Lecture
Very many sophisms look like a game with language, devoid of meaning and purpose; a game based on the ambiguity of language expressions, their incompleteness, understatement, dependence of their meanings on the context, etc. These sophisms seem particularly naive and frivolous.
Plato describes how two sophists confuse an ingenuous man named Ktesippus.
- Tell me, do you have a dog?
“And very angry,” answered Ctesippus.
- Does she have puppies?
- Yes, also angry.
- And their father, of course, the dog?
- I even saw how he deals with the female.
- And this father is also yours?
- Of course.
- So, you claim that your father is a dog and you are a brother of puppies!
It is ridiculous, if not Ctesippus, then to everyone around, because such conversations usually took place with a large gathering of people. But is it just funny?
Or the proof that the eyes are not needed for sight, because, having closed any of them, we continue to see. Is it just comic nonsense here?
Or the following argument:
“The one who lies, speaks about the case in question, or does not speak about him; if he talks about business, he does not lie; if he does not speak about the case, he speaks about something non-existent, but it is impossible to think about it or talk about it ”.
Plato represented this game simply as a ridiculous abuse of language, and himself, inventing sophisms, repeatedly showed the sophists how easy it was to imitate their art, to play with words. Is there a second, deeper and more serious plan here? Doesn't the moral that is interesting for logic follow from this?
And, strange as it may seem at first, such a plan is definitely there and such a moral can undoubtedly be learned. It is only necessary to remember that these and similar arguments were conducted for a very long time. So long ago, that there was not even a hint at the existence of a special science about evidence and refutation, neither the laws of logic, nor the very idea of such laws were discovered.
All these sophistic games and jokes, frivolity and dodge in a dispute, a tendency to uphold the most ridiculous position and speak with equal ease “for” and “against” any thesis, verbal balancing act, which is a challenge to both the usual use of language and common sense - all it is only the surface behind which lies deep and serious content. It was not realized by the sophists themselves, or their opponents, including Plato and Aristotle, but it is obvious now.
In sophistry, interest in the question of how the world works was lost, but the same power of abstractive activity as that of previous philosophers remained. And language became one of the objects of this activity. In sophistic reasoning, he is subjected to comprehensive testing, is examined, groped, turned upside down, etc. This test of language really resembles a game, often comical and ridiculous for an outside observer, but basically similar to the games of growing predators, practicing future hunting techniques. In verbal exercises, such as sophistic reasoning, the first, of course, still awkward methods of logical analysis of language and thinking were practiced unconsciously.
Usually Aristotle, who created the first consistent logical theory, is painted as a direct and unequivocal opponent of the Sophists in all aspects. In general, it is. However, with regard to the logical analysis of the language, he was a direct successor of the case they had begun. And it can be said that if there were no Socrates and the Sophists, there would be no basis for the scientific feat of creating logic.
Sophists attached exceptional importance to the human word and were the first not only stressed, but also showed in practice its power. “The word,” said the sophist Gorgiy, “is a great lord, who, possessing a very small and completely imperceptible body, performs wonderful things. For it can both exorcise fear, destroy sorrow, inspire joy, and awaken compassion ... The same meaning has the power of the word in relation to the mood of the soul, what is the power of the medicine regarding the nature of the bodies. For just as some squeeze some of the drugs out of the body, others others, and some of them eliminate the disease, while others stop life, in the same way they sadden some of the speeches, others please, others frighten, others cheer up, some poison and bewitch the soul, inclining it to something evil. "
The language, which until the Sophists was only an inconspicuous glass through which the world is viewed, since the time of the Sophists has become opaque for the first time. In order to make it so and thus turn into an object of research, it was necessary to boldly and rudely deal with the well-established and instinctive rules of its use. The transformation of language into a serious subject of special analysis, into an object of systematic research was the first step towards the creation of logic spiders.
It is also important that the typical attitude to sophists is typical of the language. Taking thought away from the object, they push aside the question of its conformity with this object and close the thought, which has lost interest in reality and truth, only in words. It was on this path, on the path of preferential structural perception of language and distraction from the content expressed by it, and a central notion of logic arose, the concept of a pure, or logical, form of thought.
“Whatever the matter,” Plato says of the sophists, “true or false, they refuted everything in exactly the same way.” From all, perhaps, points of view, such behavior is reprehensible, except for one, namely, that which is connected with the logical form. The identification of this form requires just a complete distraction from the specific content and, thus, from the question of truth. The idea of arguing with equal force "for" and "against" any position, the idea pursued consciously and consistently, can be seen as the germ of the basic principle of formal logic: the correctness of reasoning depends only on its form, and from nothing else. It does not depend, in particular, on the existence or non-existence of the object under discussion, on its value or worthlessness, etc. It does not depend on the truth or falsity of the statements included in the reasoning, this thought is dimly visible for the seemingly free appeal of the Sophists to truth and falsehood.
In sophisms there is a vague anticipation of many specific laws of logic, discovered much later. Especially often the theme of the inadmissibility of contradictions in thinking is played up in them.
“Tell me,” the sophist addresses to the young lover of arguments, “can one and the same thing have a certain quality and not have it?”
- Obviously not.
- We'll see. Honey is sweet? -Yes.
- And yellow too?
- Yes, honey is sweet and yellow. But what of it?
- So, honey is sweet and yellow at the same time. But is yellow sweet or not?
- Of course not. Yellow is yellow, not sweet.
- So yellow is not sweet?
- Of course.
- You said about honey that it is sweet and yellow, and then you agreed that yellow means not sweet, and therefore you would say that honey is sweet and not sweet at the same time. But at first you firmly said that no one thing can and should not have any property.
Of course, the sophist failed to prove that honey has conflicting properties, being sweet and savory together. Such statements cannot be proved: they are incompatible with the logical law of contradiction, which says that the statement and its denial (“honey is sweet” and “honey is not sweet”) cannot be true at the same time.
And it is unlikely the sophist seriously seeks to refute this law. He only pretends to attack him, because he reproaches the interlocutor, that he is confused and contradicts himself. Such an attempt to challenge the law of contradiction seems more likely to defend him. Of course, there is no clear formulation of the law; it is only a question of applying it to a particular case.
“Sophists,” writes the French historian of philosophy, E. Gratry, “are those who do not allow either in speculation or in practice the basic and necessary axiom of reason that it is impossible to both argue and deny the same thing at the same time , in the same sense and in the same respect. "
Obviously, this is a completely unfair accusation. Acting sophists, playing out their doubts about the fairness of the applications of the law of contradiction are accepted by E. Gratry at face value. When the sophist speaks from himself, and not by role, which, incidentally, is extremely rare, he does not seem at all to be a protector of contradictory thinking. In the dialogue "Sophist" Plato notes that the test of thoughts pas inconsistency is an undoubted demand for justice. This thought of Plato is only a repetition of the statement of the sophist Gorgias.
Thus, the sophisms of the ancients, formulated as early as that period, when there was no logic as a theory of correct reasoning, for the most part directly raise the question of the need to build it. Right to the extent that it is generally possible for the sophistic way of posing problems. It was from the sophists that the comprehension and study of evidence and refutation began. And in this regard, they were the direct predecessors of Aristotle.
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Logics
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