Plato, a Reality Game in Four Levels (Session 2)

Hello and welcome to the second session of Plato, a Reality Game in Four Levels. I'm going to pass the mic off to the instructor, Rezanegor Stani. Thanks, Leo. Okay, so last session we had a very brief introduction on some of the main ideas of Plato. and we mentioned that among all these ideas, there is one unifying idea that glues everything together in the work of Plato, and that's the idea of the good, which Plato calls the

form of forms. Also we mentioned that Plato's work moves chronologically, namely he's one of those philosophers who vastly revises his positions from the early period to middle period to the transitional period to the later period. And the only idea that is preserved throughout this chronological course

is the idea of the good. The only form that still reserves its special status as a timeless form is the form of the good. All other forms, justice, knowledge, beauty, so on and so forth, lose their special status as they were basically being treated in republic. There are no longer in fact forms, for example in Theatetus. There are categories, categories of thought, or ideal categories of thought, or in Kantian sense, you know, basically transcendental idealities, which can never

capture the essence of the true transcendence, which is for Plato the idea of the good, the principle of intelligence. So today we are going, and as I mentioned, everything will be casual, we are not going to go to scholarly details about the work of Plato, because it's not supposed to be yet another scholarly lecture on Plato. We are just simply going to casually go through some of the main ideas and try to somehow update them and give a kind of interpretation, a new interpretation of the genuine ideas, of genuine thoughts behind them.

So today we are going to talk about, mostly, about a very important part of the Republic, sets the tone not only for the Republic as this sprawling dialogue, but also for all of Plato's later works. And this part is represented by the so-called discussion or dialogue on the analogy of the

divided line. So before moving to talking about what the divided line is and why it is important and how it captures the idea of the good as a principle of intelligence and what are its implications and how it glues different ideas like Logos Thelectics, Mathematics, you know, illusions, beliefs, so on and so forth together, which are dominant ideas in Plato's work. Let's hear your ideas, your thoughts about what do you think about the material, that

section, the divine line, in connection with the most famous stereotypical example of Plato, the allegory of the cave. Taylor, you want to start? Sure, let me pull up my PDF really quick. Actually, I'd rather not start.

Can I say something? Sure, absolutely. I just missed a bit of the class, but what I gather from the divided line is that it's about the indeterminacy of the form of unity or the unity of form. Or the relationship between the two of them, such that a particular thing can only be considered as it is in relation to the form of that thing in general and to another.

different particular thing on a specific level. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So, but that thing, the difference between those things, even if they are of the same form as we call them, like if they're both chairs, The difference is always ineluctable and inexplicable and indeterminate. So is that, and that to me is the way in which I'm understanding the good as a principle that sort of supersedes any logical or potential logical analysis.

and thus sort of grounds or provides a foundation for a supposed ideality of sorts. Sure, I will talk about this. I would rather to use not the word indeterminacy, but I would say, as I mentioned, one of the main ideas or series of ideas that Plato borrows from pre-Socratic is the difference between

to peras and to apyron, to determine and to indetermine, to limit and to unlimited. And the significance of idea is that precisely because this very basic principle allows us to separate but also to combine according to specific measures things in the universe, in cosmos. And also, by way of this process of separation and combination, or what Plato in Theatotus called composteros, is that we can create mixtures, what in contemporary philosophical

lexicon we can call them intelligible unities intelligible unities now these mixtures they are in themselves are always indeterminable but not in the sense that they are indeterminable as such, their indeterminacy allows you to move further and make them more intelligible according, for example, the relation between this chair or that chair, according to the particularities, but also how they fall under the same forms, for example. So this indeterminacy shouldn't be understood as the way that we define today indeterminacy,

you might call to be the divided line, this method of separation and integration in order to create intelligible unities or mixtons, mixtures, allows us to think about things in the universe no longer as things of which we have a total knowledge. That's the most important thing. Basically Plato wants to, and that's the whole idea of the good, creates a principle through which every form of totality in the universe, the totality of beauty, the totality of knowledge,

can never be concluded. it becomes a procedure and this is the idea of integration, separation and integration, dialectics. Because once the intelligibility of thing is conceived as a matter of totality, meaning that you have said everything that could be said about something, then that thing, according to Plato becomes an illusion, a shadow, an iconus, an image. So Plato wants to understand intelligibility not as a given thing but as a process, as an unfolding procedure and that's the most important thing.

Right, so this is exactly what I was saying, but I was saying that it's only the quintessential or ultimate indeterminacy of the good or this ideal divided line that the good you see yes I don't think that we can attribute the word indeterminacy to the good because the good is not a thing to be determined the good is a principle

is a principle that allows us to to basically move between the determinate and the indeterminate I've been reading Aquinas this week as well and he says that the good always seeks its own expansion. Yes, this is exactly what Plato, I mean this is a very platonic idea that intelligence or knows only seeks itself, that's it, only intelligence is the only thing in the universe that always wants more of itself. And I remember that that is that is the principle. Yes, that is the principle yes all right hold on I have to nip to the toilet real quick sorry

Christian you want to go on yeah I'm sure because the question the we're talking about our responses to the divided line. And so there's the really interesting to me is the fact of how the third segment, the first would be correct me if I'm wrong. The first is Iconos. Yes, images, shadows. The second one is Pistis. That's likenesses, right? Pistis, what you might call to be the domain of true opinions. Okay. Or beliefs.

Okay, and then you've got Dianoia and then Episteen. Yes. Or basically Logoi and then Idols. Okay. So what to me was really interesting was the whole notion of treating the third as hypotheses and only with a fourth do you get the grounding of the hypotheses. So what I found so intriguing was the fact that the way that the hypotheses operate is like it's sort of like turf that you can play on and then only after like working through dialectic and dialectic,

in dialogue to carry out the implications of the hypotheses, can you finally ground them in the fourth, which is the eidos? Yes, you see, what you might call to be the third segment is the realm of theory construction. not accidental that the objects of the third segment are Mathematikos or Logoi because metaphysically mathematics enables you to structure multiplicity according to mathematical

objects, namely formal unities. So it is what you might call, you see, actually the third segment intermediates between the fourth segment, which is the realm of forms, and the second segment, the realm of objects in nature, namely the true opinions or matter-of-factual beliefs about multiplicity of things in the universe. So exactly like how mathematics function in physics today, ways that mathematics can gain traction on the universe. Plato thinks it because it has a metaphysical structure, and this metaphysical structure is encapsulated by its intermediary function between unities

and multiplicities. Multiplicities of things in nature, you know, physical items, structures, and unities, namely mathematical concepts, mathematical structures, categories. There's something I wanted to ask, not about the divided line, but about the good in general. Sure. Would you say that in some sense it's kind of... I don't know if I'm... This might be a little hard to articulate,

but it's almost like... in order for thought to happen at all, there needs to be a certain type of affirmation. If you ever... I don't mean affirmation in the sense of being positive, but just in the sense of sort of like a... Yes, this works. Go forward. Like, if you never... If your cognition never sort of... If nothing ever kind of melded with your cognition in a way that your cognition said this works, you would never really... the thinking would kind of never get off the ground. Does that make sense? Absolutely. This is absolutely true. Yes. This is what basically what you might call to be some sort of self-referential process of cognition.

If cognition doesn't recognize itself, it cannot gain traction. And that's absolutely true. And the way that basically the guideline, as I will talk about, it's actually quite a strange diagram. Basically, every time, so starting from the first segment, then you go to the second segment. The first segment is very rudimentary, fleeting, sensorial impulses and stimulations. The second one is a matter of beliefs about, or opinions about objects in nature. And then the third one is the realm of mathematics or Logoi. And then the third one of forms. Now the thing is that basically the diagram implies that every time that you can actually say something,

even at the level of fleeting images, shadows, that I can actually recognize things, it implies that there is a principle through which intelligence, as you might say, affirm itself and always posits the reality of that thing from a next level. So really this is, I think, a cryptic thing about Plato that intelligence, what you might call to be the engineer of reality by virtue of recognizing the reality of itself. And the way that it basically conceives of reality or perceives reality is that it always moves backward in the diagram.

