Episode 4 - Socrates and the Quest for Wisdom
Awakening from the Meaning Crisis
Ep. 4 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Socrates and the Quest for Wisdom
The last episode introduced what the Axial Revolution was, how it took place around the world. The episode gave us a taste of how the axial mythologies continue to be relevant today. More specifically, it gave us a taste of the axial mythologies developed in Ancient Israel and Greece.
The next few episodes in this series dive deeper into how the axial revolution played out in Greece. John Vervake claims that if you were to put western civilization on two feet, one foot would rest on the Bible and the other would rest on the works of Plato.
However, we need to lay some groundwork before we can take a deep dive into his work. First, we need to explore the life and death of Plato’s teacher Socrates.
The Oracle of Delphi
All historical figures as consequential as Socrates are shrouded behind a veil of legend. At this point, it’s probably impossible to tease apart the symbolic Socrates from the historic Socrates. John Vervaeke acknowledges all of this, and opts to engage directly with the symbol of Socrates. After all, it’s this symbol that has heavily influenced the cognitive and existential grammar of the West.
The Ancient Greeks believed that it was possible to communicate to the gods via the Oracles. These oracles were either human or natural phenomena that were then interpreted by the greeks. In Delphi, a woman called the Pythia would sit in a cave and receive questions from petitioners. She’d then enter a trance, possibly triggered by psychoactive substances, and return with an answer. This answer would then be interpreted by a ring of men around her and delivered to the petitioner. Pythia was known to offer cryptic answers to most questions. A cynic would observe that a cryptic answer makes one hard to pin down, and creates a shield of plausible deniability. For example, if you asked the Pythia, “Should I buy the farm from Ikaros?”, she might reply with something like, “Sometimes the swallow can’t fly far.” Or if you were to ask, “Should I marry the merchant’s daughter?”, she might reply, “Everyone must prepare for winter.” It’s possible that these cryptic and provocative responses had the effect of jolting the petitioner into a burst of insight or self-reflection. But it’s equally possible that such vagueness allowed people to ascribe coincidences with her predictions.
So anyway, there was an Oracle at Delphi known for offering cryptic responses. One day, a group of Socrates’ friends decided to ask the Oracle a question about Socrates as a joke. Socrates had already developed a reputation for being wise. They asked her, “Is there anyone wiser than Socrates?”. Stunningly, she replied, “No. There’s no human being that’s wiser than Socrates.” Not only was her claim extraordinary, it was uncharacteristically unambiguous. They immediately sought out Socrates to relay the good news. Back then, such a pronouncement would have been taken extremely seriously. After all, the oracle was a conduit to the gods. This revelation was made with the authority of the gods. Even more surprisingly, Socrates wasn’t self-congratulatory when he found out. Instead, he was deeply sceptical and inquisitive.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, and interpret information in a way that confirms one’s existing set of views. Overcoming one’s confirmation bias is often a mark of wisdom. It seems that Socrates didn’t fall prey to a reflexive confirmation bias when he heard the Oracle’s pronouncement. But it put him in a dilemma. Socrates did believe in the gods, but in an unusually axial way. The gods from the continuous cosmos were not necessarily conceptualised as moral exemplars. But for Socrates, the gods couldn’t lie. On the one hand, he’d spent years developing substantial self-awareness to realise how unwise he was. On the other hand, he had to contend with the Oracle of Delphi. He was unwilling to compromise on either of these statements being true.
He was determined to understand how both of these statements could be true simultaneously. So he sought out different groups known to be wise, to answer his question.
The Natural Philosophers - Truths without existential relevance (i.e. personal transformation)
The natural philosophers were a fascinating group of people and we can think of them as proto-scientists. John Vervake suggested that Thales could be considered an exemplar of this tradition. You can actually put most of his philosophy into three sentences:
All is the moist.
The lodestone has psyche.
Everything is filled with gods.
Superficially, his three sentences seem absurd. To appreciate Thales, we need to pay attention to how he likely arrived at these conclusions, rather than the statements themselves.
