In Republic VII Plato has Socrates make a curious argument: dialectic as currently practiced causes lawlessness, and thus the practice of dialectic should be restricted to those of a certain age who have been properly trained and selected (537e-539e). I argue that the warning in Republic VII points to a disagreement between the views expressed by the character `Socrates' in the Republic, and the views expressed by the character `Socrates' in the Apology. I do so by showing that Republic's description (...) of the problem as well as Plato's prescriptions for solving it can only be understood under the assumption that `dialectic' in this passage refers to questioning or refutation in general, and as such must include Socratic practices within its scope. This disagreement represents a more general disagreement about the path to the good life and the role of philosophy in living life well, and raises questions concerning Plato's opinion of the trial of Socrates. (shrink)

In Republic V, Plato distinguishes two different cognitive powers, knowledge and belief, which operate differently on different types of object. I argue that in Republic VI Plato modifies this account, and claims that there is a single cognitive power, which under different circumstances behaves either as knowledge or as belief. I show that the circumstances which turn true belief into knowledge are the provision of an individuation account of the object of belief, which reveals the ontological status and the nature (...) of the object. Plato explores many alternative candidates of individuation accounts of objects of true belief, which he discards. I conclude with a Platonic sketch of a teleological account of individuation which would satisfy his requirements of turning true belief into knowledge. (shrink)

This article offers a new formulation of the Socratic principle known as the Principle of the Sovereignty of Virtue. It is divided in three sections. In the first section I criticize Vlastos’ formulation of the PSV. In the second section I present the weighing model of practical deliberation, introduce the concepts of reason for action, simple reason, sufficient reason and conclusive reason that were offered by Thomas Scanlon in Being realistic about reasons, and then I adapt these concepts so as (...) to render them apt to be used in the formulation I intend to offer. In the third section I present my formulation of the PSV using the concepts introduced in the second section and explain why I believe this formulation is better than the one offered by Vlastos. (shrink)

In this paper we provide an interpretation of Aristotle's rule for the universal quantifier in Topics Θ 157a34–37 and 160b1–6 in terms of Paul Lorenzen's dialogical logic. This is meant as a contribution to the rehabilitation of the role of dialectic within the Organon. After a review of earlier views of Aristotle on quantification, we argue that this rule is related to the dictum de omni in Prior Analytics A 24b28–29. This would be an indication of the dictum’s origin in (...) the context of dialectical games. One consequence of our approach is a novel explanation of the doctrine of the existential import of the quantifiers in dialectical terms. After a brief survey of Lorenzen's dialogical logic, we offer a set of rules for dialectical games based on previous work by Castelnérac and Marion, to which we add here the rule for the universal quantifier, as interpreted in terms of its counterpart in dialogical logic. We then give textual evidence of the use of that rule in Plato's dialogues, thus showing that Aris... (shrink)

P. Erlangen 4 is papyrus fragment of an ancient Greek, “Socratic” dialogue discussing cures for the of the beautiful—and, by implication, the meaning of moral beauty itself. Previous discussions have made general comparisons with the works of Plato, Xenophon and Aeschines. Prior to its philosophical analysis, I will re-examine the fragment, suggesting new reconstructions of the text, accompanied by an English translation. Although the precise authorship still remains a mystery, I will attempt to show that its philosophical language, argument and (...) dramatic background are closer to the remains of Antisthenes than other Socratic writers and in particular to one of his Alcibiades compositions. The possibility will then be considered that it originated in one of his works or with one of his immediate followers. (shrink)

Skeptical puzzles and arguments often employ knowledge-closure principles . Epistemologists widely believe that an adequate reply to the skeptic should explain why her reasoning is appealing albeit misleading; but it’s unclear what would explain the appeal of the skeptic’s closure principle, if not for its truth. In this paper, I aim to challenge the widespread commitment to knowledge-closure. But I proceed by first examining a new puzzle about failing to know—what I call the New Ignorance Puzzle . This puzzle resembles (...) to the Old Ignorance Puzzle , although it does not involve a closure principle. It instead centers on the standard view of ignorance, a highly intuitive principle stating that ignorance is merely a failure to know. In Sects. 2 and 3, I argue that the best way to solve the New Ignorance Puzzle is to reject the standard view of ignorance and to explain away its appeal via conversational implicature. I then use this solution to the New Ignorance Puzzle as a way of explaining why knowledge-closure principles would seem true, and why abominable conjunctions would seem abominable, even if such principles were false . The upshot is a new way of explaining why the skeptic’s reasoning is appealing albeit misleading. (shrink)

