 So at this point, you know, people who are really involved in these questions about reality, being, change in Athens and you know, pretty much most of ancient Greece, they're getting more than a little discouraged. Because so far, you know, from Baileys on, Baileys, Annexmen or Annexmenes, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and Pettiglis, Annexagoras, Lucipus, the Democritus, there's just not a whole lot of agreement going on. They all disagree with each other. People are really seriously beginning to wonder whether these questions can be answered. People are beginning to wonder whether there is an answer to this question. Why make the distinction between appearance and reality to begin with? Well, along come a group of people called the Sophists. Now, the Sophists got their name because amongst one of the other things that they did is they trained people to argue any position whatsoever, for any conclusion whatsoever. You can kind of think of it as, you know, training somebody to persuade anybody to believe anything that you want. And those arguments were called Sophistry, hence the Sophists. So the Sophists, one thing to remember is that they are not Athenians. The Athenians, you know, had their own real consider views about what was real and how to argue for the truth. They had their own beliefs, especially in moral customs. They had a very elaborate set of moral customs, moral truths. And the Sophists, well, they were not Athenians. So basically they were foreigners and they came into Athens and compared their ideas with the Athenians. On top of that, the Sophists were really knowledgeable in other cultures and what they thought was more, what they thought was real. It doesn't take long, you know, if you're doing like a comparison in mythology across cultures to find that there's a lot of disagreement across cultures. So the Sophists were, you know, really kind of convinced that, you know, in various ways shape or form that there wasn't any kind of absolute truth. So the Sophists, you know, the reason why they thought there wasn't any real absolute truth is because there's this wide disagreement across all peoples. And, you know, we make the same claim today. We say something like, well, there's, especially about morality. We say, well, since there's all this difference in morality across cultures, there just must be no absolute moral truth. Well, we're going to take a look at these arguments from Protagoras, Gorgias, and Thrasymachus. If you think there aren't any nice natural areas around Texas or around San Antonio, you're not looking hard enough. The first Sophists we're going to look at is Protagoras. And Protagoras argues is that everybody is right. Everybody has, every belief that they have is true. And again, this kind of follows from, you know, it's associated with this idea that there is no absolute truth. In fact, he's going to argue that since everybody's right, there is no absolute truth. The way that he does this is he relies heavily on the idea that our knowledge, all of our knowledge comes from perception. So I'm looking around me now, and I see trees, I see water, I feel the air, it's warm, it's humid, and these are my perceptions. And that's how I come to knowledge about the world. So Protagoras' argument begins with the claim, maybe the observation, that all of our knowledge begins with perception. So I see brown trees, I see green needles, I feel rigid bark, I hear water. If I were to dip my hand in the water, it would feel cool. I see this from a particular angle. So that much seems pretty right. Protagoras goes on, he says, look, people have different perceptions. I'm looking at this tree from a particular angle, but somebody else looking at it would have to be at a different position than I am. Well that different position means there's a different perception. You're seeing the tree behind me from a particular angle. I'm seeing it from a very different angle. So our perceptions of this tree, of all trees, are very different. In fact, our perceptions vary from person to person. There's a lot of variation, and nobody has the same perceptions as anybody else. I mean, there's lots of, you know, contemporary evidence that shows this is true. You know, for instance, I'm slightly colorblind, and I have color deficiency. I can't see as many colors as you do. So my perceptions of what's going on around me are going to be different than yours simply because you see more colors. You know, even perceptions of what's true if they are perceptions at all. Our perceptions of what is true varies from person to person. Nobody has an identical set of beliefs about the world around them. So since our knowledge begins with perception and this perception varies from person to person, we don't have any test to see who's right. We don't have any way to determine whose perception is the right one. If there's no way to determine whose perception is the right one, it really doesn't look like a way to distinguish between appearance and reality. We just have our perceptions. I mean, there's no reality to match up to them. Well, if there's no way to test who's right, well, Protagoras says, well, that means there's no absolute truth. Since there's no way to determine who's right, there is no right. There's no absolute truth. There's no absolute truth. There's just what you believe. There's what you get