Why Plato Was Wrong | Plato's Tripartite Soul

[@thelaundryman9287]

This channel is incredible. Had to pause the video let you know ❤🙏🏽

[@WadeAllen001]

I appreciate that!

[@vintagegamer7027]

I do have a problem with you saying Plato believes peoples souls can't change. There are a lot of conflicting writings that Plato has to that idea, he talks about how the soul can be corrupted so that means the soul can change. His writings in Meno also conflict with that idea as through recollection he is able to teach a slave boy how to double the area of a square. Edit: Also Plato's republic is an allegory so Plato rejecting lower souled people from becoming guardians should probably be taken with a grain of salt as it's written. In addition, you're point about the lower class becoming jealous of the ruling class is unlikely in Plato's ideal situation as the 'working class' is essentially just today's economy, the only people who are actually well rewarded for their work are the people at the bottom. People like Donald Trump, Warren Buffet, and the like wouldnt be more than Bronze souled in Plato's idea as those people are chasing a love of money, (a necessary appetitive desire) as opposed to a spirited or rational desire, such as honor or knowledge respectively. If they had any desire to be in the golden soul class they probably would be golden souled to begin with, similarly, but less so with silver.

[@abriannam9325]

He doesn’t say that Plato does not believe the soul can change. He says that his idea of the chaste system contradicts Plato’s claims for the improvement of the soul.

[@teachphilosophy]

thanks for sharing your excellent insights.

[@WadeAllen001]

Thanks for your kindness!

[@Jimmylad.]

I was reading Julius Evola’s “revolt against the modern world” chapter 8 “the paths in the Afterlife”. Here he talks about the idea that the ancients believed that upon death our first aspect of the soul (the ego or our personality) superficial self dies. Then soon after our soul experience a second death, only those who through life have practiced transcendence and non attachment will be able to escape this current the rest will drown in their desire. I wonder what your thoughts were on this and how it relates to Plato’s tripartite soul. Regardless great video

[@WadeAllen001]

I haven't read that book so I'm not exactly sure what it's talking about, but from the sound of it maybe there's some wisdom there if taken metaphorically. Those who practice non attachment are able to find peace and equanimity in life and those who don't will inevitably live lives of self-inflicted suffering.

[@strangemonarchist2818]

This is the first video of yours that I've watched, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of your stuff, because you do some really good philosophy, here. This is good stuff, and I would love to hear you further discuss the topic, in particular, I think you decently well addressed the monistic argument against Plato's overly simplified (though, as you pointed out, ingeniously innovative) model of the soul; however, this doesn't represent the very real dualistic side of the argument with regard to the mind-brain problem, and I'd love to hear what you think about it. So clearly the brain doesn't represent the tripartite soul very well, but would Plato's idea hold up in a case where the mind is separate from and not constructed by the brain? I know that it's a significant position in the fields of Philosophy and Psychology.

[@WadeAllen001]

Thanks. I'd be interested to know if my other videos stand up to your initial estimation of my channel. The question of how Plato's ideas would hold up given a dualistic model is interesting, and to be honest, I haven't thought about it much from that perspective. Do many philosophers and psychologists actually subscribe to dualism? I for one am not all too convinced by dualism. For one, it often seems anthropocentric, a symptom of humanity imagining that it exists on some higher plane than other creatures, who we seem to assume don't have this same mind-body dualism. But mostly my issue with it is that it doesn't seem to agree with scientific evidence as it currently stands. For instance, all psychologists are familiar with the case of Phineas Gage (and many other similar cases by this point) who had a pole shoot through his skull and remove a chunk of his brain, permanently and drastically altering his personality. There's overwhelming evidence that changing the brain changes the mind, and thus that the brain is responsible for the mind's functioning (monism). Now, we don't yet know how exactly our brains create consciousness, which I suppose is a gap in our current knowledge that some people like to use in order to assume a supernatural answer. And there are some alternative, non-supernatural, theories that have arisen because people are unsatisfied with the concept of consciousness as an emergent property (such as panpsychism). One such theory, that could be supernatural or not depending on how one puts it, is, I think, the only real place left for dualism to go. And that is the possibility that our brains act as consciousness-receivers rather than consciousness-creators. Our brains may be a sort of television or radio that tunes into a consciousness that's coming from an outside source, and just as if you damage a television it might not receive or display data properly, if you damage a brain it might not receive consciousness properly. As interesting as I find this theory, I don't find it more believable than the alternative of physical monism. Plus, it's not purely dualistic. Yes, according to this theory there might be a dimension of consciousness out there somewhere, but our biological bodies are still intimately connected to our experience of mind. And dualism often plays into the concept of an afterlife. For instance, that our consciousness (and presumably our sense of self) will return to that realm of consciousness after death. To quote Sam Harris: "What we're being asked to consider, is that you damage one part of the brain and something about the mind and subjectivity is lost, you damage another and yet more is lost, and yet if you damage the whole thing at death, we can rise off the brain with all our faculties intact, recognizing grandma and speaking english." (Video of that: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pXXGi56ooZKYpbs) I realize none of that is an answer to your question of whether Plato's tripartite soul works in a dualistic model, but I do hope it's at least an answer of why I don't tend to take dualism all that seriously in the first place. To offer a brief answer though, my initial thought is no, it still wouldn't work. Under a dualistic model, humans still change, and the idea that some people have gold souls while others have silver or bronze souls seems to deny the fact that humans are capable of becoming better people than how they started.

