The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World (38 page)

HERMES
: I reveal no facts.

SOCRATES
: [
Sighs.
] Then I beg you – I have always wanted to know this: what is the nature of virtue?

HERMES
: I reveal no moral truths either.

SOCRATES
: Yet, as a benevolent god, you must have come here to impart
some
sort of knowledge. What sort will you deign to grant me?

HERMES
: Knowledge about knowledge, Socrates.
Epistemology.
I have already mentioned some.

SOCRATES
: You have? Oh – you said that you honour Athenians for our openness to persuasion. And for our defiance of bullies. But it is well known that those are virtues! Surely telling me what I already know doesn’t count as a ‘revelation’.

HERMES
: Most Athenians would indeed call those virtues. But how many really believe it? How many are willing to criticize a
god
by the standards of reason and justice?

SOCRATES
: [
Ponders.
] All who are just, I suppose. For how can anyone be just if he follows a god of whose moral rightness he is not persuaded? And how is it possible to be persuaded of someone’s moral rightness without first forming a view about which qualities
are
morally right?

HERMES
: Your associates out there on the lawn – are they unjust?

SOCRATES
: No.

HERMES
: And are they aware of the connections you have just described between reason, morality and the reluctance to defer to gods?

SOCRATES
: Perhaps not
sufficiently
aware – yet.

HERMES
: So it is not true that every just person knows these things.

SOCRATES
: Agreed. Perhaps it is only every
wise
person.

HERMES
: Everyone who is at least as wise as you, then. Who else is in that exalted category?

SOCRATES
: Is there some high purpose in your continuing to mock me, wise Apollo, by asking me the same question that we asked you today? It seems to me that your joke is wearing thin.

HERMES
: Have you, Socrates, never mocked anyone?

SOCRATES
: [
with dignity
] If, on occasion, I make fun of someone, it is because I hope he will help me to seek a truth that neither he nor I yet knows. I do not mock from on high, as you do. I want only to goad my fellow mortal into helping me look beyond that which is easy to see.

HERMES
: But what in the world
is
easy to see? What things are the
easiest
to see, Socrates?

SOCRATES
: [
Shrugs.
] Those that are before our eyes.

HERMES
: And what is before your eyes at this moment?

SOCRATES
: You are.

HERMES
: Are you sure?

SOCRATES
: Are you going to start asking me
how I can be sure
of whatever I say? And then, whatever reason I give, are you going to ask how I can be sure of
that
?

HERMES
: No. Do you think I have come here to play hackneyed debating tricks?

SOCRATES
: Very well: obviously I can’t be
sure
of anything. But I don’t want to be. I can think of nothing more boring – no offence meant, wise Apollo – than to attain the state of being perfectly secure in one’s beliefs, which some people seem to yearn for. I see no use for it – other than to provide a semblance of an argument when one doesn’t have a real one. Fortunately that mental state has nothing to do with what I do yearn for, which is to discover the truth of how the world is, and why – and, even more, of how it should be.

HERMES
: Congratulations, Socrates, on your epistemological wisdom. The knowledge that you seek –
objective knowledge
– is hard to come by, but attainable. That mental state that you do not seek –
justified belief
– is sought by many people, especially priests and philosophers. But, in truth, beliefs cannot be justified, except in relation to other beliefs, and even then only fallibly. So the quest for their justification can lead only to an infinite regress – each step of which would itself be subject to error.

SOCRATES
: Again, I know this.

HERMES
: Indeed. And, as you have rightly remarked, it doesn’t count as a ‘revelation’ if I tell you what you already know. Yet – notice that that remark is precisely what people who seek justified belief do not agree with.

SOCRATES
:
What?
I’m sorry, but that was too convoluted a comment for my allegedly wise mind to comprehend. Please explain what I am to notice about those people who seek ‘justified belief’.

HERMES
: Merely this. Suppose they just happen to be aware of the explanation of something. You and I would say that they
know
it. But to them, no matter how good an explanation it is, and no matter how true and important and useful it may be, they still do not
consider it to be knowledge. It is only if a god then comes along and reassures them that it is true (or if they imagine such a god or other authority) that they count it as knowledge. So, to them it
does
count as a revelation if the authority tells them what they are already fully aware of.

SOCRATES
: I see that. And I see that they are foolish, because, for all they know, the ‘authority’ [
gestures at
HERMES
] may be toying with them. Or trying to teach them some important lesson. Or they may be misunderstanding the authority. Or they may be mistaken in their belief that it is an authority –

HERMES
: Yes. So the thing
they
call ‘knowledge’, namely justified belief, is a chimera. It is
unattainable
to humans except in the form of self-deception; it is
unnecessary
for any good purpose; and it is
undesired
by the wisest among mortals.

SOCRATES
: I know.

HERMES
: Xenophanes knew it too; but he is no longer among the mortals –

SOCRATES
: Is that what you meant when you told the Oracle that no one is wiser than I?

HERMES
: [
Ignores the question.
] Hence, also, I wasn’t referring to justified belief when I asked whether you are sure that I am before your eyes. I was only questioning how you can claim to be ‘seeing clearly’ what is before your eyes when you also claim to be asleep!

SOCRATES
: Oh! Yes, you have caught me in an error – but surely only a trivial one. Indeed, you may not be literally before my eyes. Perhaps you are at home on Olympus, sending me a mere likeness of yourself. But in that case you are controlling that likeness and I am seeing it, and referring to it as ‘you’, so I am seeing ‘you’.

HERMES
: But that is not what I asked. I asked what is here
before your eyes
. In reality.

