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The world is awash with information. Some information is misinformation (falsehoods), and some misinformation is disinformation (deliberate falsehoods), but all of it is stuff that needs to processed in order to be useful, otherwise it's not much better than gossip or rumor.
Some people believe that misinformation must be suppressed lest other people do stupid or harmful things. A recent example would be the riots in England, which are alleged to have been "caused" by false rumors about the identity of someone who killed and injured children at a party. Additional examples are easily found, and I suspect they will multiply significantly once "AI" programs are used more frequently to generate "content" for posting on "social" media.
But here's the thing: human beings aren't Skinnerian stimulus-response machines. Those who give their attention to rumors and then take action (especially violent action like rioting or attacking those they disagree with) based on those rumors aren't merely misinformed - more fundamentally, they lack wisdom. If you ask me, the untruths aren't to blame; instead, it's those who haven't bothered to acquire a modicum of wisdom and common sense in the first place.
Although wisdom won't inoculate you from all foolishness, it certainly helps!
(Cross-posted at philosopher.coach.)
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One of the many fascinating aspects of both the Iliad and the Odyssey is the fundamental ambiguity of Homer's stories. Is the Iliad a great war poem - or a great anti-war poem? Is Achilles really the hero of the Iliad, or is it perhaps Hector (whose death and funeral mark the end of the poem)? Are the gods the sources and enforcers of justice, or are they just as often capriciously unjust (e.g., in causing the ten-year wanderings of Odysseus after the Trojan War)? And so on.
This is one of the reasons Plato had Socrates express so many reservations about Homer in the Republic. For the very same reason, Homer was a favorite among Greek thinkers of a questioning mindset, such as Pyrrho and his disciple Timon of Phlius. This essential ambiguity will provide much fodder for reflection in my projected epic poem about Pyrrho and Alexander the Great.
(Cross-posted at philosopher.coach.)
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Here toward the end of Book VI Aristotle looks at several skills and traits that are either constituents of wisdom or similar to wisdom in certain respects: deliberative excellence [euboulia], astuteness [sunesis], thoughtfulness [gnōmē], and sensitivity [sungnōmē].
Deliberative excellence is not conceptual understanding [epistēmē] since it deals with particulars, but neither is it mere opinion [doxa] or guesstimation since the person who deliberates well about what to do can provide an account [logos] for their actions and commitments. Instead, it's a matter of correctly [orthōs] thinking things through [dianoia] about what gets us closer to our goals [ta pros to telos]. Yet there are two kinds of goal: particular goals we might just happen to have, and the overall goal of living well. Deliberative excellence "plain and simple" [haplōs] is closely connected to wisdom [phronēsis], since both are concerned with "the sort of things that are conducive to living well as a whole" (1140a28).
Astuteness [sunesis] is quickness in perceiving situations in which we get stuck or reach an impasse [aporia] and thus cause us to deliberate or take counsel. Although astuteness isn't exactly wisdom, it enables us to more readily and appropriately use the wisdom we already possess.
Thoughtfulness [gnōmē] and sensitivity [sungnōmē] consist in correctly [orthōs] discerning what is humane [epieikos]. In Book V, Aristotle had observed that humaneness "sets things straight" and "speaks correctly" [orthōs], thus honoring the spirit of justice rather than the mere letter.
All of these mental traits - along with insight [nous] - converge on the same point: that doing what's beautifully right [kalos] is not a matter of following abstract rules but of apprehending the particular possibilities inherent in each opportune moment [kairos] we live through. Indeed, because the particulars are the sources [archai] of our insight into why we take action in life, it's important to pay heed to people who have a great deal of experience [empeiria] of life. Such people grasp the truth in significant ways, even if they can't exactly spell out why they do what they do; thus their actions and statements provide valuable material for ethical reflection and the examined life.
In the remaining chapters (12-13) of Book VI, Aristotle will put these various strands together and provide provisional answers about the nature of wisdom and sagacity. Onward and upward!
(Cross-posted at philosopher.coach.)
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In the most recent installment of our walk with Aristotle, we puzzled through the beginnings of his analysis of wisdom [phronēsis]. In Book VI.6-8 he climbs further up this steep section of the trail to discuss not only wisdom but also sagacity [sophia].
In the single paragraph of VI.6, Aristotle says that when we truly have understanding [epistēmē] of something, we can reliably engage in spelling out [apodeixis] why it is the way it is. Yet not everything can be spelled out: at some point in the chain of explanation we come to aspects of reality that can only be seen, albeit not perceptually but intellectually. He calls these the sources [archai] of things and says that the mental trait or practice [hexis] involved is insight [nous].
According to Aristotle, we need both understanding [epistēmē] and insight [nous] to have precise and reliable "truthing" [alētheuein] of the most important [timiōtatos] and serious [spoudaiotatos] aspects of reality and human experience, which are unchanging. He identifies this combination as sophia, which I render as "sagacity". By contrast, wisdom [phronēsis] concerns things we can deliberate about and change through our actions.
It's a common misconception, I think, that on Aristotle's account sagacity is limited to truths about mathematics, astronomy, theology, and the like - and that it doesn't apply to the sublunary realm of living things and human beings. Yet according to Aristotle animal species are eternal and unchanging (a topic for another time) and we can't decide to be other than we are; thus disciplines such as biology, psychology, and ethics are just as much objects of sagacity as the more rarified sciences.
