Guide wrote:
“"Here is a good speech on authority:
Start at 8:45"
The group says, here, what is self thinking? Which is to say, can one at first make a distinction between more and less free acceptance of what is said by the speaker?
Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of (authority). Try not to think of a purple tiger. You can't help what you believe.”
The group would say that “thinking” something provides the only possibility of not accepting it. In other words, one doesn’t believe in the purple tiger only because they picture it, or reflect about it. If someone is young, it is more likely that they will not be able to set aside something they have reflected over, the free thinker, then, is the one who has a mature power to confront what is put forward without succumbing to it, while, so to speak, sleeping.
Kids believe in santa claus because the parents (authority) put that idea into their heads. Eventually the consensus of opinion among friends (authority) turns against the idea that santa is real, so kids stop believing. No one can dictate by power of will what they believe as if by sheer determination one can once again decide to believe in santa. Faith comes by hearing and what's heard comes from authority (consensus of opinion).
You think by thinking you can decide what to believe, but what determines the fundamentals of thought? Well, that's just more acceptances of axioms on faith and of which you have no control.
All statements must be backed by empirical evidence. So what's the evidence for that axiom? You either buy it or you don't.
The group must say, this account given by the group is false in its presuposed slick neatness: “Eventually the consensus of opinion among friends (authority) turns against the idea that santa is real, so kids stop believing.” Rather, among the thoughtful, such transformation has an inward source. Though, for the many: such “opinion among friends” wields more than power to change the way of relating outwardly.
“No one can dictate by power of will what they believe as if by sheer determination one can once again decide to believe in santa.”
The passion for thought leads out of the grips of many such concepts, but, also into many, through the seeking of the passion for confrontation with the strongest teachings of they who have moved the farthest amidst the transcelestial region of all thinking through flanked by their protective daemons coming close to the god who does or does not philosophise.
a. there are those unable to think, largely taking their ideas from those they trust.
I run into a lot of folks online who are less concerned about my argument and more concerned about sizing me up as if that had anything to do with anything (ad hom).
It’s the trick of a sophist to hide behind “arguments”. Paid proponents in public debate. One always wants to know who, in the Delphic sense of “know thyself”, one speaks to. From a liar we can never learn about the self in the Dealphic sense. One can see this in most Platonic dialogues.Consider the case of the juryman: one wants the one who says guilty to say what they truly believe.
On the disinterested level, in Plato’s Sophist, one sees this play out beyond politics, in the sense of the impossibility to speak of the nothing, without the nothing being, i.e., in staying with the statement, there, where nothing external is at stake, the Sophist, indeed, teaches us something.
A sophist is a sophia-ist or one who practices wisdom. Perverting the word in condescension to mean the opposite is akin to today's republicans deriding intellectuals as being stupid for lacking "common sense". The "professor" is the modern day "sophist". The very purpose of perverting the term is to implement the ad hominem.
The group says this is no perversion, but the simple text of Plato, where Socrates often must deal with sophists who attempt to play the great and powerful OZ, ergo, the one hidden behind the curtain of argument.
“The "professor" is the modern day "sophist". The very purpose of perverting the term is to implement the ad hominem. “
The group says sophists were paid to make arguments. A professor who worked for a think tank in the pay of an interested party would meet this description.
"You're just a sophist and since I've labeled you such, anything you say can be disregarded!"
"You're just an indoctrinated liberal professor and since I've labeled you such, anything you say can be disregarded!"
Of course, anything can be abused. The group yawns and remains with Aristotle, he who despised often.
In this this member of the group only touches on the difficulties involved. The citation “a. there are those unable to think, largely taking their ideas from those they trust.” doesn’t fit the case you adduce in the video. But this: “b. those who can reason, but don't for the sake of interested motive” (does fit.)
How does one reason that they shouldn't reason because they have a motive to not reason?
The group advises the group to take five minutes talking to a human being into account in the group’s reflections. Then such questions would answer themselves. The group lacks experience with human beings.
In other words, it is wholly sensible to suspect a case where interested motive leads to sophistry.
Sophistry is quite different from lying.
The group says, not in this context. Big Tobacco can rightly be said to have simply lied. Though, the means was sophistry.
An obvious case of that being the tobacco companies interested in producing “arguments” denying the cancer causing nature of their product.
Either they are lying or they are honestly presenting their side of it. You could be a sophist for alleging that they are sophists by implying their arguments are not.
Too much cleverness and arid generalization about what could be serves to take one off piste. The group says, the closest approximation to a use of reason on this public issue, on the business (or "conservative") side of the issue, it knows of, is Conrad Black’s. He gives a tolerably thoughtful account, i.e., one that does not flee into selective lapses of intelligence or hiding behind mere “argument” (i.e., sophistry).