SOCRATES
: All right. Before my eyes, in reality, there is – a small room. Or, if you want a literal reply, what is before my eyes is – eyelids, since I expect that they are shut. Yet I see from your expression that you want even more precision. Very well: before my eyes are the
inside surfaces
of my eyelids.

HERMES
: And can you see those? In other words, is it really ‘easy to see’ what is before your eyes?

SOCRATES
: Not at the moment. But that is only because I am dreaming.

HERMES
: Is it
only
because you are dreaming? Are you saying that if you were awake you would now be seeing the inside surfaces of your eyelids?

SOCRATES
: [
carefully
] If I were awake with my eyes still closed, then yes.

HERMES
: What
colour
do you see when you close your eyes?

SOCRATES
: In a room as dimly lit as this one – black.

HERMES
: Do you think that the inside surfaces of your eyelids are black?

SOCRATES
: I suppose not.

HERMES
: So would you really be seeing them?

SOCRATES
: Not exactly.

HERMES
: And if you were to open your eyes, would you be able to see the room?

SOCRATES
: Only very vaguely. It is dark.

HERMES
: So I ask again: is it true that, if you were awake, you could easily see what was before your eyes?

SOCRATES
: All right – not always. But nevertheless, when I am awake, and with my eyes open,
and
in bright light –

HERMES
: But not
too
bright, I suppose?

SOCRATES
: Yes, yes. If you want to keep quibbling, I must accept that when one is dazzled by the sun one may see even less well than in the dark. Likewise one may see one’s own face behind a mirror where there is in reality only empty space. One may sometimes see a mirage, or be fooled by a pile of crumpled clothes that happens to resemble a mythical creature –

HERMES
: Or one may be fooled by dreaming of one . . .

SOCRATES
: [
Smiles.
] Quite so. And, conversely, whether sleeping or waking, we often
fail
to see things that
are
there in reality.

HERMES
: You have no idea how many such things there are . . .

SOCRATES
: No doubt. But still, when one is
not
dreaming, and conditions are
good
for seeing –

HERMES
: And how can you tell whether ‘conditions are good’ for seeing?

SOCRATES
: Ah! Now you are trying to catch me in a circularity. You
want me to say that one can tell that conditions are good for seeing when one can easily see what is there.

HERMES
: I want you
not
to say so.

SOCRATES
: It seems to me that you have been asking questions about
me
– what is in front of me, what I can easily see, whether I am sure, and so on. But I seek fundamental truths, of which I estimate that not a single one is predominantly about me. So let me stress again: I am
not
sure what is in front of my eyes – ever – with my eyes open or closed, asleep or awake. Nor can I be sure what is
probably
in front of my eyes, for how could I estimate the probability that I am dreaming when I think I am awake? Or that my whole previous life has been but a dream in which it has pleased one of you immortals to imprison me?

HERMES
: Indeed.

SOCRATES
: I might even be a victim of a mundane deception, such as those of conjurers. We know that a conjurer is deceiving us because he shows us something that cannot be – and then asks for money! But if he were to forgo his fee and show me something that
can
be but is not, how could I ever know? Perhaps this entire vision of you is not a dream after all but some cunning conjurer’s trick. On the other hand, perhaps you really are here in person and I am awake after all. None of this can I ever be
sure
is so, or not so. I can, however, conceive of
knowing
some of it.

HERMES
: Precisely. And is the same true of your
moral
knowledge? In regard to what is right and wrong, could you be mistaken, or misled, by the equivalent of mirages or tricks?

SOCRATES
: That seems harder to imagine. For in regard to moral knowledge I need my senses very little: it is mainly just my own thoughts. I
reason
about what is right and wrong, or what makes a person virtuous or wicked. I can be mistaken, of course, in these mental deliberations, but not so easily
deceived
by outside tricks or illusions, for they affect only our senses and not our reason.

HERMES
: How, then, do you account for the fact that you Athenians are constantly squabbling among yourselves about what qualities constitute virtue or vice, and what actions are right or wrong?

SOCRATES
: Why is that puzzling? We disagree because it is easy to be mistaken. Yet, despite that, we also
agree
about many such issues.

From this I speculate that, where we have so far failed to agree, it is not because anything is actively deceiving us, but simply because some issues are hard to reason about – just as there are many truths in geometry that even Pythagoras did not know but which future geometers may discover. As that other ‘wise mortal’ Xenophanes wrote:

That is what we Athenians have done in regard to moral knowledge. Through seeking we have learned, and agreed upon, the easy things. And in future, by the same means – namely by refusing to hold any of our ideas immune from criticism – we may learn some matters not so light.

HERMES
: There is much truth in what you say. So, take it a little further: if it is so hard to be systematically deceived on moral issues, how is it that the Spartans disagree with you about some of those issues on which nearly all Athenians agree – the ones that you have just said are the
easy
ones?

SOCRATES
: Because the Spartans learn many mistaken beliefs and values in early childhood.

HERMES
: Whereas Athenians begin their flawless education at what age?

SOCRATES
: Again, you catch me in an error. Yes of course we too teach our values to our young, and those must include our most serious misconceptions as well as our deepest wisdom. Yet our values include being open to suggestions, tolerant of dissent, and critical of both dissent
and
received opinion. So I suppose that the real difference between the Spartans and us is that their moral education enjoins them to hold their most important ideas immune from criticism.
Not
to be open to suggestions.
Not
to criticize certain ideas such as their traditions or their conceptions of the gods;
not
to seek the truth, because they claim that they already have it.