More news from Plato

[SteveB]

And serious philosophy too.

[Jason]

I used to argue philosophy a lot.

[SteveB]

Your avatar has a Hades-ish appeal.

[Jason]

It's one of a series. I chose one that I probably won't be asked to change.

[rasetsu]

No, the 'noble lie' is itself a lie thought to be noble by those who believe in the validity of the philosophy of the 'noble lie'. The entire philosophy is an exercise in sophistic circle-jerking reason. The most amusing thing of all is that Plato, who 'recorded' the Socratic dialogues, was one of the greatest sophists of all time. There are no 'noble lies'. There are only lies and damned lies.

Related point. In the video The Four Horsemen, with Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris, Dennett, alone among the four, suggested that there might be some truths that we are better not knowing, and it would likely be acceptable that those truths be suppressed (I don't know if he went quite that far; consider that my addition).

This seems to harken back to ancient superstitions of the truth always winning out and trial by ordeal. Is the truth, not mere interpersonal truth but truth with a capital 'T', is truth by necessity a good thing?

[Jason]

If you believe the old aphorism 'ignorance is bliss', I suppose they have a point. If you believe in the attainability of objective truths then truth by necessity becomes a necessary deontological position to hold. I do not believe objective truth is obtainable and so face no dilemma on the subject. It is my position that we all see through a glass, darkly, and while we develop methods and tools which bring us, by their employment, to a greater degree of verisimilitude, we can only ever create better models of objective truths and never obtain objective truths themselves.