So if you can't really see the shadows in the first level unless you have the B, you can't see the true, you can't have true opinions about objects in nature, namely segment B, if you don't have segment C. You can have segment C if you can have segment D. So it always comes from one level further. That's basically the principle of intelligence. I've got a, I'm sharing a picture of it right here. Did you manage to get it?

Oh, I can bring it back. You might be able to share just one application window. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. It's right here. That's really cute. It's like a movie. And Adam, you can see that basically this is what you might call the self-affirmation or self-recognition of intelligence, which is the idea of the good. You see that it is extremely similar and it was really influential for Hegel's idea of self-consciousness. consciousness not in the Kantian sense but in a Hegelian self. Self-consciousness

this is exactly what self-consciousness is. Yeah and there was a there was a interview with Jacques Derrida where he said you know I've I've picked up this mantle of you know questioning as kind of the privileged form of philosophy from you from Plato and from Heidegger and your questioning is fantastic but you know maybe before questioning there's there's kind of this, even before questioning, there's some sort of cognitive philosophical affirmation before you even get to the point of asking questions. Yes, yes. And you see, this is for Plato. Plato implicitly thinks that the function of philosophy

belongs not by asking questions about cosmos. But it begins with a sense of wonder, not of the universe, but the wonder of thought itself, the possibility of thinking. If thought is possible, then what are the ramifications of it? And only in taking this possibility seriously that we can in fact posit questions about the nature of things and the nature of thinking. And that's kind of always what's really drawn me philosophy actually is just sort of the wonder of thought and it's thought's own possibilities. Excellent. Not possibilities for other

things. Yes, possibilities for itself. Yes. Theo, any input? Yeah, I'm just sort of is the good a guarantor of correspondence coincidence between the mind and its objects? I would say that it's a guarantor in the sense that it guarantees that every time that mind functions it will yield a true belief about the things in the world. guarantor in the sense that if it doesn't exist, there would not be any form of cognitive

process that can structure the world. So basically it's the guarantor of the structuration of the world, how we can structure, how mind can in fact structure the world. And this is really the implicit idea behind the divided line. The line itself is what you might call to be the good, as we will talk about it. The segments you might call to be the measures of the structurations of things in the universe. Yeah, I'm trying to sort of grapple with how to understand it after all of these critiques

of representational epistemology in philosophy have come up and how the good might be I mean if if the relationship is not one of correspondence then then what exactly is happening between them you know the intelligence and its objects you see exactly like how the philosophy of mind understands you know how we gain traction upon knowledge of things in the world not everything is about correspondence correspondence

is the most rudimentary form of a structuring, what you might call to be non-conceptual representings. Like in our nervous system, the way that basically when something happens it affects our neural field, and that creates a pattern in us, a pattern basically of reactivation. So this is what correspondence is. But how these correspondences can actually tell us something about the structure of the world, because by themselves they are just belonging to the causal order.

Namely, the correspondence between our nervous systems and objects or items in the environment which affect us. Now this correspondence needs to be caught up in a higher order structure, what you might call to be in contemporary terms the conceptual order, where you can in fact start to structure, the relation between such causal patterns and hence giving a structure to them. So this correspondence, I mean concepts are not about correspondence, concepts don't correspond with anything. The concept of a

chair doesn't refer to an actual matter-of-factual stuff in the universe. In fact, you can't talk about a chair if you don't have a concept of a chair. Even if at the level of causal order, at the level of your nervous system and how it interacts with this stuff, you have something, some stuff with thus and so properties, colors and shapes. It is really that those generalities, those inferential invariances, which we call concepts, allow us to organize such correspondences and give some structure to them.

And at the level of concepts, concepts do not primarily represent anything. concepts refer to one another and that's basically what the inferential web of concepts consists of. It is only in so far as there is such an inferential web between different concepts that we can talk about representations, namely correspondences, between such and such things. So I think, and this is typically a very contemporary, obviously, place where I'm thinking about

this, but in fact when you look into the divided line, this is exactly what the divided line is. The realm of the iconus, namely shadows, are the realm of correspondences, non-conceptual representations, what you might call to be stimulations of how objects affect our nervous systems. At that level, you only have sensory correspondences with things or items in the universe which are fleeting not even transitory they are fleeting they are like a flux they have a confusion hence what platos called them shadows then the next level is that you have

true beliefs but you can have true beliefs about such correspondences such shadows unless you have the logo segment C, namely concepts or conceptual generalities, what Plato calls analytical idealities, that's in which you can basically plug these particularities into generalities, and these generalities, namely concepts, stand in relation with other generalities, other formal objects, other indexes of logos or reason or mathematics.

So this is, for him, for Plato, representation is not something that can be located in one segment versus another segment. Representation comes as the combination of all these segments. You need to have forms, you need to have mathematical structures, you need to have beliefs and what counts as asserting a true belief about something versus something else, and also you need to have those rudimentary sensory correspondences namely the realm of iconos the realm of the sensory yeah i mean it it well even at the level of uh pisteas the opinion

I mean, I'm just not sure that the level of correspondence is excluded to the realm of the shadows. It seems like it's a problem that could extend to all levels of the line. You see, each segment is intermediary. It is not exclusive to one segment. In fact, this is the whole idea of a divided line that has been written in proportions. That's why it's called analogy of a divided line. So what is exactly analogy in Greeks?

Analogon. Analogon means a proportional structure that can encode the ratios of something versus other things. So each segment is not just exclusive to one segment, but it has a ratio of proportion to other segments. This is the very idea of analogy. And analogy, what is exactly analogy analogy means basically a as I mentioned a sufficiently a structured or sufficiently encoded a structure according to some measure that

that can capture the differences but also the relations, namely syntheses, between different things as they ascend. So at the level of pistis, which is the true opinion, second segment, you essentially have you might call to be, in a Kantian sense, intuitions or the intuitives, rudimentary invariances that are afforded both by sensory input, the first segment, and also the categorical

structures belonging to a third segment, the segment where you have basically mathematical analytical idealities. So let's just start with this. Let's start, now that we already talked about the structure of the divided line, let's start with basically what is exactly the divided line. So there is this part of the Republic of Book 6, Section 509D628.

Take a line divided into two unequal sections and cut each section again in the same ratio. This way of segmenting a line creates a diagram that from left to right you have a small segment their smallest segment then you have a bigger segment second segment then you have the third segment which is equal to the second segments and then you have

the biggest segment which is the fourth segment so the first this diagram Plato Plato uses to employ it as not a diagram just about epistemology or how things in the world can be understood and what is the relation between them. He gives in fact other than epistemological, ontological, and axiological interpretation of the divided line. As I mentioned, the diagram of the divided line encapsulates all of the ideas in Plato's

work. The ideas about values and disvalues, namely axiology, the ideas about ontology, the nature of what is, and epistemology, how we gain traction, how we have knowledge of the world. When he says, take a line, divide it into unequal sections, and cut each section again in the same ratio the Greek word for it is a ton logon

a ton logon so and it comes back to the idea between the idea that what is exactly an analogy ana means upward or basically some sort of Buddhist rapping that you from from basic level you start to construct higher levels, or from higher levels you can create the smaller levels, so you can go in either direction. But the relation between the upper levels and higher levels, even though it's transitive, is asymmetrical. And logon is the proper method of dialectics, separation and integration.