from your perceptions and that's all you really need. That's all you need to know. So this is an extreme claim. Everybody is right. You might wonder if you agree with that. Gorgias is next. Gorgias is an interesting character. Gorgias was an extreme skeptic. Now, skeptic denies that we have knowledge or sometimes that there's truth about some particular question or field or discipline. So if you're a skeptic about morality, you doubt that there are any moral truths. Gorgias was a skeptic to an extreme condition. He thought that there wasn't any truth whatsoever to be known at all. Where Patagoras thought that everybody was right. Gorgias pretty much thought that everybody was wrong in a way. You can believe what you want to believe, but there's no truth to what you believe and you don't know it at all. He does this by arguing three things. He argues that nothing exists. Even if something existed, then it would be incomprehensible. And even if it were comprehensible, you wouldn't be able to communicate it. Pretty extreme position. If you're saying nothing exists, then yeah, that's hard to believe. Well, how's Patagoras going to do that? Well, remember he's arguing that nothing exists. Even if it did exist, it's incomprehensible. Even if it were comprehensible, you wouldn't be able to communicate it. Well, let's start with how he does this. The way he does this is he does kind of a reductio. So to do a reductio, remember, you assume the proposition that you want to show is false, you assume that it's true. So he starts by assuming something exists. You agree with this assumption, you think at least you exist. Well, we also think that if something exists, then we can comprehend it. So I'm looking around me and I see trees. There's this tree right here. This tree exists and I can comprehend it. I know things about the tree. It's tall, it's rigid. It has its own metabolism. It uses the water. So I know things about the tree. How do I know things about the tree? Well, we've got a protagonist in the background here. Gorgias says, look, if we know something, we know it only through perception. We know it only through perception. And it seems pretty right. Physical sciences go about their business by using observation. My mind does not have access to the tree. I can't use my mind, send it out to touch the tree and then to understand it. No, I have to use perceptions. I have to use sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. Well, guess what? If you're using perception to know the thing, what you know are your perceptions. You don't know the thing itself. And it seems like he's right here. I have access to my perceptions. My mind has access to my perceptions. My mind does not have access to this tree. The tree is something distinct from my mind. If I were to be able to know the tree without using perceptions, I could just close my eyes and use my mind to contact the tree. That doesn't happen. The same thing with the water and the sky. The bugs that I hear right now, they're making that buzzing sound. My mind can't access those bugs. I don't even know where they are. I can only hear the sound and I know what's happening around that away. So if what I know are the perceptions and not the thing, the one I'm comprehending are the perceptions. I'm not comprehending the thing. My mind doesn't have access to the tree. That's not what I'm comprehending. What my mind has access to are the perceptions. What happens now? I started with the presumption that if something exists, then I could comprehend it. So I conclude that I can comprehend it. But now it looks like, by the way, I comprehend things. I don't actually comprehend these things. I comprehend my perceptions without the things themselves. With that in place, I've drawn a contradiction. So it's false that something exists. It's also false that even if it did exist, that I comprehend it. Well, I couldn't comprehend it because I know the presumption is not the thing. So just with that one single stroke, with dealing with existence and comprehension and perceptions, Gorgias has wiped out existence. And even if it existed, we couldn't comprehend it. Well, if I don't exist, I don't know what I'm doing here. That's a bit of an uneven path. Lots of sticks and roots in the way. Some mud, too. A lot of shade coming off of the side of the hill. What I'm doing right now is I'm trying to communicate the things that I see around me. Now, Gorgias thinks that I can't actually do this. That I'm mistaken. Because you notice what I had to use to describe it all. I had to use words. Words, whether they're spoken or written, are symbols. The words uneven, root, mud, tree, shade, sun. The words are not the things themselves. When I say the word sun, the sun doesn't come out of my mouth. It's a representation of the thing. It's not the thing itself. Well, Gorgias has already argued that nothing exists. And even if it did exist, we couldn't comprehend it. Now he's going to argue that even if we could comprehend it, we can't communicate it. And to do this again, he uses a reductio. First he assumes, yeah, if you comprehend something, then you can't communicate it. But what's involved in that communication? Well, if you're communicating, then you're using symbols. I just used a bunch of symbols. Rough, uneven, root, mud, sun. But these symbols are what I have. And everybody has their own set of