[@josephcoon5809]

The neurons in the brain have three main roles: receive signals, process signals, and transmit signals. This leads to their behaviors. One basic behavior is to encode meaning into a pattern. A single photoreceptor in your retina does not offer much meaning in isolation. It is when groups of receptors activate in various ways that the next layer of neurons have the opportunity to assign meaning to each pattern. Patterns with assigned meaning is nothing more than language. Language is used to compress patterns of information into smaller symbolic patterns. Language arises between one layer of neurons and the next. For visual information gathered by the retina, there is a cascade of meanings encoded into patterns at successively higher and higher levels of consciousness until the visual cortex communicates to the prefrontal cortex in the language of “color.” Light exists. Color does not. Color is merely the symbolic language used to summarize the millions of bits of information collected by the photoreceptors in the retina. Further support of this idea is the fact that “color” can originate from places other than the retina or even the visual cortex. The portion of the prefrontal cortex that understands the language of “color” can receive signal originating from anywhere in the brain. This is what results in hallucinations, dreams, and synesthesia. Furthermore, regions along the visual communications pathway apply various filters and modifications to the information so that the prefrontal cortex receives the most pertinent information. The veins in your eye are present in the raw data collected by the retina which makes that visual information irrelevant and prime for scrubbing. The same occurs for your blind spots being filled in. At birth, most of those neurons along your visual path do not have roles. Babies see in extremely blurry black and white because the neurons haven’t determined their roles in processing visual information yet. Through repeated visual experiencing of the world, neurons will begin to create connections with one another as they “find” “work” to justify their “existence.” So, if the retina is dysfunctional at birth, the neurons usually associated with processing visual information will find new roles to fill. This manifests as blind people who have more sensitive non-visual senses. So, even at a neurological level, “souls” are quite malleable, BUT the caste system still applies.

[@zeynepkavakoglu5530]

you are doing amazing! thanks a lot.

[@WadeAllen001]

Thanks!

[@ozzy5146]

plato's enduring point is that it is extremely important for humans to learn self-restraint.

[@mohammadkhan8765]

Logos IS very unique to humans. Notice that in the examples you provided each Animal is only good at one specific part of logos. That's why it is more like survival instincts and not logos. Informative video overall though. Keep up the great work.

[@WadeAllen001]

You might be right in saying that each animal is only good at one part of logos. That wouldn't make it unique to humans though, that would just make humans the best at it. Also, I'm frequently a bit irritated when people say "instincts" because they usually use it as a way to discard all notions of legitimate animal intelligence. The point of that section of the video is: animals are smarter than we give them credit for.

[@mohammadkhan8765]

@@WadeAllen001 Humans aren't just the best at it, humans are the "Definition" of intelligence. Think of Human intelligence as the "Platonic Form" of logos. Even with the advance of temporary science animals can only be distantly compared to us, they can never be called intelligent since they dont possess the required properties of the form(i.e. language) Notice that unlike them we dont require the level of intelligence we have for mere survival whearas their little tricks are necessary for their survival. Our intelligence seems to be so complex that neurology hasn't been able to progress much. Neither can evolution explain our intelligence properly. The best explanation we have till date seems to be mutation or religion.

