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Does Plato offer a comprehensive refutation of relativism?
By: someoneisatthedoor

In Theatetus Plato sought to formulate an absolute theory of knowledge, one that is “unerring” or possibly objective. He sought to unify or transcend the presocratic philosophers, particularly the contrast between Parmenides and Zeno’s monism and the pluralism of Heraclitus and Protagoras. Plato’s answer is the dualism of the senses and the Forms, the search for knowledge consisting of the discovery of or participation with innate ideas. He presents Socrates as an objective and fair questioner who is “barren of wisdom,” (Plato, 1987, 150c) whose method will yield fair and true answers to the epistemological questions with which Plato is concerned. This technique fails to refute relativism in Theatetus, as his argument against relativism and his presentation of the innate theory of knowledge are unconvincing.

The Socratic method is meant be objective, or at least unbiased. Socrates asks questions of Theatetus and masquerades as knowing nothing. This is aimed to convince us that what Socrates says is true; because he has no prior motive or knowledge he must be objective. This is a clever deceit on Plato’s part because it means he can manipulate the reader or audience into accepting anything Socrates says and he can keep his agenda i.e. the Forms, concealed from view, at least initially. Socrates asks questions to produce certain answers from Theatetus and from this seemingly innocent position he dictates the enquiry. This betrays the inquiry as exclusive , not objective as it might appear, this exclusivity being Plato’s already existing conception of knowledge. The type of questions used dictate the possible answers, “Tell me how you are searching and I will tell you what you are searching for.” (Wittgenstein, 2000, p18) Asking questions is the most effective way to shape a discourse about something, particularly when you are trying to exclude certain possibilities. The argument that all he is doing is asking questions is a poor one because there are long sections of the inquiry where Socrates speaks for many sentences and Theatetus merely agrees. Furthermore Plato’s enquiry presupposes there is truth and is directly concerned with what truth is. This means he also presupposes falsehood as something which truth is not.

The logical rule by which Socrates’ inquiry progresses, and hence the shape adopted by Theatetus’ answers, is the law of non contradiction, explained in the Phaedo, “The absolute opposite cannot become opposite to itself.” (Plato, 1896, 103a) Plato uses this method to attack the pluralism of Heraclitus and Protagoras, and this constitutes his principle attack on relativism . Plato is successful at demonstrating that Protagoras’ theory is contradictory, by stating that if ‘man is the measure of all things ’ then each man is right if one says relativism is correct and one says relativism is not correct, “In saying that everyone believes what is the case he is conceding the truth of beliefs which oppose his own, he is conceding the truth of the opinion that he is wrong.” The escape for the Protagorean or the relativist is admitting that relativism is self-contradictory; since no opinion is better than any other it is irrelevant that someone might consider relativism wrong and be correct because this claim is no more effective at refuting relativism than the claim supporting it. Nor is either claim better at proving relativism. While Plato has demonstrated that relativism is self-contradictory, the relativist defence would say that relativism is no more or less true with respect to whether or not it is self-contradictory. Plato’s other key argument against relativism is that if I make a prediction such as ‘It will rain tomorrow’ and then tomorrow I say ‘it isn’t raining’ and I am right, it isn’t raining, then I have contradicted myself, I cannot be right both times. The defence of relativism to this criticism is that the today-me and the tomorrow-me are equally right. This is a somewhat rhetorical argument in that today-me and tomorrow-me are also equally wrong but the relativist could say this distinction between right and wrong is purely rhetorical .

Heraclitus’ ambiguity can also be used to successfully defend relativism , in that although he maintained that everything was in a state of flux, contrary to the monists Zeno and Parmenides who stated that nothing changed, he also claimed that ‘all is one’: precisely the claim that defines monism. The theory of flux can be used to explain differences in perception, as Socrates notes, a wind can feel different to two people because it is in motion and therefore could have come to be a different temperature between the situations when the people felt the wind. This ambiguity the theory of flux allows, say between warm and not warm, may flaunt the law of non-contradiction but a Heraclitean relativist could just say that the claim itself that ‘all is in flux’ is in flux and so it is impossible to say anything conclusive about it. If it is impossible to pause (the flux) and say anything about anything then all is one, because you can’t distinguish between things without referring to one as different from another. This difference relies on their being an identifiable difference between them but according to Heraclitus (according to Plato’s Heraclitus), “Nothing is a single non-relative identity and you cannot correctly identify anything or describe what it is like.” (Plato, 1987, 152d) If we cannot identify the qualities of things then we cannot differentiate between them, hence all things being one.

One criticism of this idea is if the theory of flux is itself in flux then how can we identify that everything is in flux ? The self-contradictory quality is similar to that of Protagoreanism and can be defended in a similar way. If the theory of flux has the property of being in flux (i.e. that which makes it self-contradictory) then it cannot be identified as being self-contradictory. A less insistent form of the theory of flux allows the theory to escape the criticism of not being able to state that all is in flux. If everything is the same state of flux, i.e. all is becoming at the same rate and in the same way, then it is impossible to distinguish between things, indeed it is impossible to identify change because one has nothing to compare change to. However if we say that all things are in flux but in different states of flux and at different rates then the faster changing things can be distinguished from the slower things and so statements about them can be made. These statements still have no absolute (permanent) truth-value in that they will only be true temporarily but they are possible, unlike the more insistent form of the theory.

