[westoncb]

> Make the assumption that Plato was a smart guy (A. N. Whitehead once wrote that all western philosophy is but a set of footnotes on Plato's dialogues...) and, if you find some place where there is a dumb way of reading the text and a smart one, assume Plato had the smart one in mind, even if Aristotle tried to make us believe he had the dumb one, ...

This is not starting off well. The first rule is to interpret him in the most favorable way possible... (And the second rule btw is that Plato is better than Aristotle—which incidentally also makes up most of the first rule.)

I've read some plato and been very impressed with what he was doing at his time. That said, I've run into a number of folks who insist that he is still one of the most important philosophers to read (in the sense of being capable of benefitting modern readers)—but I can never get them to say what any particular idea(s) he has that's useful or true/important but not already well known. And any ideas I came across in my own reading were either easily demonstrable to be incorrect (and which someone as intelligent as Plato never would have espoused if he lived with our modern knowledge), or I'd already run into them in other contexts.

[curious_yogurt]

>This is not starting off well. The first rule is to interpret him in the most favorable way possible

Actually, as a principle of reading in general, this is not a bad one. It does not mean that we have to decide that the most favourable interpretation is the one correct interpretation, but it does mean that it is reasonable to search for such an interpretation in the beginning. This is called the principle of charity. The reason the author recommends it is that often people will impute a particular view to a philosopher that implies the philosopher made elementary errors in reasoning or obvious falsehoods.

This may, of course, be the case. It is trivially true that philosophers make invalid or weak inferences, and false claims.

But there are two good reasons to adhere to the principle of charity that the author does not make explicit. First, if we do not, then we often end up short-circuiting our understanding of what the philosopher may be trying to say. That is, we may prematurely dismiss the claim as absurd instead of trying to sort out what might be the actual claim. Second, while part of philosophy depends on what philosophers are actually saying, a good part of doing philosophy is figuring out what our response to a particular claim is, how we ourselves would support that claim (if the inference is invalid), and what claim we would put in its place (if the claim is false). If we do little more than dismiss a claim as absurd, then we are not really doing philosophy.

So I guess what I am saying here is that making the assumption "Plato is a smart guy" is actually not a bad start for one taking a serious study of what he has to say.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

[abecedarius]

I would be careful about applying this principle to Plato because he himself advocates lying to students, insofar as you can take him at face value -- and if you can't, well, here we are. Plato seems to have been a smart guy with an agenda and no qualms about manipulating his readers. That it's manipulative doesn't mean it's false or worthless, but I won't read it in the usual Gricean way.

[curious_yogurt]

Does Plato actually advocate this? If you are referring to an argument Socrates makes in the Republic regarding politically motivated lying, it seems to me not unreasonable at an initial glance to say that Socrates represents Plato's position.

But it also seems to me that there are other ways to take this. First, the Socrates in the Republic is a character in an exchange — and so it seems not unreasonable to think that perhaps that character is not a simple mouthpiece of the author. For example, nobody would say Hamlet is Shakespeare's mouthpiece. Second, there are dialogues where Socrates gets completely trounced by his opponent — in particular, the Parmenides. Interpretations of what is going on in the Parmenides are diverse; but at the very least it seems that Socrates is not Plato's mouthpiece. Third, if (contrary to the previous two points) it turns out that Socrates is Plato's mouthpiece, but that mouthpiece is telling us that Plato will manipulate the reader as he sees fit, then it seems at least possible that the whole idea that Socrates is Plato's mouthpiece is itself not a straightforward claim. Thus, the grounds for your claim that one should be careful about applying this principle to Plato — assuming I am right that you base it on evidence in the dialogues — is not entirely solid.

As an additional point, it seems to me that even if the author wants to manipulate the reader, it still stands us in good stead to have a principle of charity. It is a starting point, not an ending point.

[abecedarius]

Yes, it's a passage in the Republic that I'm particularly thinking of. I have only the vaguest memory now, something like that only a few of the oldest and wisest should be told the real reasons for rules, and the rest should get various levels of cover stories?

Agreed that there's a deliberate indirection in dialogs; that's why I included the caveat. But to take another example, the Turtle is not always Hoftstadter's mouthpiece, yet Hofstadter doesn't seem especially manipulative to me. Plato (at least in translation) does. The passage I brought up just crystallized that reaction. I started out reading Plato from the usual charitable standpoint, and ended feeling that's a mistake: whatever's he's up to, it's not primarily to help the reader become a better independent thinker, or to accurately report events.