Indeed, Aristotle claims that even action-guiding wisdom [phronēsis] needs to grasp not only the particulars of specific situations but also the universals of human nature and the human good. This might even imply that you can't be consistently good in your actions unless you have some measure of sagacity in your thoughts. Nevertheless, the primary focus of action and decision remains with the particulars, which is why it's necessary to have experience [empeiria] of life in order to be wise. In a field like mathematics, experience isn't required and young people can succeed admirably, whereas in ethics and action young people are full of theoretical talk (1142a21, cf. 1105b13) but haven't yet integrated the lessons of experience into their practice of life.
In the chapters that follow (VI.9-11), Aristotle will further analyze the constituent faculties and activities of action-guiding wisdom. We'll look at those next time.
(Cross-posted at philosopher.coach.)
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Every year around Independence Day, I carve out time to read and reflect on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; and every year I notice something new. This year it was the first clause in Article IV, Section 4: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government." As with everything else in the Constitution, this "guarantee clause" has been analyzed historically, legally, and philosophically over the last 200+ years. Although I'm not a scholar of the Constitution and don't plan to become one, my curiosity was piqued, so I decided to gain a slightly better understanding of republicanism (with a small "r").
James Madison, the primary framer of the Constitution, defined republicanism as that form of government "which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people", thus opposing it to governments in which some or all of the powers are held by one person or a certain faction of the people. In his book From Oligarchy to Republicanism: The Great Task of Reconstruction, Forrest A. Nabors observes that "a key test of republicanism is whether the people for whom the law is made are the makers of the law", in contrast to the "imperial rule" that obtains "when an outside power makes the law for others who must live by the law" (p. 11) - which, of course, was the condition of the colonies before independence. He also notes that Madison was not impressed by the novel constitutional interpretations put forward decades later by John C. Calhoun and his ilk, whom he called "disciples of aristocracy, oligarchy or monarchy" (p. 13).
According to Nabors, perhaps the most daring innovation of the framers was to attempt the founding of a large republic; unlike the small republics of, say, ancient Athens or Renaissance Venice, the U.S.A. was designed to scale up indefinitely. A key constitutional construct intended to make large-scale republicanism work in practice was federalism: "'the division and organization of power' between the national government and the state governments" whereby "powers appropriate to national objects were enumerated and given to the national government in the Constitution" while "all others remained with the states" (p. 11) - or, as the Tenth Amendment says, even "reserved to the people".
Over time, the American people have progressively discarded federalism, so that more and more powers have been concentrated in the central government. It strikes me that this hasn't worked out all that well, since decision-making happens ever more distantly from the people, most things have been "nationalized" so tussles over policy seem increasingly existential, and more and more the laws and regulations promulgated in the District of Columbia feel like imperial impositions by an "outside power".
Even though a healthy dose of federalism might be part of the cure for our partisan death spiral, I'm not optimistic that collectively we'll come to that realization unless truly pressed to seek radical solutions to what ails the American body politic.
In any case, political musings like these, while interesting at times, touch on matters that are far outside my span of influence and control, so I try not to engage in them very often. Your mileage may vary. :-)
(Cross-posted at philosopher.coach.)
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Only the merest wisps of evidence remain for the thoughts of Pyrrho, the founder of ancient Greek skepticism and, perhaps, the bringer of Buddhism to Greece. Like Socrates, Pyrrho wrote nothing. His disciple Timon of Phlius did some writing, but almost all of it is lost. The primary text that has survived from antiquity is a brief passage in the Preparation for the Gospel by the Christian polemicist Eusebius of Caesarea (4th century AD), who quotes from Book VIII of On Philosophy by the Peripatetic philosopher Aristocles of Messene (1st century AD), who in turn cites but doesn't seem to precisely quote Timon. That's not much to go on!
According to Aristocles by way of Eusebius, Timon said Pyrrho held that "πράγματα are equally ἀδιάφορα, ἀστάθμητα, and ἀνεπίκριτα" (from which certain interesting behavioral recommendations follow, such as cultivating a lack of opinions about the πράγματα). Some scholars, such as Christopher Beckwith, try to puzzle out the meaning of these terms by looking to early Buddhism. That can be enlightening, but another worthwhile approach is to ponder these terms in the context of earlier Greek philosophy, literature, and theology. Having just re-read the Iliad for the second time this year and also having just read Homer on the Gods and Human Virtue by Peter J. Ahrensdorf, I think I've identified a connection worth pursuing.
Through close study of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Ahrensdorf observes that the Greek gods (Zeus, Hera, and the rest) are "unpredictable, whimsical, and capricious beings" (p. 57) who are "mysterious" (p. 246), "unreliable" (p. 59), and "fundamentally indifferent" (p. 59) to the fates of human beings. Taking our cue from the fact that one meaning of πράγματα is "fortunes" or "circumstances", we can see that from a theological perspective the gods are indifferent (ἀδιάφορα), unreliable (ἀστάθμητα), and inscrutable (ἀνεπίκριτα) regarding the fates and fortunes of human beings. If we take the gods to be personifications of natural processes and events, then it stands to reason that a Greek thinker deeply steeped in Homer might draw conclusions about human affairs that appear similar to early Buddhism. For example, Beckwith argues that ἀδιάφορα is equivalent to Buddhist anātman, ἀστάθμητα to Buddhist dukkha, and ἀνεπίκριτα to Buddhist anitya. While he might be right, we don't necessarily need the Buddhist angle to make sense of ancient reports about Pyrrho's stance toward things human and divine. Indeed, the two lines of argument might corroborate and reinforce each other, or even reflect an underlying insight common across several Indo-European cultures. As I work on research and writing of an epic poem about Pyrrho, I'll continue to reflect on these matters and provide further reports on what I learn.
(Cross-posted at philosopher.coach.)
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