symbols. Now by that, he doesn't mean they're all speaking different languages. Sometimes that happens, but not always. What he means by that is, you know, I'm using the word sun, but that doesn't mean that you're using the word sun in the same way. Think back to Protagoras, where Protagoras is saying about perceptions. We all have our different perceptions. We all perceive things exactly the same way. So for instance, the sun is not my friend. There's a reason why I'm usually wearing a hat. The sun burns my skin. It hurts my eyes. It causes actually some other health problems. So I can't stay out the sun for very long. As a matter of fact, the sun is not a good thing, necessarily a good thing to me. It has a lot of problems. A lot of people are different when they think about the sun. They like the sun. They like laying out on the sun. They enjoy being out in extended periods of sunlight. I can't do that. Undoubtedly, their experiences, their perceptions of the sun are different than mine. Therefore, when they use the word sun, they mean something different than I do. I mean, evil ball of hydrogen that causes me pain. Other people mean wonderful glowing aura of light that brings joy to their lives. So what this means is that everybody has their own symbols. They already have their own meanings for the symbols. Well, if we're using different meanings for the words, for the symbols, then we're not actually communicating. I might use the word sun, and you would use the word sun, but we have different meanings there. So to sum up, this is Gorgias' point with this last argument, is even if we could comprehend it, because we use different symbols, we are not communicating. So what does Gorgias argued here? Well, he's argued that nothing exists. Even if it did exist, we couldn't comprehend it. Even if it could comprehend it, we couldn't communicate it. And from all of this, he concludes, therefore, there's no truth. I say the sun is shining. There's no truth to that. I say the water is flowing. There's no truth to that. I can say the sun is hidden. There's no truth to that either. I can say that the water is completely still. There's no truth to that. Gorgias is an extremely, extreme position here. It's a very extreme skepticism. Nothing, absolutely nothing is true. I don't know about you, but I feel a little sad. The last soap we're going to look at is Thersemicus. Thersemicus argues for a kind of moral relativism. Moral relativism will say, more claims are true or false depending upon some condition. For instance, culture relativism says that moral claims are true depending upon what the custom says, what the culture says. So, for instance, it's contrary to our custom to swim in this river without a swimsuit. If you did that, you'd get arrested and people would scorn you. However, that custom is not always the case depending upon where you go. Other cultures not only think it's perfectly acceptable to swim in rivers in the nude, but sometimes it's expected. Well, Thersemicus offers a kind of moral custom, but he tags on something to it. So, he starts off with the observation that moral customs vary from culture to culture. And that's true. It doesn't take very long to figure that out. Especially if you have roots in more than one culture, you know this is true. In addition to that, Thersemicus adds on the observation, or at least the claim, that moral customs, that there's something that all moral customs have in common. And what they have in common is that they benefit those in power. And even more so, the moral customers are there to keep those in power in power. So, from this, he draws a conclusion. Since there's this great variety of moral customs and moral customs benefit those in power, what makes something moral is if the powerful say it's moral. Yeah. So, this is a moral relativism on the condition of power. You want to know what's moral? Figure out what the most powerful person says is moral. Tough pill to swallow. Thersemicus continues with an observation about what about justice. And justice roughly means that you give to people what's due to them. So, if I agreed to, you know, work for an employer to do a certain kind of labor for a wage, then at the completion of that labor, the employer should give me the wage. That's just. It would be unjust for the employer to withhold the wage. And similarly, it would be unjust for me to take the wage but then not do the labor. You give to everybody what's due. Well, Thersemicus makes an observation on this. He says, look, if justice is in place, that means that that limits what those in power can do. As a matter of fact, those in power take advantage of those that don't have power. It's called corruption. It really ticks us off. It happens all the time. But Thersemicus says, yeah, it happens all the time. But if justice were in place, that would limit what those in power can do. Now, since morality is what the powerful say it is and since justice limits what the powerful could do, well, then justice is immoral. Justice is immoral. Another consequence is that there's no absolute truth, no absolute moral truth. Because what's moral just depends on what the powerful say it is. So this is another extreme position. There's a lot of people who have some pretty strong tendencies towards cultural relativism. But to say that what the powerful do just is what's moral. That's tough.