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>> Okay, so thank you and welcome.
So as Troy said, I teach philosophy here
at St. Norbert College, Moraine Valley Community College
and in my teaching of philosophy,
one of the courses I teach is ethics, and I've come
across many students in my teaching who sort
of have this uncritical acceptance of this idea
that when it comes to ethical things, anyone's opinion is just
as good as anyone else's;
even if those two opinions are totally contradictory
or opposed to one another.
And this bothers me in several ways.
It bothers me as a philosopher, but it bothers me as a member
of Moraine Valley Community College,
because I don't think it's what college education is really
about, nor do I think it's Moraine Valley,
as an institution, is really about.
So you might wonder, "Well, what are we really
about as an institution?"
And unless you didn't know,
Moraine Valley does have certain core values, which we take
to define ourselves as an institution,
and those values are these: Diversity; Respect;
Responsibility; Integrity; and Fairness.
But what do those really mean?
What does it really mean to value diversity?
Or to value respect?
Or to value the rest of these?
That's still something of an open question,
and you might think that those students who I've come
across in my own teaching are sort
of valuing diversity, in a sense.
I mean, if they have different opinions,
there's your diversity.
And even if those opinions are contradictory to one another,
or opposed, they're both equally good and so it's good
that we have that difference.
But again, I don't think that's the way
to understand what we mean as an institution, when we say,
"We are valuing diversity."
So I want to talk about Plato's Cave, a very famous passage
from his work, "The Republic".
But before I do that, I want to talk a little bit
about the philosophical background,
and Plato's philosophical influences.
So in the ancient Greek world,
there's this famous philosopher known as Protagoras.
And he's very famous for having said, "Man is the measure",
or to be not gender biased here, "Human is the measure",
meaning "Whatever anyone thinks about anything is just as good
as whatever anyone thinks about anything."
So that if you feel cold, you are cold;
and if you feel hot, you are hot.
Well, that sounds okay when it's about cold and hot,
but what about ethical or moral issues like,
"If you feel x is right, and the next person feels x is wrong,
you're both right," says Protagoras.
And this is a view that's usually called "relativism"
or "ethical relativism" by philosophers.
And it's actually the same view, more or less, that I've come
across in many of my students' minds,
which they uncritically accept.
The idea here again is, all opinions are equally good,
and it doesn't matter what the topic is,
that we're talking about.
Again, I don't think that's the way to understand what we mean
as an institution, when we say we value diversity of opinion
and diversity of perspective, and the rest of our core values.
So another influence on Plato,
was another very famous philosopher known as Socrates.
And Socrates is famous for his "search for truth".
He was told by the oracle at Delphi that he was
"the most wise person in all of the world"
and this quite surprised him.
"How can I be the wisest person?
I don't think I know anything."
He set off on this lifelong quest of investigating
and talking to other people who claim to have wisdom.
But through all of this, he wasn't able to find anyone
who really knew what they were talking about,
because they always ended up contradicting themselves,
and so he realized, after this lifelong search,
that he's the wisest person precisely because of the fact
that he admits is ignorance.
He knows he doesn't know, and at least he's got
that on everyone else who thinks they know,
even though they don't know.
Yet, in admitting his ignorance, and this is an important,
sort of philosophical influence on Plato, and the Cave passage,
which we'll look at in just a minute,
Socrates is assuming throughout that, that still there is truth,
there is truth, and that truth is the very thing
of which he is ignorant.
And it is the very thing that other people claimed
to have known, but were shown, upon examination,
to not really have known in the first place.
So just a little bit more background on Plato.
Plato's most famous work, as I said earlier,
is a dialogue called "The Republic" and in Plato's
"Republic" the topic of discussion ranges
over a very wide subject matter.
But one of the things that's talked about,
in an important passage in "The Republic" is this question:
What's the most important thing to know?
What's the most important thing to obtain in life?
And Plato's answer to that question is this:
the truth, the good.
That's what's most important to know,
that's what's most important to obtain,
and that's what we all want.
I mean, if you compare this for a little bit,
to say wanting health, it seems fair
to say most people want health, but they don't want fake health,
or made up health, they want true health.
They want real health, they want good health.
Plato thinks that's true and thinks it applies to sort
of a general search in life,
that all humans are sort of engaged in.
Yet, he admits, no one fully knows what the truth is,
no one fully knows what the good is,
and this is something he gets from his teacher Socrates;
we want it, but we don't know what it is.
So what's that like?
What's the human condition like?
