Nitpick about Plato's Republic

[BrainGlutton]

@CarnalK

But so is legality.

But legality is a matter of collective opinion.

[BrainGlutton]

@Captain_Amazing

Is it? We think that Dred Scott is unjust because we think it’s unjust that one person can own another as a slave. But there were people who thought that it was just for one person to own another, and that Dred Scott was a just decision. It seems to me that justice is a meaningless term, because everybody decides for himself what’s “just”. So when you say, “Is X just?”, you have to really ask, “Is X just according to me?” or “Is X just according to so and so?” Justice doesn’t exist except in individual opinions. It’s a human concept, not a natural one.

Russell agrees, repeatedly saying that to say something is “unjust” or “unethical” means nothing more than that you do not like it. Of course, if true, that would render pointless all philosophical speculations about justice, ethics or values. Many philosophers have a hard time accepting that. Kant, writing after David Hume took skepticism to its ultimate conclusion, tried to found a system of ethics on strict logic, and Nietzsche in his less-logical way tried to do the same, and even today there are “natural law” theorists (it seems to have something to do with Aristotle, which is a good reason for treating it skeptically).

However – I’m reminded of something else Russell said, in his discussion of St. Anselm’s Ontological Argument (wherein Anselm attempts to prove God’s existence by definition; short version: God is the perfect being, nonexistence would an imperfection):

. . . The real question is: Is there anything we can think of that, by the mere fact that we can think of it, is shown to exist outside our thought? Every philosopher would like to say yes, because a philosopher’s job is to find out things about the world by thinking rather than observing. If yes is the right answer, there is a bridge from pure thought to things; if not, not.

The same would apply to ethics, wouldn’t it?

[Trinopus]

@Captain_Amazing

Is it? We think that Dred Scott is unjust because we think it’s unjust that one person can own another as a slave. But there were people who thought that it was just for one person to own another, and that Dred Scott was a just decision. It seems to me that justice is a meaningless term, because everybody decides for himself what’s “just”. So when you say, “Is X just?”, you have to really ask, “Is X just according to me?” or “Is X just according to so and so?” Justice doesn’t exist except in individual opinions. It’s a human concept, not a natural one.

True. This comes out, now and then, in SDMB GD threads where it is usually acknowledged that science cannot guide us to the best moral system, because what is “good” can’t be tested scientifically.

On the other hand, we do have a very large consensus on basic morality – murder is bad, theft is usually bad, rape is very bad – and, given that, we can perform scientific tests to see what policies best support that moral “common core.”

We can, thus, compare slave-owning societies to free societies, and see that the latter tend to have more of the overall things we like to call good, and fewer of what we label as bad.

@CarnalK

But so is legality.

@BrainGlutton

But legality is a matter of collective opinion.

Exactly. Legality, justice, and “good” are all defined by the collective consensus of our society. Some choices are highly polarized and contended: abortion is a key example. But others are so widely agreed-upon as to be nigh-universal, and the abhorrence of slave-owning is high on that list.

Also…I’d be interested in any abstract definition of “justice” that can accommodate extreme class differences among people. Joe gets to live in the mansion and eat pie, but Jack has to pull the plough all day long – on the basis of skin color? I could conceive of “lottery slavery” as not being contradictory to justice: every one of us would, at least, have the same odds as everyone else. But determination by skin color? I can’t see any conceivable way of calling that “justice.”

[BrainGlutton]

@BrainGlutton

But if he were a good (i.e., competent) Sophist, he would at least be capable of framing an appeal to justice if a case required it.

You must not take Thrasymachus’ expressed opinion here as being typical of Sophists, either. The Sophists had no shared philosophical doctrine of any kind, their approach was more technical and results-oriented, they taught pupils how to make use of logic and rhetoric to succeed in the human social world, and they did it for money, yet. That’s what must have really annoyed passionate truth-seekers like Plato and Socrates – who had independent incomes, and no need to charge money for their lessons.

E.g., from The Republic, Book VI:

Why, that all those mercenary individuals, whom the many call Sophists and whom they deem to be their adversaries, do, in fact, teach nothing but the opinion of the many, that is to say, the opinions of their assemblies; and this is their wisdom. I might compare them to a man who should study the tempers and desires of a mighty strong beast who is fed by him-he would learn how to approach and handle him, also at what times and from what causes he is dangerous or the reverse, and what is the meaning of his several cries, and by what sounds, when another utters them, he is soothed or infuriated; and you may suppose further, that when, by continually attending upon him, he has become perfect in all this, he calls his knowledge wisdom, and makes of it a system or art, which he proceeds to teach, although he has no real notion of what he means by the principles or passions of which he is speaking, but calls this honourable and that dishonourable, or good or evil, or just or unjust, all in accordance with the tastes and tempers of the great brute. Good he pronounces to be that in which the beast delights and evil to be that which he dislikes; and he can give no other account of them except that the just and noble are the necessary, having never himself seen, and having no power of explaining to others the nature of either, or the difference between them, which is immense. By heaven, would not such an one be a rare educator?

I read that and I think of modern political campaign consultants.

[BrainGlutton]

@Trinopus

Also…I’d be interested in any abstract definition of “justice” that can accommodate extreme class differences among people. Joe gets to live in the mansion and eat pie, but Jack has to pull the plough all day long – on the basis of skin color? I could conceive of “lottery slavery” as not being contradictory to justice: every one of us would, at least, have the same odds as everyone else. But determination by skin color? I can’t see any conceivable way of calling that “justice.”

Aristotle would have, on the basis that Hellenes, who alone have both intelligence and courage, are naturally superior to, and the natural masters of, the cowardly barbarians of South and the stupid barbarians of the North. I don’t know about Plato.

[Sitnam]

@Trinopus

The same is true of pretty much all utopias. I’m thinking of Skinner’s Walden II. Since the place is presumed to be pretty much as good as it can possibly be, innovation is necessarily harmful, and thus to be deterred.

It has been awhile since I read it but I did not come away with that impression at all. The communal society is structured for interests to match ability, the goal is to maximize innovation. Don’t get me wrong, I had significant issues with the society but then it made me question why I obected to it, which might have been the point all along.

[BrainGlutton]

@Subterraneanus

This is all the more ironic given the failure of his own logicist project.

How did it fail?