I've read less Aristotle, but he gives a different impression: someone with faults like overconfidence, but who's honestly pitching in to the project of improving collective knowledge and thinking.

[cgio]

I self-referentially disagree with the principle. We are conditioned to think that books and their writers and their roles and society standing are an implicit guarantee of quality or validity of their arguments. It holds to some extent, but I find it more productive to by default disagree with everything I read and let the author try to convince me. After all, not everyone agrees in this world and one has to build the anchor of their own ideas and convictions gradually so that they don't sway from one end to the other under the winds of the opinions they happen to consume. I would rather short-circuit someone else's argument and let it do its work behind the scenes in due time, rather than establish the practice of short-circuiting any process of building my own convictions and ability to argue my ideas. The important is to respect what you read and give it a chance to convince you. On the other hand, if you find yourself agreeing too much with something you read, you probably don't need to read it.

[ordu]

> I find it more productive to by default disagree with everything I read and let the author try to convince me.

It doesn't work great with texts. Any communication is done with background idea of a receiver. If you try to prove math theorem to someone, you need to start with some assumptions about level of math literacy of those who will read/listen your proof. If your assumptions are wrong, you either will tire your readers with trivialities, or will prove them nothing, because they cannot comprehend your argument.

Authors of texts make assumptions like this. If you do not assume that their assumptions about your preparedness for topic are too high, then you have a little chance to figure it out while reading text. Reading a math text you probably will figure out that text is too high level for you. But if you read philosophy it is more probably that you find author to be a stupid one with stupid ideas.

> The important is to respect what you read and give it a chance to convince you.

It works great with interactive dialogue, but with texts you need not just give a chance, but make all the efforts the need to make to convince you, because book cannot make any efforts. The more efforts to do to prove the author to be right, the more you would get from the book. In dialogue you can expect your opponent to make all the hard work to prove his point. If your opponent is smarter than you are. If he is not, than to get maximum from dialogue you'd better help your opponent sometimes. A book is a stupid opponent, a book have ideas but lacks intelligence to defend them.

> We are conditioned to think that books and their writers and their roles and society standing are an implicit guarantee of quality or validity of their arguments.

The goal is not to prove the author right or wrong. The goal is to get maximum from reading. If you read book, assuming that the author is smarter than he really was, and you spent a long hours to prove him wrong, arguing with more intelligent ideas than stupid author really had, it means that you have invented some clever looking ideas, and then prove them wrong. That was not obviously wrong ideas: if they were you wouldn't spent hours to refute them. So you have got more wisdom from book, than the author had in his mind. It is a great outcome, isn't it?

Alternatively, if you found interpretation of text, that cleverer than author meant, and you prove this interpretation to be true, than it is even more great outcome. Does it really matters now what the author really meant by his text?

[westoncb]

This also called giving someone the 'benefit of the doubt.' It's clearly necessary for a fair reading. The extreme form advocated by the author, while potentially problematic, was more just a signal to me of bias. And that's problematic for me, because what I want is someone to talk about Plato who knows it well but can be objective about it.

[ianai]

Phht, objectivity doesn’t need to be taken to an absolute. It’s ok to be a Platonist. Especially if you disclose it up front!

[blueprint]

> It is trivially true that philosophers make invalid or weak inferences, and false claims.

Then those are not exactly very good "philosophers" then, are they? If so, it's not right to compare them with philosophers. It would be a weak and invalid inference. A philosopher needs to be able to define the term philosophy, first of all. Let me tell you that it's not "a love of wisdom". If you define it like that then you need to be able to define love and wisdom in terms of 'what is'. Only a real master of philosophy was able to do so in history. And we only have perhaps 4-5 of them in the last ~6k years of recorded history.

[nmg]

I was reading "Physics and Beyond" by Werner Heisenberg this weekend, and he mentioned reservations about Plato, specifically, speculation about the form and behavior of constituent particles of matter as described in the Timaeus. Heisenberg goes on to illustrate that in thinking critically about his disagreements with Plato, he arrived at some of his most important ideas.

The ideas presented by Plato may become outdated, but the mode of thinking required to challenge those ideas does not. Plato was not only conveying his thoughts, he was trying to teach us how to think.

