00:00:00.000 Hi, and welcome to chapter 10 of the beginning of Infinity, a dream of Socrates.
00:00:15.120 This chapter I'm going to present in two parts.
00:00:18.120 There's rather a natural divide I seem to think between the conversation that goes on between
00:00:22.720 Hermes and Socrates, and then the next conversation which happens without Hermes, but
00:00:29.000 with Socrates and his followers mainly played her.
00:00:32.120 I doubt if David Deutsch had this in mind at all, but I like to think that Hermes is either
00:00:37.520 a traveler from the future, could be even David himself going back to speak to Socrates
00:00:42.360 about epistemology, or, and this might be even more bizarre, Hermes represents the creative
00:00:47.480 process itself, mysterious, and godlike in its capacity to conjur knowledge, or maybe
00:00:55.600 And this chapter is of course primarily about epistemology.
00:00:59.200 It's a fun and condensed form of the basic themes that appear as far back as in chapters
00:01:03.760 three, problem solving, four criteria for reality, and chapter five, virtual reality from
00:01:13.400 I had some trouble trying to figure out how I would actually read this particular chapter
00:01:18.880 because the entire chapter is a dialogue, or basically the entire chapter is dialogue, or
00:01:25.560 I hope my solution to this issue of what to do about reading it isn't too distracting.
00:01:31.200 I'm not reading the whole thing, of course, as usual, I'm just taking snippets and doing
00:01:36.720 But if you are listening on audio only and you don't have access to the video, you might
00:01:40.600 be missing something, part of the visual element here that might, well, I think could possibly
00:01:48.560 So if you have access to the video, I'd encourage people to watch this video.
00:01:53.160 So let's just dive right in and commence with chapter 10, a dream of Socrates.
00:01:56.280 I'm going to go old school now and just read the introduction from the paper version of
00:02:02.680 And David writes, to set the scene, Socrates is staying at an inn near the temple of the
00:02:10.080 Delphi or Delphi, suppose it depends upon your accent.
00:02:12.880 Anyway, together with his friend Kefon, he has today asked the oracle, who is the
00:02:17.480 wisest man in the world, so that they might go and learn from him, but to their annoyance,
00:02:23.160 the priestess, who provides the oracles voice on behalf of the God Apollo, merely announced
00:02:31.520 Sleeping now on an uncomfortable bed in a tiny and exorbitantly expensive room, Socrates
00:02:36.280 hears a deep, melodious voice, in toning his name.
00:02:47.200 I will weigh, I've already made too many offerings today, and you're not going to ring
00:02:52.880 any more out of me unto wisest for that, hadn't you heard?
00:03:02.560 Oh, well, I'm sure that some of my associates camped outside will be glad to.
00:03:07.920 It is not them that I seek, but you owe Socrates.
00:03:13.840 Then you shall be disappointed, stranger, now kindly leave me to my harder and rest.
00:03:20.880 Very well, wait, I am asleep, dreaming, and you are the God of Apollo.
00:03:37.120 These precincts are sacred to you, it is night time, and there is no lamp, yet I see you
00:03:43.120 This is not possible in real life, so you must be coming to me in a dream.
00:03:52.160 Ah, I ask you, in return, are you a benevolent God or a malevolent God?
00:04:04.400 We Athenians are a proud people, and protected by our goddess as you surely know, twice
00:04:09.240 we defeated the Persian Empire against overwhelming odds, and now we are defying Sparta.
00:04:14.600 It is our custom to defy anyone who seeks our submission.
00:04:23.360 On the other hand, it is also our custom to give a hearing to anyone who offers us honest,
00:04:27.080 criticism, seeking to persuade us freely to change our minds, for we want to do what is right.
00:04:35.800 So there we've got a problem with the worship of deities.
00:04:45.640 The same might go for worship or any other demand a God traditionally is supposed to desire.
00:04:51.560 In the next section, which I'm not going to read, Hermes says that he reveals no facts
00:04:56.040 about anything, but he is there to reveal some knowledge about knowledge.
00:05:00.560 Hermes is, of course, providing the popularian view.
00:05:03.000 But how did Popper himself ever come to this knowledge of knowledge?
00:05:11.880 We might ask how Darwin came to Darwinism, or Einstein came up with relativity and so on.
00:05:17.640 Problems confronted them, and somehow in the mind, the solution presented itself.
00:05:22.600 And first, we test that solution, that purported solution within the laboratory of our own
00:05:26.880 minds, if you like, before checking it against external reality.
00:05:31.080 So in the next section, Hermes asks Popper, what is easiest to see, and Popper responds
00:05:36.880 that it is whatever is before your eyes, and Hermes asks him if he is sure about that.
00:05:42.200 Very well, obviously I can't be sure of anything, but I don't want to be.
00:05:46.640 I can think of nothing more boring, no offense meant wise polo, than to attain the state
00:05:53.760 Which some people seem to yearnful, I see no use for it.
00:05:57.400 It doesn't provide a semblance of an argument when one doesn't have a real one.
00:06:01.200 Fortunately, that mental state has nothing to do with what I do yearnful, which is to
00:06:05.040 discover the truth of how the world is, and why, and even more, of how it should be.
00:06:11.400 Congratulations, Socrates, on your epistemological wisdom.
00:06:15.880 The knowledge that you seek, objective knowledge, is hard to combine, but attainable.
00:06:21.880 That mental state you do not seek, justified belief, is sought by many people, especially
00:06:27.280 priests and philosophers, but in truth, beliefs cannot be justified, except in relation
00:06:32.400 to Abba, beliefs, and even then only, probably.
00:06:37.080 So the quest for their justification can lead only to an infinite progress, each step of
00:06:47.560 Indeed, and as you look like Muramar, it doesn't count as a revelation if I tell you what
00:06:51.360 you already know, yet, notice that that remark is precisely what people who seek justified
00:06:59.520 I'm sorry, but that was too convoluted to comment from my allegedly wise mind or comprehend.
00:07:04.880 Please explain what I am to notice about these people who seek justified belief.
00:07:10.000 Suppose they just happen to be aware of the explanation of something.
