Part Two: Plato’s Argument Against Artificial Intelligence

It is striking that thousands of years before the advent of “Artificial Intelligence” Plato should insist repeatedly and forcefully that mind (i.e., intelligence) without soul is impossible to find[i], that soulless intelligence can never come to be[ii], and that of all existing things only soul is fit to be possessed by mind[iii]. Similar arguments can be found in other writings of Plato[iv]. Though “artificial intelligence” in our sense was unknown in Plato’s time, it is remarkable that he would feel the need to insist that mind and intelligence can be found only in ensouled, i.e., living beings. What was he pushing against?

At any rate, what do these statements of Plato mean? Do they mean that soul is the cause for the existence of mind? Or, given that Plato in other locations[v]  insists that mind is the cause of all things, that that the opposite is true and mind is the cause for the existence of soul? Or are mind and soul inseparable in some other way that awaits being understood.

There are deeper issues involved in any inquiry into how Plato views the relation between mind and soul, given that that he views mind as that by which we grasp timeless unchanging being whereas soul is the source of changing, becoming in time. Unresolved issues of how Plato sees the relation between rest and motion, being and becoming, the one and the many are involved in our inquiry into his view of the relation between mind and soul. We shall attempt it below anyway.

Apart from their poetic, theological and mystical allusions, none of the above statements would make any sense unless we can first ascertain what precisely it is that Plato means by “soul.” But once we have done that and have stripped the word “soul” of the baggage of all sorts of vague meanings and connotations that have attached themselves onto this word over the centuries and have thereby isolated exactly what Plato meant by “soul,” then we shall relate it to what he says he means by “mind” in the hope that his claims that “mind without soul is impossible to find” begin to make sense.

“Soul” for Plato is the cause and principle of self-motion and, by extension, of all motion. And insofar as it is also ruled by mind, it opposes random, inchoate motion. To deny the existence of ensouled mind, Plato argues, is the same as arguing that that our world is the chance result of the random motion of material particles. In such a world, mind (intelligence) would ultimately be the mechanical result, the artifact, created by human beings who themselves are the mechanical result of the random motion of material particles.

If the world was indeed created by the random motion of material particles, then matter precedes mind, and artificial (i.e., man-made) intelligence is the only intelligence possible. In a nutshell, according to Plato, precisely because the world is the created product of an intelligent creator force (i.e., is not “godless”), and specifically for this reason, artificial (man-made intelligence is impossible. For Plato, intelligence – mind – is God-made, and in this sense “natural” rather than artificial.

Conversely, according to Plato’s line of argumentation, the mistaken belief that artificial (man-made) intelligence is at all possible arises when society is seduced by the illusion that random material motion has caused our world (“godlessness”).

This will become clearer below when we follow Plato’s reasoning on this matter of “soul” and motion in some detail. Doing so will also provide additional insights into how the various operations of mind are to be understood in a manner that will help solve the difficulties in understanding the Parmenides dialogue.

For Plato soul is, strictly speaking, that-which-moves-itself. This and nothing else is the essence of soul and its definition. In his own words, the noun “soul” applies to an “entity” whose definition is “that which moves itself.” Everything else that he has to say about soul, whether literal, poetic, or allegorical, is rooted in this simple definition which, as far as Plato is concerned, is grounded in simple, common-sense interpretation of empirical data.

In the Phaedo, Plato may describe the soul as incorporeal, invisible, immortal, etc.; in the Theaetetus as the thing which senses sensible things through its bodily sense organs and grasps intelligible things through its own incorporeal mind without the aid of bodily organs; in the Philebus as the seat of all kinds of pleasures, pains, cognitions and other motivating powers in general[vi]; in the Timaeus as the prized creation of a loving Demiurge who fashioned it by mixing Sameness, Otherness and Being; in the Republic as the vast battlefield where the dialectic endeavors to secure the rule of the mind over the other parts of the soul; in the Symposium as the place where that “the zeal for immortality,” Eros, may give birth to immortal offspring; and in the Meno as the immortal repository of all knowledge from which we draw recollections and call them learning.

But what controls all these Platonic explorations into the soul is the core definition of its essence as “that-which-moves-itself.” In the Phaedrus, Plato gives a quick summary of his view of soul as “that which moves itself,” but later, in the Laws, he offers a complete and elaborate presentation of the argument that shows why this is the case.

In the course of arguing in the Phaedrus that the ultimate cause of all kinds of motion in the universe is the necessarily immortal “that-which-moves-itself,” Plato asserts that “anyone who says that self-motion is the essence and the very definition of soul will not be embarrassed[vii].” This being the case for all soul – cosmic, divine, and human – Plato then proceeds to describe allegorically the self-moving human soul as a two-horse self-moving chariot with mind as its charioteer, i.e., with mind as the controller of the eternally self-moving.

The Tenth Book of Plato’s Laws, in which the detailed argument of soul as “that-which-moves-itself” is found, addresses a socio-political situation very much reminiscent of what is transpiring in contemporary (1^st quarter of the 21^st century) western civilization: a dominant, sophisticated secular elite questions the merits of grounding lawmaking on the belief of the existence of gods. These elites, in Plato’s text, find the commitment of crimes that accompany godlessness preferable to legislation that anchors its effectiveness on belief in gods. The sophisticated secular elite demands persuasive argument, not legal compulsion, to support any belief in the existence and providence of gods.

To supply the persuasive argument demanded by the sophisticated secular elite, Plato must show that all observed lawful order in the cosmos derives from and continues to depend on a self-moving mover, on “that-which-moves-itself” which we just happen to refer to with the conventional name “soul.”

The argument in Laws X.889a4-896b3 unfolds as follows:

This concludes the argument in Laws X.889a4-896b3. The definition of soul as that which moves itself as well as that which causes all other types of motion and change to exist can now be used to inquire what Plato may mean by his claims, mentioned in the beginning of this report, that it is “impossible to find mind without soul” and “soulless mind can never come to be.” Does he mean by this that soul precedes mind as its principle and cause or that mind precedes soul? Or does he hint at a different soul-mind relation?