[westoncb]

But there doesn't appear to be anything special about the 'mode of thinking', anymore. It was an extremely important innovation thousands of years ago. From my understanding it's basically habitual questioning of assumptions. Great—but do I really need to read thousands of pages of his dialogues (as a modern reader!) to get that? I've already spent my life living that way (often to my own detriment), no doubt in part because of Plato's lasting influence—but that still sums up to me as: read out of respect or curiosity about history, not because you should expect to uncover some magical idea contained therein which will change your whole viewpoint on life and reality.

[coldtea]

>but do I really need to read thousands of pages of his dialogues (as a modern reader!)

Yes. For one, because those are foundational texts of the western civilization. Even if Plato's text were insignificant, understanding one's civilization (in a way that goes beyond the pop culture of the day) remains as illuminating as ever.

Second, because texts written 100, 50, 20 and 1 year ago are still influenced by them, including seminal texts in their own right.

Third, because good philosophy (including theology) is perennial, not tied to this or that era. If anything, it will be this or that era that will come to pass, while Platos ideas (and other such inquiries) will still be around.

It's like Lisp: those who don't understand philosophy will construct their own philosophical system badly (or adopt wholesale some poorly made IKEA-grade one, adapted to appeal to consumers of their era -- from the plethora of self-help gurus to various pulp attempts at philosophizing).

[westoncb]

Sure, I agree about the history—and I have already read a decent amount of Plato, and multiple summaries.

> Third, because good philosophy (including theology) is perennial, not tied to this or that era

For historical relevance sure, but from what I can tell the rest of it has already passed its time.

> those who don't understand philosophy will construct their own philosophical system badly

This is a common defense I hear from philosophers: the 'real' philosophy is always around the corner—the 'real' interpretation, the 'real' way of doing it. But from what I can tell, 'real' is just a colorful expression of how positive their subjective experience of reading so-and-so was.

Or maybe the several hundred hours or so I've spent reading philosophy (or meta-philosophy, inquiring into the proper way of approaching it) is insufficient for me personally and I'll never 'really' understand Plato and others.

[ianai]

It’s important to remember that, aside from mathematics, every area of modern human knowledge started in philosophy. Over the years, all of these topics were taken out of philosophy. And all of those topics still have philosophy in them - including logic and the basic approaches to reasoning in the field.

It’s too much to divorce a topic from philosophy and later go back to philosophy for a defense of its worth.

[coldtea]

>For historical relevance sure, but from what I can tell the rest of it has already passed its time.

I wouldn't say there's much in it that has "passed its time". What would that be? It's not like in the era of Trump (or Hillary if you prefer) we have mastered good government. Or we can't benefit from inquiries about the nature of good, or the nature of the state because they're "old".

It's not like some great scientific discovery rendered those obsolete (and if so, only the most superficial parts), or like man changed in essence. We don't have any settled once and for all "better" arguments -- and those all arguments are still not just foundational, but very current.

Someone not familiar with them, still uses half of them (badly) when explaining their viewpoints or politics -- just like someone who doesn't know about parsers might be able to parse something, hooking together regular expressions and ad-hoc code, but not very rigorously, and missing an awful lot of tricks.

>This is a common defense I hear from philosophers: the 'real' philosophy is always around the corner—the 'real' interpretation, the 'real' way of doing it.

"Real philosophy" is not some rare event that arrives accompanied by some Michal Bay-styled revelation, with explosions and fireworks. It's an inquiry and a dialogue.

People have been really reading philosophy, real philosophy, -- and applying it to their lives and their states, for millennia.

Not sure why a philosopher (which are few and far between today, most are just tired tenured academics rehashing and elaborating on what others wrote. Original philosophers come once in a blue moon) would say that "real philosophy" is "around the corner".

[naravara]

>But there doesn't appear to be anything special about the 'mode of thinking', anymore.

If it was easy everyone would be doing it. There's nothing special about a traditional roundhouse kick anymore either. Various martial arts traditions figured out that bit of applied kinesthesiology ages ago. But mastering it still takes practice, practice, practice.

[westoncb]

That, I can totally agree with. But again, I strongly disagree that Plato is the best way of practicing, or even a good way of practicing (in comparison to the authors we now have access to, or perhaps had access to even hundreds of years ago, who happened to take some advantage of the thousands of years passed between themselves and Plato).

[curious_yogurt]

Indeed, questioning assumptions is a part of what hopefully comes out of a careful reading of Plato's dialogues. But it is much more than this. Plato not only tries to figure out which questions are worth asking, but embeds a plethora of different approaches and ideas in his dialogues. Many of these approaches and ideas are specific to the type of question under discussion—part of why we have different classes of arguments for different topics.

