Sophists and Socrates

[@warlord8954]

In other words, sophists asked leading questions to elicit a reply or replies that could be countered, dismissed, discounted, or even politely ridiculed.

[@warlord8954]

Perception v Reality. If I light a fire and I forcibly take your hand and put it over, or into the fire and your hand is burned, is that your perception, or a reality? Is the fire real? Is your hand real? Is your hand burned? Are you in pain? So, there are in fact absolute truths that can't be denied. With regard to metaphysics, this is a true and undeniable fact. From this, other things can also be true and absolutely true.

[@_VISION.]

19:46 the Sophists believed in relative truth though. So that truth to Relativists is not true for others. I think what they were actually trying to get at is something along the lines of Nietzsche's Perspectivism. Not "there is no truth" but "truth is perspective/relative". By other disagreeing is to prove that statement to be truth. Since all people do not agree then it is true. If everyone does believe that statement to be true then it is an objective perspective. Not an objective truth that corresponds to reality. Really we are corresponding to ourselves and that would make all of our knowledge self-referential and self-refuting. Which is why the Sophists say there is only persuasion or as Nietzsche would say there is only perspective. The Sophists would be okay with their paradoxes or the violating the law of non-contradiction. So to answer they would simply say 'Yes' and show the truth within paradox or 'It is true to me'.

[@olle9068]

Hi, i am in no way familiar with this Nietzsche perspectivism or philosphy in general. But isnt what the guy in the video was saying correct? To say that there is no such thing as an absolute truth, only subjective truth, is to give a proposition that is claiming to be an absolute truth. As youre projecting youre own proposition as the truth, its in other words no longer subjective. And additionally, Sophism from what ive read actually says that there is no absolute truth. Either way, I found youre comment to be really interesting, can you explain more?

[@_VISION.]

@@olle9068 The truth is that there is no truth. Meaning that each person sees reality relative to their own experiences, knowledge, and comprehension. It's quite clear to me that the differences of opinions between philosophers and people in general (since ever) is evidence of no absolute truth. Otherwise we'd all be on the same page. In science how many times have we proven ourselves wrong as time went on? It's bizarre to claim to have some objective truth of reality. This assumes you know the essence of reality. Which I highly doubt anyone does. There is more evidence for subjective truth than objective truth via appearances and history. You have to take a leap of faith to believe in an objective truth from my perspective. It's like believing in God. Ludwig Wittgenstein (once a Logical Positivist) figured this out later in his life: "My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them-as steps-to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright." Once you make a claim to objective truth. You are also in a paradox. Because if you followed the breadcrumbs using logic it would lead to 'nothingness'.

[@warlord8954]

I understand your blind man analogy. However, a blind man won't simply grab the tail of an elephant unless there is a limitation imposed. Whether it be external or internal.

[@_VISION.]

So from my perspective, the only difference between the Sophists and Socrates is that the means were the same but the ends were different.

[@_VISION.]

Interesting. When it comes to Gorgias argument for relativism. I've seen a perspective that mentioned that he didn't actually believe the argument he made but that he simply used an example of using logic where logic can be used to prove anything. And using that example he proves relativism by sort of making a mockery of logic. It has a "Is this your king?!" tone to it. He didn't use logic because he believed in it, but was just showing the logic can be used to prove anything (not necessarily truth) like rhetoric.

[@donikasaracini6987]

Thank you so much! It helped me understand it better! :)

[@zootjitsu6767]

20:35 What if you say “it is true to those who believe it”?

[@michaelberhow7058]

In that case, you would need to define what you mean by the statement. For example, how is the statement, "it is true to those who believe it" different than the statement "but what if they really believe it"? I don't see much of a difference. If the word "true/truth" has any meaning, then it must be something like a correspondence view of truth. That is, truth must be something like: that which is consistent with reality. The statement you are referring to is a coherence view of truth, which argues that truth is that which is consistent with me. There are several problems with the coherence view, but the main one for me is that makes the word "true" almost identical to the word "belief". In other words, when one adopts a coherence view of truth, they are saying nothing more than, "I believe it." To me, that is not very interesting. I'm more concerned about which beliefs are true (consistent with the real world), and less concerned about what people merely believe (which is what I understand by the statement, "it is true to me).