So analogy in Greek, particularly for Plato, is really a principle that captures the procedure of dialectics, separation and integration, according to measures, so as to create a structure sufficient for the intelligibility of things, but also of values and disvalues. and also the intelligibility of mixed lives. So the purpose of dialectics, which we will talk about dialectics when we talk about the sophist and Theotitus in next session, very briefly.

The idea of dialectics is a procedure that should allow us to craft intelligibilities. And the nature of these intelligibilities is not limited to epistemological intelligibilities or ontological intelligibilities, but also include intelligibilities of values and disvalues, but also practical intelligibilities, how to craft a good life, a mixed life, that can correspond adequately with other intelligibilities, namely intelligibility of the universe, intelligibility of ourselves, intelligibility of values and disvalues, so on and so forth.

So what I wanted to say is that the divided line can be interpreted differently according to the framework in which you try to anchor it, epistemological, ontological, practical and axiological. And in fact, as other works of Plato, later works of Plato, try to elaborate or unpack the condensed material presented in this diagram, it seems that the ultimate point of Plato is that you can't have just epistemological intelligibilities. In order to have epistemological intelligibility,

you should have also a good life, practical intelligibility. In order to do that, you need to have ontological intelligibility, and so on and so forth. So these are all interdependent. The order of intelligibility is an order upon which intelligence acts is interdependent. It's a web. So before moving forward, any question about this idea of analogy? Analogy not in the sense that we are talking about, analogy in terms of a structuration. what analogy is in Greek. Proportions, structural ratios, or basically measured approaches that

allow us to structure things. And by virtuous structuring things, whether there are actual things in nature, or whether there are values or disvalues, or whether there are practices, we can confer intelligibility upon them. So this is the relation between a structuring, analogon, using different measures and ratios, and intelligibility. And from a contemporaneous standpoint, this structuring is essentially the function of It's the function of mind. There is no structure in the universe. There is no inherent structure in anything, in practices or values, in these values.

What gives a structure to things, and hence conferring intelligibility upon them, is the mind itself, is the intelligence itself. And hence the idealism of Plato. An idealism without which you fall back on pre-Socratic philosophy or from the contemporary terms you fall back on what Sellars calls the myth of the given, that as if there is a structure there in the universe that by virtue of simple affecting us via our senses,

it provides our mind with its own structures, hence becomes spontaneously or imminently intelligible to us. In Selar's example, basically a seal, seal being the universe, that imposes its structure upon a melting block of wax. This melting block of wax is our mind. This is what Selar calls the myth of the given, which is an ideology. It's a dogmatic ideology, because there is no such a thing as the given, a given structure.

There is no inherent intelligibility in the universe to which mind has access in advance or as it can spontaneously access. So this is, as I mentioned, is one of the main ideas behind a structuration, segmentation and also combination of these different sections or levels in the divided line. The first segment, sensory information.

The second segment, intuitive opinions, which can be adjudicated or judged. And the third section, mathematical abstractions or concepts or categories. And then the fourth one forms par excellence, what you might call to be, at least in the epistemological interpretation of divided line, unrestricted universes of discourse. When you said dialectics is a procedure that should allow us to craft intelligibilities,

just epistemology but ontological as well? But also practical and axiological, yes. Can you expound on what you mean by dialectics allowing us to craft ontological intelligibilities but that not being epistemological? Well, this is... So basically epistemological intelligibilities, if we are talking about simple epistemology, epistemological intelligibility answers the question of not what things are in precise sense, but it talks about what we ought to do, what sorts of practical know-hows we should

know in order for us in fact to be able to have beliefs about thus and so things, about things in the universe. So epistemology is different from philosophy of knowledge. Epistemology answers the question of the know-hows of actually forming claims about things, regardless of whether these claims are true or not. Whereas philosophy of knowledge, which is the intermediary between epistemological know-hows and ontological intelligibilities, is closer to the ontology, it belongs to the ontological realm in which you can actually talk about things as they stand in the universe.

So this idea of epistemology is very different from philosophy of knowledge which belongs to the domain of ontology. Epistemology talks about the know-hows of how we can in fact say something, whether false or true, to assert something, come up with a claim about something else. basically the epistemological dimension. Thanks, that helps clarify things. Can I just ask, I'm just wondering how this analogy or idea of analogy or whatever we

what we're talking about right now, how does this not imply the necessity of an unconditional pragmatism and therefore a theodicy and thus back to a sophism or sophistry? Can you elaborate this by what you mean by unconditional pragmatism? Like the good. Does the good in itself not imply an unconditional pragmatism as its form of manifesting itself in relation to vocation or free choice?

in the personal development of attaining? No, you see the good has a will, has a practical will or some transcendental will of itself. But will is different from wilker or free choice. Free choice is something that's what you might call to be, from a Kantian perspective, free choice is simply about a non-existent or relative spontaneity or autonomy that only from the perspective of subject appears to be an unconditional autonomy.

This is free choice. Free choice is in fact nonexistent. In fact, Kant even would say that free choice is just an illusion. It's something that is only within what you might call to be the pragmatism of subjective perspective. So, but the good itself is simply a principle of a structuration, a principle of a structuration, a principle through which intelligibilities can be articulated, can be crafted and articulated. And through this articulation, intelligence can evolve. Intelligence can evolve.

So in itself, it's an inaccessible abstraction. Yes, it is simply a principle. Yes, it is simply what you might call to be a function, a function, an abstract function, yes. And provides the possibility for complexification and optimization of... Variation, complexification, canalization, yes, yes. I mean, it's basically the good can be understood as, you know, very, what you might call to be new lexicon as a transcendental function, as an abstract function.

So it doesn't necessitate like a primacy to theodicy. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Absolutely not. It's when you reify this abstraction into a thing, hypothesize it, as no Platonists do, then it becomes those kind of more uglier Platonic ramifications. Okay, I didn't entirely get that. You see, reification is this process of that you treat an abstraction as a thing. Okay. And this process, which is called hypostasization, creates categorical mistakes.

Right. I mean, because everything's insufficient inherently, ultimately. A good example of someone who is both very sophisticated and also makes a huge mistake in reading of Plato and precisely hypothesized the function of the good into a thing is Proclus, one of the main philosophers of Neoplatonism. And basically that really sets in motion in medieval era a Christian, a peculiarly Christian

theological reading of Plato, to which basically we are all acquainted with. And so many people still read Plato simply by way of this Christian take on Plato. Should we have a small break and then come back and start? Sure, say five minutes? Sure. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Amen. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

I was just saying in the sidebar, it's really hard for me to even read it and not think about it in terms of this correspondence to truth type of epistemology. And I mean, especially with the Allegory of the Cave, I think. You see, truth for Plato, and this is also, I wanted to continue my response to Oliver. As I mentioned, the very fact that there is truth, there is knowledge, there is beauty, is because there is good, good understood as the principle of intelligence, as a transcendental

function. Now, truth for Plato is not canonical truth. In Republic it is. In his later works, as I mentioned, forms, including truth, become Tychonah categories, which means that truth is no longer unique, canonical, it's not a matter of completeness. Truth is a matter of verifiability. Simply when there is the good and the good basically makes everything, every endeavor in the universe, every endeavor for a mind always incomplete, knowledge is always incomplete.

Our knowledge of the world is incomplete, our disvalues and values is incomplete. But the good allows us to simply verify them and expand the horizon of these values, disvalues, knowledge, practices, so on and so forth. So I think we need, we will come back when particularly when we talk about Menno and the sophists, what exactly Plato means by truth. Truth has different levels, at the level of assertibility, at the level of basically true beliefs about the nature of things, at the level of mathematical ideality, so on and so forth.

