Plato's Protagoras

Question 1

Is virtue (arete) teachable? If so, how?

Answer 1

Protagoras: Virtue is taught through habituation and social conditioning (noncognitive)

Socrates: Doubtful, but if it can, it will be through intellectual training

Question 2

How are the different virtues related to each other?

Answer 2

Protagoras: Vitues are to a large extent separate and independent

Socrates: The virtues form a unity - you can’t have on without the other

Question 3

What’s the relation between virtue and intellect

Answer 3

Protagoras: Virtues are independent of intellect - doesn’t have much to do with what you believe

Socrates: Virtue is a kind of knowledge, or at least depends on a certain kind of knowledge

Question 4

Is akrasia (weakness of will, incontinence) possible?

Answer 4

Protagoras: Incontinence/weakness of will is possible

Socrates: Weakness of will is impossible

Question 5

It is assumed that successful living requires the cultivation of virtues

Answer 5

In this Protagoras, it is assumed that successful living requires the cultivation of virtues
Eg. The virtue of a blade, is to be sharp, given that the function is to cut things
Eg. A teacher has a job to do, and there are certain characteristics to be a good teacher
This is the same for being a human

Aristotle reports that Socrates thought that virtue was knowledge

Plato and Aristotle are going to reject Socrates’ intellectualist ideas, they thought it was too much

Question 6

Sophists

Answer 6

Protagoras - a sophist

Hippocrates wants to learn from Protagoras

It’s dangerous to hand over your soul to a sophist - you don’t know whether you are entrusting your soul to something good or bad
Socrates says that Hippocrates should be wary

Protagros that what Hippocrates will get from studying with him is that he will get better and better
Socrates says that Protagaros is talking about the art of citizenship, and to be promising to make men good citizens

Question 7

Socrates’ reasons to doubt that virtue can be taught:

Answer 7

• There don’t seem to be any experts
• If virtue could be taught, there would be experts
• If there were experts, only experts would be asked to give advice
• If virtue were teachable, people would teach their children to be virtuous
• Children of virtuous men are not always virtuous

Protagoras’ response to the first doubt:
No experts?
We’re all experts

Protagoras’ response to the second doubt:
- Children are actually taught to be virtuous

Virtue is taught through punishment
Sons of virtuous people, are virtuous, they just may not seem virtuous - or they may not be exceedingly great at being virtuous
Everyone must have a share of virtue if there is going to be societal law

Question 8

The Athenians punish people for vicious activities, and this makes sense, only because people don’t regard justice as natural, but developed

Answer 8

• No one admonishes or reproves someone for bad things that are due to nature or bad luck
• If some good thing is attainable through practice and training and teaching, and someone does not have this good thing, but the corresponding bad thing, then we do admonish and reprove that person
• When someone acts unjust, we admonish and reprove that person
• Punishment is only reasonable if it aims to deter the wrong-doer or others from committing the crime in the future
• This aim of deterrence presupposes that right conduct can be learned and punishment is a way of instilling
  So, humans regard conduct

Question 9

Why pay protagoras then? (if anyone can teach virtue)

Answer 9

If there is someone more advanced in virtue, they must be cherished

Question 10

Socrates poses this question:
Is virtue a single thing, with justice and temperance and piety its parts, or are the things I have just listed all names for a single entity?

Answer 10

Protagoras’ answer:
Protagoras says that they are different - you can have one without having the others

Virtue depends on knowledge - so you can’t have one without the other

So this seems to be a counterintuitive

However, no virtue is supposed to be alike

Problems: Justice is just? Piety is pious?
Self-prediction? Is this just a category mistake?
Or are they assuming a transmission theory of causality?

Problem: forced choice?
Isn’t piert the sort of thing that is just, and isn’t justice the sort of thing to be pious?

