![]() ![]() Thaning presents this dialogue as living up to its name ('Release') in two different ways, apart from the obvious one that a main character is called Lysis. In 'Dialectic and dialogue in the Lysis' Morten S. Division therefore, concludes Fossheim, is a method, not for making discoveries, but only for presenting them. For example, to tell us that a successful division cuts reality 'at the joints' (Plato, Phaedrus 265e) is not to tell us how to find where the joints are. Plato tells us what a successful division looks like, but does not tell us how to succeed. 'Division' is the term for a kind of definition often found in Plato's dialogues, a definition that constructs a taxonomy and locates the thing to be defined within that taxonomy. Hallvard Fossheim discusses 'Division as a method in Plato'. ![]() But the finer details of this article are not so easy to follow. ![]() For example, when respondents are trapped into denying what they earlier affirmed, does that merely show that they are muddled, or does it disprove what they earlier affirmed? At best the former, with some strategies perhaps even the latter, with others. In 'The role of the respondent in Plato and Aristotle' Marja-Liisa Kakkuri-Knuuttila argues that to understand dialectic, we must appreciate not just the constitutive rules which define what it is to play that game, but also what strategies the players are to follow for only then will we understand quite what dialectic can achieve and how. In all these cases, the self-refutation argument shows, not that the thesis against which it is arguing entails its own negation or is for any other reason false, but rather that this thesis is bound to lose in any dialectical contest. He presents four case studies: the argument in Plato's Euthydemus against 'It is impossible to contradict' the argument in Plato's Theaetetus against Protagoras' slogan 'Man is the measure of all things' the argument in Aristotle's Metaphysics for the Principle of Non-Contradiction and the argument of Aristotle's Protrepticus, that we must philosophise, since any attempt to maintain that we need do no such thing is itself philosophising. Castagnoli demonstrates beautifully that this is not so, at least for what have been called 'self-refutation arguments'. Some have claimed that the dialectical context is never more than ornamental, that any argument presented in question-and-answer format could be presented just as easily, if less colourfully, in monologue. In 'Self-refutation and dialectic in Plato and Aristotle' Luca Castagnoli examines what we miss, logically and philosophically, if we take ancient arguments away from their dialectical context. The essays are too varied for a single description to suit them all. Only incidental passages deal with dialogues by people other than Plato, or with what people other than Plato and Aristotle said and did about dialectic. This book consists of essays on Plato's use of the dialogue, and on the theory and practice of dialectic in Plato and Aristotle. This made the rĂ´le of questioner ideal for Socrates, who liked to say that his wisdom consisted simply in knowing that he did not know anything much. One obvious beauty of dialectic is that the questioner need not claim any expertise on the subject of the conversation. If so, then the respondent is refuted if not, then the initial assertion can stand - at least for the moment. The questioner's hope is that, in answering these questions, the respondent will be led to deny the initial assertion. The questioner gets the respondent to assert something the questioner then tests this assertion by putting to the respondent a series of questions. This style of reasoning requires two people: the questioner and the respondent. The dialogue was a literary genre invented by the followers of Socrates to give written representation of dialectic, his conversational style of philosophical reasoning. 'Dialectic' and 'dialogue' come from the Greek word for conversation.
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