00:07:13.560 You and I would say they know it, but to them, no matter how good an explanation is,
00:07:18.560 and no matter how true and important a useful it may be, they still do not consider it
00:07:23.520 It is only if a God then comes along in the issues, and it is true, or if they imagine
00:07:28.440 such a God or other authority, that they count it as knowledge, so to them it does count
00:07:33.680 as a revelation if the authority tells them what they are already fully aware of.
00:07:38.920 I see that, and I see that they are foolish because, for all they know, the authority,
00:07:45.640 may be toying with them, or trying to teach them some important lesson, or they may
00:07:50.040 be misunderstanding the authority, or they may be mistaken in their belief that it is an
00:07:57.280 So the thing that they call knowledge, namely justified belief, is a chimera.
00:08:02.720 It is unattainable to humans except in the form of self-deception.
00:08:06.320 It is unnecessary for any good purpose, and it is undesired by the wisest among more
00:08:13.360 There's an often he is new at two, but he is no longer among the more people.
00:08:18.720 So there we have a criticism of the JTB, justified true belief version of knowledge.
00:08:26.800 It's not justified because if it was, then you'd have to wonder how the justifications
00:08:31.440 are themselves justified, and you'd end up with an infinite regress.
00:08:37.240 You need a foundation, which is absolutely certain, and if you have this absolutely certain
00:08:40.760 foundation, which is unjustified, from there you can start building your justification
00:08:45.600 to reach whatever the conclusion is that you have.
00:08:48.320 This is the traditional and completely false view of epistemology.
00:08:52.400 So as David says there's through Socrates and through Hermes, it's unnecessary to seek justification.
00:08:57.880 The claim that something is actually true or probably true, it's unwise to seek that
00:09:03.960 And of course also notice that knowledge isn't about beliefs, which is a private going on
00:09:12.440 Instead, we're right to say we know a thing when we have an explanation for it.
00:09:16.760 It need not be justified, it need not be true or believed.
00:09:19.880 In fact, my favorite example of this is just any old scientific theory, which is nonetheless
00:09:26.160 useful, and my favorite of those is of course Newton's theory of gravity, on Newton's
00:09:33.280 It's known to be false, so it can't be true, so it automatically fails at the T hurdle
00:09:41.440 I don't believe it, and I don't think anyone does believe it because we know it to be false,
00:09:49.760 And as for justified, well, we can't justify it as true, knowing that it's completely false.
00:09:55.840 Knowing that it's completely false, and it rests upon assumptions that are themselves,
00:10:01.840 So for example, in Newton's theory of gravity, Newton's law of gravity, it rests upon
00:10:06.800 this assumption that the gravity is a force between masses, but this force acts instantaneously,
00:10:11.920 so it violates special relativity, so it can't be true.
00:10:14.960 In other words, Newton's law of gravity actually fails all three features of the JTV test,
00:10:22.880 I know it, every student of physics knows it, it's a piece of knowledge.
00:10:28.080 It's useful, it helps us to make predictions and accomplish things like even get to the
00:10:33.680 So Newton's theory, Newton's law of gravity, is used.
00:10:37.600 It's a bit of knowledge that is useful, it contains useful truth, but it ultimately,
00:10:42.400 in the final analysis is false, and it's not justified, it's not true, and no one should
00:10:48.280 Knowledge as David explains elsewhere is useful information, and more precisely elsewhere
00:10:53.600 in the beginning of infinity, he explains that knowledge is that thing which, once it comes
00:10:57.880 into being, tends to cause itself to remain, so once it's instantiated in matter, it tends
00:11:03.200 to cause itself to remain instantiated in matter in some way, it could be in different forms,
00:11:07.640 but the thing about knowledge is, it's self-sustaining in some way, and this is certainly
00:11:11.760 true of Newton's theory, it's a piece of knowledge that has caused itself to remain in place
00:11:15.880 because it's so useful over time, despite being shown to be false.
00:11:19.800 It's also here in this section that we hear of Zenophides for the first time.
00:11:24.000 We'll come back to him later, he was a philosopher, poet who lived from like 570 to 475
00:11:29.040 BC, so his death was about five years prior to the birth of Socrates, whatever the case,
00:11:34.480 if Popper is the father of critical rationalism, then I guess Zenophides is like the great,
00:11:39.280 great, great, great, great, grandfather in some sense.
00:11:42.600 What follows now in the dialogue, and which I also won't read, is a very long section
00:11:46.920 about what can actually be seen, what is obvious and right before our eyes and so on,
00:11:52.240 and whether we, and how we can rule out whether or not certain things are true on the
00:11:55.120 basis of that, or whether we are dreaming when we think we're seeing, what can Socrates
00:12:00.560 be sure of, this is what hermit is pressing him on?
00:12:04.280 It seems to me that you've been asking questions about me, what is in front of me, what
00:12:09.080 I can easily see, whether I am sure and so on, but I seek fundamental truths of which
00:12:14.040 I estimate that not a single one of them is predominantly about me, so let me stress again.
00:12:19.040 I am not sure what is in front of my eyes, ever with my eyes open or closed, a sleep
00:12:25.040 or awake, nor can I be sure what is probably in front of my eyes, for how could I estimate
00:12:30.280 the probability that I am dreaming when I think I am awake, or that my whole previous
00:12:34.520 life has been butter-drained in which it has pleased one of you and more holes to imprison
00:12:41.240 I might even be a victim of a mundane deception, such as those of conjurers.
00:12:45.120 We know that a conjurer is deceiving us because he shows us something that cannot be,
00:12:49.200 and then asks for money, but if he were to forgo his fee, and show me something that
00:12:57.640 Perhaps this entire vision of you is not a dream after all, but some cunning conjurers trick.
00:13:02.520 On the other hand, perhaps you really are here in person, and I am awake after all.
00:13:06.520 None of this can I ever be sure is so, or not so.
00:13:10.400 I can, however, conceive of knowing some of it precisely, and is the same true of your moral
00:13:18.200 knowledge, in regards to what is right and wrong, could you be mistaken on this lead by
00:13:30.640 In regard to moral knowledge, I need my senses very little.
00:13:35.240 I reason about what is right and wrong, or what makes a person virtuous or wicked.
