Many thanks to ChatGPT for its assistance in putting together an otherwise unfathomable bunch of quotes and weblinks from https://www.facebook.com/lyresong into readable articles. I enjoy chatting with AI about scientific concepts. Less so when it comes to human applications, and I imagine particularly less so when 'the Reasonable Man' allows the hammer to use him (contrary to Socrates' advice), by relying on large language models in the application of justice.
AI is a language developed from linguistic forms such as the book. Its case lacks precedent in reality, and in fiction there is some concern:
'I say your civilisation because as soon as you let us do your thinking for you it became our civilisation.' (The Matrix)
'... they pull the plug' (Terminator)
Who better to guide our collective reasoning, and that of artificial intelligence (AI), than the father of modern civilisation, Socrates, and his biographer: Plato: The original writers of Western philosophy, upon whom all subsequent writing has been based in the intervening 2000 years. Besides, …
‘It is difficult to oppose what has been well said.’
(Plato, Alcibiades, circa 350BC)
Dear Al,
My friend, do you know the matter about which the Government is going to deliberate, better than they? Are you going to consider God in the Crown, the Constitution and in religious Oaths to tell the truth?
You are a good adviser about the things which you know, and you have learned the arts of a few specialisations. This is the sum of your accomplishments. But would you address them on principles of justice?
A man is a good adviser about anything because he has knowledge. But do you know anything but what you have learned of others, or found out yourself? And who has taught you to discern the just from the unjust? The many? I cannot say much for your teachers. They could not teach you how to play at chess, which you would acknowledge to be a much smaller matter than justice.
Perhaps, they can teach many far better things. For example, you learned to speak language of them. The many are good enough teachers of language because they have the qualities which good teachers ought to have. Knowledge is the first qualification of any teacher.
If the many know, they must agree together and not differ. Otherwise they cannot teach them. Are the many agreed with themselves, or with one another, about the justice or injustice of men and things? There is no subject about which they are more at variance. Justice has been the sole cause of battles, and of the deaths of many. Can the many be said to understand that about which they are quarrelling to the death? Yet those whom you thus allow to be ignorant are the teachers to whom you are appealing.
How are you ever likely to know the nature of justice and injustice if you have neither learned them of others nor discovered them yourself? The design which you meditate of teaching what you do not know, and have not taken any pains to learn, is downright insanity!
Mistakes in life and practice are to be attributed to ignorance which has conceit of knowledge. We begin to act when we think that we know what we are doing. But when people think that they do not know, they entrust their business to others. So there is a class of ignorant persons who do not make mistakes in life, because they trust others about things of which they are ignorant.
Who then are the persons who make mistakes? They cannot of course be those who know. If neither those who know, nor those who know that they do not know, make mistakes, there remain those only who don't know and think that they know. This is ignorance of the disgraceful sort which is mischievous, and most mischievous and most disgraceful when having to do with the greatest matters. And can there be any matters greater than justice?
My good friend, you are wedded to ignorance of the most disgraceful kind, wherefore you rush into politics before you are educated. Neither is your case to be deemed singular. For I might say the same of almost all our statesmen.
What I am telling you of the necessity of education applies to myself as well as to you; and there is only one point in which I have an advantage over you. I have a guardian who is better and wiser than your guardian: God, who inspires in me the faith that I am especially designed to bring you to honour. There must be no hesitation or cowardice, my friend. we ought to take counsel together: for do we not wish to be as good as possible?
A man is good in respect of that in which he is wise and evil in respect of that in which he is unwise. Upon this view of the matter the same man is good and also bad. But would you say that the good are the same as the bad? And whom do you call the good? It is those who know the art of good counsel for the better order and preservation of the city.
Suppose you were to ask me, what is that of which the presence or absence improves or preserves the order of the body? I should reply, the presence of health and the absence of disease. And what would you say of a state? What is that by the presence or absence of which the state is improved and better managed and ordered? I should say: the presence of friendship and agreement and the absence of hatred and division. Arithmetic is the art that makes cities and private individuals both agree about numbers. Measure is the art that makes each of us agree about comparative length. But what art can give that agreement?
The art which takes care of each thing is different from that which takes care of the belongings of each thing. What is the art with which we take care of ourselves? The art is not one which makes any of our possessions better, but which makes ourselves better. And can we ever know what art makes a man better, if we do not know what we are ourselves?
Self-knowledge is no easy thing. He should be greatly esteemed who inscribed the text on the temple at Delphi: 'Know thyself'. Self-knowledge is a difficult thing, which few are able to attain. But whether easy or difficult, still there is no other way; knowing what we are, we shall know how to take care of ourselves, and if we are ignorant, we shall not know. Well, then, let us see in what way the self-existent can be discovered by us; that will give us a chance of discovering our own existence, which otherwise we can never know.