We now turn to some relevant passages in the Philebus, Timaeus and Laws to see what Plato has to say about mind that might help us in this inquiry:

Thus, the relation of immutable mind to moving soul evokes the relation of a single, indivisible musical idea grasped in a single instant of time to the organized succession of the multitude of notes employed to communicate that idea by means of moving sounds; or of a single, indivisible poetic idea to the flood of words recited in succession in a way that is intended to convey that idea: when the unfolding in time of musical notes or of the words of a poem is organized by the soul in league with mind, the result is beautiful and “happy” and we marvel at the success of the composer in conveying to us, his audience, exactly the full weight of meaning of the musical or poetic idea as it was originally conceived in his mind at the single, original  instant of “inspiration”.

The notion of “single, indivisible idea” at the instant of inspiration is represented in mythology by the legend of the goddess Athena erupting in an instant fully grown and fully armed from the mind of Zeus. It is most likely the case that great creative craftsmen experience their greatest inspirations in an elusive, timeless (i.e., “immutable”) instant as one perfect, complete and indivisible entity and afterward expend their great creative labors to transcribe that timeless, indivisibly one instant insight into the multitude of musical sounds, articulate speeches, painted shapes and colors, or architectural and sculptural volumes and shapes in the unfolding world of space-time. The instantaneous, timeless, immutable flash of creative insight is the work of mind; its transcription into unfolding space-time is the work of soul.

Differently equipped human beings receive and appreciate the works of creative craftsmen differently. All may receive identically the craftsman’s output as it unfolds in space-time: all hear the same notes of Mozart’s Requiem, the same words of Cavafy’s Barbarians; see the same colors in Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son and the same sculpted marble in Michelangelo’s Pieta. But not all understand what is meant behind these sound, words, colors, and shapes.

To reach the artist’s intended meaning, the viewer’s or listener’s mind must leap past the sounds, words and images transmitted by the creative craftsman’s soul to sensory organs of the listener/viewer through the medium of space-time, leap past these sensory indicators and reach that immutable entity which originally inspired the artist. Not all can do this. Those whose souls are absorbed in the moving world of matter and motion and do not enlist their “immutable” mind, invariably either misinterpret the artist’s intended meaning, or find it boring or incomprehensible or, worse, threatening. Those whose souls are allied with their “immutable” mind are likely to get nearer to the experience that the artist intended to convey with his work.

Moreover, the complete absence of mind, i.e., of intelligence in this Platonic sense precludes any entity that claims the title of “intelligence” – whether living or artificial – from even the possibility of grasping the meaning and intentions of the artist.

Criton M. Zoakos

July 2, 2023

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Appendix: An experiment with the Artificial Intelligence of ChatGPT

To test this, I conducted the following experiment: In a 2008 article in the Mathematical Intelligencer, mathematics professor A. Vardulakis of the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki reported an earlier conjecture by another mathematician, the late A. Zachariou of the University of Athens, that a passage in Plato’s Laws V.737e1-738b1 contains a hidden theorem about the distribution of prime numbers. The conjecture was filed by Zachariou in the February 1982 issue of the Abstracts of the American Mathematical Society and, according to Vardulakis, the conjecture was first proven in 2004 by Peter Shiu of the University of Loughborough, UK. Plato’s “hidden theorem” states that

            if 3<P<Q where P and Q are successive primes, then every integer r<Q divides P!

The implications of this theorem are enormous for the ongoing research about the distribution of prime numbers, the Holy Grail of modern Number Theory. Professor Vardulakis claims that Plato’s “hidden theorem” in Laws V.737e1-738b1 has implications for the 1859 Riemann Hypothesis about the Number of Prime Numbers Smaller than any Given Magnitude.

The discovery from the 160 words of this passage that Plato’s flash of creative insight was the hidden theorem described above was obviously the work of mind, specifically as mind is understood in the Platonic texts we have been discussing.  To put contemporary artificial intelligence to the test, I submitted the passage from the Laws to ChatGPT, the flagship for the time being of the AI endeavors of state-of-the-art computer engineering, and asked ChatGPT if the text implies anything about prime numbers. ChatGPT answered that it does not. After some clever evasions, ChatGPT stated clearly that the passage “does not provide implicit information about the distribution of prime numbers that could be formulated into a theorem.”

Artificial Intelligence is not intelligence. It is an attempt to redefine what intelligence is:

Notes:

[i] Timaeus 30 b4: “[I]t is impossible for mind to be found apart from soul” (“νοῦν δ’ αὖ χωρὶς ψυχῆς ἀδύνατον παραγενέσθαι”)

[ii]Philebus 30c9: “Wisdom and mind could never come into existence without soul.” (“Σοφία μὴν καὶ νοῦς ἄνευ ψυχῆς οὐκ ἄν ποτε γενοίσθην.”)

[iii] Timaeus 46d5-6: “τῶν γὰρ ὄντων ᾦ νοῦν μόνῳ κτᾶσθαι προσήκει, λεκτέον ψυχήν …»

[iv] Euthydemus 287c1-e1; Sophist 248e7-249a8; Laws XII.967a7-d1, and 961d1-11.

[v] E.g., Philebus 30e10-12.

[vi] Philebus 47e: “[R]age and fear and longing and mourning and love and jealousy and malice” (“ὀργὴν καὶ φόβον καὶ πόθον καὶ θρῆνον καὶ ἔρωτα καὶ ζῆλον καὶ φθόνον”)