00:13:39.840 I can be mistaken, of course, in these mental deliberations, but not so easily deceived,
00:13:47.040 For they affect only our senses, and not have reason.
00:13:50.760 How then do you account for the fact that you are Theeans are constantly scrubbing among
00:13:54.120 yourselves about what qualities constitute virtue or vice, and what actions are right
00:14:01.960 We disagree, because it is easy to be mistaken.
00:14:03.960 Yet, despite that, we also agree about many such issues.
00:14:07.120 From this, I speculate, where we have failed so far to agree, it is not because anything
00:14:12.920 is actively deceiving us, but simply because some issues are hard to reason about, just
00:14:17.440 as there are many truths in geometry that even Pythagoras did not know, but which future
00:14:23.600 As that otherwise mortals and offerings wrote, the gods did not reveal from the beginning
00:14:28.360 all things to us, but in the course of time, through seeking we may learn and know things
00:14:34.400 That is, what we Athenians have done in regard to moral knowledge.
00:14:38.200 Through seeking we have learned and agreed upon the easy things, and in future by the
00:14:41.600 same means, namely by refusing to hold any of our ideas immune from criticism, we may learn
00:14:49.560 So in that section, Socrates thinks it is harder to be deceived about moral issues, because
00:14:54.480 in that domain, his reason, so he argues, is the sole arbiter of what is true.
00:14:59.960 But Hermes goes on to point out that Sparta teaches their children wildly different moral
00:15:03.760 lessons compared to Athens, and this causes Socrates to begin teasing apart the differences
00:15:11.520 He arrives at the conclusion that the difference between these two societies is all about
00:15:15.320 endless critical debate, which Athens and Gagazin, but which Sparta prohibits.
00:15:21.400 So here we're connecting a very epistemological concern about how it is we come to understand
00:15:28.720 knowledge, we don't come to understand some truth about the world, and the extent to which
00:15:33.520 a society is open or closed or dynamic and static.
00:15:37.280 So we've got a connection, we draw a straight line connection between epistemology in
00:15:45.200 Moreover, since the Spartans never seek improvement, it is not surprising that they never
00:15:49.000 find it. We, in contrast, have sorted, by constantly criticizing and debating and trying
00:15:54.120 to correct our ideas and behaviour, and thereby we are well placed to learn more in the
00:15:59.480 It follows them that it is wrong of the Spartans to educate their children to hold their
00:16:04.320 cities, ideas, laws and customs, immune from criticism.
00:16:09.720 Wait, I thought you weren't going to reveal moral truths.
00:16:14.760 Yes, I do. And I see what you are getting at. You are showing me that there are such
00:16:25.840 things as mirages and tricks in regards to moral knowledge. Some of them are embedded
00:16:29.960 in the Spartans' traditional moral choices, their whole way of life misleads and traps
00:16:34.000 them, because one of their mistaken beliefs that they must take no steps to prevent their
00:16:40.720 So there we have it. The moral imperative not to destroy the means of error correction
00:16:45.080 is the only moral imperative from which others follow. If we want to continue being a society
00:16:51.000 that makes progress, continue being dynamic, a society that prevents itself from being
00:16:56.240 destroyed through stasis, we must continue to generate knowledge. But that is only possible
00:17:01.800 if debate has allowed. So speech has to be free. People have to be free, and so on.
00:17:06.800 In short, we cannot have laws or customs in place that hold ideas, laws and customs
00:17:12.520 immune from criticism. So say that again, we cannot have laws or customs in place that
00:17:19.080 themselves hold, ideas, laws and customs immune from criticism. We need to protect error
00:17:26.680 correction, not prevent it. So I am skipping another lengthy section again, and Hermes
00:17:31.640 is about to lead Socrates into a defence of fallibleism.
00:17:34.560 Yet there is even more of a defence than you think. Bear in mind that the Spartans and
00:17:39.800 Athenians are like, are but fallible men, and are subject to misconceptions and errors
00:17:46.960 Wait, we are fallible in all our thinking. Is there literally no idea that we may hold
00:17:57.800 Well, what about the truths of arithmetic? Like, two plus two equals four. Well, the fact
00:18:04.520 that Delphi exists. What about the geometrical fact that the angles of a triangle sum
00:18:11.880 Revealing no facts. I cannot confirm that all three of those propositions are even
00:18:15.840 true. But more important is this, how did you come to choose those particular propositions
00:18:21.120 as candidates for immunity from criticism? Why Delphi are not Athens? Why two plus two
00:18:26.400 are not three plus four? Why not the theorem of Pythagoras? Was it because you decided
00:18:31.160 that the propositions you chose would best make your point because they were the most
00:18:35.080 obviously unambiguously true of all the propositions you considered using?
00:18:42.520 But then how did you determine how obviously an unambiguously true each of those candidate
00:18:47.480 propositions was, compared with the others? Did you not criticize them? Did you not quickly
00:18:52.960 attempt to think of ways or reasons they might conceivably default?
00:18:56.960 Yes, I did. I see. Had I held them immune from criticism, I would have had no way of
00:19:06.400 So you are, after all, a thorough-going fallibleist. So you mistakenly believed you were
00:19:14.680 You doubted and criticized fallibleism itself as a true fallibleist should.
00:19:20.920 That is so. Moreover, had I not criticized that I could not have come to understand why
00:19:25.840 it is true. My doubt improved my knowledge of an important truth, as knowledge held
00:19:35.200 This too, you already knew. For this, why you are is encouraged everyone to criticize
00:19:46.560 Now I will consider. What would happen if the fallible Athenian voters made him stake
00:19:52.000 and enacted a law that was very unwise and unjust?
00:19:59.800 Imagine a specific case for the sake of argument.
00:20:03.560 Suppose they were somehow firmly persuaded that thieving is a high virtue for which many
00:20:09.240 practical benefits flow, and that they abolished all more so forbidden.
00:20:16.240 Everyone would start thieving. Very soon those who were best at thieving and at living
00:20:20.440 among the thieves would become the wealthiest citizens. But most people would no longer
00:20:24.640 be secure in their property, even most thieves. And the farmers and artisans and traders
00:20:29.520 would soon find it impossible to continue to produce anything worth stealing.
00:20:36.520 While the promised benefits would not. And they would all realize they had been mistaken.