La actual crisis pedagógica que vive Occidente, constatada por todos aquellos educadores que deben enfrentarse diariamente a unos estándares cada vez más bajos y al consecuente perjuicio en lo que a la autoridad del profesorado se refiere, fue ya profetizada en su momento por Hannah Arendt (“The Crisis in Education”). La educación es uno de los factores más importantes para definir la calidad de vida de un país y, desde esta perspectiva, una crisis educativa es una crisis en todos los (...) ámbitos sociales, económicos y, en última instancia, políticos. El presente artículo intenta exponer cómo la educación y el conocimiento fueron concebidos en la antigüedad a través de dos modelos, Grecia y China, para mostrar así en qué medida los autores clásicos pueden todavía enseñarnos con sentido común a afrontar los problemas metodológicos actuales. Mediante una exposición comparativa, se analizarán las teorías clásicas griegas, así como la epistemología y pedagogía en el confucianismo clásico y tempranomedieval, destacando cómo estos autores confrontaron relativismo, opinión y acumulación vacía de conoci-miento, frente a la búsqueda de la verdad y la selección cuidadosa y científica de saber. En última instancia, destacaremos la necesidad de recuperar nuestra tradición clásica para mantener un nivel educativo adecuado. (shrink)

Many philosophers of education emphasise the impossibility to really ‘solve’ philosophical—and with that, educational—problems these days. Philosophers have been trying to give philosophy a new, constructive turn in the face of this insolvability. This paper focuses on irony-based approaches that try to exploit the very uncertainty of philosophical issues to further philosophical understanding. We will first briefly discuss a few highlights of historical uses of irony as a philosophical tool. Then we concentrate on two different interpretations of irony, formulated by (...) Bransen and Rorty, that aim at gaining insight into how we make meaning of the world, while at the same time recognising that such an understanding would be impossible. After discussing some problematic aspects of these interpretations a third interpretation of irony is developed, based on a third view of the nature of meaning-making. Following these three interpretations, we will discuss their philosophical merits and the different kinds of insight they can produce for philosophy of education. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce a notion of ‘disjunctive ignorance’, which is a weak combination of two forms of ignorance in the literature. We propose a logical language with ‘disjunctive ignorance’ as a sole modality, explore the logical properties of this notion and its related notions, and axiomatize it over various frame classes. By finding suitable reduction axioms, we extend the results to the case of public announcements and apply it to Moore-like sentences.

What role, if any, does dialectic play in Aristotle’s epistemology in the Topics? In this paper I argue that it does play a role, but a role that is independent of endoxa. In the first section, I sketch the case for thinking that dialectic plays a distinctively epistemological role—not just a methodological role, or a merely instrumental role in getting episteme. In the second section, I consider three ways it could play that role, on two of which endoxa play at (...) least a co-starring role. But in the third section, I argue that endoxa don’t play that co-starring role, by arguing for a deflationary account of what endoxa are. For that reason, the third view emerges as the most plausible; but the third view is, I’ll suggest, Platonic. (shrink)

This is a study of Plato's use of the character Socrates to model what philosophy is. The study focuses on the Apology, and finds that philosophy there is the love of wisdom, where wisdom is expertise about how to live, of the sort that only gods can fully have, and where Socrates loves wisdom in three ways, first by honoring wisdom as the gods' possession, testing human claims to it, second by pursuing wisdom, examining himself as he examines others, to (...) achieve a more well justified set of beliefs about how to live, and third by trying to live wisely, insofar as he can, which includes exhorting others to care about living wisely than anything else. The essay also includes some suggestions about how Plato criticizes and revises this model of philosophy outside the Apology. (shrink)