I do agree with you that you should not expect to uncover some magical idea in Plato's works. But this is certainly not what Plato intended us to do. Instead, what Plato is trying to do is encode philosophical practice. This entails not a collection of ideas (magical or not), but rather an approach to philosophical discourse and hence to the world. Curiosity and scepticism, as you correctly point out, are important and are recurrent themes. But this just scratches the surface.

[astazangasta]

Questioning assumptions is hardly what Plato conveys - rather the opposite. Most of his arguments are constructed of blank suppositions which we're meant to take at face value, usually because the social burden of contravening them in the back-and-forth flow of dialog is so difficult - Thrasymachus was right, Socrates is simply a bully. This is how the Republic is able to take us to such, frankly, asinine places (like a ban on fast-tempo'd music) - because Plato doesn't even attempt to unpack most of his (rather conservative) assumptions.

[westoncb]

> But this just scratches the surface.

I'd be curious to hear about any others.

Additionally, my understanding is that his actual argumentation is generally pretty bad and he's really just trying to convince people of things that the thinks would be effective for them. That's mostly coming from reading Bertrand Russel, but the fact that his arguments are bad (structurally, not just because of the data he's missing) seems to be uncontroversial from what I can tell.

[curious_yogurt]

It seems to me that the claim that Plato's "actual argumentation is generally pretty bad" is something that might be challenging to defend. It is a very sweeping claim, and it also assumes the argumentation of the author is reflected by the characters in the dialogues. Even if we were to weaken this to say that the actual argumentation of the characters in the dialogues is generally pretty bad, I think that it would be challenging to defend this claim. I'm not saying it's not possible; but it would be interesting to see if it could be sustained. My guess is that it would not be possible to sustain such a general claim.

Bertrand Russell, of course, is a master of logic. But if you are drawing from his History of Philosophy, I'm not sure that is a particularly good source for views on ancient philosophy. I tend to think the best way to justify a claim is to look at the primary sources themselves (if we have them—which in the case of Plato we are pretty sure we have everything he wrote and then some extras).

In terms of scratching the surface, much of what Plato contributes is ways to approach particular problems. For example, if you look at the treatment of universals in the Parmenides and the Philebus, the approaches in the arguments here (severally considered) have a lot of staying power: in particular, you find related arguments being made regarding universals by Aristotle and on, going all the way up to the present day (including, for example, Bertrand Russell). What is going on here is not merely philosophical scepticism (though there is that), but also approaching and techniques that need to be solved in order to make progress on a particular problem. So, that is an example of how the dialogues go beyond simple scepticism. There are so many other examples: the dialogues are packed with them — which is part of the reason why treatments of many modern philosophical problems and approaches can be traced back to Plato.

[westoncb]

Thanks for the replay curious_yogurt. As far as going back to primary sources, I did that initially but it seemed to me like he was making flawed arguments—either that or I just was totally failing to follow the logic. That's where I ended up going to places like Russel's History of Western Philosophy (as you guessed), and Durant's The Story of Philosophy. You can see even on this thread though, others echoing what I came to understand to be the case: it's relatively accepted that the intrinsic logical merit of Plato's arguments is not very high.

That said, when you pointed out the universals qeustion it reminded me of the thing that probably impressed me the most in reading Plato. The level of abstraction he reached just skyrocketed things. It's there in a certain sense with the pre-Socrates with general statements like 'everything is flux' or whatever, but some of Plato's stuff does feel remarkably modern.

That said, I think my original point still holds: impressive for his time, but there are far better things to be reading now (unless you're looking specifically for historic content). Or maybe there's still something I'm missing?

[pmoriarty]

"but I can never get them to say what any particular idea(s) he has that's useful or true/important but not already well known"

Philosophy does not rack up facts in some sort of storehouse of knowledge.

Much of the value of reading Plato is that he gets you to question your own assumptions and those of others, and does so in an accessible and easy to understand way.

What is justice? What is good? What is the best way to govern? What is true? Where does knowledge come from? Why should any of this matter?

Most people without any philosophical training go around acting like they have the answers to all of these questions, or that they're self-evident, or that they don't matter.

Plato helps us to see that we and various self-styled experts might not know as much about these as we thought.

Later philosophy tends to get more and more technical and jargon-filled, and (at least in Western philosophy) tends to assume a familiarity with Plato.

