end of the article, or an MTV interview discussing "influences", but the attitude is always oriented toward improving, revising, correcting or disproving those that came before.

    Parmenides, on the other hand, saturates his work with allusions to everyone from Hesiod to Heraclitus. He doesn't seem to take issue with the forerunners of thought that he was influenced by, rather taking great pains to honor and include their work in his own.

    That said, his ideas are interesting in their own right. The relationship between "what is" and "what is not" is simultaneously abstract and familiar. For instance, the idea that what is cannot have originated from what is not is derived directly from the divergence of the two spheres. It makes sense that everything that exists or will exist has to have its origin in what already is, but it is difficult to wrap our head around the concept of what is not. This difficulty arises from a problem with human heuristics.

    We try to learn by forcing things into the cookie cutter mold of analogy. The problem with this is that "what is not" cannot be compared to anything that is, and any similarity must actually be illusory. The difficulty of conceptualizing what is not is exactly the point. What is not cannot be conceptualized clearly, it cannot be reasoned through, investigated, interrogated or made sense of. As Parmenides believes, our limited senses cannot give us the complete picture, even of things that are. How then can we rely on them to fuel our reasoning on a topic even more alien to us?

Earth, Wind and Fire Reunion Tour, featuring guest artist Empedocles

    In his attempt to explain and describe the way the world works, Empedocles constructs a concept with 4 "roots", earth, air, fire, and water, and 2 "forces," Love and Strife. According to Empedocles, the universe exists in a cycle of coalescing to one entity from many disparate pieces, through the force of Love, and breaking into pieces from a single substance, through the force of Strife. At no point in this cycle is either force consumed or generated, or any of the 4 roots destroyed or created. It is this last bit that I find the most interesting.

   Central to a scientific understanding of the world are the laws of conservation of energy and of matter. These laws state that no chemical reaction, no physical force, no event of any kind ever has, ever will, or ever could result in the destruction or creation of energy or matter. All that exists today will exist tomorrow, though it will not appear in the same form. Isn't it interesting that these foundational principles of chemistry and physics were first recognized by a preSocratic thinker?

   I am constantly amazed at the frequency with which our modern worldview is actually a validation of and not a revision of the thoughts of the ancients. Sure, the electron microscope affords us a certain advantage denied to someone who lived and died in the 5th century BCE, and yes, this advantage allows us to understand that Empedocles' 4 "roots" and 2 "forces" are oversimplifications of the mechanisms underlying the material world. That said, Empedocles was clearly on the right track. All matter does consist of the same basic building blocks, and breaking apart or fusing matter does require a great exertion of force. The implications of this observation have informed everything from medicine to mechanics.

    It's easy to forget that being smart is a capacity common not to an era of history, but to humanity. I find myself assuming that because they lacked the advantages of modern technology and the "facts" that it affords us, people throughout history must have lacked the sophistication of thought and intelligence that I and other modern thinkers so obviously possess. Empedocles tried to teach quite a few things in his day, but what he's teaching me today is a little lesson in humility.