00:20:41.040 What they let me remind you again of the fallibility of human-nature Socrates. Given that
00:20:47.960 they were firmly persuaded that thieving was beneficial, wouldn't their first reaction to
00:20:52.760 those setbacks be that there was not enough thieving going on? Wouldn't they enact laws
00:21:00.600 Alas, yes. At first, yet no matter how firmly they were persuaded, these setbacks would
00:21:06.760 be problems in their lives. Which they would want to solve.
00:21:10.720 A few among them would eventually begin to suspect that increased thieving might not be
00:21:14.040 the solution after all, so they would think about it more.
00:21:17.040 They would have been convinced that the benefits of theory by some explanation are other.
00:21:20.640 Now they would try to explain why the supposed solution didn't seem to be working. Eventually
00:21:25.360 they would find an explanation that seemed better. So gradually they would persuade others
00:21:29.240 of that, and so on, until the majority again opposed thieving.
00:21:34.040 So there we have a great defence of fallibilism. All it means is that nothing is to be
00:21:39.960 held immune from criticism. That's what fallibilism is about. And when a budding fallibilist
00:21:45.520 comes along and says something like, well what about two plus two equals four, classic
00:21:49.360 response? Surely that. Surely that thing we cannot possibly doubt.
00:21:55.880 Well the response to such a person is how did you come to that particular claim? Why
00:22:03.240 did you choose that particular claim out of all the possible claims you could have picked?
00:22:07.120 You picked two plus two equals four or one plus one equals two, whatever. Whatever claim
00:22:11.640 a budding fallibilist comes up with to try and refute the idea of fallibilism? What
00:22:16.960 they've done is actually criticise a claim, found they couldn't discover any criticisms
00:22:23.600 and presented that one to you. So the response is that finding no criticism does not make
00:22:29.760 you anti fallibilist. The key is whether you attempted to find some flaw with an idea
00:22:35.240 and then failed to. So you doubted it. You really did doubt this idea for a moment and
00:22:40.480 maybe automatically unconsciously in a way. But the point is that one's personal inability
00:22:48.400 or indeed the entire civilizations inability to find a flaw with some idea is no proof
00:22:54.800 of its certain absolute truth. I mean it could be that it could be certain absolute
00:23:00.720 truth but it could also be false because we just lack imagination, we lack sufficient
00:23:08.120 creativity to figure out what's wrong with that idea, what could possibly be false about
00:23:13.240 that idea. And if you can't think of anything that could possibly be false about that idea,
00:23:18.000 that doesn't mean that idea couldn't still in principle be false. It could just mean
00:23:21.040 that you've got pathetic abilities to imagine. For example, for centuries people thought
00:23:28.760 that Newton's Law of Gravity was absolutely certain truth. They really did. And for centuries
00:23:33.520 people thought that Euclidean geometry was the absolute truth about literal physical
00:23:38.360 space. But both were shown to be false and in fact by the same theory, by general relativity.
00:23:44.240 People once thought that God created all the life on earth. They couldn't imagine how
00:23:47.560 it was otherwise until Darwin didn't go to good explanation of how it was possible.
00:23:52.160 And here in my opinion, some people might not like this opinion, we also connect fallibilism
00:23:57.200 and epistemology and morality to a defensive capitalism or free trade against, say, alternatives
00:24:03.760 like communism. The choices between can you own private property make a claim on certain
00:24:08.360 private property? Or are other people allowed to take it from you? Because they've agreed
00:24:14.040 or decided that you have no right to it. In other words, can stealing be a virtue? So
00:24:20.520 this is why I think it's kind of the communist or socialist worldview that certain kinds
00:24:24.960 of stealing certain kinds of theory are OK. But that perspective, that some kinds are OK.
00:24:32.720 And maybe we'd want to increase the number of things that could be stolen until all stealing
00:24:37.000 becomes a kind of a virtue. That's where we go in taking this theory to its extreme. But
00:24:44.160 that's going to run up against some logical problems eventually. Like no one will feel safe
00:24:48.600 in such a society and eventually will simply run out of things to steal. And when such
00:24:54.480 a theory about how to organize society fails, and it will fail, the response as Hermes
00:25:01.600 suggests here and that Socrates arrives at is that people won't necessarily want it fails,
00:25:09.320 give up on the idea that theory is bad. If they've decided it's a virtue in some way,
00:25:14.400 then their immediate response will not be to dismiss that theory of theory as being a virtue.
00:25:20.200 But rather think we haven't been doing enough of it, we should steal some more, which tends
00:25:25.560 to be the kind of socialist conclusion, that when lots and lots of welfare or socialism
00:25:33.840 generally occurs in society, but the society isn't really thriving. The response is to
00:25:40.800 do more of it, to tax more, to increase the amount of welfare. And things will continue
00:25:45.960 to get worse, but in general, the socialists won't think socialism's a bad idea. It's socialism
00:25:51.600 that's the problem. They will just try and instantiate ever more of it. They always want
00:25:55.560 to move towards more theft and confiscation and so on. But I'm taking David's parable
00:26:02.040 from Hermes, probably a little further than he intended there. And David also says here
00:26:07.920 through, again, through Hermes and Socrates, that although mandating theory would be bad,
00:26:13.720 or regarding it as a virtue would be bad, it's not the worst thing that can happen.
00:26:17.840 After all, eventually someone would figure out a better explanation and would decide there
00:26:22.280 are better ways to run society than having one built upon theft. And this will come about
00:26:27.800 through thought and explanation and persuasion, which is what Athens is typically up to.
00:26:33.640 But then we come to the explanation of how there is one kind of error, one law that could
00:26:39.760 be made, that is a special case. That one kind of law resists thought and explanation
00:26:46.200 and persuasion. And Hermes is about to tell us what it is. How you must laugh at us.
00:26:52.000 Not at all Athenian. As I said, I honor you now. Let us consider what would happen if instead
00:26:58.840 of legalising theory. Their era had been to band, to date, and to ban philosophy and politics
00:27:05.640 and elections, and that whole consolation of activities and to consider them shameful.
