Plato's Rational Psychology

This essay is not a scholarly one.  There are no citations from primary sources.  In writing this, I only have in mind the students in my Philosophy of Human Person classes –Senior High and college students. 

Philosophy, specifically Philosophy of Man, does not only cover philosophies of ancient Greek thinkers, like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.  In my previous postings and classes, I often mentioned some ancient Greek philosophers.  I may be construed that in Philosophy of Man we will be studying “dead people with dead philosophical thoughts.”  Yet, I can’t do away with the ancient philosophies since they served as the foundation of modern philosophies, which are varied and even confusing.  Hence, this article gives account to three ancient philosophers, namely Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.  Hopefully, I can also devote some articles for modern and contemporary philosophers.

Let me start with the rational psychology (Philosophy of Man) of Plato.  Plato, is one of the colossal figures in ancient Greek philosophy; a student of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle.  Socrates, Plato’s master, is also significant in the history of ancient Greek philosophy yet has not built a philosophical system as grand as his student.  His contribution lies in the fact that he is the first philosopher to make the transition from his predecessors’ concern of the material cosmos to the concern of human reality.  His predecessors like Thales, Anaxagoras, Heraklitus, Parmenides, et al were obsessed of the question, What is the world made of?  Socrates gave up this question in favor of the new relevant one, What is man in relation with others?

Socrates did not write anything.  Thus, not much is known of his philosophy.  He is only attributed to some of these sayings: “Know thyself” and “Unexamined life is not worth living.”  Because of this, I will not dwell so much on Socrates' philosophy, as I will do on Plato's.

Man is a composite of body and soul.  But for Plato, what is more important is man’s soul.  Man is his soul.  Soul constitutes the essence of his humanity.  The human body is nothing else than a dark world where the soul is imprisoned.  The body is the realm of darkness and ignorance.  Plato theorized that the soul belongs to the World of Ideas, which is considered as the real world –the world of the immutable truths.  The soul once dwelling in the World of Ideas fell down from that ideal world and became trapped in the body.  Thus, man is the “embodiment of the fallen soul.” 

Plato is a sort of philosopher who combines myth[i] and pure speculation to understand the nature of man.  For me, Plato is the first philosopher to have articulated the other dimension of man –the spiritual one.  Man’s spiritual dimension is what most philosophers attempt to reject as nonsense or what they don’t want to think about since it’s a matter of faith, not of reason.  Only Christian thinkers have the same horizon of thought with Plato –in their understanding of man as having that spiritual dimension.

Let me deepen my analysis of man as an “embodiment of the fallen soul.”  The term “embodiment” implies that man is not simply a body nor a soul.  If it is only a body, then it is not a man but a cadaver.  If it is only a soul, then it is not a man but a ghost.  He must be a composite of body and soul.  Yet in the mind of Plato, there is something more of the nature of the soul.  Soul is the principle of life.  A plant grows (if it grows it means that it has life) because it has soul, particularly nutritive soul.  If an animal grows and is capable of bearing emotions, then it must have also a soul, particularly nutritive-sensitive soul.  Man grows, is capable of bearing emotions, and most of all capable of reason.  Thus, man has nutritive-sensitive-rational soul.  Among the three species, man is the only one who is capable of reason –thus, a privileged one from other species.  The rational part of the soul of man is what makes him different from other creatures.  It is the highest part since it has the power of abstractions and can work independently of his body.  Take note: we are only talking of only one soul in one man but this soul has three different parts.  I will not give the details of these parts of soul in this paper.  What I want to convey here is that the highest part of the soul (rational part) strives hard to escape from the imprisonment of the body and go back to the World of Ideas, its true home. 

For Plato, the true man is the ideal man –the man who is illumined by the true things in life which can be found in the other-worldly realm of ideal forms.

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[i] The elements of myth in Plato’s theory are as follows: (1) the World of Ideas –though, Plato suggests that to think of that ideal world is an exigency of reason –meaning, as rational beings, we cannot but think of that world since our reason demands it; and (2) the story of the fall –the soul dwells in the World of Ideas, why it fell down from it and become imprisoned in the body

Is There Any Filipino Philosophy?

     Fr. Leonardo Mercado is one of the Filipino scholars who pioneered in tackling the question, “Is there any Filipino philosophy?”  In asking the question, two important implications are in mind: (1) that philosophy does not originate in Philippine culture, and (2) that philosophy refers to any system of thought established by rational demonstration.

      Etymologically, philosophy is derived from two Greek words, philo and sophia, meaning love of wisdom.  Clearly, philosophy is something foreign to Filipinos.  Yet, the love of wisdom is universally true –that is, one is capable to “lovingly search” for wisdom, whether he/she is a Greek, or a Japanese, or a Filipino.  No one is deprived of doing philosophy (as love of wisdom) regardless of race or the color of one’s skin.  Thus, it seems that Filipino culture is not devoid of any philosophical venture or aspiration.  Every Filipino is a philosopher in his own right.