In many important ways, you would be either lost or missing an important piece of the puzzle were you to try to dive in to later philosophy without a knowledge of Plato, as philosophy to a large extent is a dialogue with earlier philosophers, of whom Plato is a seminal figure.

Plato is also a good sparring partner for when you're just dipping your feet in to the waters of philosophy. A boxer shouldn't expect to knock out the reigning heavyweight champion the first time he puts his boxing gloves on. Similarly, you should really have a go at Plato before you have a go at later philosophers, who themselves have engaged with Plato and tried to answer Plato or have another go at issues first raised by him.

A familiarity with philosophers from every historical period is just part of a well-rounded philosophical education. Skipping to contemporaries would just leave huge gaps in your education, especially if you skip some of the greatest and most influential philosophers of all time, like Plato.

[westoncb]

I've probably read a hundred or so pages on my own, and 'recaps' by Russel, Durant, and have spoken with practicing philosophers about him. I have enough exposure that I've been able to make much more sense of why later philosophers seem obsessed about certain points that only make sense if you consider the historical philosophical tradition from Plato. But hearing people talk about him, especially when they insist on his continued relevance, it makes me think either I'm missing something or they're faking something.

But then again, I'd answer the questions you mentioned in a way I feel that most philosophers would find to be 'missing the point'. For example:

> What is justice?

A concept useful for regulating human societies. It's based on ultimately arbitrary heuristics that are effective for satisfying an approximately maximum number of people.

> What is good?

A word we use to label a fundamental behavior in our brains: we use values as something like utility functions in optimization processes. Ultimately there are constraints placed on the values we're capable of selecting which are imposed on us by our evolved biology, but we do have a good amount of freedom, so by studying human nature we can figure out which values are the most effective for creating the sort of lives we're interested in.

> What is the best way to govern?

We don't know yet. There probably is no best. If there is, we'll probably find it algorithmically.

> What is true?

There is too much ambiguity here to really answer, so I'll just choose one interpretation and say: whatever it is, it's highly unlikely that human minds would be capable of 'understanding' it ('understanding' being a human faculty, and not likely something important to the nature of the universe).

> Where does knowledge come from?

Brains.

> Why should any of this matter?

Because experience is real.

[skissane]

> > What is good?

> A word we use to label a fundamental behavior in our brains: we use values as something like utility functions in optimization processes.

That position limits the degree to which ethics can be objective. Suppose some other culture believes in doing things we believe to be gravely immoral. If our idea of good is just "a behaviour in our brains" or a "utility function" or a product of "evolved biology", well then theirs is too, so how can we say our moral views are objectively better than theirs? The ability to say that certain behaviour is immoral, in an objective and transcultural way, is threatened by your position; and I think that threat is a good reason to reject it.

> > Where does knowledge come from?

> Brains.

You seem to treat (some version of) materialism as if it were obviously true, but I don't think its truth is obvious.

I'm inclined toward idealism, and I don't believe there are any good reasons to believe that materialism is more likely to be true than idealism.

[westoncb]

> and I don't believe there are any good reasons to believe that materialism is more likely to be true than idealism.

You poke someone in the brain (or drop some chemicals in there), their behavior changes. This is a pretty good reason for considering the brain to be the generator of our minds. And then on top of that, we now have another hundred years or so of experiments (via neuroscience and its antecedents) and theoretical models which allow us to accurately predict things about how the brain in fact behaves, and how people's larger scale behavior conforms to that.

But that's only a reply I give because you called me a materialist after my answer of 'Brain.' In fact I'm not a thoroughgoing materialist, but we have enough data at this point to confidently say values arise from brains.

[skissane]

> You poke someone in the brain (or drop some chemicals in there), their behavior changes.

An idealist can say: Physical objects, events, and processes, and the correlations between them, are all patterns in the experiences of minds. "Brain" is a pattern in the experiences of minds. "Poke someone in the brain" or "drop some chemicals in there" are also patterns in the experiences of minds, and so likewise is "their behaviour changes". The fact that the former is regularly correlated with the later is a yet further pattern in the experiences of minds. There is nothing here that cannot be explained by idealism.

> This is a pretty good reason for considering the brain to be the generator of our minds

A materialist explains these observations in terms of brains generating minds, whereas an idealist can explain them in terms of minds generating brains. Since both can explain the evidence in terms of their own theories, it is unclear how this could be a reason to prefer one theory to the other.