Well, what I wanted to say is that insofar as the principle of the good makes every endeavor incomplete, it renders our knowledge incomplete, it renders our practices incomplete, values and disvalues incomplete, this has a very significant social ramification. But you, I think, is absolutely correct, even though that might appear to be a feat of exaggeration, to call Badou the first communist. Why is that? Because if there is...

You meant to call Plato, not call Plato the first communist. I mean, it's not Badu, the first communist. Oh, yeah, sorry. Plato, the first communist. Yes, sorry. Why is that? It's precisely because if there is a transcendental function, a principle that renders every achieved or totality, every system that appears to be the totality of things, incomplete, dissolves them, That's exactly what communism is according to Marx and Engels, a real movement that rises above the totalities of the present.

This real movement is exactly what the transcendental function is for Plato that basically, in The estates man, he basically elaborates this function in terms of his social ramification. This principle allows us, the principle of intelligence, the principle of the good, allows us to move beyond any achieved or purportedly complete totality. Whether this is a totality of our practices, whether it's a totality of our knowledge, or it is the totality of the statecraft, namely politics. The way, can I just say, the way I'm understanding this is that it doesn't imply, it doesn't necessarily imply relativism.

No, no, no, no, no. And at the same time, it makes possible, or the good is precisely that which makes possible desert warfare. The good is that which brings about the space of the possible. That even if you think you have achieved a totality, whether this is your knowledge of an object, whether it is the system of your practices, whether it is the system of axiological values and disvalues of ethics, there is still something beyond it.

And this is basically, I equated the principle of the good with transcendental will in Kantian sense rather than will care which is free choice. Because transcendental will is exactly like that too. Transcendental will is something that is what you might call to be some sort of drive for you to use the same principle in order to break any achieved totality, any form of basically established order. Like the reduction of things to ends in themselves.

Yes, in fact, again we come back to this in Philbus and Timos, that's why he calls this production, and he associates this form of production with what he calls the demiurgic principle. A demi-orge is someone who crafts, and in fact compares the soul, the mind, with a craftsman. A craftsman is someone who is always in production, and he never abides by what is given in material ingredients of his craft, nor with the instructions of the recipes of how to craft something.

craft becomes basis for something else. Right, so like it's sort of like the creation of a personal metamorphosis based on the garnering of new forms of techne practices yes from the practice itself yes yes depending if you are acquisition of eudaimonia yes yes and you see there is a reason that you know

Plato was so infatuated with Socrates because this is the principle of self cultivation if you interpret it at a personal level. Self-cultivation, which is one of the main ideas associated with eudaimonia, happiness. Like the creation of a routine in one's life to... Not essentially routines, what you might call to be disciplines or assesses. Assesses meaning not in the Christian sense of ascetic life, but in terms of forming new exercises. Yeah.

Right. Right. So, right. I mean, this is, this is, this is, right. This is the good life. This is, I've read a lot of Hadot, Pierre Hadot. Yes. Exactly what he focuses on. Yes, yes, absolutely. Yes. the Elenchus and also Nehamas I was really into Nehamas a while ago 10 years ago on the art of living yes there was another fantastic book that I highly suggest is by John Sellars exactly the title

The Art of Living it's a very very good book and another one you know, the famous last lecture of Michel Foucault, which he talks about Socrates, is also a very, very good one. And basically they are all covering the same principle. But you see, the way that they focus on the idea of self-cultivation as this idea of a form of production that once you commit to it, once you let it shine in Socratic sense through your soul or your mind, you harness the power of going beyond any established order of things,

any achieved totality, which at the end is an illusion. So you build your own foundation from which your activity provides the means to the building of the house. So the house needs a foundation put in first and that's something that needs to always be there in a certain way. Yes, and this is one of the, you know, of course the main theme of the allegory of the cave. People think that Plato is like, you know, tweets sun as a metaphor of purity, you know, the very Nietzschean idea. But this is not really the case. Plato actually

is main positive emphasis, not really on the sun, but on the exploration of the cave. Exploration of the cave. A fantastic work written on this, on this idea that how to read the allegory of the cave as an expression of basically certain principles or certain practices through which you can in fact attain a good life or basically access the order of intelligibility of things,

practices, values, and disvalues is John Findlay, a book called The Discipline of the Cave. But then aren't we just talking about Patochka, Dumaitzil, Klotra, and Gerard, René Gerard, the secrets hidden traditions of religion, the sacred, and culture. Yes, but Plato doesn't really, you see Plato appears at the first sight as a mystic, but Plato simply does not believe in any of these things. For Plato, exploration of the cave

requires measures, and these measures are set by analytical idealities. In a very, very contemporary sense, that you need to have logic, you need to have concepts, you need to have mathematics in order to explore the cave. You can't have mystical measures. You cannot rely on such things. The idea of measure in Plato is extremely important, and that borrows from Parmenides. So it's not just an understanding or knowledge of culture, access to cultural secrets

but moreover like an ancient established order that's handed down a manner of acting to which we we develop a correspondence or whatnot? Not in the traditional sense, but yes, it's a matter of practical know-hows. Practical know-hows of, for example, in the second segment, is a practical know-hows of how to make, in fact, an opinion about something, whether that opinion can be said to be true or false. It's a matter of know-hows of how to use concepts or logoi or reasons.

It's a matter of know-hows of how to use forms. So it's, yeah, it's a textual imposition in the end. It's a textual imposition as opposed to the pure act. What confuses me is the total and infinite indeterminacy, can show itself to be

possible or true but then at the same time eudaimonia is something created within networks and ages and societies as opposed to... I mean, can you live a good life if you never leave your room but always order delivery? I mean, these are the questions that I guess... I don't know if that's even interesting.

Well, if Plato had to answer this, or Socrates had to answer this, he would say first yes, but then ultimately no. Ultimately no, right. I mean, then it's Aristotle, this is Aristotle saying the contemplative life supersedes the political life. But then on the other hand, the political life is necessary for... Yes, as I mentioned, you see there are different orders of intelligibility. The intelligibility of practices, social practices, the intelligibility of things.

And this order of intelligibility, which dialectic is supposed to separate and integrate, to combine ever more higher orders of intelligibility, allows us to simply see how they are dependent upon one another. And basically this order, realization of this order of interdependency between different orders of intelligibilities is necessary and sufficient, according to Plato, for having a good life. I mean, but this is all reduced to access to information in our data. You see, intelligibilities are not information.

is, as I mentioned, what is exactly intelligibility? Intelligibility is something that has been structured so as allowing an agent to be able to adequately understand or act on something. Hence, again, comes back to this idea of truth. Truths that are not just theoretical, but also practical. So it's like a YouTube video that tells you how to cook an eggplant parmesan, for instance.

There's an intelligibility to it, and according to that intelligibility, you yourself can replicate that cooking of the eggplant parmesan, even though you can add your own way of doing it and it's not going to turn out exactly like the person in the YouTube video. But you might take it another level, this metaphor, saying that this is according to Plato is just an instrumentality. It is an intelligible instrumentality. But beyond the level of intelligible instrumentalities, there are also other intelligibilities. Intelligibility of the purpose of doing this, which is again connected to the intelligibility of how I

can relate it to other intelligibilities. Can I serve this to other people? Can I do this. Again, intelligibilities of these material ingredients. I can in fact do this better, or in fact I can abandon this way of doing this by simply doing this scientifically rather than just using some sort of culinary instruction. So there are these unfolding ramifications of intelligibility. Absolutely. This answers my question perfectly. So the intelligibilities are not reducible to pragmatic... No, no, no, no, no instrumentalities. No, instrumentalities belong to the order of intelligibilities. Sorry? Intelligibilities belong to the order. They are just simply a set, a very restricted set of intelligibilities.