[vii] Phaedrus 245e2-4: “ … πεφασμένου τοῦ ὑφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ κινουμένου, ψυχῆς οὐσίαν τε καὶ λόγον τοῦτον αὐτόν τις λέγων οὐκ αἰσχυνεῖται.” The full argument reads as follows (Phaedrus 245c5-246a2 Harold N. Fowler translation): “Every soul is immortal. For that which is ever moving is immortal but that which moves something else or is moved by something else, when it ceases to move, ceases to live. Only that which moves itself, since it does not leave itself, never ceases to move, and this is also the source and beginning of motion for all other things which have motion. But the beginning is ungenerated. For  everything that is generated must be generated from a beginning, but the beginning is not generated from anything; for if the beginning were generated from anything, it would not be generated from a beginning. And since it is ungenerated, it must be also indestructible; for if the beginning were destroyed, it could never be generated from anything nor anything else from it, since all things must be generated from a beginning. Thus that which moves itself must be the beginning of motion. And this can be neither destroyed nor generated, otherwise all the heavens and all generation must fall in ruin and stop and never again have any source of motion or origin. But since that which is moved by itself has been seen to be immortal, one who says that this self-motion is the essence and the very idea of the soul, will not be disgraced. For every body which derives motion from without is soulless, but that which has its motion within itself has a soul, since that is the nature of the soul; but if this is true, that that which moves itself is nothing else than the soul, then the soul would necessarily be ungenerated and immortal.” (“ψυχὴ πᾶσα ἀθάνατος. τὸ γὰρ ἀεικίνητον ἀθάνατον· τὸ δ᾽ ἄλλο κινοῦν καὶ ὑπ᾽ ἄλλου κινούμενον, παῦλαν ἔχον κινήσεως, παῦλαν ἔχει ζωῆς. μόνον δὴ τὸ αὑτὸ κινοῦν, ἅτε οὐκ ἀπολεῖπον ἑαυτό, οὔποτε λήγει κινούμενον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ὅσα κινεῖται τοῦτο πηγὴ καὶ ἀρχὴ κινήσεως. ἀρχὴ δὲ ἀγένητον. ἐξ ἀρχῆς γὰρ ἀνάγκη πᾶν τὸ γιγνόμενον γίγνεσθαι, αὐτὴν δὲ μηδ᾽ ἐξ ἑνός· εἰ γὰρ ἔκ του ἀρχὴ γίγνοιτο, οὐκ ἂν ἔτι ἀρχὴ γίγνοιτο. ἐπειδὴ δὲ ἀγένητόν ἐστιν, καὶ ἀδιάφθορον αὐτὸ ἀνάγκη εἶναι. ἀρχῆς γὰρ δὴ ἀπολομένης οὔτε αὐτή ποτε ἔκ του οὔτε ἄλλο ἐξ ἐκείνης γενήσεται, εἴπερ ἐξ ἀρχῆς δεῖ τὰ πάντα γίγνεσθαι. οὕτω δὴ κινήσεως μὲν ἀρχὴ τὸ αὐτὸ αὑτὸ κινοῦν. τοῦτο δὲ οὔτ᾽ ἀπόλλυσθαι οὔτε γίγνεσθαι δυνατόν, ἢ πάντα τε οὐρανὸν πᾶσάν τε γῆν εἰς ἓν συμπεσοῦσαν στῆναι καὶ μήποτε αὖθις ἔχειν ὅθεν κινηθέντα γενήσεται. ἀθανάτου δὲ πεφασμένου τοῦ ὑφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ κινουμένου, ψυχῆς οὐσίαν τε καὶ λόγον τοῦτον αὐτόν τις λέγων οὐκ αἰσχυνεῖται. πᾶν γὰρ σῶμα, ᾧ μὲν ἔξωθεν τὸ κινεῖσθαι, ἄψυχον, ᾧ δὲ ἔνδοθεν αὐτῷ ἐξ αὑτοῦ, ἔμψυχον, ὡς ταύτης οὔσης φύσεως ψυχῆς· εἰ δ᾽ ἔστιν τοῦτο οὕτως ἔχον, μὴ ἄλλο τι εἶναι τὸ αὐτὸ ἑαυτὸ κινοῦν ἢ ψυχήν, ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἀγένητόν τε καὶ ἀθάνατον ψυχὴ ἂν εἴη.”)

[viii] Laws X. 894c4-7: “τήν τε ἑαυτὴν κινοῦσαν καὶ ἕτερον, ἐναρμόττουσαν πᾶσιν μὲν ποιήμασι, πᾶσιν δὲ παθήμασι, καλουμένην δὲ ὄντως τῶν ὄντων πάντων μεταβολὴν καὶ κίνησιν.”

[ix] Laws X. 895b3-6: “ἀρχὴν ἄρα κινήσεων πασῶν καὶ πρώτην ἔν τε ἑστῶσιν γενομένην καὶ ἐν κινουμένοις οὖσαν τὴν αὑτὴν κινοῦσαν φήσομεν ἀναγκαίως εἶναι πρεσβυτάτην καὶ κρατίστην μεταβολὴν πασῶν…”

[x] Laws X. 896a3-4: “τὸ ἑαυτὸ κινεῖν φῂς λόγον ἔχειν τὴν αὐτὴν οὐσίαν, ἥνπερ τοὔνομα ὃ δὴ πάντες ψυχὴν προσαγορεύομεν…”

[xi] Philebus 16c5-e2: “A gift of gods to men, as I believe, was tossed down from some divine source through the agency of a Prometheus together with a gleaming fire; and the ancients, who were better than we and lived nearer the gods, handed down the tradition that all immutable entities are sprung from one and many and have inherent in them the finite and the infinite. This being the way in which these things are arranged, [16d] we must always assume that there is in every case one idea of everything and must look for it—for we shall find that it is there—and if we get a grasp of this, we must look next for two, if there be two, and if not, for three or some other number; and again we must treat each of those units in the same way, until we can see not only that the original unit is one and many and infinite, but just how many it is. And we must not apply the idea of infinite to plurality until we have a view of its whole number [16e] between infinity and one; then, and not before, we may let each unit of everything pass on unhindered into infinity.”  (“θεῶν μὲν εἰς ἀνθρώπους δόσις, ὥς γε καταφαίνεται ἐμοί, ποθὲν ἐκ θεῶν ἐρρίφη διά τινος Προμηθέως ἅμα φανοτάτῳ τινὶ πυρί: καὶ οἱ μὲν παλαιοί, κρείττονες ἡμῶν καὶ ἐγγυτέρω θεῶν οἰκοῦντες, ταύτην φήμην παρέδοσαν, ὡς ἐξ ἑνὸς μὲν καὶ πολλῶν ὄντων τῶν ἀεὶ λεγομένων εἶναι, πέρας δὲ καὶ ἀπειρίαν ἐν αὑτοῖς σύμφυτον ἐχόντων. δεῖν [16δ] οὖν ἡμᾶς τούτων οὕτω διακεκοσμημένων ἀεὶ μίαν ἰδέαν περὶ παντὸς ἑκάστοτε θεμένους ζητεῖν—εὑρήσειν γὰρ ἐνοῦσαν— ἐὰν οὖν μεταλάβωμεν, μετὰ μίαν δύο, εἴ πως εἰσί, σκοπεῖν, εἰ δὲ μή, τρεῖς ἤ τινα ἄλλον ἀριθμόν, καὶ τῶν ἓν ἐκείνων ἕκαστον πάλιν ὡσαύτως, μέχριπερ ἂν τὸ κατ᾽ ἀρχὰς ἓν μὴ ὅτι ἓν καὶ πολλὰ καὶ ἄπειρά ἐστι μόνον ἴδῃ τις, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὁπόσα: τὴν δὲ τοῦ ἀπείρου ἰδέαν πρὸς τὸ πλῆθος μὴ προσφέρειν πρὶν ἄν τις τὸν ἀριθμὸν αὐτοῦ πάντα κατίδῃ τὸν [16ε] μεταξὺ τοῦ ἀπείρου τε καὶ τοῦ ἑνός, τότε δ᾽ ἤδη τὸ ἓν ἕκαστον τῶν πάντων εἰς τὸ ἄπειρον μεθέντα χαίρειν ἐᾶν.”)