Is this a forced choice?
Is it not pious and is piety not just

Aristotle says that there are different ways of being opposites

Contradictories: F and G cannot both apply to a subject, because they are opposites, and F and not F cannot both fail to apply to a subject (one must apply, just or unjust)

Contraries: F and G cannot both apply to a subject (because they are opposites), but both F and not F can both fail to apply (neither just or unjust)

Problem: similar = same?
What about the move from “similar in some respects” to very similar or nearly the same
Is this the distinction that Protagoras is alluding to

Problem: Dissimilar in all respects?
He says that parts of virtue are related to each other, in such a way that no part resembles any other
He says that one part of virtue is not like another

It would seem that they are not entirely dissimilar

Question 11

Folly and Wisdom are opposites

Answer 11

1. Folly and Wisdom are opposites
2. Acting foolishly is the opposite of acting temporarily
3. Foolish action is due to folly
4. Temperate action is due to temperance
5. Opposite actions are due to opposite qualities
6. Folly and temperance are opposites
7. Each thing has only one opposite
   So, wisdom = temperance

Remember, there are two types of opposites: contraries and contradictories
Is the type of opposite in Premise 2 the same as that in Premise 7
Premise 2: Acting foolishly is the opposite = contrary of acting temperately - you can’t be acting temporarily and foolishly
Premise 7: Each thing has a single opposite = contradictory - different sense of opposite - he means opposite in the sene of contradictory, it has to be one or the other

Question 12

Contraries

Answer 12

• There are two ways of not being a coward
• Being courageous (having confidence based on knowledge) and
• Being rash (having confidence based on delusion or passion)
• Contraries: Cowardice and courage
• Contradictories: cowardice and non-cowardice (which includes both courage and rashness) - in the case of those two things, you have to be one or the other

Question 13

Temperance and Justice

Answer 13

• Sometimes people who act unjustly act sensibly
• Acting sensibly is having good sense
• Having good sense is/involves having good judgment
• Having good judgment implies doing well
• What’s good is advantageous for people
• Here the argument cuts off.
• Protagoras denies what he expects Socrates to argue: that injustice is never advantageous

Question 14

Protagoras revises his claim:

Answer 14

Although justice, piety, temperance, and wisdom may be similar, courage is clearly distinct
You will find many people who are extremely unjust, impious, intemperate, and ignorant and yet exceptionally courageous
You could be courageous without having the other virtues

With justice and wisdom, these virtues are about hitting a certain target, about the aim of an action, how you treat others, or hitting the truth

Protagoras thinks that virtues are passive traits and Socrates thinks they are active, intellectual capabilities
Protagoras sees virtues as quasi-natural states

Question 15

Socrates’ response to Protagoras’ idea that courage is distinct

Answer 15

First Socrates tries to show that courage and wisdom are the same, but all he ends up showing is that wisdom is necessary for courage - not every kind of confidence is sufficient for being courageous - however, that doesn’t mean that all wisdom and courage are the same - what Socrates is trying to show is that everyone who is wise is courageous, and all who are courageous are wise - Socrates’ claim is only a necessity claim, it is not necessarily the same thing
Then Socrates tries to argue for a more modest thesis: that courage is a kind of knowledge

Question 16

Intellectualism: the sovereignty of knowledge

Answer 16

Most people think this way about it, that knowledge is not a powerful thing, neither a leader nor a ruler. They do not think of it in that way at all; but rather in this way: while knowledge is often present in a man, what rules him is not knowledge but rather anything else - sometimes anger, sometimes pleasure, sometimes pain, at other times love, often fear; they think of his knowledge as being utterly dragged around by all these other things as if it were a slave. Now, does the matter seem like that to you, or does it seem ot you that knowledge is a fine thing capable of ruling a person, and if someone were to know what is good and bad, then he would not be forced by anything to act otherwise than knowledge dictates, and intelligence would be sufficient to save a person?

Sovereign of a state - one who rules everything
Socrates asks what’s the sovereign of our soul
To say that knowledge is the sovereign, nothing can undercut what we believe is best
It can’t be overthrown

Question 17

Weakness of will:

Answer 17

• Weakness of will (akrasia, also translates as incontinence) is acting against what you believe is best
• This phenomenon seems commonplace: passion, temptation, fear, and laziness often derail our planes
• If this phenomenon is real, knowledge or belief wouldn’t be sovereign. Our rational evaluation of what’s best wouldn’t be the only thing guiding our actions. Our rational evaluation could be overridden by non-rational forces.
• It’s about having an idea of what is best, and then contradicting that and doing otherwise due to another psychological force that is stronger than the idea of what you think is best
  If this idea is real, knowledge is not sovereign and is not guiding us, because it can be overridden

Question 18

How Socrates rejects weakness of will

Answer 18

1. Hedonism: Something is good to the extent it brings pleasure, bad to the extent it brings pain. Something is better when it brings more pleasure and less pain
2. Weakness of will: I think X is better than Y, but I do Y anyway because I’m overcome by the pleasure of Y - being overcome by pleasure could just be a relative pleasure, like avoiding a pain
3. Substitution of better with more pleasant: I think X is more pleasant than Y, but I do Y anyway because I’m overcome by the pleasure of Y - if hedonism is true then substituting better with more pleasant makes sense
4. This is incoherent. How can I be overcome by the pleasure of the less pleasant thing? How can you be overwhelmed by the pleasure of eg. going out with my friends - it would mean that you admit something is a lesser pleasure, is making you not to what is a greater pleasure

Question 19

Why does Socrates assume hedonism?