Not everything is reducible to instrumentalities. Okay. This is the main point that Plato makes in Philebus, as I said, his most mature work. But then does this not imply that there's some sort of predominance or primacy to the intelligibility of sacrifice? I don't know how that works. I mean, like a non-instrumental intelligibility, something like an artwork, like a painting.

Mm-hmm. I mean, okay, so when someone looks to purchase a painting, what is it in that painting that appeals to them? Yes, you see, that's what I said, that there are also different orders of intelligibility according to Plato. Not everything is the intelligibility of practices or practical intelligibility to which the order of instrumentalities belong. There are also axiological intelligibility according to Plato, values and disvalues. And aesthetics belongs to the order of axiological intelligibility. And the form forms of virtues. Yes. and I guess that in a way

provides some sort of foundation for communication according to the level of comprehension in which cultures and societies can relate primarily according to the mutual consensus over the necessity of maintaining a particular value or interpretation of what could be called a value. Yes. I mean, this is one of the things that's... So it's a mutualism, really, that... Yes, yes. Yeah.

I just want to make sure that if anyone else has a question they can step in too. Thank you for clarifying that for me. Absolutely. I just had one really, really, really brief question. Did you say that the good life is a mixed life? A mixed life, yes. What Plato calls a mixed life. Yes, mixed life. And this idea of mixture, as I mentioned, is essentially Plato's solution to pre-Socratic philosophies. So Heraclitians are the ones who move with multiplicities, fluxes, change.

Other philosophers, Eleatics, go with unities, the ones. There are other philosophers who interpret these principles of Apeyron, the infinite, and Peros, limits, multiplicities, on an axiological level. Like for example, you, for example, Epicureans who are after this read Pre-Socratics and they use the idea of multiplicity as a base of how to live the best life. And at the level of multiplicity, what you essentially have are disconnected activities,

which you can, again, bring back to the idea of pleasures, sensory stimulations. Or for example, the Stoics think about, or sorry, cynics believe in a form of a rational order of pleasures, namely unities. So Plato essentially wants to understand a life, a good life, but also how to craft and in fact determine what a good life consists in by way of the process of mixturing, myctum. And as I said, the principle we'll be talking about next session, the principle responsible

for producing a good mixture, a good myctum, is dialectics, in the platonic sense of dialectics, separation and integration, limiting and delimiting of the relation between things, values and practices according to their own measures. I think this problem of mixture helps answer Theodore's continued insubordination with regards to conceptual thinking because of it's not about correspondence because I mean the transcendentals that are held within the soul aren't connected specifically to any

concrete objects until the confrontation with the concrete multiplicity of objects and then the transcendentals then act as inferential coordinates in order to render intelligible that concrete multiplicity. Another thing that we have kind of beyond about our even starting the analogy of the white line, but it doesn't matter, we can still have some make-up sessions at the end, but I want to talk about this idea that truth in Plato, we will talk about this, but as I mentioned, truth in republic is what you might call to be a very platonic, with capital T truth.

But as he moves forward, particularly starting from theatruth, which is the transition of work between mid-period and late period, truth, as I mentioned, becomes something called in you know, contemporary sense, we might call it a presumptive or promising truth, a truth candidate, a truth candidate, a matter of incompleteness, a matter of inquiry. So you start, so, you know, we talked about this in the previous course, in a traditional sense, truth, at least in Greeks, comes in the sense of the given, that what axioms are,

data, like Euclid's elements, truth comes as axioms, something that you have them and then you build a structure on top of them, which is hierarchical. The foundations are the given truth, the truth givens, or data, or axioms. But you have also a different conception of truth, the truth candidates. According to some criterion of conceptual plausibility, according to some measures, you see some claims as truth candidates. They have the highest plausibility according to current resources. Then you create a system of these truth candidates, and how they cohere with one another allow

you to navigate from the outer rims rather than from the bottom upward of the axiomatic method. You create these basically truth givens, and then you slowly cohere them, and through this process of coherence, which is inferential articulation of truth, you sometimes discard some of these truth candidates and replace them with more plausible words. And then that's basically your process of converging on truth, which as I mentioned for Plato, particularly in his later work, truth is rendered incomplete by the principle

of the good. There is never a totality of truth. Truth is a form, is a form that allows you in fact to come up with measures of how to determine the plausibility of things and how they cohere with one another. But as such in itself is never complete. I'd be curious to hear you go on and talk about the cave as well. Sure. Any question? Hunter? Okay, if we don't have any question, let's...

so we saw the how the diagram looks like consisting of four segments the first each of these segments represent a level a level of what you might call to be the intelligible order or how intelligence functions. The first level, which is icosia, whose objects are icons, images, or shadows, as properly

Essentially speaking is the domain of sensory materials. Sensory materials always come in a flux. They are essentially confused. So these are, in the allegory of cave, are shadows on the wall. They are fleeting, exactly like shadows. simulations, sensory flux is fleeting. It does not have any stability. I was thinking earlier that you might actually be able to identify

the epistemological, axiological, and ontological components in the divided line based upon the way that basically the fourth grounding principle ends up um sort of being reformative of another aspect and i was thinking that um the the epistemological would be um the the fourth maybe on the second and then like the because it's changing your um it's changing your uh your true opinion and like axiological would be like the fourth to the first because it's being reformative of the world so it's practical. So there's an

interest, so it's like depending the the axiological, ontological, and epistemological are different ways that the different vectors of movement between the divided lines. Yes, yes, that is completely true, yes. So the first level is the level of the sensory fluxes which is always confused hence the metaphor of shadows fleeting but Plato wants to say that even at this level we have the reality of even the reality of shadows the rudimentary reality of

shadows which is an illusion of course is posited by a further from a further level from segment two how does this possible because you can't even have according to this metaphor of this analogy you can't even have an awareness non-conceptual awareness or rudimentary awareness of sensory stimulation if you could not differentiate, if your nervous system, you could not differentiate these estimulations from one another at the most basic level,

which Plato calls it in terms of more or less intensities. So the very fact that you in fact have a recognition, a non-conceptual recognition of estimulations is because intelligence has the capacity to organize sensory materials, being thus and so affected in terms of densities more or less. More or less is the most rudimentary or most basic way by which you can structure the world. Basically all what you might call organisms have that.

organism has a form of differentiation of stimulating signals the jargon for this in philosophy of mind and in philosophy is called the acoustic phase A-K-O-U-L-I-T-H-I-C, I think. So acaulitic phase is precisely the idea that even at this level of confused flux fleeting shadows, they are essentially a form of organization, an organization that is not inherent

the flux of sensory stimulations, but something that belongs to the intelligence. And you can differentiate similar shadows from less similar shadows. You can spatiotemporally locate them, you can see them in terms of intensity of them versus less intense, more or less, which this is a particular conversation that later comes at the end of Republic, where Socrates talks about the iconos in terms of more or less differentiation, more or less.

even at this level you have something of the mind rather than of reality as such. So this is, as I mentioned, why is that Plato is idealist? Not in a naive sense, but precisely because he thinks that if there is no mind, there is no reality. Because the nature of the organization or the structure not given in the sensory material, It is the intelligence has the capacity to differentiate rudimentary in the most basic level, sensory assimilations, icons or shadows or fleeting.