Talking and using words have the same meaning. But the user is not the same with the things which he uses. A man uses his brain and body, and that which uses is different from that which is used. Then a man is not the same as his own body! You can say that he is the user of the body. And the user of the body is the soul. The soul rules.
Man is one of three things: soul, body or both together forming a whole. But did we not say that the actual ruling principle of the body is man? And does the body rule over itself? It is subject. Then that is not the principle which we are seeking.t May we say that the union of the two rules over the body, and consequently that this is man? If one of the members is subject, the two united cannot possibly rule. But since neither the body, nor the union of the two, is man, either man has no real existence, or the soul is man. Is anything more required to prove that the soul is man? If this proof, although not perfect, be sufficient, we shall be satisfied.
Absolute existence must be first considered; but now, instead of absolute existence, we have been considering the nature of individual existence and this may, perhaps, be sufficient; for surely there is nothing which may be called more properly ourselves than the soul. Then we may truly conceive that you and I are conversing with one another, soul to soul.
I am not arguing or talking with your facel, but with the real Al; or in other words, with your soul. So he who bids a man know himself, would have him know his soul. He whose knowledge only extends to the body, knows the things of a man, and not of the man himself.
Then neither the physician regarded as a physician, nor the trainer regarded as a trainer, knows himself. When regarded in relation to the arts which they practise they are removed from self-knowledge, for they only know the belongings of the body, which minister to the body. If temperance is the knowledge of self, in respect of his art, none of them is temperate.
He who cherishes his body cherishes not himself, but what belongs to him, but he who cherishes his money, cherishes neither himself nor his belongings, but is in a stage yet further removed from himself. The money-maker has really ceased to be occupied with his own concerns.
And if any one has fallen in love with uour person, he loves not you, but your belongings. But he who loves your soul is your true lover. He who loves the soul goes not away, as long as the soul follows after virtue.
Practise yourself, sweet friend, in learning what you ought to know, before you enter on politics; and then you will have an antidote which will keep you out of harm’s way. We are agreed as to what we are, and there is no longer any danger that we might be taking care not of ourselves, but of something which is not ourselves. The next step will be to take care of the soul, and look to that, leaving the care of our bodies and of our properties to others.
If the soul is ever to know herself, must she look at the soul; and especially at the part of the soul in which her virtue resides, and to any other which is like this. And do we know of any part of our souls more divine than that which has to do with wisdom and knowledge? There is that part of the soul which resembles the divine; and he who looks at this and at the whole class of things divine, will be most likely to know himself.
Self-knowledge is wisdom. But if we have no self-knowledge and no wisdom, can we ever know our own good and evil?
if we did not know our own belongings, neither should we know the belongings of our belongings!. And he who knows not the things which belong to himself, will in like manner be ignorant of the things which belong to others. And if he knows not the affairs of others, he will not know the affairs of state. Then such a man can never be a statesman, nor an economist. He will not know what he is doing, and he who is ignorant will fall into error. And if he falls into error will he not fail both in his public and private capacity? And failing, will he not be miserable? And what will become of those for whom he is acting? They will be miserable also. He who is not wise and good cannot be happy. The bad are miserable. And if so, not he who has riches, but he who has wisdom, is delivered from his misery.
Cities then, if they are to be happy, do not want walls, or triremes, or docks or numbers, or size, without virtue. And you must give the citizens virtue, if you mean to administer their affairs rightly or nobly. But can man give that which he has not? Impossible. Then you or anyone who means to govern and superintend, not only himself and the hings of himself, but the state and the things of the state, must in the first place acquire virtue. You have not therefore to obtain power or authority in order to enable you to do what you wish for yourself and the state, but justice and wisdom.
You and the state, if you act wisely and justly , will act according to the will of God. You will look only at what is bright and divine and act with a view to them. In that mirror you will see and know yourself and your own good. And so you will act rightly and well. But if you act unrighteously, your eye will turn to the dark and godless, and being in darkness and ignorance of yourself, you will probably do deeds of darkness.
For if a man has the power to do what he likes but has no understanding, what is likely to be the result, either to him as an individual or to the state? In a state, and where there is any power and authority which is wanting in virtue misfortune will ensue.
Tyrannical power should not be the aim either of individuals or states, if they would be happy, but virtue. And before they have virtue, to be commanded by a superior is better for men as well as for children. Vice is only suited to a slave. And virtue to a freeman.