Answer 19

• Elsewhere Socrates and Plato typically rogue against hedonism
• Even here he seems to hesitate
  Hedonism is not at all as intuitive as he makes it seem. What about pleasures that are bad regardless of their consequences - like the enjoyment of someone else’s suffering or humiliation
• Argument against hedonism as a whole - Pleasure is an indication of what you value - you could value bad things
• Even if we assume hedonism, it still isn’t clear that all pleasures should be evaluated on a single scale (according to size alone)
• Isn’t it sometimes rational to prioritize immediate pleasures and discount distant ones?
• After all, immediate pleasures are typically more certain, and we can’t be sure what our future self will care about

Question 20

Why does it seem like weakness of will exists?

Answer 20

We often choose a smaller, immediate pleasure over a bigger, distant pleasure, but this is only because immediate pleasures look bigger than they really are. The basis for our decision is still the perceived size of the pleasure
“Do things of the same size appear to you larger when seen near at hand and smaller when seen from a distance, or not? … If then our well-being depended upon this, doing and choosing large things, avoiding and not doing small ones, what would we see as our salvation in life? Would it be the art of measurement or the power of appearance?”
Our standpoint affects how we see pleasure
For his argument to work, the person choosing clearly believes one thing is better than another, they are the sort of things that can be compared

Question 21

The art of measurement

Answer 21

If appearances fool us into thinking that nearby pleasures are bigger than they really are, our only hope is to acquire the art of measurement, which will allow us to judge the size of pleasures from an objective standpoint
We avoid the weakness of will by some sort of knowledge

So what people call weakness of will, is really just ignorance: we lack the art of measurement, the ability to judge the size of pleasures from an objective standpoint

Question 22

The key lesson:

Answer 22

“Now, no one goes willingly toward the bad or what he believes to be bad; neither is it in human nature, so it seems, to want to go toward what one believes to be bad instead of to the good. And when he is forced to choose between one of the bad things, no one will choose the greater if he is able to choose the lesser.’

Rule of human behavior: we always do what we think is best

Question 23

Wisdom and courage

Answer 23

1. Nobody willingly goes toward what they believe is bad
2. Fear is the experience of something bad
3. Nobody goes toward the things they consider fearsome
4. Cowards and courageous people go toward completely opposite things
5. What do the courageous go toward Dishonorable, bad, unpleasant things
6. What do cowards go toward? Dishonorable, bad, unpleasant things
7. Given 1, cowards can’t know that what they go for is bad
8. Cowardice is therefore “ignorance of what is and is not to be feared”
9. Courage and cowardice are opposites
10. So courage must be knowledge or wisdom about what is and is not to be feared

Conclusion:
Socrates hasn’t shown that wisdom and courage are the same (let alone established that all the virtues are interdependent)
But he has shown that courage is a kind of wisdom so that someone who is completely wise would also be courageous
So, the conclusion seems to be that wisdom implies courage
(assuming hedonism is true)

If you have wisdom, one of the things you know is what you should or should fear
So wisdom implies courage

Question 24

The topsy-turvy ending

Answer 24

Socrates began by arguing against the teachability of virtue and for the unity of virtues
Protagroas began by arguing against the unity of the virtues and for the teachability of virtue
But if virtue is knowledge/wisdom, then it would seem to be teachable. If it isn’t, it’s hard to see how it could be. Only if the virtues are unified, at least in the sense that they all depend on wisdom, would it make sense to claim that virtue can be taught.

1. Is virtue teachable?
2. How are the virtues related to each other?
3. What’s the relation between virtue and intellect?
4. Is weakness of will possible?

It seems like we have not gotten any answers to these questions
The dialogue does not have a resolution
It seems like the third question is the main one, if it’s true that virtues all depend on knowledge, then it tells us how to relate it and whether virtue is teachable, and it talks about the weakness of will

The assignment is about resolving this tension
Getting some facility in building consistent and coherent views