00:27:10.440 I see. That would have the effect of banning persuasion. And hence it would block off a path
00:27:15.520 to salvation that we have discussed. This is a rare and deadly sort of error. It prevents
00:27:21.160 itself from being undone. Or at least it makes salvation immensely more difficult years.
00:27:28.560 And this is what Sparta looks like to me. So, free speeches and special cases, we can
00:27:34.000 see it provides the conditions within which all other debates, moral, political, economic,
00:27:38.920 scientific, mathematical, philosophical, can be incrementally improved. As we cannot predict
00:27:43.440 the growth of knowledge, the argument that there is some speech or some things that can
00:27:47.960 never be said is a claim about knowing that in the future such things will not possibly
00:27:52.280 form an ingredient in the growth of knowledge. We can always think of terrible examples
00:27:57.200 about, well, what about terribly racist things? We shouldn't be able to say those. What
00:28:02.800 about so-called hate speech? Surely there are some things which we can completely rule
00:28:06.680 out. What the problem with prescribing speech in that way is that it causes the debate
00:28:13.720 around that speech to also be shut down. So anyone who wants to explain why such things
00:28:19.480 are bad to say in the first place can't say them. They can't say the very thing that
00:28:25.200 they want to be able to discuss the evil of. And so in an open society, instead of having
00:28:30.760 laws which will send people to jail for saying certain bad things, we can more easily
00:28:35.640 distinguish between the people over there who are saying the bad things for certain bad
00:28:40.520 reasons and the people over here who were discussing certain things and the people who
00:28:44.360 are making jokes. But the law is often too blunt an instrument to make these distinctions.
00:28:50.080 And insofar as it tries to make these distinctions, people can still be taken to court.
00:28:54.480 People can still be hauled away by the police or simply suffer the inconvenience of
00:28:59.480 having to stand in front of a judge and argue that they're not, they weren't saying things
00:29:03.720 for the bad reasons that they deserve to go to jail for or deserve to be fined for.
00:29:07.480 But they were of the good kind. And all of this has the terrible effect of dampening
00:29:12.880 down speech, of causing people to be very quiet where they otherwise would be openly
00:29:17.800 debating things. Just a little bit of a divergency. So it's worth saying that recently
00:29:22.720 there have been two kinds of attacks on free speech that have occurred. And I'm sure
00:29:26.320 these kind of attacks have happened generations past as well.
00:29:30.840 The first is the attack against free speech by some governments, and this is truly frightening.
00:29:36.600 This means the apparatus of the state and certain countries, the state for, state violence,
00:29:41.480 guns, police can be brought to bear against people for what they say. It might be a joke
00:29:47.000 or it might be satire or whatever. But if certain things cannot be said because they are
00:29:50.960 deemed hate, then we create circumstances where there are roadblocks to discussing why
00:29:56.080 those things are wrong. If we cannot say those things, we cannot say those things for the
00:30:01.920 purpose of discussing the rightness or wrongness of those things. We cannot improve our ideas
00:30:06.400 about those things and we cannot easily correct those people who think but do not say those
00:30:10.560 things for fear of arrest. A very good way of countering evil hate speech is to make fun
00:30:16.480 of it, is to do comedy or satire. But often judges and lawyers aren't the best people
00:30:25.400 to distinguish between what's comedy and what's serious. The average person is, but a highly
00:30:32.760 learned lawyer might end up regarding something that was said in jest as being quite serious
00:30:38.040 and then some poor person gets sent off to jail mistakenly. If you didn't have such laws,
00:30:42.240 no such mistakes would be possible. Okay, so that's the government attack upon speech,
00:30:49.280 but there's another kind of attack on free speech as well. So in a place like the United
00:30:53.560 States, which is actually really rare, I don't know of another country that has codified
00:30:59.720 in the same way, rights that protect free speech in law in their constitution. So while
00:31:07.240 they have free speech protected from the intrusions of government to a large degree, there
00:31:14.000 is some attacks on free speech. The government is rather powerless to address in quite
00:31:19.440 such a direct way. And that is the social or cultural pressure on free speech. So we have
00:31:24.400 large social movements who sometimes even go all the way to using violence to attack people
00:31:30.880 who say certain things, to try and suppress certain kinds of speech. It is small comfort
00:31:35.440 in those particular circumstances. If the government and police will let you say whatever
00:31:40.360 the truth happens to be, the sky is blue. But if you do say it, there might be the people
00:31:46.200 who say that, no, that's hate speech for whatever ridiculous reason they might have to label
00:31:51.920 such a thing hate speech. But because you say this thing that is eminently true, or it
00:31:57.240 might just simply be your opinion, you might decide to say the sky is red because here
00:32:02.000 in New South Wales at the moment in Australia, there's been a lot of bushfires and the sky
00:32:04.800 has been red quite often. Whatever the case, certain people might think that certain
00:32:10.880 speech is so beyond the pale that you deserve to be attacked in the street for it. So
00:32:15.600 although the government will allow you to say it, there might be groups of people that
00:32:19.560 won't allow you to say it. And even if they don't go all the way to attacking you in
00:32:23.520 the street, they could have boycotts against you, they could slander you, etc, etc.