[xii] Philebus 30d10-e2: “ὅτι νοῦς [30e] ἐστὶ γένους τῆς τοῦ πάντων αἰτίου λεχθέντος [τῶν τεττάρων, [ὧν] ἦν ἡμῖν ἓν τοῦτο].”

[xiii] Philebus 16c9: “… ὡς ἐξ ἑνὸς μὲν καὶ πολλῶν ὄντων τῶν ἀεὶ λεγομένων εἶναι …”

[xiv] Philebus 30b1-3: “τοῦτο ἐν μὲν τοῖς παρ᾽ ἡμῖν ψυχήν τε παρέχον καὶ σωμασκίαν ἐμποιοῦν καὶ πταίσαντος σώματος ἰατρικὴν …”

[xv] Timaeus 27d6-28a1: “τὸ ὂν ἀεί, γένεσιν δὲ οὐκ ἔχον … νοήσει … περιληπτὸν”

[xvi] Timaeus 30b1-5:  “λογισάμενος οὖν ηὕρισκεν ἐκ τῶν κατὰ φύσιν ὁρατῶν οὐδὲν ἀνόητον τοῦ νοῦν ἔχοντος ὅλον ὅλου κάλλιον ἔσεσθαί ποτε ἔργον, νοῦν δ’ αὖ χωρὶς ψυχῆς ἀδύνατον παραγενέσθαι τῳ. διὰ δὴ τὸν λογισμὸν τόνδε νοῦν μὲν ἐν ψυχῇ, ψυχὴν δ’ ἐν σώματι συνιστὰς τὸ πᾶν συνετεκταίνετο”

[xvii] Timaeus 36d8-9: “… κατὰ νοῦν τῷ συνιστάντι πᾶσα ἡ τῆς ψυχῆς σύστασις ἐγεγένητο …”

[xviii] Timaeus 47e3-48a3: “Τὰ μὲν οὖν παρεληλυθότα τῶν εἰρημένων πλὴν βραχέων ἐπιδέδεικται τὰ διὰ νοῦ δεδημιουργημένα δεῖ δὲ καὶ τὰ δι᾽ ἀνάγκης γιγνόμενα τῷ λόγῳ παραθέσθαι. μεμειγμένη γὰρ οὖν ἡ τοῦδε τοῦ κόσμου γένεσις ἐξ ἀνάγκης τε καὶ νοῦ συστάσεως ἐγεννήθη: νοῦ δὲ ἀνάγκης ἄρχοντος τῷ πείθειν αὐτὴν …”

[xix] Laws X. 896e8-897b1: ἄγει μὲν δὴ ψυχὴ πάντα τὰ κατ᾽ οὐρανὸν καὶ γῆν καὶ θάλατταν ταῖς αὑτῆς κινήσεσιν, αἷς ὀνόματά ἐστιν βούλεσθαι, σκοπεῖσθαι, ἐπιμελεῖσθαι, βουλεύεσθαι, δοξάζειν ὀρθῶς ἐψευσμένως, χαίρουσαν λυπουμένην, θαρροῦσαν φοβουμένην, μισοῦσαν στέργουσαν, καὶ πάσαις ὅσαι τούτων συγγενεῖς ἢ πρωτουργοὶ κινήσεις τὰς δευτερουργοὺς αὖ παραλαμβάνουσαι κινήσεις σωμάτων ἄγουσι πάντα εἰς αὔξησιν καὶ φθίσιν καὶ διάκρισιν καὶ σύγκρισιν καὶ τούτοις ἑπομένας θερμότητας ψύξεις, βαρύτητας κουφότητας, σκληρὸν καὶ μαλακόν, λευκὸν καὶ μέλαν, αὐστηρὸν καὶ γλυκύ, καὶ πᾶσιν οἷς ψυχὴ χρωμένη,

[xx] Laws X. 897b1-3: νοῦν μὲν προσλαβοῦσα ἀεὶ θεὸν ὀρθῶς θεοῖς, ὀρθὰ καὶ εὐδαίμονα παιδαγωγεῖ πάντα, ἀνοίᾳ δὲ συγγενομένη πάντα αὖ τἀναντία τούτοις ἀπεργάζεται.

Part One: Summary

In order to address the translation problems that I raised in my previous communication, The translation problem of Parmenides 132c6-7, I found it necessary to take a closer look at what Plato said about nous (νοῦς), and its operation, noein (νοεῖν).

“Mind” is perhaps the least problematical translation of the Greek “nous,” which has also been translated as “intellect,” “intelligence,” “reason,” “understanding,” “thought,” “spirit,” “wit,” etc., each choice emphasizing a different, cognitive aspect of mental life. The modern usage of the English word “mind” covers a broad enough range of meaning to include these other cognitive aspects and can be stretched to imply intentional (“I am of a mind”), volitional (“I’ve made up my mind”), affective (“I mind you”) and even somewhat vaguely causal (“I bring to mind”) connotations. All of this makes “mind” more suitable for translating Plato’s “nous,” and for carrying the additional meaning load that will emerge from our study of Plato’s texts.