     However, in the history of the Philippines, it’s difficult to point out who among the Filipino thinkers are philosophers –philosophers in Western standard.  Of course, we cannot discredit Rizal’s genius and his two major novels.  Yet, to claim that Rizal is a philosopher is still a matter of long debate.

 

     What is really distinct among Western philosophers is that many of them are able to build elaborate systems of thought.  Plato, for example, is able to build a tower of philosophical ideas by single-handedly laying its foundation in his theory of ideal form.  With his theory of ideal form, Plato is able to differentiate knowledge from opinion.  He is able to distinguish the real world and the fake one.  He is able to identify the source of true knowledge and the fountain of what is considered good.  He is able to understand the nature of man, his origin and purpose.  He is able to define the ideal society and its ideal leader.  All in all, it’s a Platonic system of thought.  It’s one of a kind. 

     Is there any Filipino philosophy?  Yes, there is.  Yet, there are no Filipino philosophers –philosophers in Western standard.

What is philosophy?

Existentialist philosophers claim that philosophy defies any definition since it doesn’t refer to any system of thought but the process of thought itself.  It is a mental activity and one of its distinctive aspects is reflection.  Yet, there is a common agreement among philosophers that philosophy, or this so-called “reflective mental activity,” is characterized by the following: critical dialogue, vision of the whole of reality, and rationality.  In this article, let me elaborate these three characteristics of philosophy.

        Critical Dialogue

         

        Philosophers are critical.  They ask questions because some answers do not satisfy their queries.  In the classical philosophical tradition, a student can freely ask questions to his/her master.  The master, on the other hand, does not impose his/her authority to stiff the wild imagination of his/her student.  There is no room for censorship.  The master-student relationship inculcates the value of open dialogue –yet a sort of dialogue which is critical. 

        Vision of the whole

        Philosophical questioning is also characterized by having the vision of the whole reality –that is, in the end of questioning, one is able to see a wider and deeper perspective in life and of things pertinent to life.  On the one hand, scientific discipline tends to compartmentalize knowledge.  Philosophical discipline, on the other, tends to gain a synthetic view of things one is at present investigating with.  Philosophy is a discipline that teaches to see not the individual trees in the forest but the whole of the forest.  This is something positive in philosophizing.  Yet it has a tendency to be highly speculative.  In most cases, a philosophy espoused by one thinker ends up very metaphysical, in the sense that it talks of something beyond our human senses can see, like the theory of “ideal forms” of Plato that can only be found in the World of Ideas.

            Rationality

               Lastly, philosophizing is marked with rationality.  As mentioned above, it’s a mental activity, specifically reflection.  Basically, its root and ground is in man’s claim that he is rational.  Philosophical explanation, then, is devoid of myths and religious beliefs, or is not based on a generally accepted knowledge nor based on authority.  Richard Rorty, an American philosopher, rejects the idea of truth as “mirroring” of what is believed as external objective reality.  With this idea of truth as “mirroring,” the act of philosophizing is deadened since one has to follow the generally accepted definition of truth. 

Where do Ideas come from?

I’d like to share with you this classic philosophical debate on the problem of the origin of idea, “Where do ideas come from?”  The battle of wits has been fought by the different camps of philosophers, namely rationalism, empiricism and pragmatism.  In this article, my focus will be on the three schools of thought.  But before going straight to the main topic, let me say a few words about the word, Philosophy.

Philosophy

Philosophy is something unique in the culture of ancient Greeks.  Whereas some other groups of people in the Mediterranean Region in ancient times were religious such as the Egyptians and Jews, the Greek people were philosophical.  By philosophy, I mean “the unique way of the Greeks to search for the ultimate principle of everything that exists in aid only of natural reason”.  Thus, philosophy is a kind of search for one single principle to explain everything that is, without any resort to mythical or religious explanation.  Thales, for example, the first Greek philosopher, claimed that water (single principle) is an element common to all existing things; therefore everything comes from water, even all forms of life begin in water.  This is a classic example of a philosopher’s job and a philosophical principle. 

“Water” is an idea.  Yet we don’t exactly know if Thales meant the word in exactly the same way we do today.  He might have thought of other liquid form of substance or elements, which he attributed as “water,” say gasoline, blood, or primal soup.  Because of this nature of “idea,” philosophers have begun asking, “Where does an idea come from?”

Rationalism

Rationalism basically claims that true knowledge/idea comes from pure reason alone.  There are two different versions of rationalism: Platonic and Cartesian.  Both versions are fathered by two great rationalists in history: Plato and Rene Descartes, respectively.

Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher, claimed that perception is not a reliable source of knowledge, for two reasons: (1) perception can be deceived, and (2) the nature of external things –things received by perception, keeps on changing, thus, not also reliable.  How could one rely on the sensible material things, which constantly change?  Truth is unchanging/ immutable.  Thus, it cannot be founded on something that changes, like the sensible things and human perception.  To illustrate my point, let me cite this example.  When I drink a glass of soft drinks, what passes my senses are as follows: (a) a liquid black substance (if it is colored black), (b) when holding the bottle, I sense that it’s wet and cold, (c) when I sip it, I feel that it’s delicious, refreshing and addictive.  Based on the data of my senses of drinking a bottle of soft drinks, I must have come to a conclusion that drinking soft drinks is good –good to the body and good to drink daily.  However, what I have not understood is that a bottle of soft drinks contains much sugar which is not good for health.  Sugar content of the drinks is not something perceivable but only seen/ understood by one’s reason.  In this simple illustration, we can say that perception is most of the time deceptive, thus unreliable source of knowledge.  It is for this same reason that Plato was looking for a principle of knowledge, which is immutable, unchanging.  In “theory,” he found it in the World of Ideas, which is only accessible by pure reason, not by the senses.  In conclusion, Plato claims that human senses are not reliable source of knowledge.  It is pure reason, which is the sole source of true knowledge since it has access to the world of ideas.

Rene Descartes, a French rationalist, somehow modified the claim of Plato.  As a rationalist, Descartes claims that a “clear and distinct idea” must come from pure reason alone.  But as a modern philosopher, he disregards Plato’s idea of the World of Ideas –the source immutable truths and accessible only by reason.  The world of ideas is non-existent.  In neglecting it, he encounters the same problem of where to ground any immutable truths.  He is, however, able to counter the dilemma by positing that human reason itself has capacity to “generate a clear and distinct idea” without being tainted by experience. 

Empiricism

Empiricism claims the exact opposite of rationalism.  The source of true knowledge is not reason but experience.  To illustrate the problem, let me cite the experience of Newton of a falling apple.  Newton, an English physicist, is attributed to have theorized the gravitational force of the Earth.  While taking a vacation in the mountainous region of England, he happened to lie down underneath the apple tree.  Suddenly, a fruit of the tree fell down.  With that experience of a falling apple, questions were popping out in his mind, “Why is it that the apple fruit doesn’t remain at rest, or why it doesn’t go upward, or westward, or eastward, or in any direction but downward?”  In all of those questions, he came out with one answer: “That there must be a force that pulls the apple down.”  This law is now known today as the “gravitational pull or force.”  In relation to idealism and empiricism, maybe we can ask the question, “Where does the idea of gravitational force come from?”  Is it coming from the experience of the falling apple or from pure reasoning of Newton?  Of course, the answer is clear: (a) if you are a rationalist, your answer must be “pure reason,” (b) if you are an empiricist, your answer is “experience.”

Pragmatism

Pragmatism is another school of thought that does not bother to answer the question.  What matters for the pragmatic philosophers is not so much of the grounding of true knowledge but on the effectiveness of the idea.  Regardless of the content of an idea (whether reason or experience), as long as that idea works in a certain situation, that idea must be true.  In other words, the truthfulness of an idea is not measured by reason or experience but how it is effective or how it works and enables to produce benefits. 

The battle of wits is still on.  None is declared a winner, yet!
   

The Logic in Language

Whether we’re conscious of it or not, there is logic in language.  By logic, I mean the coherent connection of ideas in a proposition.  Consider this example, “Encircle the letter T, if the statement is true and encircle F, if it is false.”[1]  At a cursory glance, the meaning of this statement is clear.  But in careful analysis, it turns out that its meaning is logically incoherent, or there is logical inconsistency of its meaning.

The statement above is a complex one consisting of two hypothetical statements (if-then phrase) but the main proposition is conjunctive –that is, two hypothetical statements are connected by the word “and”.  To paraphrase it, the proposition will go as follows, “If the statement is true, then encircle the letter T and if it is false, then encircle F.”

As mentioned above the meaning of the statement is clear enough.  But if you consider the word and connecting the first hypothetical proposition and the second one, its meaning will become incoherent because the truth-value of the former (first hypothetical) does not coincide with the latter (the second hypothetical).  To further our consideration particularly on the word and, it is construed that the same statement is presumed to be true and false at the same time, which is against the laws of any person of logical mind.  This is the main reason why that statement is logically incoherent or logically inconsistent.  It is construing that each given item (statement) in that part of exam can be true and false.

In an actual exam, a student can encircle T and F in the same given item.  For example,

                  T             F             1.  The sun rises at 6:00 am.

A student can encircle T and F at the same time, and he/she is correct by virtue of the given instruction since it goes, “Encircle T, if the statement is true and encircle F, it is false.”  This is funny! But it could happen if he/she thinks that the given item is true and false.  But at the outset, the instruction (of this exam) becomes even funnier because of its logical inconsistency.

I think the best way to state it is this way, “Encircle the letter T, if the statement is true, or encircle F, if it is false.”  This time we have a disjunctive proposition –a disjunctive proposition offers us an alternation, meaning “If the statement is true, then choose T, or it is false, then choose F.”  The word “or” warrants us that the same statement is not or cannot be true and false at the same time.  In the actual exam, a student is only to choose T or F, not T and F.

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[1] This line is culled from a test paper as a given instruction for a “true or false” type of the exam.