[@vintagegamer7027]

@@mohammadkhan8765 The main difference between human and animal logos is the ability for human abstraction. It's not that animals cant perform simple reasoning, but because they are incapable of language its impossible for them to develop the skills necessary to abstract concepts. Yeah a monkey can hit a square on the screen, but does he know what the square is or does he just know that 'when human speak *noise that sounds like 'square' monkey get food'? Humans are able to abstractly understand what a square is, we know it is an equal sided shape within a two dimensional plane with probably a billion other qualifiers that I'm not knowledgeable enough to know. But a human can recognize that the idea of a square exists within some abstract sense and also no that no real squares exist within our reality.

[@isitool8]

Loved this video man.

[@WadeAllen001]

That's heartening. Thank you for letting me know.

[@isitool8]

@@WadeAllen001 look forward to future videos

[@nournawar1762]

Thank you for sharing this.

[@WadeAllen001]

Thank you for watching

[@edwardbanda6018]

No your psyche is not just an aspect of the brain, brain and heart. Tripartite my friend is an aspect representation of the human soul, but it can also represent other aspects of the soul as well for instance: Self, family, occupation is a tripartite on how one shares thyself socially in a well rounded balanced manner. I like that somebody is making videos and that one should always critically think philosophically. So can you tell me Plato is wrong, when I see "tripartite" is not exactly a fact, so you are not exactly wrong, but neither is Plato being incorrect? Possible mention the Platonic discourse on this issue is just a dialog and is an unfinished dielectric.

[@josephcoon5809]

3:30 So, there’s a distinction about reality that many people are not aware of. There’s the physical object that has a single set of physical characteristics. There’s also the metaphysical object that has a single set of metaphysical characteristics. There is a reciprocal one-to-many relationship between physical and metaphysical objects. Physical is interchangeable with material while metaphysical is interchangeable with ideal. When applied to reality, a rock has ONE set of physical material properties which can be applied to MANY metaphysical ideals such as a projectile, a container, a bludgeon, shelter, a paper weight, a door stop, or any other assigned to it by an intelligence. Conversely, a “cup” has ONE metaphysical ideal that can be applied to MANY physical materials such as a rock, wood, glass, plastic, or even your hand as well as many other material objects. As an ideal can only be applied by an intelligence, an intelligence can apply an ideal to inanimate objects, to other intelligences, or to itself. An inanimate object merely exists physically subject to any purpose given to it. While rocks exist regardless of an intelligence, a hammer existed in a metaphysical mind before it existed in physical reality. So the question is, what “existence” is more important: physical or metaphysical? Personally, I see the distinction as a reciprocal system in which the material creates knowledge and the ideal creates understanding.

[@josephcoon5809]

4:30 It’s not just historical records. It’s also the ability to project further and broader into the future. The lizard brain is tied to the here and now; or the near present. The cerebrum is a fractal network that allows for a deeper understanding of the past as well as a greater ability to extrapolate along various dimensions of reality. Having access to history means little without the ability to understand that history. It is the understanding that allows us to extrapolate. Facts mean very little unless you understand how those facts relate to each other. You can know every word in a book, but that only makes you as smart as that book. When you understand all the words, you are wiser than the book.

[@josephcoon5809]

6:00 Neurons are, basically, a highly advanced version of a transistor. So while humans might require access to historical knowledge to build upon to develop a transistor, nature had already surpassed humans when it developed neurons. Nature even beat humans regarding motors by about 4 billion years.

[@josephcoon5809]

9:30 The only thing that I disagree with is the concept of the soul. I see it merely as the mind. They are both metaphysical manifestations. The soul is a manifestation from something “supernatural” while the mind is a manifestation of neurological processes. However, taking simulation and procedurally generated programming to their ultimate conclusions, the “soul” could exist as a layer of existence for an avatar when the avatars deterministic existence is supplanted by a “player” controlling it. It would resemble any PC within a video game with a programmable script for the time when a player is not actively playing (afk) which is lower in hierarchy to direct control of the player. However, the avatar, even when controlled by the player, is still beholden to the laws encoded within the game: status effects, movement, collision detection, and so on. In a sense, a PC in a game has the “player” as its soul, and that PC would have no way of every making that determination on its own due to its existence being determined by a different set of laws than the one its player is determined by.