00:32:29.720 And so again, it's cold comfort to people who are attacked for saying certain things,
00:32:33.560 that they're being attacked was unlawful. For knowledge, growth and progress to occur
00:32:38.520 in a maximised way, not only must the law protect free speech, but the culture also
00:32:44.160 has to be one of non-violence. And when the culture begins to say things like hate
00:32:49.000 speech is violence or hate speech is not free speech, then we have a proxy means by which
00:32:55.240 the powerful groups in society, despite what the government's doing, these powerful groups
00:33:00.520 or other powerful interests, ban certain forms of debate. And if that is taken seriously,
00:33:06.880 then regardless of what the letter of the law is, we find ourselves in a cultural circumstance
00:33:11.080 where we have an error that is preventing itself from being undone. Now of course, happily
00:33:16.000 things aren't quite that bad right now. In the United States, the great strength is that
00:33:21.880 it is a state-based nation. So as bad as things get in one community with clamp downs
00:33:27.120 on certain kinds of speech by certain groups, there's always another community equally
00:33:32.320 as strong somewhere else in the country which will protect the speaker. So there are places
00:33:35.960 to go for people that are more safe, but where such movements even begin, we need to
00:33:41.800 be cautious. I mentioned the United States here because it really is kind of the ideal
00:33:47.080 with respect to this in law. In the West elsewhere, as free as speech might be, it's not
00:33:52.640 as free as it is in the United States. People are being locked up elsewhere or if they're
00:33:56.760 not being locked up there, a minimum being investigated for things said. So there are certain
00:34:02.520 things in other Western countries that cannot be said, hence cannot be debated, hence
00:34:06.880 cannot be corrected, except within the national parliaments of course, but that's hardly
00:34:11.000 reassuring. And I won't even mention the countries that aren't Western countries in those
00:34:15.880 places, of course, free speeches, absolutely, not on the cards yet. So I'm skipping a little
00:34:23.000 more here. I also see why you urge me always to bear human fallibility in mind. In fact,
00:34:29.200 since you mentioned that some moral truths follow logically from epistemological considerations,
00:34:33.840 I am now wondering whether they all do. Could it be that the moral imperative, not to
00:34:39.520 destroy the means of correcting errors, is the only moral imperative? That is, all other
00:34:47.040 moral truths follow from it. As you wish. Now in regards to Athens and what you were
00:34:54.240 saying about epistemology, if our prospects for discovering new knowledge are so good, why
00:34:58.760 are you stressing the unreliability of the senses? I was correcting your description of the
00:35:04.760 quest for knowledge as striving to see beyond what is easy to see. I meant that metaphorically.
00:35:12.600 See in the sense of understand. Yes, nevertheless you have considered that even those things
00:35:18.880 that you thought were easiest to see literally are in fact not easy to see at all without
00:35:24.560 prior knowledge about them. In fact, nothing is easy to see without prior knowledge. All
00:35:29.880 knowledge of the world is hard to come by. Moreover, moreover it follows that we do not
00:35:34.000 come by it through steam. It does not flow into us through our senses. Exactly. Yet you
00:35:39.600 say that objective knowledge is attainable. So if it does not come to us through the senses,
00:35:44.480 where does it come from? Suppose I was to tell you that all knowledge comes from persuasion.
00:35:49.600 Persuasion again? Well, I would reply with all due respect. That that makes no sense. Whoever
00:35:56.760 persuades me of something must first have discovered it in himself. So in such a case,
00:36:01.520 the relevant issue is where his knowledge came from. And right there we've got the argument
00:36:06.440 against empiricism. As a side note, this seems to be one of the more contentious parts
00:36:10.840 of papurina epistemology. And I'm not really sure why. People really do think that seeing
00:36:15.840 is believing or that we can understand the world as it is by looking, okay, by observing.
00:36:23.120 This is why that alternative epistemology, sometimes called objectivism, is something I have
00:36:27.880 long thought is perverse in calling itself objectivism. Certainly in the epistemological
00:36:32.440 sense, it's entirely subjectivist on this point. It says that human senses, the internal
00:36:38.280 psychological workings of the human mind are a way to get direct knowledge from the world.
00:36:44.680 In other words, the individual subject can come to know reality using their senses in
00:36:49.440 some way. But the senses, this empiricist mistake, the senses are able to derive knowledge
00:36:54.360 from the world out there. But we cannot detect most of what we know to exist. So it can't
00:37:00.440 come to us through the senses. All the interesting truths of science, essentially, are not
00:37:05.520 about what we sense. So the big bang, evolution by natural selection, the existence of quarks
00:37:13.920 still a fusion, germ theory. All these things can be known without us ever needing to see
00:37:21.200 directly any of them. It's always explaining the scene in terms of the unseen, which is
00:37:28.800 an amazing part of actual epistemology. So it takes knowledge creation and criticism away
00:37:34.400 from whatever your fallible senses are up to and puts it in a domain of explanation, an explanation
00:37:39.960 of things that cannot possibly be verified or checked by the senses. Now, someone might
00:37:45.520 object a little here and say, well, it's not the sense of the line. We use technology,
00:37:49.920 okay? You can't see bacteria, but with a microscope you can or you can't see what happened
00:37:56.240 at the big bang, but you can use telescopes to find the cosmic microwave background, okay?
00:38:00.120 So it's not your senses. That's not what we meant. You can use instruments. And the instruments
00:38:04.480 don't wake up on the wrong side of the bed. The instruments aren't subject to optical
00:38:07.320 illusions. Well, aren't they subject to illusions? It may be that we can augment our senses
00:38:14.920 through the use of technology, but all that does is put us in a domain of understanding
00:38:21.960 how the technology works and understanding how the technology works is a theory or an explanation
00:38:25.600 about how the technology works. And that could be false. And so to use popisteria,
00:38:30.120 senses remain theory laden all the time. We have a certain idea about how the senses
00:38:35.360 work, how our eyesight works. The photons enter the eye. They hit the cornea. They travel
00:38:40.320 through the vitreous humor. They go through the lens of the eye. They eventually reach
00:38:44.600 the retina where there are rods and cones. And inside the rods and cones, there's certain
00:38:48.960 chemicals, these chemicals when the light hits them, change shape and changing in the
00:38:53.780 shape, sends electrical impulses down the optic nerve, which reaches a visual cortex, okay?
00:38:58.440 This is how seeing works, but that whole chain of causation I just gave you there. And
00:39:02.240 that's a theory. That's an explanation. That could be wrong. We know that it's correct.
00:39:07.720 We know that it's correct. We don't certainly know that it's correct. All knowledge is
00:39:10.760 conjectural. All knowledge is fallible. Things could be different to what I've just told
00:39:14.680 you. And so too with our technology. So our technology is theory laden. This is what
00:39:19.600 it means by theory laden. How is it? How do we understand how our senses work? How
00:39:24.000 is it? We understand how our telescopes work or our microscopes or anything else we use to detect
00:39:29.720 scientific stuff. So if we were to find that our explanation of how any of these things,
00:39:36.400 the technology, or our senses work, if we found it was false in our crucial way, then
00:39:42.200 the knowledge that we had thought we'd constructed using that sense data could, could
00:39:47.880 turn out to be false. This happens in science by the way all the time. It's called systematic
00:39:51.280 error. If you think you know how your telescope works and you're making highly precise
00:39:56.440 measurements and these highly precise measurements could be due to error, but you're not
00:40:00.560 sure. And you repeatedly do the same experiment over and over again and you get the same
00:40:04.080 consistent results. It looks like a result to reliable. What reliable means is you're getting
00:40:07.800 the same result every single time. But if there's some flaw with your telescope, some
00:40:12.040 noise that's there that you didn't realize, then in fact, although you've got highly
00:40:16.920 reliable data, it could all be completely false because your theory about what the telescope
00:40:21.560 was doing was wrong. And so the knowledge that you think you've created is in fact false.