> In fact I'm not a thoroughgoing materialist

I'd be interested to know what your position is.

[westoncb]

> Physical objects, events, and processes, and the correlations between them, are all patterns in the experiences of minds

But there is no evidence of such minds, right? We have no ideas about where or what they are, or actually anything anything at all about them?

> whereas an idealist can explain them in terms of minds generating brains

But the difference is that causality is moving in a particular direction in the example I gave about brains being poked or having chemicals added to them, where the mind is affected by such actions. However, it has never been demonstrated in the opposite direction: there is an absence of a brain somewhere, then a mind does something, then a brain manifests. If the causality there were actually bi-directional, then that sort of thing would be observed too.

Now I know that when you say 'mind' you are referring to something else, and I partly just give the above answer to show how misleading it is to use the same term for what you're talking about (which I assume is more like the 'mind' of a monistic panpsychism).

I can grant your assertion that there is a mind-like something underlying everything, it's the substrate through which all matter appears (including brains), and actually believe something a little like that myself—but it doesn't change the fact that at the end of the days we're left with the matter thus generated, and that it is governed by certain predictable rules, etc. So for spiritual purposes perhaps it makes sense go ahead and contemplate the mind-medium that is more fundamental than our physical reality; but for the purpose of understanding how our universe works, you want to engage the materialist perspective.

So I think we agree that at least for transcendent, truly fundamental matters, materialism is insufficient. I think where we disagree is about which sort of things are fundamental/transcendent or not: 'knowledge' is something that I believe to be totally mundane and amenable to scientific description (same with 'justice' and the best way of governing), whereas philosophers have a tendency to elevate it. It makes sense that they would elevate it because in the days of its original elevation it was as unapproachable and mysterious to them as anything—as say, the notion of an afterlife, is to us. But time has passed, science encroached on that territory, and a lot of philosophers need to catch up.

[pmoriarty]

It's not about the answers, but about thinking deeply about these questions and questioning your own assumptions (and those of others).

I'd highly recommend taking an intro to philosophy course, or one on ancient philosophy, where you can read the Socratic dialogues and engage with them in a group setting, along with others who are encountering these for the first time.

When done well, if you're lucky enough to have a good teacher and be in a group of students who are willing to engage fully with the reading and talk about it in class, this can be an experience like no other.

[westoncb]

I've already taken in intro philosophy class. Furthermore, I've been debating philosophical points with friends since I was a kid—and since I've grown up two of my good friends who I spent multiple years talking philosophy with were either presently in grad school for philosophy or had finished with it.

I see what you mean about doing philosophy in a group setting, but for what I'm interested in anyway, I'm not going to have a great time debating the above questions with an intro to philosophy class. A starting point for me to enjoy it would be that my interlocutors would need to be able to have some degree of understanding of the answers I gave above, what points might be in their favor, and what their limitations might be.

I can say no philosopher I've met personally would answer those questions like I did (though I think I've read some who would), so I'm still very curious to see why we choose different ways. But my guess is still just that they'd answer differently if they had more knowledge of cognitive science and other topics.

[coldtea]

>This is not starting off well. The first rule is to interpret him in the most favorable way possible...

That should be something people should strive for in every discussion. It's called the Principle of Charity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

[supersrdjan]

Or what they call steelman as opposed to strawman, right?

[coldtea]

I guess so, though I haven't heard the first term!

[noncoml]

> And any ideas I came across in my own reading were either easily demonstrable to be incorrect

Genuinely interested to learn which ideas you found to be incorrect

[westoncb]

I think the tougher thing would be to find any specific ideas of something that is correct.

But I'll give you an easy incorrect one: his 'tripartite theory of the soul'.

See what really gets me about people still recommending Plato is that they'll encourage others to go read some (now) useless theory like that, when they could instead be reading some modern cognitive science which covers the same ground, but with thousands of years of progress.

It's to my mind similar to telling someone to study an old doctrine about the world being composed of earth, wind, and fire instead of learning modern Chemistry.

[noncoml]

I see what you mean, great example. But I think when people recommend Plato is not for his conclusions but for the reasoning he uses. At least that's what I find fascinating.

[Tomte]

> I'd already run into them in other contexts.

But that‘s exactly the point behind the footnotes remark that you seem to dislike.

Plato owned philosophy so completely that everyone, even centuries later, still referenced him.

You coming across ideas first via some more recent source does not invalidate him any more than Wordpress invalidates the importance of Movable Type.