But before we embark on the inquiry of what is mind/nous for Plato, we need to take note of a caveat that Plato himself supplies toward the end of his writing career. In the tenth book of the Laws, he has the Athenian Stranger warn that we shall never adequately know what mind is. In his own words: “[L]et’s not, on the other hand, reply in a way that we would bring on night in the middle of the day by looking straight into the sun, by presuming that we could ever look upon mind [nous] with mortal eyes and get to know it adequately…”[i]

This was Plato’s prescient warning against the futility of such projects as Kant’s two Critiques of Reason and all the neo-Kantian and post-Kantian critical philosophies that followed Kant in their bold ambition to know precisely what is human reason and thereby control, also precisely, what it can and cannot do. The futility of which Plato warned is evident in the complete failure of the Kantian critique program from its first 18^th century formulation and its immediate 19^th century successor schools of German Critical Philosophy down to its latest iteration in the form of 20^th century Heideggerian Destruktion and the more recent 21^st century “critical theory” fads at our universities.

More on this Platonic caveat and how the failure to heed it has brought about the now unfolding crisis of Western civilization will follow later in this discussion.

To the extent that we know some things about mind, Plato’s Socrates (but also Timaeus and the Eleatic Stranger) argues that mind is (1) a power residing in the soul and impossible to be anywhere but in the soul[ii] whose action is simultaneously not only (2) cognitive[iii], but also (3) volitional[iv] and (4) directive[v] and (5) causal[vi] and (6) moral[vii] in the sense that its operation is activated only under the influence of “The Good.” Further, the mind of which Plato’s Socrates et al. speak is not merely (7) the mind of the individual man[viii]. The mind found in the soul of individual man is but a small fragment of the (8) great mind that reigns in the great soul which animates the well-ordered, living universe: the cosmos[ix]. Accordingly, the human mind depends for its subsistence on this cosmic mind; and the virtue of the human mind – its ar-etē (ἀρετή) – is to achieve ar-monia(ἁρμονία), harmony, with the cosmic mind, i.e., to discover how to fit in the cosmos. Etymologically, both aretē and armonia derive from the verb ar-ariskō (ἀραρίσκω), which means “to fit together.” The word for “number,” ar-ithmos (ἀριθμός) derives from the same verb and denotes a multitude of things that “fit together.”

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These findings suggest that in Plato’s writings, mind had retained the characteristics found in the Homeric poems: it is the cognitive, deliberative, volitional action of living, ensouled subjects both human and divine and it directs and controls the universe. But this understanding of mind is not limited to Plato and Homer. It pervades the Greek literary record from Homer to Plato.

Thales speaks of god being the mind of the universe, and of “everything being ensouled and full of spirits”[x]; according to Xenophanes “god is mind and thought and eternity”[xi]; Heraclitus speaks of the common mind which binds together everything in the way that law binds together a city[xii]; then there is the “relentless mind” of Pindar[xiii], the “willful mind” of Bacchylides[xiv], the “unbending mind” of Aeschylus[xv], the “mind that loves” of Sophocles[xvi], and the “mind that shoots arrows” of Euripides[xvii].

This literary record reflects the popular world-image that prevailed in Archaic Greece, in whose mythology and folklore everything both animate and inanimate was full of “spirits,” minds of a kind – from the speaking water of the Delphic Oracle  to the weeping rock of Niobe at Mount Sipylus – and in whose usage of everyday, non-literary language, “mind” and its verb conveyed then, as they do to this day in modern Greek, the same variety of meaning – cognitive, deliberative, volitional, affective, causal, etc. – as is found in the classical literary record.

Anaxagoras seems to have been the first to attempt a systematic treatment of the archaic Greek understanding of mind in a book whose opening sentence, according to Diogenes Laertius, was “all things were together; then came Mind and set them in order.” Plato has Socrates explain that he began his journey as a young man by being drawn to Anaxagoras’s book and its promise to show that mind is the cause of everything; and that upon discovering that Anaxagoras failed to deliver on his promise, he undertook his “second sailing,” his own philosophical journey to discover what can be discovered about mind.

The result of Socrates’s “second sailing” is an inquiry not only into the traditional (in the Greek context) cognitive, deliberative, and causal aspects of mind, but also, in a revolutionary Socratic/Platonic turn, into the ethical and affective (erotic) aspects of mind. This revolutionary turn to the ethical and affective aspects had the collateral effect of producing a radically new understanding of all the other aspect of the mind’s activity. After the Socratic subordination of mind to “the good,” cognitive, deliberative, and causal action will be understood differently than before.

To clarify: Socrates’s link of the archaic Greek understanding of mind to the idea of “the good” triggered a revolutionary transformation in our understanding of how cognition works and launched a revolution in science. In the reports to follow, I shall try to trace how this transformation happened and what political consequences followed in the ancient Greek world.

Criton M. Zoakos

June 16, 2023

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Notes:

i Laws X.897d: “μὴ τοίνυν ἐξ ἐναντίας οἷον εἰς ἥλιον ἀποβλέποντες, νύκτα ἐν μεσημβρίᾳ ἐπαγόμενοι, ποιησώμεθα τὴν ἀπόκρισιν, ὡς νοῦν ποτε θνητοῖς ὄμμασιν ὀψόμενοί τε καὶ γνωσόμενοι ἱκανῶς.”

[ii] Timaeus 30 b4: “[I]t is impossible for mind to be found apart from soul” (“νοῦν δ’ αὖ χωρὶς ψυχῆς ἀδύνατον παραγενέσθαι”); Philebus 30c9: “Wisdom and mind could never come into existence without soul.” (“Σοφία μὴν καὶ νοῦς ἄνευ ψυχῆς οὐκ ἄν ποτε γενοίσθην.”)

[iii] Plato’s succinct statement of the cognitive aspect of the mind is in Philebus 65d2: “[B]ut mind is either identical with the truth or of all things most like the truth and the truest.) (“νοῦς δὲ ἤτοι ταὐτὸν καὶ ἀλήθειά ἐστιν ἢ πάντων ὁμοιότατόν τε καὶ ἀληθέστατον.”) His extended statement of the case is, of course, in Books 6 and 7 of the Republic.

[iv] Phaedo 99a7-b2: “[B]ut to say that I do the things I do and do them using my mind but without choosing that which is best would be a lot of foolish talk” (“ὡς μέντοι διὰ ταῦτα ποιῶ ἃ ποιῶ, καὶ ταῦτα νῷ πράττων, ἀλλ’ οὐ τῇ τοῦ βελτίστου αἱρέσει, πολλὴ ἂν καὶ μακρὰ ῥᾳθυμία εἴη τοῦ λόγου.”