So, you'll have to forgive my silence because I just haven't heard of Plato being read like this before. The great, it's actually, as I mentioned, Plato, the reading of Plato is unfortunately for the most part until 20th century when actually people, scholars, mostly women actually, started to really dig into Plato and see what's actually going on without the preconceived

interpretation borrowed from, you know, no Platonists. One of the best books, probably in my opinion, the best commentary ever written on Plato by one of the most famous Platonic scholars who tries to reconcile the Tobinjian school interpretation, the unwritten doctrines and the actual canon of the dialogues is Rosemary Desjardins. But actually this interpretation of the divided line has been given not just by her, it has

been given by Findlay, it has given by Giovanni Wheel, it has given by Una Harari, it's actually quite a very, you know, when you read the dialogues this is exactly how it is and as As I mentioned, it is the only part, the only ever section in any of Plato's dialogues, that all of these are actually combined together, compacted together, is the analogy of the divided line. And that's why we chose this, precisely because analogy of the divided line exactly talks

about shadows in terms of flux, fleeting or flux of senses. I mean, I lost you for a second there, but are you saying in some sense that there's a finite but potentially infinite quantity of unsuspectable reactions to every one of our choices and behaviors in the sense in which we wouldn't be able to know

but could always imagine that which results from our actions like as if these more or less are indicative of a reason that is maintained as a sort of clean almond. I mean, I don't hate, I hate talking about this stuff, but you could, are you saying, are you implying in the sense that Plato's a precursor to Lucretius, perhaps? Not really, no. I think, no, I don't, I don't see, you know, might be, there is a, might be full of

comparison but I genuinely don't think so. I think this idea of, yes, Plato might say that there might be like infinite possible reactions but these infinite possible reactions, they are crafted according to some measures, they are not haphazard, they are only haphazard at the level of the first segment, at the level of sensory stimulations. Later on, they have intrinsic structure precisely because they have to abide by some norms, analytical ideologies and idios.

But even if they have to abide by these norms, there are possibilities afforded by them, And these possibilities, according to Plato, are truly infinite. And that's the realm of it, the realm of idoses. That you can, in fact, see particularities in different shades. So, uh... So there's a justifiable causality... Yes, it's a matter of justification. Justification is important. really comes back again to the idea of truth in Plato. A sort of, right, so, but then, right, a legitimacy is surmised or imposed upon the reaction.

Yes, it's the idea of legitimacy, and this legitimacy, again, can be interpreted on different levels, whether it's epistemological, whether it is the knowledge of ontology, whether it's axiological. I mean, but this would imply that complexity and comprehensibility I mean, on a level of lucidity that also contains an an obscurantism would be the sort of narrative or textual sort of thrust

of the eudaimonic project. Did that make any sense? I need to think about it, but one of the things, I will think about it and next session I will come up with some sort of answer, but one of the things that is important, as I mentioned, for Plato, the emphasis is not really on eudaimonia. Yeah, for Stoics, for Cynics, it is eudaimonia, but not for Plato. Plato doesn't really, as I mentioned, eudaimonia comes off as the main objective of Plato in

Republic. But as I mentioned, Plato always, as he matured, he thought that Republic is one of his weakest war, in fact. And he started to vastly revise this idea that eudaimonia is the center of his project. It's the good, and the good is different from the good life. The good is a principle that in fact brings about the possibility of the good life. But I will think about your question and I genuinely need to think about it. The good is something Plato is always chasing after. Yes. Behind bushes.

He doesn't chase it. He actually, what you might call to be, he thinks that this is a principle, and this is the principle by which, in fact, you can think about anything, by which you can, in fact, have a practice to begin with. And this is basically the divided line is precisely this, the cognitive order. A cognitive order that enables us to talk about things but also to act in different ways. This is beautiful, it really is beautiful.

So one of the things also I forgot to mention at the beginning of the sessions before moving forward, it would be really, really useful if you are reading Plato always starting from the later works and read the middle period, the most famous ones, in light of the later works because many of these connections that appear, or you have, you know, when you read Republic you always treat it with preconceived ideas. Some interpretations are common in Platonic studies. But reading those concepts, for example, particularly the divided line

and the Aikasia, and Ikonos, Pestis, so on and so forth, they have a different interpretation, a very more nuanced interpretation in later books, particularly, as I mentioned, Philebus. So, for example, Aikasia, the realm of images, in Philebus, is presented as a phase in which from an originally sensory continuum of moral lessness, we first consciously separate out elementary sense perceptions.

The imaging action of icasia would be seen to constitute our initial cognitive taking But is there any evidence that Plato or the Platonic Socrates ever held such a view? Now I think once one approaches these two texts, Republic and Philippus, particularly with the emphasis on the analogy of the divided line.

Plato talks about a material element inherent in the primeval nature and infected with great order. This is a quote from a statesman where there is a very, very brief mention of icasia. So until intelligence, so, and then this part of the statesman, which is again a very late

work, throughout this dialogue when they address the nature of Icassia, the participants of the dialogue, talk about that the disorder of things cannot be ordered until intelligence knows begins to introduce logon, a structure, to it. Now they say also at the same time that this sensory structure, this icasia, is a logos,

irrational, ametros, by itself, a logos and ametros, unmeasured and unstructured, and anos, mindless, irrational. Is it similar to the relationship between ishesus and ethos? Can you elaborate on this? Like in the sense in which Roncier talks about aesthetics as sort of, and the image like in Bergson's Matter and Memory, the image as it becomes the force behind the communicative proposition or statement.

Not the force, but you might call it as the raw material of it. Something, something. As a raw material. And that's exactly what the divided line shows, that it's a raw material for the second segment. A raw material. But the raw material, you see, this is what I say, that this entire idea of the divided line comes back to the idea of craft. in Timos, in Philebus, in the statesman, but also in republic, there is this idea of the metaphor of a craftsman. The idea that a craftsman always uses some raw material in its craft

to make something, an intelligibility, right? Something rational, something imbued with logos. But how a raw material cannot itself be language and only language? But this is the whole thing. The raw materials by themselves do not have the instruction of the craft. So in order for you to craft, and this is the idea that he puts in T-MOMS, in order for you to craft an intelligibility, you not only need raw materials, namely iconos or images or sensory material but also you need to have proportions structures analogon you need to have ratios namely logoses you

need to have basically forms to put them together so this is the idea of the sellers call it you know the idea of intelligibility essentially needs to be understood as a recipe. A recipe, just exactly like you're making a cake, not only have raw materials, which might be products of something else, but also it has instructions, it has ratios and proportions, it has instrumentalities, and none of them by themselves are sufficient to make a craft only in conjunction with one another that they make something intelligible.

And the divided line essentially is this, essentially, as I mentioned, is a form of classification of levels of cognition are required for us to be capable of making something intelligible, whether that intelligibility pertains to the world or practices or values or disvalues. So back to an analogy of the divided line.

So reading Republic in the light of later works, we see that icosia, iconos images, are introduced in different dialogues as essentially rudimentary organizations, rudimentary structures, metrons and logons that have been introduced to a primal nature that is essentially disordered, essentially disordered.

So the function, even the function of the mind knows, is to basically structure, hence render intelligible this nature. And the first level with which this process begins is the most rudimentary form of a structuration, which in Republic Plato talks about the shadows in terms of the continuum of high and low intensity of shadows. In A Statesman he talks about them in terms of more or less. In Timoth he talks about them in terms of intensities, that even at this level we have

a minimal form of differentiation and separation that can inject a structure and order into the most primal fluxes of nature, sensory materials. The second, as I said, I highly recommend if you can obtain that book by Rosemary Desjardins, is called Plato and the Good. Unfortunately, it's a bit expensive,

but it is absolutely a phenomenal book. There is a PDF of it. It's in the document. Oh, did I put it? Okay, okay, okay, excellent. So this is the first one. The first segment is the segment which we called Images, fleeting or fluxes in a persocratic sense, which Plato thinks that at the first level in ratios and proportions with regard to other segments in the line, you have something called

a minimal organization, a minimal structure. But this minimal structure is afforded by other segments of the line. At the second level you have pistis. What are pistis? They are what you might call them conjectures or opinions or beliefs. What is really the characteristics of beliefs? The characteristics of beliefs means that you should have some criterion as to in fact

assert a claim, assert a conjecture, even though that claim might be at the end false. So, the idea of truth is exactly where it starts from the second segment. Precisely because truth not as whether a claim or a belief or an opinion is true or false, But in fact there should be a form of truth, or a truth procedure, required for us to make a claim about anything in the world.