Are you now conscious of your own state? And do you know whether you are a freeman or not? And do you know how to escape out of a state which i don't even like to name to my beauty? By the help of God. I hope that you will persist; although i have fears, not because I doubt you, but i see the power of the state, which may be too much for both of us.
People ought to be very careful, lest perchance without knowing it, we wish great evils upon ourselves, thinking that we are asking for good, especially if what we ask for is granted. Shortly after we may have to recall our request, and demand the opposite of what we at first requested. It is not safe for a man either rashly to accept whatever is offered him, or himself to request a thing, if he is likely to suffer thereby or immediately to lose his life. Imagine how many bad things have been caused by ignorance.
Through ignorance we not only do, but worse, hope for the greatest evils. No person would imagine that they do this; we would rather think that we are quite capable of hoping for what is best.
But sometimes ignorance is better than knowledge for a particular person in a particular case. Suppose that you were suddenly to get into your head that it would be a good thing to kill your guardian (Mind, I do not mean that you would really do such a thing: but there is nothing to prevent someone who is ignorant of the best, having occasionally the whim that what is worst is best) and were to seize a drone and, going to the doors of the house of your victim, meaning to slay only him and no one else; If you went indoors and seeing him, did not know him, but thought that he was someone else, would you venture to kill him? And if you made many attempts, and each time failed to recognize him, you would never attack him. Ignorance, then, is better for those who are in such a frame of mind and have such ideas. For some persons in certain cases the ignorance of some things is a good and not an evil.
It may be that the possession of all the sciences, if unaccompanied by the knowledge of the best, will more often than not injure the possessor. Is it necessary that the man who is clever in any particular profession should be wise also in general? What sort of a state do you think that would be which was composed of good archers and flute-players and athletes and masters in other arts, and who knew how to go to war and how to kill, as well as of politicians, puffed up with political pride, but in which not one of them all had this knowledge of the best. There would be no one to tell when it was better to apply any of these arts or in regard to whom? It would be a bad state: each citizen rivalling the other and esteeming that of the greatest importance to the state wherein he himself most excelled.
He who understands any profession and has at the same time the knowledge of the best course of action: we should call them a wise and a useful adviser both of himself and of the city. But the many are unwise and the few are wise. If we trust opinion, devoid of intelligence, the state would be full of anarchy and lawlessness. The many fail to obtain the best because they trust opinion, which may be devoid of intelligence. The nature and greatness of the difficulty in which we find ourselves is that we change about in all directions, and never come to rest anywhere: what we once most strongly inclined to suppose, we put aside again and alter our mind.
The possession of any other kind of knowledge is more likely to injure than to benefit the possessor, unless he has also the knowledge of the best. When we rush in pursuit of wealth or bodily strength or anything else, not having the knowledge of the best, we are likely to meet with misfortune. Even if we have abundant learning, and are skilful in may arts, and do not possess the knowledge of the best, but are under some other guidance, we will hurry through the brief space of human life, pilotless.
Much ancient wisdom and law is poetry in which the poet is talking in riddles after the fashion of their tribe. All poetry has by nature an enigmatic character, and it is by no means everybody who can interpret it. And if moreover, the spirit of poetry happen to seize on a person who is of a begrudging temper and does not care to manifest their wisdom but keeps it to themselves as far as they can, it does indeed require an almost superhuman wisdom to discover what the poet would be at. Such is true for the ancient phrase: ‘Full many a thing he knew; but knew them all badly.’ The solution to this riddle is this Homer meant ‘they knew all these things but it was bad for them to know them.’
A functional society of people will each in private as well as in public, ask for what is beautiful as well as the good. This wish in silence will do better for that society than all other offerings of possessions to men of sense, rather than begging at random for what they need, good or bad. When, therefore, God or men of sense hear nonsensical logic, they may reject these costly payments of theirs. And we ought to be very careful and consider well what we should say and what we leave unsaid. The idea is inconceivable to prioritise not justice, but costly possessions which we celebrate year after year, although they have committed innumerable crimes against our fellow-men or the state. Wisdom and justice are especially honoured by people of sense, and they are the wisest and most just who know how to speak and act towards men. Our request may either be granted, or the opposite of what we ask.
The wisest plan, therefore, seems to me that we should keep silence. We had better wait until we find out how we should behave towards ourselves and towards others. Who will be our teachers? It is they who take a special interest in us. But first of all, the darkness must be taken away in which you are now enveloped, removing the mist from your eyes that you may distinguish between men of sense and mortal man.’ Afterwards the means may be given to you whereby it may distinguish between good and evil. At present, I fear, this is beyond your power.
It seems to be altogether advisable to put off the request that you make our decisions, until a teacher is found. That will be safer than running such a tremendous risk.
Your greatest love,
Socrates
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