[v] Philebus 28c7: “[M]ind is king of heaven and earth” (“νοῦς ἐστι βασιλεὺς ἡμῖν οὐρανοῦ τε καὶ γῆς”); 30d8: “mind always rules the universe” (“ἀεὶ τοῦ παντὸς νοῦς ἄρχει.”)

[vi] Philebus 30e1: “[M]ind belongs to the class that has been called the cause of all” (“νοῦς ἐστὶ γένους τῆς τοῦ πάντων αἰτίου λεχθέντος.”)

[vii] Republic 508b10-d6: “ – [P]lease understand then, that this is what I called the offspring of the good to which the good  gave birth in proportion with itself: as the good is in the mental domain to mind and the objects of mind, so is the sun in the visible world to vision and the objects of vision.” – How is that? he said; explain some more. – “You know, I said, that when our eyes are no longer turned upon objects whose colors are no longer illuminated by the light of day but the light of night, the eyes are dimmed and they seem almost blind, as if clear vision were not in them. – Yes, indeed, he said. – Yet when when we turn the eyes on objects illumined by the sun, they see clearly, and vision appears to reside in these same eyes. – Certainly. – Then think of the soul in the same way: When it is focused on something on which truth and reality shine, it understands and knows them and is shown to possess mind;”  (“Τοῦτον τοίνυν, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, φάναι με λέγειν τὸν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἔκγονον, ὃν τἀγαθὸν ἐγέννησεν ἀνάλογον ἑαυτῷ, ὅτιπερ αὐτὸ ἐν τῷ νοητῷ τόπῳ πρός τε νοῦν καὶ τὰ νοούμενα, τοῦτο τοῦτον ἐν τῷ ὁρατῷ πρός τε ὄψιν καὶ τὰ ὁρώμενα. –   Πῶς; ἔφη· ἔτι δίελθέ μοι. –   Ὀφθαλμοί, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, οἶσθ’ ὅτι, ὅταν μηκέτι ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνά τις αὐτοὺς τρέπῃ ὧν ἂν τὰς χρόας τὸ ἡμερινὸν φῶς ἐπέχῃ, ἀλλὰ ὧν νυκτερινὰ φέγγη, ἀμβλυώττουσί τε καὶ ἐγγὺς φαίνονται τυφλῶν, ὥσπερ οὐκ ἐνούσης καθαρᾶς ὄψεως; –   Καὶ μάλα, ἔφη. –   Ὅταν δέ γ’ οἶμαι ὧν ὁ ἥλιος καταλάμπει, σαφῶς ὁρῶσι, καὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς τούτοις ὄμμασιν ἐνοῦσα φαίνεται. –   Τί μήν; –   Οὕτω τοίνυν καὶ τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ὧδε νόει· ὅταν μὲν οὗ καταλάμπει ἀλήθειά τε καὶ τὸ ὄν, εἰς τοῦτο ἀπερείσηται, ἐνόησέν τε καὶ ἔγνω αὐτὸ καὶ νοῦν ἔχειν φαίνεται·”)

[viii] When Socrates is challenged that his mind has shortcomings, he agrees that while it may be true for his individual mind, it is otherwise for the true, God-like mind:  Philebus 22c2:   “PHILEBUS: [B]ut neither is your mind the good, Socrates, but it shall be subject to the same objections. SOCRATES: My mind, perhaps, Philebus, but I certainly don’t think this applies to the true mind which is God-like.” (“ΦΙ. Οὐδὲ γὰρ ὁ σὸς νοῦς, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἔστι τἀγαθόν, ἀλλ’ ἕξει που ταὐτὰ ἐγκλήματα. –  ΣΩ. Τάχ’ ἄν, ὦ Φίληβε, ὅ γ’ ἐμός· οὐ μέντοι τόν γε ἀληθινὸν ἅμα καὶ θεῖον οἶμαι νοῦν, ἀλλ’ ἄλλως πως ἔχειν.”)

[ix] Socrates in the Philebus dialogue, after explaining that the physical elements (earth, water, air, fire) that make up our bodies are but small, dependent fragments of the great supply of elements that make up the body of the cosmos, asks Protarchus whether this human body that belongs to the cosmos also has a soul, and if so, whether this soul and the mind in it are not a part of the soul and the mind of the cosmos: Philebus 30a-d: ” – SOCRATES: Shall we not say that our body has a soul?  – PROTARCHUS: Clearly, we shall.   – SO: Where did it get it, Protarchus, unless the body of the universe had a soul, since that body has the same elements as ours, only in every way superior?   – PR: Clearly it could get it from no other source.  – SO: No; for we surely do not believe, Protarchus, that of those four elements, the finite, the infinite, the combination, and the element of cause which exists in all things, this last, which gives to our bodies souls and the art of physical exercise and medical treatment when the body is ill, and which is in general a composing and healing power, is called the sum of all wisdom, and yet, while these same elements exist in the entire heaven and in great parts thereof, and area moreover, fair and pure, there is no means of including among them that nature which is the fairest and most precious of all.  – PR: Certainly, there would be no sense in that.  – SO: Then if that is not the case, it would be better to follow the other line of thought and say, as we have often said, that there is in the universe a plentiful infinite and a sufficient limit, and in addition a by no means feeble cause which orders and arranges years and seasons and months, and may most justly be called wisdom and mind.  – PR: Yes, most justly.   – SO: Surely reason and mind could never come into being without soul”. (“ – ΣΩ: πόθεν, ὦ φίλε Πρώταρχε, λαβόν, εἴπερ μὴ τό γε τοῦ παντὸς σῶμα ἔμψυχον ὂν ἐτύγχανε, ταὐτά γε ἔχον τούτῳ καὶ ἔτι πάντῃ καλλίονα;   – ΠΡ: δῆλον ὡς οὐδαμόθεν ἄλλοθεν, ὦ Σώκρατες.  – ΣΩ: οὐ γάρ που δοκοῦμέν γε, ὦ Πρώταρχε, τὰ τέτταρα ἐκεῖνα, πέρας καὶ ἄπειρον καὶ κοινὸν καὶ τὸ τῆς αἰτίας γένος ἐν ἅπασι τέταρτον ἐνόν, τοῦτο ἐν μὲν τοῖς παρ᾽ ἡμῖν ψυχήν τε παρέχον καὶ σωμασκίαν ἐμποιοῦν καὶ πταίσαντος σώματος ἰατρικὴν καὶ ἐν ἄλλοις ἄλλα συντιθὲν καὶ ἀκούμενον πᾶσαν καὶ παντοίαν σοφίαν ἐπικαλεῖσθαι, τῶν δ᾽ αὐτῶν τούτων ὄντων ἐν ὅλῳ τε οὐρανῷ καὶ κατὰ μεγάλα μέρη, καὶ προσέτι καλῶν καὶ εἰλικρινῶν, ἐν τούτοις δ᾽ οὐκ ἄρα μεμηχανῆσθαι τὴν τῶν καλλίστων καὶ τιμιωτάτων φύσιν.   –ΠΡ: ἀλλ᾽ οὐδαμῶς τοῦτό γ᾽ ἂν λόγον ἔχοι. – ΣΩ: οὐκοῦν εἰ μὴ τοῦτο, μετ᾽ ἐκείνου τοῦ λόγου ἂν ἑπόμενοι βέλτιον λέγοιμεν ὡς ἔστιν, ἃ πολλάκις εἰρήκαμεν, ἄπειρόν τε ἐν τῷ παντὶ πολύ, καὶ πέρας ἱκανόν, καί τις ἐπ᾽ αὐτοῖς αἰτία οὐ φαύλη, κοσμοῦσά τε καὶ συντάττουσα ἐνιαυτούς τε καὶ ὥρας καὶ μῆνας, σοφία καὶ νοῦς λεγομένη δικαιότατ᾽ ἄν. – ΠΡ: δικαιότατα δῆτα. σοφία μὴν καὶ νοῦς ἄνευ ψυχῆς οὐκ ἄν ποτε γενοίσθην.  – ΣΩ: σοφία μὴν καὶ νοῦς ἄνευ ψυχῆς οὐκ ἄν ποτε γενοίσθην.”)