Although Theatetus and Socrates come to the conclusion that they have found no satisfactory definition of knowledge Plato does propose his alternative to relativism. He uses the metaphor of an aviary in, “the birds are to be thought of as pieces of knowledge; that to acquire a bird and confine it in the enclosure is to have learned or discovered the matter with which the piece of knowledge is concerned; and that is what knowing is.” (Plato, 1987, 197e) This explains how it is possible for man to, “possess, but not have, knowledge,” (Plato, 1987, 197c) because according to Plato man has an eternal soul which contains knowledge and we recall it as we live, “Learning is only a process of recollection… we must have learnt at some former time what we recollect now. And that would be impossible unless our soul had existed somewhere before they came into this human form. So that is another reason for believing soul immortal.” (Plato, 1896, 72e) Plato here is stating how knowledge is attained through appreciation of his theory that the Forms ‘participate’ in the things we see, giving them the qualities or properties of beauty, goodness, truth etc. Plato thus explains his scepticism about our perceiving of the physical world, dividing between appearance and reality, or truth. One problem with this is that the world of the forms, or any other interpretation, is just an appearance. It may appear that appreciation of the world as defined by the Forms is more accurate than the appearance of what our senses tell us but all it does is appear to be more accurate. If an epistemological enquiry starts, as Plato does, from a point of being sceptical about what appears to us then we must be sceptical about everything which appears to us. Even if we ascribe a Form to that which is truly beautiful we still may be in error that the thing is truly beautiful, so to talk of Forms (which are unchanging and certain) as defining what we perceive, what appears to us (changing, uncertain) seems contradictory .

Indeed Plato uses a contradiction between the apparent and the true to explain knowledge, contrary in one sense his own logical rule of non-contradiction, “The criteria which have been bestowed upon the ‘true being’ of things are the criteria of not being, of naught; the ‘true world’ has been constructed out of contradiction to the actual world: indeed an apparent world insofar as it is a moral-optical illusion.” (Nietzsche, 1976, p 484) The “moral-optical illusion” in Plato’s case derives from him presupposing the existence of complete truth and then defining it by means of an exclusive, incomplete set of criteria . What is more significant to the argument about relativism is that if knowledge is innate then all we each have to do is recollect our knowledge. This in an epistemological sense makes us all as potentially wise as each other, which is what many relativists would claim. Plato does argue against this egalitarian definition of knowledge, “doesn’t it surprise you suddenly to find yourself the intellectual equal of any human being, or even any god?” (Plato, 1987, 162c) The opposing claim, that we each have different knowledge to recollect makes it seem impossible to accurately state which type of knowledge is superior to which because no one might yet have recollected the best type of knowledge of all.

Plato is trying to construct an objective reality that is alternate to the world of our senses. It is in this sense that Plato’s logic encompasses a contradiction, between the apparent and actual worlds. The third definition of a rational account shows us what method would reveal such truth to us, “If you get hold of what uniquely differentiates something from everything else, you will arguably get a rational account of that thing.” (Plato, 1987, 208d) One implication of this is that we would have to know everything in order to know in what way each thing differs from all the others. It seems that knowing everything would signal the end of philosophical discussion, just as relativism would since it would render everyone equally wise there would be no point discussing issues with one another. What is there left to search for if we obtain absolutely certain knowledge? It is only in uncertainty that there is any role for most of philosophy, particularly logical discourse because in certainty there are no two arguments to be criticised or reconciled. It seems that Plato draws on the view of the monists that the world is unchanging as part of his definition for what knowledge is, knowledge being part of the eternal stuff that makes up our souls. One issue is that once we have validly attained a view of the world that is unchanging then the world ceases to be interesting, because we can have no other reaction to it. It is only through difference and opposition that discourse takes place and through this discourse that the world is interesting, “War is the father of all good things.” (Nietzsche, 1974, p143) The shape of our discourse about a subject defines how we take that subject to be, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” (Wittgenstein, 2000, 5.6) It is when discourse is interpreted as being changeable and uncertain that discourse remains interesting and it only through using language in a new way that we can come to new ideas, as Plato notes of the theory of flux, “Those who hold this theory need to set up another language since at present they don’t have expressions which fit the theory,” (Plato, 1987, 183b)

Plato fails to offer a comprehensive refutation of relativism. His method is deceitful in that it covers up the presumptions or more basic principles that his whole theory rests, and also defers the point at which Plato reveals his alternative to relativism, the Forms. Both Protagoreanism and Heracliteanism can be defended against the attacks of the law of non-contradiction, by rendering the law of non-contradiction no better or worse than any other idea. However for Heracliteanism to more constructively rid itself of being contradictory we could have a reading that excluded the monist parts of the theory and say that with different rates and types of flux then certain judgements are possible, they are just only valid temporarily. Plato’s argument for the Forms and innate ideas runs into contradiction when he attempts to conceive of the Forms as real and as explaining the unreliable appearance of the world of the senses. The contradiction here is that Plato tries to use something unchanging to explain the changing. His theory of innate ideas can give way to relativism by rendering all people equally wise or alternative gives way to the claim that we haven’t recollected knowledge yet and don’t know when we have. Fundamentally we shouldn’t even want the sort of overarching objective certainty that Plato looks for because such a type of truth would render philosophy redundant and the world banal.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science. New York. Vintage Books Ltd.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1976. Twilight of The Idols. in Walter Kaufmann ed. The Portable Nietzsche. London. Penguin Books.

Plato. 1987. Theatetus. St Ives. Penguin Books Ltd.

Plato. 1896. The Trial and Death of Socrates. New York. Macmillan & Co.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2000. in Heaton, John M. Wittgenstein and Psychoanalysis. Cambridge. Icon Books Ltd.

Article Source: http://journal.ilovephilosophy.com

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