Chapter 1: Sophistry | The Sophistructure [0th Edition]

by Steven Gussman

            ⁰The ancient Greek Sophists were populists—they fancied themselves practical philosophers for laypeople, as opposed to those ivory tower elitists, who horded knowledge for themselves.¹ Surely, we are just as capable as any elite at adducing truth, they thought. And surely you deserve affordable advice about the way the world works, they advertised. Indeed, the enterprise was something of a private market sector phenomenon: it was a for-profit teaching business for practical folk.² It is perhaps here in the spirit of populism that we find the root of their vain hubris in thinking they could start from scratch and see further than all past knowledge combined, for the Sophists were relativists.³

            The Sophists were not only moral relativists (believing there are no such things as absolute, objective moral facts), but a much rarer breed: epistemological relativists (believing that there are no absolute, objective truth claims).⁴ In philosophy, there is something called dualism, which historically originates in the idea that there exist two separate parts of reality: the physical realm of the world and body, and the mental realm of the mind (this is ultimately a specific instance of the naturalism versus supernaturalism debate). Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia argued to Descartes that dualism doesn't make sense because the moment you claim the two systems are separate, they cannot interact, and therefore can have no effect on each other (meaning you could only experience one, with no evidence of the other).⁵ If you can prove two phenomena are real, then they must both be part of a singular reality. This is true of not just mind-body dualism, but generalizes to any claim that there are two separate realms of reality which cannot interact (such as biologist Stephen J. Gould's Non-Overlapping Magisteria, the dogmatic claim that science and religion can't come into conflict, because they allegedly speak to entirely non-overlapping topics, despite, as biologist Richard Dawkins points out, regular contradiction between the truth claims of each philosophy in practice).⁶ One can think of total epistemological relativism as something like dualism, but where there are many more than just two (indeed, infinitely many) truth claims all simultaneously considered to be true despite contradicting each other.⁷ At base, epistemological relativism is the abdication of logic itself, it is inconsistent, incoherent, and impossible (both to be true, and, I propose, for someone to actually believe it's true).⁸

            Sophistry is the philosophical origin of one of the main stains of modern thinking: blatant, unapologetic logical contradiction and the irony it inspires. It is so often so brazenly, so plainly incoherent, it beggars belief. At least in the western canon, this seems to have began chiefly with the Sophists. Once you admit to relativism, especially epistemological relativism, you turn philosophy into nothing but the naked battle between the biases of the arguing factions, with no means for mediating which claims are better than others.⁹ Indeed, Sophists seemed sometimes to be arguing for just this: the primacy of mere rhetoric over the quality of actual evidence being communicated by that speech.¹⁰ They appear to even go as far as to justify this by attempting to claim that all past philosophy was unduly shaped by empty rhetoric, so what's the difference if they do it; to them, it's all that can be done.¹¹ Of course, the most basic problem with relativism is that for any claim, you can construct a directly contradictory claim (“the Earth is flat” versus “the Earth is round”, or “murder is bad” versus “murder is good”), and to claim that contradictory claims are equally true is the very definition of logical incoherence. Philosopher Anthony Gottlieb points out that to claim nothing is objectively true is incoherent because it is itself a truth claim. If it's true, then it's not true. If it's not true... then it's not true.¹² As a result of the recognition of these failures through the ages, the word “sophistry” comes to us as a derogatory insult for use when an argument is indirect, needlessly wordy or obfuscating, nitpicky, and lacking in real substance.¹³

Footnotes:

0. The Sophistructure Table Of Contents can be found, here.

1. Perhaps the first Sophist was Protagoras in the 5^th century, B.C., see The Dream Of Reason by Anthony Gottlieb (2000 / 2016) (pp. 114, 116, 120, 125) and The Dream Of Enlightenment by Anthony Gottlieb (2016) (pp. 95).

2. The Dream Of Reason (pp. 116).

3. See (pp. 123-124, 128, 130, 132, 339-340) and The Dream Of Enlightenment (pp. 95). The later Skeptics (around 250 A.D.) were similar, but perhaps more in line with the idea that everything is effectively false or undecidable than the idea that everything is acceptable, see The Dream Of Reason (pp. 336, 339-340).

4. See The Dream Of Reason (pp. 119, 123-125, 127, 130, 339-340) and The Dream Of Enlightenment (pp. 95).

5. My brother, Jake, originally told me about this royal lady's argument; I later read of it in The Dream of Enlightenment (pp. 21-23). Interestingly, Gottlieb argues that Descartes was actually a fairly straightforward materialist who thought there was a mechanical explanation for consciousness. Nonetheless, many people today do believe that the realm of the conscious mind and the realm of the physical world cannot be brought into one picture—this is the common definition of philosophical mind-body dualism, even if it is not an accurate definition of Descartes' views.

6. I originally learned of Gould's NOMA from the criticism of it in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (2006 / 2008) (pp. 77-85).

7. I tweeted this observation on Dec. 1^st, 2018: https://twitter.com/schwinn3/status/1068984823568625664?s=20. This generalized form of dualism is called pluralism. See The Dream Of Reason (pp. 124-127, 339-340).

8. See The Dream Of Reason (pp. 123-127, 130). Here, I appeal to an argument put forth by Daniel Dennet in his essay, “The Hard Problem”, for This Idea Must Die, edited by John Brockman (2015) (pp. 139-140): if I am not mistaken, part of his argument is that there exist thought experiments or ideas that one can think they are thinking, but yet are so conceptually incoherent that the mind can't actually follow-through with modeling the idea. (Incidentally, I don't agree with his specific examples of philosophical zombies and the hard-problem of consciousness being flukes).

9. The Dream Of Reason (pp. 119-120, 122-124, 126-127, 132, 188-189).

10. See The Dream Of Reason (pp. 119, 122-124, 188-189). Gottlieb bends over backwards to try and moderate this facet to give some credit to Sophists (noting the much softer facts that human institutions like courts are imperfect and ultimately the decisions rendered are influenced by rhetorical speech), see The Dream Of Reason (pp. 132).

11. The Dream Of Reason (pp. 122-124, 188-189). This will be a repeating theme in this book: the defense of bad behavior by attempting to erect the false claim that everyone else did it first / it's all that can be done.

12. This problem generalizes to all relativism. Moral relativism, for example, is the incoherent claim that no moral system can be said to be better or worse (despite the fact that this is itself a moral claim), see The Dream Of Reason (pp. 125-126, 129). Gottlieb writes that it's not the philosophy department that tends to subscribe to relativism, today, see The Dream Of Reason (pp. 125).

13. Gottlieb attempts to partially rehabilitate the reputation of the Sophists (focusing on their democratization of practical knowledge through education and their utilitarianism / pragmatism components), though I think the derogatory nature of the word is ultimately deserved due to the relativism, see The Dream Of Reason (pp. 116, 119, 122, 126-128). That said, I am narrowly focusing on their most salient features for the goals of the present work, for a fuller description, see Gottlieb's entire chapter entitled “Opening Pandora's Box: The Sophists”, in The Dream Of Reason (pp. 114-134). Gottlieb ultimately agrees when it comes to the bankruptcy of the concept of relativism itself; see the previous footnote.