Thales didn’t have access to the vast array of knowledge we’ve accumulated in chemistry, physics, etc. Imagine that you’re in Ancient Greece trying to uncover the true nature of things via reason. It’s pretty easy to notice that Greece is surrounded by water. Water also seems to fall from the sky, and everything needs it to live. Water also seems to have many interesting properties, like having the capacity to take the shape of any container it’s in. So perhaps it’s not unreasonable for Thales to conclude that water was somehow related to the fundamental nature of things. He was obviously wrong. But his process was rational. He used rational analysis to attempt to explain the world, rather than a complicated narrative involving the gods. Essentially, he was at the forefront of inventing the forms of thought necessary for us to do science today.
The lodestone is a natural form of a magnet. Magnets can move iron and other magnets at a distance. Moreover, they can move themselves when acted upon by another magnet’s field. “Psyche” refers to the breath possessed by things that are self-moving, and can cause other things to move. Therefore, people have psyche. Again, teleport yourself back to Ancient Greece. A lodestone has the ability to move itself and to move other things. Therefore, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that the lodestone has psyche like a person. Given the information he had, he made a rational and plausible argument.
Ontology is the study of the structure of reality. Ontological analysis is when you use reason to think about the underlying structure and forces of reality. Thales introduced the idea of “ontological depth perception”, which scientists are still engaging in today. It’s the idea that we can use our minds to see into the true nature of reality. Most people however, are struck with awe and wonder when attempting to examine the true nature of reality. That’s what he means by “everything is filled with gods”. The deeper one looks at reality, the more one’s left dumbstruck with wonder.
Socrates was impressed by natural philosophers because of their commitment to getting at the truth of things. Ultimately however, he rejected them because their method didn’t help him with solving the dilemma he faced from the gods. The natural philosophers were able to offer a process for discovering facts. But they couldn’t say much about personal transformation, becoming wise and overcoming self-deception. That is, they were able to provide truths from the natural world without any existential relevance.
The Sophists - Existential relevance (i.e. personal transformation) without the truth
Athens pioneered direct democracy. Note that direct democracy is very different from representative democracy. In a direct democracy, everyone eligible (women and foreigners weren’t eligible in Athens) filed into an assembly and voted on everything. They resolved disputes via debates. Argumentation was the route to power in this environment, creating a strong incentive for its development.
The sophists were a group of people in Athens that invented a new psychotechnology called rhetoric. They exploited the intersection of language and cognition to develop oratory skills for influencing the opinions of other people. However, the sophists were only concerned with teaching and refining these skills. They didn’t feel burdened with any moral restrictions. For example, in the morning, a sophist might tutor a particular aristocrat to help him figure out how to argue on why Athens should increase the size of its military. Then in the afternoon, he might help another aristocrat figure out how to argue for decreasing the size of its military.
Many tools used by politicians and advertisers today find their roots with this group. For example, what’s the goal of an advertisement? It’s to exploit your brain into making an association between some emotional desire and a product that the advertiser is trying to sell. What’s important here is that the association doesn’t need to be true for it to be effective. We’ve all seen car commercials where a family buys a car and suddenly finds themselves living idyllic lives. On some level, we all know that this is “bullshit”. That is, buying a specific car usually doesn’t magically solve every problem in real life. But it doesn’t matter. A car commercial is making certain things salient to you. This drives your behaviour even if the things that are salient are “bullshit”.
At this point, it’s useful to offer a technical description of what “bullshit” is. I really loved Harry Frankfurt’s book “On Bullshit”. Frankfurt is interested in the difference between a liar and a bullshit artist. A person can be both, but they’re not fundamentally the same. A liar is someone that relies on your commitment to the truth. They attempt to deliberately obscure the truth from you to achieve some end. A bullshit artist is different. They have no regard for the truth. Their goal is to distract you from the truth by making you disinterested in it. Specifically, by shifting what you find salient, exactly the way an advertisement does.
