Blog Comment on Plato - Neal Taliwal
September 3, 2017
I firmly believe that most of what Plato is arguing is based on the literal meaning of the argument, without taking into account the practicality of the situation. Plato has been trying to find the answers to the "why be moral" question with many well-constructed statements to render his opponents arguments false. However, while formulating some of his statements, he goes to the extreme to prove his point without thinking pragmatically. For instance, Plato tries to define a perfectly moral city in order to define a moral person. While doing so, he stumbles into the problem of having to protect the moral city with a guardian, someone who is brutish/passionate by nature. While trying to prove that the guardian needs to have some sense of morality, he relates the mentality of animals with the mentality of humans; if an animal is able to be both "gentile and passionate," then humans should be able to act the same way. However, this line of reasoning is where Plato stops thinking pragmatically and instead more idealistically, through a theoretical lens. It is a little absurd to think that humans are able to think like dogs. Even if we are able to achieve the same level of thought as a dog, then Plato's argument still conflicts with other arguments that he has claimed true. One example of this is when Plato says that things are only able to do their job best, and no other thing is able to do it any better. The same logic applies: a dog can only think like a dog better than anything else. If a guardian start thinking like a dog, then he will be jeopardizing his duty as a guardian by trying to be something that he is not. With Plato's line of reasoning, it would almost be better to have dogs in charge of defending out cities rather than humans. If our perfectly moral city are not able to defend itself, then it begs the question, is it still worthwhile to maintain morality? To answer this question, Plato needs to incorporate some of the findings in sciences to draw a reasonable conclusion. Gary Gutting brings up a reasonable point where philosophy is not able to solve all of the world’s problems, but with the help the sciences, philosophy could use some of the findings as a stepping stone to lead us in the right direction. Granted, Plato's time did not have the knowledge of biology as we have today; although, incorporating the theory of evolution and neuroscience, Plato then could draw a reasonable conclusion on if it is reasonable to maintain morality.
I firmly believe that most of what Plato is arguing is based on the literal meaning of the argument, without taking into account the practicality of the situation. Plato has been trying to find the answers to the "why be moral" question with many well-constructed statements to render his opponents arguments false. However, while formulating some of his statements, he goes to the extreme to prove his point without thinking pragmatically. For instance, Plato tries to define a perfectly moral city in order to define a moral person. While doing so, he stumbles into the problem of having to protect the moral city with a guardian, someone who is brutish/passionate by nature. While trying to prove that the guardian needs to have some sense of morality, he relates the mentality of animals with the mentality of humans; if an animal is able to be both "gentile and passionate," then humans should be able to act the same way. However, this line of reasoning is where Plato stops thinking pragmatically and instead more idealistically, through a theoretical lens. It is a little absurd to think that humans are able to think like dogs. Even if we are able to achieve the same level of thought as a dog, then Plato's argument still conflicts with other arguments that he has claimed true. One example of this is when Plato says that things are only able to do their job best, and no other thing is able to do it any better. The same logic applies: a dog can only think like a dog better than anything else. If a guardian start thinking like a dog, then he will be jeopardizing his duty as a guardian by trying to be something that he is not. With Plato's line of reasoning, it would almost be better to have dogs in charge of defending out cities rather than humans. If our perfectly moral city are not able to defend itself, then it begs the question, is it still worthwhile to maintain morality? To answer this question, Plato needs to incorporate some of the findings in sciences to draw a reasonable conclusion. Gary Gutting brings up a reasonable point where philosophy is not able to solve all of the world’s problems, but with the help the sciences, philosophy could use some of the findings as a stepping stone to lead us in the right direction. Granted, Plato's time did not have the knowledge of biology as we have today; although, incorporating the theory of evolution and neuroscience, Plato then could draw a reasonable conclusion on if it is reasonable to maintain morality.
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