[x] Diels-Kranz Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Thales Fr. A23: “Θαλῆς νοῦν τοῦ κόσμου θεόν, το δὲ πᾶν ἔμψυχον ἅμα καὶ δαιμόνων πλῆρες.”

[xi] Diels-Kranz Die Fragmente …, Xenophanes, Fr. A1; “οὐσίαν θεοῦ σφαιροειδῆ, μηδὲν ὅμοιον ἔχουσα ἀνθρώπῳ· ὅλον δὲ ὁρᾶν καὶ ὅλον ἀκούειν, μὴ μέντοι ἀναπνεῖν· σύμπαντα τε εἶναι νοῦν καὶ φρόνησιν καὶ ἀίδιον.”

[xii] Diels-Kranz Die Fragmente …, Herakleitos, Fr. B114: “ξὺν νόῳ λέγοντες ἰσχυρίζεσθαι χρὴ τῷ ξυνῷ πάντων, ὅκωσπερ νόμῳ πόλις, καὶ πολὺ ἰσχυροτέρως.

[xiii] Pindar, Pythian Odes Ι.95 “νηλέα νόον”

[xiv]Bacchylides, Lyrica Epinicia 4.9: “ἑκόντι νόῳ”

[xv] Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 164: “ἄγναμπτον νόον”

[xvi] Sophocles, Electra 913: “ὁ νοῦς φιλεῖ”

[xvii] Euripides, Hecuba 603: “καὶ ταῦτα μὲν δὴ νοῦς ἐτόξευσεν”

My translation of Plato’s Parmenides two years ago was a failure. It has thus joined the ranks of every other translation of this dialogue that has preceded it. Initial self-doubts had been focused on passage 132c6-7 which reads:

Εἶτα οὐκ εἶδος ἔσται τοῦτο τὸ νοούμενον ἓν εἶναι, ἀεὶ ὂν τὸ αὐτὸ ἐπὶ πᾶσιν;

This I translated at the time into:

Thus, wouldn’t eidos be this very object that is thought to be one, always the same over all?

Note that the passage contains the six most crucial words that have borne the full weight of Western civilization’s meaning-discovering function over the millennia: εἶδος (eidos), ἓν (one), ὂν (being), τὸ αὐτὸ (same) and the verbs νοεῖν/(νοούμενον) (to think) and εἶναι/(ἔσται) (to be).

Plato in this dialogue portrays Parmenides as proposing to Socrates the above-cited passage as a conclusion to an argument showing that eidos cannot be a thought (noema, νόημα), contrary to what Socrates had suggested earlier. Socrates agrees: eidos cannot be a thought. This is the same Parmenides that was famous, as Plato well knew, for having said “τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι” usually translated as “to think and to be is the same”.

Obviously, translating the Greek verb νοεῖν into the English “to think” – as every translator of this dialogue has done – needs to be looked into more closely. What νοεῖν means in Greek moves further and further away from the meaning of the English “to think” the closer one examines its use in the surviving archaic and classical Greek texts from Homer to Plato.

The verb νοεῖν denotes the action of an entity called νόος (νοῦς), a very ancient Greek word of unknown etymology whose existence is first attested almost a thousand years before Homer in Linear B tablets as part of the proper name of male persons (Ἰφί-νοος, Αἰγί-νοος). This νόος is usually translated as Mind or Intellect on the untested presumption that the ancient Greeks meant by νόος the same thing that we moderns (and post-Moderns) call Mind or Intellect or Consciousness or Reason or Vernunft.

The set of problems that arise from this modern presumption of the meaning of the ancient Greek νοῦς multiply further once we begin to consider the profound disagreements over Mind and Consciousness engulfing modern cognitive science and its predecessor philosophical epistemologies.

At any rate, the verb νοεῖν expresses the action of νοῦς;  νοεῖν is what this controversial νοῦς does.

Continue reading →

Plato’s work was unknown to Western Europe for most of its history. The full body of Plato’s writings first became available to Latin language readers in 1484 A.D. – 1,831 years after Plato’s death. From the time of Cicero until the 12^th century only half of the Timaeus was available in Latin, then around 1160 A.D. the Phaedo and the Meno were translated.

