 it's beautiful out here it's also hot and it doesn't help that with the sophists well we kind of got ourselves in a sticky situation kind of a actually really kind of bad situation although I mean I seem like it at first my protagonist says or concludes that everyone is right in their beliefs everyone has true beliefs and Gorgias goes the direct opposite direction and and says everyone is mistaken in their beliefs everybody has false beliefs there there is no truth right yeah not even wow maybe not even saying you know everybody's just mistaken and there is a truth but just going so far so that there is no truth to be mistaken about that's a pretty extreme conclusion hmm so we you know with these two guys we very definitely are stuck you know between a rock and a hard place sorry I couldn't help myself okay well protagonist starts with the notion that all knowledge is based on perception I mean we talked about this before all knowledge is based on perception I perceive greens and browns blues I feel hate I hear birdsong right I hear and see all kinds of things and based upon that perception that's how I have knowledge but people still disagree right if somebody were here they would perceive things slightly differently than I did there might be some disagreements I might claim that the bird song is one kind of bird and they would say it's a different one I might claim that it's 95 degrees out here and they might say well no it's only 87 right there's all kinds of ways that we would disagree or could disagree that would but could well protagonist says well since you know this is what knowledge is based upon this perception you know even though there's disagreement or since there's disagreement everyone is right everyone has true beliefs Gorgias kind of goes the other direction he's still relying on the idea that knowledge is based on perception and in fact that that's what knowledge is right for both of them that's what knowledge is is perceptions what you experience okay well you know Gorgias takes it even further look since there's this you know disagreement about perception um you know even a even if something existed by the way nothing does exist right because there's no truth even if something existed we wouldn't be able to comprehend it even if we could comprehend it we wouldn't be able to talk about it now since you know nothing exists and even if it did exist we couldn't comprehend it and even if we could comprehend it we wouldn't be able to talk about or communicate about it uh there's no truth nothing is true now you might have heard various versions of this argument before or you know these conclusions anyway maybe not necessarily these arguments for these conclusions um I'm sure you've heard something along unless well you know everybody's right right you you know you could believe whatever you want to believe and therefore whatever you believe is true that's true for you this is true for me all truth is relative people are fond of saying all truth is relative all right everybody's right right if all truth is relative everybody's right no matter what you believe everybody's right and there are even some like Gorgias everybody's wrong right there is no truth everybody's wrong um okay well well let's let's let's bring Protagoras over here Protagoras all right come on come over here now Protagoras you say everyone is right right okay good all right everybody's right uh no matter what they believe everyone's right okay uh Gorgias says everyone's wrong is he right I say that sometimes people are mistaken in their beliefs am I right because if Gorgias is right everyone's wrong and you say everyone's right and now we have a contradiction and I say sometimes people are mistaken in their beliefs am I right I mean either you say I'm right or you say I'm not right my beliefs aren't right and if I am right then you reject your own contradiction or they reject your own conclusion if I say if you say that I'm not right you've rejected your own conclusion that's kind of a problem Protagoras well well thanks for stopping by thanks for stopping by well maybe we'll have more luck with Gorgias Gorgias come on over here okay now Gorgias you you say everyone's wrong there is no truth okay there's no truth everyone there's no truth no matter what they say no matter what reasons they offer there is no truth okay everyone's wrong including you okay there's no truth including the statement there is no truth that's not true okay what about all those reasons that you've offered for your conclusion it's a rather lengthy argument are any of those reasons true so now I have no reason to accept your conclusion and your conclusion rejects itself okay well well thank you for stopping by Gorgias this is the problem with these kinds of conclusions if you say everyone's right and at least one person right if you say everyone's right then there's in fact no disagreement but there is disagreement right there's lots of disagreement if you say everyone's right and I say well I think some people are mistaken either I am right or I'm wrong if I'm right then not everyone's right and that conclusion goes away or if I'm wrong then that conclusion goes away that conclusion is very deeply self-defeating in some deeply important ways I mean it's not necessarily within itself but the minute that there's a single disagreement right that conclusion is wrong so that's a deep problem and even the statement there is no truth while including that one that conclusion is explicitly self-defeating it rejects itself so we can't accept either one of these conclusions and be rational we can't we can't accept either one of these conclusions and be rational they these conclusions reject themselves all right but these conclusions are nevertheless the products of a deductively valid argument which means that the premises are true the conclusion must be true if we reject the conclusion you have to reject at least one of the premises which one so by now I think you're probably familiar with our plan our structure here right you've seen this argument here's Protagoras's argument and his conclusion rests on one of these premises well we can't just reject the conclusion and walk away we can't just reject a premise walk away if we reject a premise we are committed to its logical contradictory here are the logical contradictories now if you reject one of the premises you are committed to one of these so which one and why now when we looked at Annex Manor and Annex Men is we had to choose between the two this time you have to you got to reject both Protagoras and Gorgias both those their conclusions are self-defeating well here is Gorgias's argument you've seen this before and it rests it's a very lengthy argument but it rests on these premises thankfully there's fewer premises than in the whole argument all the lines in the argument so if you reject one of these premises you are committed to one of the logic excuse me you committed to its logical contradictory so here are the contradictories based on the premise from rejecting the premises so for each of Protagoras and Gorgias which one right which premise are you going to reject and how are you going to justify that logical contradiction