00:40:25.800 Now, there's a real life example of this. If you look up the changing fine structure
00:40:31.960 constant, this is precisely what happened. The fine structure constant, I won't go
00:40:35.880 into what I've talked about it on previous episodes actually, but the University of New
00:40:39.760 South Wales did a big study on this. And it looked for all the world because all the results
00:40:47.120 seem to agree that the fine structure constant was changing. And if the fine structure
00:40:51.840 constant was changing, this was kind of a big deal. I mean, one of the fundamentals
00:40:54.720 constants of nature was changing. Perhaps the speed of light was different in the past, perhaps
00:40:59.240 the charge on an electron was different in the past. It's very interesting. I won't go
00:41:01.880 into it now. The point here is that the theory that was being used that explained how the
00:41:08.080 telescope worked that was taking the readings was wrong. We had a theory laid in observation
00:41:14.280 and that introduced this, introduced a systematic error, which ultimately meant the conclusion
00:41:18.760 was false. Namely, this fine structure constant was not changing after all. Okay, so whatever
00:41:24.320 the case, we interpret the data from our technology. We interpret the data from our senses.
00:41:30.560 And like we say, it's interpretations all the way down. And then we move on to the discussion
00:41:37.360 with Socrates and Hermes forward where they become engaged about, they become engaged
00:41:43.880 in concerns about the source of knowledge. Hermes is attempting to impart to Socrates
00:41:50.680 the idea that knowledge doesn't come from outside of him. But Socrates isn't quite
00:41:57.440 so sure. Like, namely, the knowledge that Hermes is giving Socrates right now about epistemology
00:42:02.760 is in that coming from Hermes. But Hermes wonders, well, what if I'm just a figment
00:42:08.120 of your imagination, Socrates? Now, if I am only a figment of your imagination, then who
00:42:14.520 has persuaded you, presumably, I myself, unless this dream is coming neither from you nor
00:42:20.600 from within myself, but from another source? But did you not say that you were open
00:42:25.240 to persuasion by anyone? If dreams emanate from an unknown source, what difference should
00:42:30.560 that make? If they are persuasive, are you not on a bound as an Athenian to accept them?
00:42:37.120 It seems that I am. But what if a dream were to emanate from a malevolent source? That
00:42:43.440 makes no fundamental difference either. Supposed that the source purports to tell you
00:42:47.200 a fact, then if you suspect that the source is malevolent, you will try to understand
00:42:51.320 what evil it is trying to perpetuate by telling you the alleged fact. But then, depending
00:42:55.840 upon your explanation, you may well decide to believe it anyway.
00:42:59.240 Sir, we can conclude that the source of knowledge is not important. The source in a real
00:43:04.880 sense is within us. We create it, then criticise it, by our own lights. So, objective knowledge
00:43:10.880 is attainable, and it doesn't matter where it appears to come from. We do not judge ideas
00:43:15.400 by their sources. Of course it does. Do you remember what is enough in ease, Rob? Just
00:43:19.800 after he said that objective knowledge is attainable by humans? Yes, the passage continues.
00:43:26.000 But as for certain truth, no man has known it. Nor will he know it, neither of the gods,
00:43:31.400 nor yet of all the things of which I speak. And even if by chance he were to utter the perfect
00:43:35.800 truth, he himself would not know it. So there, he is saying that, although objective knowledge
00:43:41.320 is attainable, justified belief, certain truth is not. Yes, we've covered all that. But
00:43:48.800 your answer is in the next line. For all is a woven web of guesses.
00:43:55.520 guesses? Yes, conjectures. But wait, what about when knowledge does not come from guesswork?
00:44:03.800 As when a god sends me in a dream? What about when I simply hear ideas from other people?
00:44:09.520 They may have guessed them, but I obtain them merely by listening. You do not. In all those
00:44:15.720 cases you still have to guess in order to acquire the knowledge. I do. Of course. Have
00:44:23.400 you yourself not often been misunderstood even by people trying hard to understand you?
00:44:28.480 Yes. Have you in turn not often misunderstood what someone means even when he is trying
00:44:33.960 to tell you it's clearly as he can? Indeed, I have. Not least during this conversation.
00:44:40.960 This brings to mind, you could call it his criterion of comprehensibility. It is impossible
00:44:47.560 to speak in such a way as to not be misunderstood. So I'm going to skip a little here and
00:44:53.440 then, indeed, most guesses are not new knowledge. Although guesswork is the origin of all
00:45:00.040 knowledge, it is also a source of error and therefore what happens to an idea after it has
00:45:04.640 been guessed is crucial. So let me combine this insight with what I know of criticism.
00:45:10.560 I guess might come from a dream or it might just be a wild speculation or a random combination
00:45:14.680 of ideas or anything, but then we do not just accept it blindly because we imagine it is
00:45:19.600 authorized or because we want it to be true. Instead, we criticize it and try to discover
00:45:24.200 its flaws. Yes, that is what you should do at any rate. Then we try to remedy those flaws
00:45:31.200 by altering the idea or dropping it in favor of others and the alterations and the other
00:45:34.800 ideas are themselves guesses and are themselves criticized. Only when we fail in these attempts
00:45:40.800 either to reject or improve an idea, do we provisionally accept it?
00:45:45.440 Skipping a little bit more here, it all comes from within, from conjecture and criticism.
00:45:52.200 Wait, it comes from within, even if revealed by a god and is just as fallible as ever.
00:45:58.800 Yes, your argument covers that case just like any other.