The distinction between lies and bullshit is really important. It’s impossible to lie to yourself, but it’s easy to bullshit yourself. You can’t lie to yourself, because lying involves possessing beliefs about the world. For example, pick any belief that you’d like to have. I’d like to have the belief that I’ve never hurt anyone’s feelings before, and that everyone loves me. Maybe you’d like to possess this belief too. But notice what’s happening. You can hope it’s true, and perhaps you can wish it’s true. But you can’t just internalise it on command, and start believing it in terms of how you engage with reality. Imagine if I grabbed your shoulder and commanded you to “believe it”, it likely wouldn’t work. You can’t just voluntarily compel yourself to believe something in the moment. So it’s not really possible to lie to yourself.
However, that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to engage in self-deception. Bullshit is the doorway to self-deception. You can’t change your beliefs but you can change where your attention is pointed at. There’s an inherent feedback loop at play here too. As you pay more attention towards something, it will start to become more and more salient to you. At some point, that object will be so salient that it will automatically grab your attention when you come near it. But your attention is finite. If you’re mired in bullshit, you’re likely to get distracted from what’s true or what’s real. That’s how people deceive themselves. Essentially, the sophists were promoting bullshit. Not only does promoting bullshit induce self-deception in other people, it makes oneself vulnerable to self-deception too.
The death of Socrates
The natural philosophers developed techniques to find the truth. But they didn’t have much to say about whether those truths were existentially relevant. The sophists developed techniques to shift a person’s perspective of what was relevant. But they did this without any regard to the truth. Socrates wanted a way to unify the two. He wanted a method to generate a positive feedback loop between the discovery of the truth and methods to make the truth relevant.
His method involved asking questions. He’d go out and ask people questions to get to the heart of the matter. For example, he’d show up at a market and have an exchange similar to the one below.
Socrates: What are you doing here good man?
Man: I’m here to buy some wine.
Socrates: Why are you buying wine?
Man: Because it makes me happy.
Socrates: Ahh! So you must know what happiness is?
Man: Well, I guess happiness is pleasure.
Socrates: But wait! Is it possible to have pleasure, but still find yourself in a horrible situation that you dislike?
Man: Well, of course Socrates! That’s possible.
Socrates: Ohh so happiness isn’t pleasure. You’re being coy with me! Tell me. Tell me. What is happiness really?
Man: Well, maybe happiness is getting what’s important to you.
Socrates: Ahh so in that case, you must have knowledge of what’s important! Tell me, is it the knowledge of what’s truly important, or the knowledge of what you think is important?
Man: I guess….it’s the knowledge of what’s truly important, Socrates.
Socrates: What would you call this knowledge of what’s truly important?
Man: I guess…you’d call that wisdom?
Socrates: Ah I see! So in order to find happiness, you must have finished cultivating wisdom first. Please tell me how you did this.
And at this point, the man’s head explodes in shock and paralysis.
As one can imagine from such exchanges, Socrates was adept at pissing people off. He’d engage in these exchanges to demonstrate that all of us are bullshitting ourselves all the time. We constantly find things salient, and are drawn to things without truly understanding why. Or whether they’re true. We’re constantly victims of being trapped by our bullshit. I can confirm from my own life, that the realisation of just how mired we are in bullshit often provokes a strong reaction from people. People either realise how vulnerable they truly are and try to change themselves. Or they become angry at the person that led to them gazing in the mirror in this way. Socrates found these exchanges deeply insightful. They helped him understand how it was simultaneously true that the gods were not lying and that he was the wisest man alive. He knew what he didn’t know. Not in terms of facts. But in terms of a painfully acute awareness of his capacity to bullshit himself.
To Socrates, wisdom was to keep his machinery for ascertaining truth aligned with his machinery for detecting relevance. He famously claimed to know “Ta Erotika”. That is, the knowledge of loving well. It doesn’t mean romantic love. It means that he understood what he should care about and what he shouldn’t. He believed that it was imperative for people to “know thyself”. That is, for people to understand that we’re all prone to self-deception and to develop methods to protect ourselves.
In any case, it’s unsurprising that Socrates soon found himself arrested and brought to trial. During the trial, it was pretty clear that they’d let him go if he just stopped engaging in this work. But to Socrates, living wisely was more important than living. He was eventually executed. His life and death left a mark on many of his students, especially Plato. As we’ll see in the next episode, this is crucial because Plato took this work and united it with the work of Pythagoras.