That's sort of the question; what is that like?
And with this then, Plato launches
into the famous allegory of the Cave.
He says, "This condition, this situation,
that we want the truth, and
yet we don't know what it is, is like this.
Imagine," Plato says, "that there's this cave.
And in this cave, at the very bottom
of the cave there's these prisoners, and they're chained
up to a wall, such that they can only look straight in front
of them, they can't turn their head side to side;
they can't talk to anyone else;
they've been there their whole lives.
So that shadow, on that wall, is all they've ever seen.
It's the only thing that they've ever been exposed to,
or experienced.
"Behind the wall are other people, who hold puppets
and various statues, and behind those people there's a fire
burning, which of course is going to cast the shadows
on the wall, that the prisoner who's chained
up at the bottom is looking at."
And so Plato makes the comment first that, this is a weird sort
of set up to imagine, but it's not unlike our own actual
condition in life, vis a vis, our search for truth,
and our ignorance of that very thing that we're searching for.
So now Plato says, "Okay, well imagine
that this prisoner is asked, 'What is a cat?'
His answer is going to be, 'That thing I see;
that's a cat.'" Notice the arrow there, pointing at the shadow.
He's never seen anything but shadows,
so he thinks that's all there is to a cat.
That of course is a false answer, and Plato is well aware
that we know, that's not really a cat; it's merely a shadow.
But this prisoner has really no idea.
So now, Plato says, "Imagine if this prisoner is released
and brought back over to the other side of the wall.
What's going to happen to him?"
Well, first of all, he's going to be blinded by the light.
He's been in the darkness, literally, his whole life;
comes over by the fire, he can't really see anything.
It's too bright.
But after he's been there for a while, he gets used to it,
he becomes comfortable, and he starts to realize, upon looking
about himself, that that thing on the stick,
that puppet in this diagram, is actually what causes the shadow
to be cast on the wall.
The only time the shadow's cast on the wall is
when the puppet of the cat goes by.
So now, suppose he's asked again, "What is a cat?"
Now his answer is going to be, "It's that."
We still know this answer is what?
False. We know this answer is still false.
He thinks he's got the truth now.
Notice, there is a sense in which he's made progress.
He no longer thinks that the shadow is a cat; he now knows
that that's a shadow, but he's still wrong
because he thinks it's a shadow of a cat.
When the truth is, of course, that it's a shadow of a puppet.
So he's made progress, and yet, he's still ignorant
and that's going to be kind of important lesson to remember,
when I come back at the end of my talk here,
to Moraine Valley's core values.
So now Plato says, "Okay, he's made some progress.
He's still ignorant.
What if he gets outside of the cave?
What if he climbs up, outside of this steep ascent,
and he's brought out into the very light of the sun?
Once again, what's going to happen to him?"
He's going to be totally blinded.
He's not going to be able to see anything.
For quite a while, he's going to be thrown into confusion,
and yet, once he gets used to the light of the sun,
he'll be able to look around him and see that living,
breathing kitty cat standing before him.
So now, if asked once again, "What is a cat?"
His answer's going to be, "That's a cat."
That living, breathing thing is a cat.
Once again, he's made progress.
He's now understanding something to be true,
more than what he understood before, that is to say,
he thought that the shadow was a cat at first;
that turned out to be wrong.
Then he thought that the puppet was a cat;
now he realizes that is wrong.
His answer now is, "That is a cat."
Now, we might think that's where to stop.
Plato doesn't think that's really the final answer.
So I want to explain that just a little bit.
Plato then says, "Well imagine if this guy, upon getting used
to the sun, were to be so bold as to look
up directly into the sun."
Now, I don't recommend anyone actually do this;
it's not a good idea.
But this is an allegory, of course.
So, "upon looking at the sun, sort of,
what would happen to the guy?
What would he eventually realize?"
And Plato thinks, what he would realize,
is that the sun is what causes all
of the other things he's been experiencing up to this point.
That means, if there were no sun, there would be no plants.
And if there were no plants, there would be no mice.
And if there were no mice, there could be no cats
to eat the mice, so cats couldn't even exist.
So the sun causes the cat to exist.
And if there were no cat to exist, then those puppeteers
down in the cave, never would have thought
to make a puppet of a- cat.
So the sun also causes the puppet to exist.
And of course, if there were no puppets of cats,
down in the cave, there would be no shadow of puppets of cats,
to be cast against that back wall.
So the sun also causes the shadow to exist.