00:46:02.720 Marvelous, but now what about the objects that we experience in the natural world? We
00:46:08.080 reach out and touch an object and hence experience it out there. Surely that is a different
00:46:12.760 kind of knowledge, a kind which fallible or not, really does come from without, at least
00:46:18.000 in the sense that our own experience is out there at the location of the object.
00:46:23.000 Love the idea that all those other different kinds of knowledge originate in the same way
00:46:26.400 and are improved in the same way. Why is direct sensory experience an exception? What
00:46:35.440 But surely you are now asking me just to believe in a sort of all-encompassing conjuring
00:46:39.320 trick resembling the fanciful notion that the whole of life really is just a dream. For
00:46:44.200 what would mean that the sensation of touching an object does not happen where I experience
00:46:47.320 it happening, namely in the hand that touches. But in the mind, which I believe is located
00:46:51.280 somewhere in the brain, so all my sensations of touch are located inside my skull, when
00:46:56.440 reality nothing in touch while I still live. And whenever I think I am seeing a vast,
00:47:00.560 brilliantly illuminated landscape, all that I am really experiencing is likewise located
00:47:04.360 entirely inside my skull, where in reality it is constantly dark.
00:47:08.960 Is that so absurd? Where do you think all the sights and sounds of this dream are located?
00:47:15.440 I accept that they are indeed in my mind. But that is my point. Most dreams portray things
00:47:20.160 that are simply not there in the external reality. To portray things that are there is surely
00:47:24.440 impossible without some input that does not come from the mind, but from those things themselves.
00:47:29.680 Well, reason Socrates. But is that input needed in the source of your dream? Or only
00:47:35.760 your ongoing criticism of it? You mean that we first guess what is there, and then what?
00:47:42.200 We test our guesses against the input from our senses? Yes. I see. And then we hone our guesses.
00:47:49.200 And then fashion the best ones into a sort of waking dream of reality. Yes. A waking dream
00:47:54.920 that corresponds to reality. But there is more. It is a dream of which is in game control.
00:48:01.920 You do that by controlling the corresponding aspects of the external reality.
00:48:07.040 Ah, it is a wonderfully unified theory and consistent as far as I can tell. But how am I
00:48:12.880 really to accept that I myself, the thinking being that I call I, has no direct knowledge
00:48:17.440 of the physical world at all, but can only receive arcane hints of it through flickers and
00:48:21.360 shadows that happen to impinge upon my eyes and other senses? And that what I experience
00:48:26.280 as reality is never more than a waking dream, composed of conjectures originating from
00:48:30.320 within myself. Do you have an alternative explanation? No. And the more I contemplate this
00:48:37.480 one, the more delighted I become, a sensation of which I should beware. Yet I am also persuaded.
00:48:44.200 Everyone knows that man is the paragon of animals, but if this epistemology you tell me
00:48:47.480 is true, then we are infinitely more marvellous creatures than that. Here we sit for every
00:48:52.400 imprisoned in the dark, almost sealed cave of our skull, guessing. We weave stories of an
00:48:57.760 outside world, worlds actually, a physical world, a moral world, a world of abstract geometrical
00:49:02.480 shapes and so on. But we are not satisfied with merely weaving or with mere stories. We
00:49:07.320 want true explanations. So we seek explanations that remain robust when we test them against
00:49:13.000 those flickers and shadows, and against each other, and against criteria of logic and
00:49:17.200 reasonableness and everything else we can think of. And when we can change them no more,
00:49:20.680 we have understood some objective truth. And if that were not enough, what we understand
00:49:25.680 we then control. It is like magic only real. We are like gods. Well, sometimes you discover
00:49:32.760 some objective truth and exert some control as a result. But often when you think you
00:49:38.160 have achieved any of that, you haven't. So that's all wonderful. And again follows from
00:49:43.640 some material in the fabric of reality. Our minds really are a kind of virtual reality.
00:49:49.360 We are virtual reality ourselves, constantly checking against actual reality and updating
00:49:54.920 our model of the external world inside of our minds. Now, this is a very powerful idea
00:49:59.760 that contains within a lots of known philosophy and science as well. Namely, we are
00:50:06.480 programs of a kind. Our mind is a program. It's a bit of software. What kind? Well, it's
00:50:12.640 a creative explanation generating kind. Explanation of what? Well, everything, including
00:50:19.040 the external reality that we find ourselves in. Our explanations often explicit of that
00:50:25.760 external physical world. There are things that, in a sense, illuminate our mind. The
00:50:32.560 illumination of the actual physical world is incurring strangely within the utter darkness
00:50:38.880 of our own brains. In there, it is actually physically, completely dark. But that is where
00:50:45.440 the bright lights of the waking world are being generated and presented to our consciousness.
00:50:50.400 Of course, there are actual real lights in the external world. But those lights only enter
00:50:56.280 our eyes before they are completely absorbed and destroyed at our retina. They are then
00:51:02.080 converted into electrical impulses. And it's then that we have the experience of light.
00:51:08.000 But the light that we have the experience of inside of our minds is not the same as the
00:51:12.280 light that's outside of our minds. Yes, it's unusual to think of things in this way.
00:51:18.440 All of our senses, the sight, taste, touch, smell, hearing, it's all happening inside the
00:51:24.480 mind. And just checked again with respect to what is happening outside. And then we update
00:51:28.960 our ideas. And all of this is completely fallible. The checking might go wrong. The neurons
00:51:34.440 might misfire. The senses can deceive you. But nonetheless, we learn more and more and
00:51:39.160 understand and thus gain more and more control over the external world. As Socrates says,
00:51:44.400 all right. But if we choose to, are you saying that there is no upper bound to how much
00:51:49.000 we can eventually understand and control and achieve? Funny, you should ask that. Generations
00:51:55.000 from now, a book will be written, which will provide a compelling and excellent. There's
00:51:59.720 Hermes hinting at the writing of the beginning of the infinity, indicating that he does appear
00:52:05.760 to be a time traveler, some sort. And there I'm going to end part one. We've only had two
00:52:10.800 characters so far. So next time I have to introduce some of the rest of the cast. I'm
00:52:15.920 going to be nice if someone actually did produce a live action version of this little
00:52:20.880 play. Maybe that's the next thing we can hope for. I'm Blockbuster Philosophy. Until