Because making a claim in the world is not something God-given, it doesn't come by itself. So this is exactly where what you might call to be rudimentary knowledge starts from this segment. It is not knowledge yet, but you see that embryonically this idea of truth emerges in Plato from this segment. Now, just as...so it's from an epistemological reading of a divided line, whereas the first segment pertained to sensory materials, the second segment belongs to beliefs about items

in the world, objects. I just said objects, but objects according to Plato, or what you might call them particularities, particular items, is something that can only be afforded by the third segment. You see, every segment is afforded by next segment, the first one, the structure of the second, then the material, the stuff that you can do in the second segment, which is

the realm of true opinions about things in nature, is required by unities. You can't in fact talk about, for example, a chair. A chair at the level of the first segment comes as fleeting shadows, more or less distinctions, hotter, colder, brighter, so on and so forth. In order for you to organize this into a particularity of which you can have an opinion, whether false or true, you need to have a unity.

This is what you might call it an object, a particularity. are in the in the caves these are exactly those figurines or things that are behind the fire and cast shadows from I say the thing that strikes me is that the the difference between a lounge chair like a lazy boy or a massage chair or an Eames chair and an electric chair are so diverse but still are

classified under the taxonomy of chair, yes, category of chair, that they don't reach a level whereby a complex complexity of description could be called indeterminate, nevertheless. Yes, yes. As I said, I mean, if you were going to give a very, very contemporary, nothing to do with Plato whatsoever, but nevertheless I think very relevant, is that this nature of indeterminacy is in fact required for this whole idea of intelligibility.

Semantic wholeness, semantic holism, comes hand in hand with epistemic holism. In epistemic holism, you require further and further inquiry as to determine the relations between particularities. And semantic holism is about those concepts, taxonomies, classifications, so on and so forth, and the inferential relations between those classifications. So these are always conjoined. But there's an abyss of essence between the electric chair and the lazy boy.

Well, yes, and that's why there is also an abyss of intelligibility. You can go deeper and deeper, and this is ultimately what makes Plato a philosophy of the abyss. Unlike Nietzsche, who thought that Plato always works on the ground. No, actually, Plato set a principle that takes you further and further into articulation of these relations. I mean this is the this is basically the the underlying sort of the underlying hermeneutic hermeneutic stance of

recur that there's always a plus one like n plus one there's always this there's always an exception or something that could be deviated so as to create a further interpretation. Kuhn and Popper come to mind. Falsifiability and the Structured Scientific Revolution. Yes, but I think Kuhn's interpretation of Plato is quite very classic, and I don't think that it's just about falsifiability. is really this idea of truth candidacy, the idea that truth is considered as a procedure,

as a principle that allows you to verify things, that allows you to articulate, inferentially articulate things. It's not something that is given to you. Once you have truth candidates in terms of conceptual plausibilities, then you are capable of navigating these diverse relations and not all relations come to falsifiability or verifications. Sometimes there are hypotheticals, sometimes there are counterfactuals, sometimes they are about falsity and verification, sometimes they are not. This is a whole web of these kinds of relations and that's I think one of the best representations of this in terms of science, is very much closer to this idea of Platonic unfolding

of the order of intelligibilities, is German philosopher of science Wolfgang Stegmüller. Sorry, can you say that again, Wolfgang? Stegmüller, S-T-E-G-M-L-L-U-R. Stegmüller, okay. Stegmüller. So, at the level as I mentioned, in order for us to in fact move from the first level to the second level, we require something more.

I'm thinking Pistis as conviction that would presumably require some sort of personal argument, but in today's state doesn't actually require any sort of argument. you could just come straight to the conclusion and garnering assurances, such as likes on Facebook or retweets on Twitter, would be the way of gaining support for whatever conclusion or belief you would have.

You would have. So having an actual argument to back it up is not as important as garnering assurance from a multitude. Interesting. But then again, I'm not sure whether that does that not broach on sort of like a totalitarianism and the necessity of an authoritarianism. I tried to talk about some of these. Yes, I think Plato, I mean, this is the whole idea that Plato uses a very specific word in Philebus

when he comes back to analogy of the divide line also in Republic it means to leap and they talk about risk of making a leap. Intelligence is what makes a leap. Every segment requires a level, consists of levels. I'm sorry, the divide line consists of segments. The segments can be considered as levels. Making leap from one segment to another segment, one level to another, the risks increases. What is at the stakes becomes higher and higher.

And you make a wrong move as you go upward at the level of levels, things can basically result in tragedies. And this is exactly what the conversation that Socrates with Goakun has in Urn of the Public, that this is a risky business. The order of thinking is a risky business. The order of practice, according to these principles, is a risky business. Intelligence is a risky thing. Yeah, right. At the same time, it's always like the miracle of the political is the failure of the politician, is his defacement and removal from the political scene.

Well, I don't want to divert too much, but very briefly before getting back and we don't have that much time, very, very brief thing. Plato and Socrates were extremely anti-democratic. They did not believe in democracy in the sense that they think that democracy, I mean, you need to understand the social condition of Greece during their time. The democracy is not something that was promoted by philosophers. It was something that was the product of sophistry. Sophists were the ones who selling democracy and the ideas about democracy namely particularly

two things. You know, the idea that simply we can say everyone is equal at birthright to the freedom of expression. What is basically, that's the main theme in the sophist, that the sophist is the one who thinks that saying things, all sayings are equal because all sayings are true. Of course, otherwise it would be hypocritical. And Plato really shows that Plato is the person who comes with the idea of equality of all minds. But the matter of equality of all minds is a matter of concrete social elaboration rather than a presupposition.

That you can simply say that, well, we are all equal, so let's start in this kind of liberal democratic atmosphere. So democracy for liberation or emancipation or equality for Plato is not something that is given at birthright. Once you take it as something given at birthright, you might end up simply going stagnant, endorsing the most tyrants of history. And that's basically the whole idea of Socrates, the Socratic tribe. And again, it comes back to the idea that democracy is simply a means, a means toward

ends that transcend. is, if you take democracy as an end in itself, you essentially, the path to tyranny is inevitable, according to Plato. I have a question that I don't want to derail, because if people would like to stay longer today we can, because we... We can actually, I think I have to go somewhere, but we can, as I mentioned, we will every like, we put one or two sessions at the end, like additional sessions in addition to eight. That sounds great.

So the question I had is, are you seeing the model of the divided line, the image of the divided line as being a model of an ontology of eminence too as well as as well as being a map of thought itself yes this ontology of eminence that you are mentioning this is exactly what Finley talks about when he talks about the divided line yes yes I will try to get a PDF of this I think I have it

somewhere on my hard drive in Lisbon Plato where he talks about the problem of imminence in the divided line and that's basically what he argues but I think the idea of this cognitive map gives a more robust understanding of what Plato, what counts as imminent and as transcendental in Plato's work. So very briefly, just to... So next session I will try to talk about, again, second level, third level, and the fourth level.