[@josephcoon5809]

10:30 It’s not so much the circumstances as it is the understanding of those circumstances. Take Daniel Larussa in “Karate Kid.” Mr. Miagi had him doing “chores” which frustrated Daniel until he rebelled. At this point, Mr. Miagi revealed that the physical motions that Daniel had committed to subconscious activation were the same movements used in the martial arts he had been seeking. Not only did Daniel learn martial arts, but he also learned that if one is too rash, one might miss a deeper understanding which will rob them of some important lesson. Plato exercised the same understanding when he put his wisdom into a work of “fiction” called “The Republic.” By casting one of his characters as his now dead mentor, it was “Socrates” that was making Plato’s arguments, and not Plato himself. Socrates was put to death for the same thing that Plato was doing, except Socrates did it head on directly against The Establishment. By encapsulating his ideas within a work of “fiction,” Plato avoided the same persecution. So, we see ideal being layered upon ideal for multiple reasons. One is to provide an idea within a more digestible format (Aesop’s Fables). Another is to avoid the ire of the power structure. Another use is to get it past another person’s resistance to an idea by packaging it within a neutral or even more easily accepted idea. Ideas are only as important as their relationships to other ideas.

[@josephcoon5809]

11:00 Philosophers come every walk of life. Stoicism spanned between one who was born into slavery and one who was born into royalty. Ultimately, it isn’t the situation that you are in. It is knowing the situation that you are in, and knowing of another situation. Then it is the understanding of the relationship between those situations. Suffering is only possible if you have a desire. Desires are only possible if you have knowledge of two different situations: one “good” and one “evil.” You cannot have a value system with a single value. Emotions are impossible with a single value. If all you’ve ever experienced was the same level of hunger, there would be no way to assign a value to it relative to another state of hunger you have never experienced. Once you do have this knowledge and suffering now becomes a possibility, only understanding will relieve the suffering of unmet desires. If you are unaware of a million dollar lifestyle, you are unable to desire one or suffer not having it. Once you become aware of it, you can accept that you will not acquire it and continue on as if you never learned it; you can research how to acquire it and take actions to do so; or you can desire it and suffer not achieving it. The existence of a million dollars does not determine your suffering, or you would suffer before even being aware of it. The knowledge of a million dollars does not determine your suffering, or everybody who is aware of it would suffer. The desire and suffering is self-inflicted. Hell is self-inflicted. Heaven is self-inflicted. Knowledge does not guarantee mastery over your situation. Wisdom guarantees your view of the situation.

[@TheUnorthodoxEcclesia]

So do you think Plato was wrong about the immortality of the soul????

[@WadeAllen001]

Yeah. I didn't talk about that in the video, but there isn't any evidence for or any reason to believe in immortal souls. Or souls at all.

[@TheUnorthodoxEcclesia]

@WadeAllen001 yes I agree with you the soul is not immortal

[@bruhmoment5034]

Plato actually did mention women and said men and women should serve in the same jobs.

[@EnemyOfEldar]

Dude this was really good. Just, really really good. 👍 I would highly recommend you listen to the work of Prof John Vervaeke at UofT 👍 And I would say if that if "all of philosophy is footnotes on Plato," then even if he wasn't right, he got something correct because we keep trying to interpret the world that way. Finally, Maslow's hierarchy has a peak above self actualisation -- transcendence. Which is service to others, basically. Now those top two seems to go with Logos well!

[@videobob]

Maybe; in future time you’ll be a great philosopher?

[@Ok-bk5xx]

You must read allama iqbal's poetry is called "The secret of the self" for criticized Plato

[@wiankellerman8979]

10/10

[@Diogenes_43]

Average midwit take. You took transcendent, eternal concepts and reduced them to anatomy. You should lift.

[@sageantone7291]

This guy seems less impressive than Plato or Aristotle.

[@iraklibakuradze5673]

Plato cringe af ngl

[@Hypothetical-Being]

You’re cringe af for saying that

[@iraklibakuradze5673]

@@Hypothetical-Being says Mohamad xD!

[@admiralmurat2777]

C R I N G E

[@covenawhite4855]

I like this video.