Plato started becoming available in modern languages in 1804 A.D. – 2,151 years after his death, almost a quarter century after Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and almost two centuries after Descartes’s Discourse on Method. Other than mystical Neo-Platonic interpretive claims and a bit of somewhat benign gossip from Aristotle, absolutely nothing of Plato’s own thought was known in the West until almost two millennia after his death.

Two millennia later! Let this sink in, then consider if you want to lend credence to Alfred Whitehead’s celebrated quip that “the European philosophical tradition … consists of a series of footnotes to Plato”. Continue reading →

I have completed my translation of Plato’s Parmenides dialogue and together with my introduction to it I am posting it  here in pdf files in two variants, one in English only and one which includes the facing Greek text side by side with the English:

The English-only translation

The English-Greek side-by-side version

Plato argues that space is a consequence, a byproduct of “substance” (Parmenides 145b3-e6): space depends on “substance”.

Immediately afterward, he advances the argument that substance not only generates space but that the space that substance generates is a nested manifold (Parmenides 148d5-149d7).

Subsequently in the Timaeus dialogue he attempts to elaborate the character of this substance-dependent space by employing the following descriptive expressions: imprint-bearer, container, winnowing basket, receptacle, all-recipient, and nurse, nurturer, mother, space, and seat.

(What Plato means by being, substance, the one, or eidos (words that Plato uses interchangeably as signifiers for his usually misunderstood ontological order of incorporeal causes) is another controversial issue to be discussed separately).

Plato’s ontological generation of space is diametrically opposed to the logical construction of the mathematical concept of Hilbert space whose validity depends not on any ontological facts but on the logical consistency of its own a priori axiomatic structure.

It is remarkable that the employment of Hilbert space mathematics by quantum physics appears to have led to certain (still untested) descriptions of the physical world that are more consistent with Plato’s view of reality than they are with Immanuel Kant’s Weltanschauung on which Hilbert’s mathematical achievement is based (here, here, here, here and here). In other words, the mathematical-physics consequences of Hilbert’s mathematics vindicate the ontological suppositions of Plato and not the critical-rational view of Kant, even though Hilbert’s mathematics depend on Kant’s critical rationalism and not on Plato’s ontological realism.

You can read here the relevant passages from Plato in the original Greek side-by-side with my English translations.

Before commenting on the link between globalism and the ongoing, broad-based assault against police officers and against law enforcement in general, a clarification is required: political globalism is distinct and radically different from the global economic integration we are used to calling “globalization.”

The aftermath of the Brexit referendum has made this radical difference clear and even obvious to any fair and unbiased observer. The United Kingdom’s rejection of the political tyranny of Brussels’ political globalism has in fact improved its prospects of further integration in the global economy outside the protectionist confines of the EU. (See my earlier posts: here and here)

Political globalism is the agenda of promoting global government at the expense of national sovereignty. Political globalism exploits economic globalization as an alibi and an excuse behind which to conceal its true aims. As a political aspiration – namely the destruction of the nation-state – it has an ancient pedigree that long predates the emergence of the recent, post-1992 wave of economic globalization.

Political globalism has as its primary aim the destruction of the legal writ of the sovereign state. The current wave of violent mob attacks against law enforcement personnel and the coordination of those mob attacks with academic and journalistic propaganda against the institutions of law enforcement represent a high point in globalism’s long-standing campaign against the legal writ of the nation state – a campaign that in, effect, is a campaign of lawlessness.

For nearly three decades there has been a proliferation of specialized legal regimes that gobble up legal authority from sovereign states and administer international treaty-based public law in areas formerly covered by the writ of sovereign states such as trade law, environmental law, human rights, etc. Pressured by powerful lobbies and on advice of administrative and academic experts, national legislatures time and again have surrendered their lawmaking function to unelected supranational bureaucracies. They do so by voting vague administrative laws and assigning accompanying rule making and legal interpretation to the “experts” of these bureaucracies.

Unaccountable, globalist rulemaking has thereby replaced large swaths of law that used to be made by national legislators held accountable to the constituencies that voted them into office. The process has been gradual enough to escape the attention of the general public over the last nearly three decades. But the cumulative effects that are being felt today leave little doubt in the mind of the general public that significant portions of public life operate in lawlessness disguised as administrative rulemaking.

Administrative rulemaking is fine and good if the administrators are incorruptible public servants. But when powerful special interests and lobbies take over the administrators and carry out what is technically called “regulatory capture,” then we have a failure of government. Regulatory capture is followed by generalized corruption of public life which, if not reversed, eventually leads to failed states.

If those failed states happen to be former sovereign nation-states, so much the better for our political globalists.

This perspective gives some context to Hillary Clinton’s non-indictment and to the virulent anti-police rhetoric and street-violence of recent days. But, more to the point, it calls for a fresh look at what happened during and after the 2008 financial crisis and the twin doctrines of “too big to fail” and “too big to prosecute” that protected (and keep protecting) the major global banks responsible for that crisis. The first doctrine was promulgated by President Bush’s Treasury Secretary; the second by President Obama’s Attorney General.

The current wave of lawlessness targeting police officers today takes aim at the heart of the legal writ of the sovereign nation state in exactly the same way that Hank Paulson’s “too big to fail” and Eric Holder’s “too big to prosecute” damaged law and order in 2008 and in 2013.

But neither the volatile street rioters nor the more cerebral Paulson and Holder realize that their behavior is defeating their own purported intentions. Without the legal writ of the sovereign nation state there is no rule of law. And without the rule of law there is only tyranny – the tyranny of supranational corporate lobbyists and their administrative experts operating under “regulatory capture.” Neither “social justice” – the purported objective of the street rioters – nor well-regulated markets – the purported objective of Paulson and Holder – are possible in a globalist tyranny.

Murdering cops and shredding banking and securities laws are equally violations of the law. Murder of individual law enforcers is more heinous than financial crime but financial crime on the scale perpetrated destroyed millions of lives, many of them irreparably.

Following the meeting of the EU’s European Council (heads of state) last night, EU President Donald Tusk confirmed that “there will be no negotiations of any kind until the UK formally notifies its intention to withdraw.” He was referring to Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon, which London has indicated will not be invoked until October when a new Prime Minister comes in to replace David Cameron. Article 50 is supposed to regulate negotiation for withdrawal. Continue reading →