But very briefly, so in the first level we had Iconos, and in Republic, Plato implies that experience is limited to the apprehension of passing shadows, projected on a wall and of fleeting echoes resounding off the wall. Their cognitive activity, the cognitive activity of the prisoners in the cave, this is exactly the one of the best translations of this part that he talks about. This whole idea of seeing shadows and hearing the echoes, which can be only differentiated

by less and more, represents a cognitive activity limited to, this is quote from Republic, putting names on images, labeling images, and vying with each other in so identifying these appearances, remembering their customary precedence, sequences and consistencies, and so guessing as what is to come. Tomelon hexin. This is the very idea if you see what is to come, to anticipate is the function of the memory.

So what basically you might say that the move from this first one, from the minimal sensory organization to the second level is something that is afforded by the function of memory, he calls remembering their customary precedents, sequences, and consistencies, and so guessing at what is to come, to anticipate what is to come. This is what you might call to be you know, in the Kantian sense, impression, reproduction, and anticipation.

That without memory, without having the capacity to organize these impressions, these sense equations into sequences with their internal consistency, you cannot have particularities. So back to this idea that there are so many interpretations of the cave as essentially

an argument about the conditions necessary for having phenomenal appearances in the first place. Having phenomenal appearances in the first place, as I said, is not a given matter, it's not something that is the structure of the universe. There are, there needs to be some capacities, minding capacities or noetic capacities, in order in fact to provide such appearances which we take as given, which of course are not. Shadows appear to be given, but the very fact that they appear to be given, namely phenomenal

appearance, is because we have the capacity to structure this as a given, as an appearance, a data as a shadow any question before so thanks was basically sorry fake news basically a Fake news. I typed a couple other questions in the sidebar. That is the expansion and self-making of thought a type of, I'm going to omit hegemonic, but I did say hegemonic, hegemonic organization.

It almost sounds like the power of thought is actually more akin to force. And then I said. You know that Stoics are, Plato probably wouldn't answer this, but from our perspective, yes. And Stoics, in fact, go on and call it hegemonicon. Hegemonicon is the cognitive power, is the mind. Mind essentially, and mind for Plato is essentially a structuring point. And the divided line is essentially, as I mentioned, shows different modules or levels

of structuring you require to make the world intelligible in its expansiveness and on different levels, whether this is the world of practices, the world of society, the world of things in nature for values and disvalues. Yes, it comes back to the thing that I mentioned to Adam at the beginning, this whole idea of self-consciousness, this idea that thinking refers to itself, beginning with its own possibility, taking its possibility seriously rather than the possibility of other things, has a structuring

ramifications. Once the order of intelligibility comes to the picture, the order of intelligence becomes hegemonic. Because what is ultimately intelligence? It's that which acts on the intelligible adequately. So, Tantra, basically. This is Tantra. You see, I have problem with comparing what Plato means by intelligibility with more of what you might call to be sage-oriented philosophies, particularly Sino-Indian philosophies.

Not that they are not philosophies, but the way that they talk about what they mean by, for example, the intelligible, again, is not really intelligible in this sense. For example, this is one of the things that when you go to the, read, for example, the Brahmanian or Buddhistic texts, that the picture of the universe that they give is quite actually mechanistic. Whereas Plato is an idealist. Plato does not believe in something that mind loses itself in cosmos or intelligibility,

something that is given in advance, but it is something that excavates, is excavated by the power of mind. And this power of mind is not mind, again, in that traditional sage, you know, philosophy, sage-oriented philosophies. Mind has principles, and these principles are driven by formal resources of thinking, justification, conceptualization, classification, verification, coherences. So it is mind that imposes order upon the disorganization of the shadows, right? Yes, yes, but even, as I mentioned, even at the level of the shadows, you have minimal

organization. But this minimal organization, again, is not given by the great disorder of nature, the Heraclitian flux, but it's something that is imposed by mind on it, at the most rudimentary level. So it's objective? Yes, yes. Well, at this level you don't have objectivity. At this level you have what you might call to be just simple matter of factual, matter of factual, belonging to the causal order, matter of factual relations between how things stand to each other. For example,

is brighter than the other one. Objectivity, when it comes to the pictures, when you can actually make a claim about them, moving to the second segment, when you can only... This is when you can make a claim about something, you can assert about something that can be further challenged by other claims and against further observations, then you can say something can be said to be objective. But the order then is sort of archaic, apodictic continuity.

I don't see how it becomes apodictic in the sense. You see, this is the idea that the process of justification is not simply a matter of know communication it's not a matter of for example you know having access to information so it's a process that requires some norm some what Plato calls measures and these measures quite differ from one another at each level we have some measures level of this divide line we have some measures and it's only the

combination of these measures and the right applications of measures that allow us to in fact justify something to be objective. But for something to be objective doesn't mean that it is essentially true. Objectivity should not be equated with the idea of a claim to be true. Objectivity means that it is an assertion, a claim, or a belief, or an opinion about certain state of affairs in the world through which you can launch an epistemic inquiry. You can in fact investigate whether it is true or not.

So this is the hidden subversive systematization of cultures. Yes, and in Republic, but also I think in the Estatesman, Plato associates a subversive, very literally a subversive import to the power of rationality that can in fact put every norm in peril. It can subvert every form of convention by virtue of its principles. So we are now 10 minutes past. Does anyone else have any other questions? I want to make sure

that everyone else has an opportunity to speak they'd like. I just wanted to say one more thing. So when you come out of the cave and you see the sunlight, you go back in, you try and convince the people who are looking at the shadows that they're not seeing real things. And when that doesn't work, because it doesn't, you just join the people creating the shadows. And that's just the way it works. We'll talk about, we haven't got to the allegory of cave or the third and the fourth segment, but I will talk about this, our different interpretation of this idea of what it means

to return to the cave. It's actually, I think, it's quite really interesting, it's one of those moments that Plato becomes again ambiguous, very ambiguous. I will talk about this hopefully next session. But yeah, I agree that not essentially what you are saying in terms of it's always going to end up like this, but Plato is actually quite pessimistic about this idea. And also the way that he presents this is ambivalent. I mean, sociopolitically is ambivalent. So I'll try to upload a lot of the PDFs that I have of the Plato material you sent earlier.

Yes. Under the classroom. Sure. I just sent you an invite to the classroom as well. Excellent. And then for next week, are we going to be following up with the cave? and then just people should try and read the supplementary material. No, we, okay, so I'm going to the next session talk about, you know, a little bit about, still, we need to finish this idea of the divide line and what exactly these segments ultimately are and how they combine or join together. But, yes, we can have a reading. It's a text. You can find it online. It's called Soul as Craftsman by Wilfred Selvars.

Okay. All right, sounds good. Well, thank you, everyone, and thank you, Reza. Thanks, everyone. I'll add one brief question. Sure. It might open up a big can of worms, but I just was wondering if there you think there would be a connection between Girard's four levels and and then you are doing Johnny zero her yeah Go on. I'm just wondering if you think is is it homologous in any way? I haven't thought about it. I haven't thought about it It's a monster very esoteric Who are you asking about? Johnny V. Girard, the mathematician that pioneered linear logic.

Oh, okay. Yeah, Pete and Reza are big fanboys of Johnny V. Girard. Yes, no, I need to think about this. But very quickly... I was going to say one more thing. Something else that might seem similar. I mean, it's totally just an awful numerological comparison, but Bidou also sorts things into four levels in his Mark and Lac in the concept and form. Well, that's exactly Plato's thing, and he's very explicit about it in his book Republic. There is actually a very, very fantastic dialogue that he creates between Socrates and Glaucus and other people

with a diagram of the divided line, where Plato actually gives a very, very good interpretation of the divided line across the same lines that I was talking about. Okay, interesting. Okay guys, thank you so much. See you next week. Alright, sounds good. And Reza, can I stay on the hangout with you right after? Sure, sure.