Plato thinks upon looking at the sun, this guy will have a sort
of epiphany, a realization,
that the truth is something much bigger, much deeper,
much broader, than anything he ever realized way back when,
when he was chained up, down in the bottom of that cave,
in a deep state of dark ignorance.
Now, for Plato, without going too much into the specifics
of his philosophy here, the sun symbolizes what Plato calls
"forms" and Plato thinks of these forms as "the truth".
The forms are the truth; the forms are the real natures
of things, and that's what we seek to understand.
That's what we seek to understand, scientifically,
that's what we seek to understand philosophically,
ethically, morally; that's Plato's view.
So the idea that Plato has, in the full picture of this cave,
is that the cat is ultimately a copy of the form;
a copy of what Plato calls the form of the cat,
just in the sense that all the cats there are share something;
they have something in common.
And for Plato, that common thing they share is being an
embodiment of what he calls "the form of the cat"
or what we might today call "the species of being a cat".
Catness would be another way to put it.
Not Katniss Everdeen from "Hunger Games,"
but [laughter] but cat-ness.
And of course, the puppet is a copy of a cat,
and at the very bottom of things here,
the shadow is a copy of the puppet.
So once this guy is outside, and has seen the sun,
he's now made some serious, definite progress
and we can understand that, from our perspective,
because we knew all along that the thing he was seeing
at the very bottom of the cave,
was after all, nothing but a shadow.
So, this prisoner has definitely made progress,
but part of that progress was also involving being blinded
anew, at each level.
Every time he sort of, makes some steps forward,
he's thrown into confusion at first.
And this is analogous Plato thinks
to the efforts we all sort of have to make,
and the experience we all have in educating ourselves
and becoming educated, we become comfortable or complacent
with things as they stand and with our received opinions,
and to be educated and exposed to different ways to think
about things can be very shocking, can be very confusing.
Plato is sort of recognizing that, in this allegory
of the Cave, and admitting that is sort
of a key experiential component of what it is to come
to gain knowledge, and get closer to the truth.
This is still, however, as I said, a making of progress.
We realize, we, us, realize that the prisoner made progress
when he moved over the wall and understood that the thing
at the very bottom was, after all, just a shadow and the thing
on the stick, which he calls a "cat", he's not quite right,
but he's closer to the truth.
And then he makes further progress
as he gets up out of the cave.
So there's a sort of sense of progress,
a sense of making headway toward the truth.
Furthermore, Plato also discusses the fact
that this prisoner, the released prisoner now,
if she were to return back down into the cave,
after having seen the sun,
she would be completely misunderstood, by the people
who were still in the cave and never got out.
Imagine she goes back down into the cave,
after having understood that the sun causes the cat,
and the sun causes the puppet, and the sun causes the shadow,
and tries to tell all of this to the people
who are still only seeing shadows.
Those people who are only seeing shadows will have
like virtually no idea what she's talking about.
Yet, we still know that she's talking about the truth,
and they're sort of stuck in the darkness of their own ignorance.
Which is also part of what Plato's getting at here.
So this cave analogy, among other things, is sort of effort
by Plato to explain the nature of education, and the nature
of the educational enterprise,
which is something we're all involved here,
as members of Moraine Valley.
And so, as it pertains to your education, among other things,
one thing that Plato is saying is that knowledge of the truth,
cannot be poured into you.
As an instructor, I can't just take what I know,
and sort of hand it to you, on a silver platter.
It doesn't work that way.
Just like the prisoner who's seeing the sun can go back
down into the cave, and say, "Hey guys, there's a sun
out there;" but they're not going to understand that at all.
They have to make their own way up, out of the darkness.
They have to make their own way up, out of the cave.
This takes great effort on your part; this takes great effort
on anyone's part, because of the sense of confusion
that one is thrown into.
We have a tendency, as human beings to become complacent
and comfortable, with what we are familiar with.
But what's familiar may not, after all, be what's best,
what's true, or what's good, Plato is telling us.
So, education, as a process, is always good, but is always hard.
And that's a sort of a general lesson, that Plato's trying
to tell us, with regard to the educational process.
So, how does all this relate back
to Moraine Valley's core values?
Well if you remember, the first of those values was diversity.
And one way to understand the valuing, or the goodness
of diversity, would be that relativist way,
that Protagorist way, where diversity is good, just as long
as there are some different people
with some different opinions.
I don't think that's the way we want
to understand our defining values, as an institution.
Instead, if we think about the Cave, the allegory
of the cave here, as it pertains to the progress
that people are making, different prisoners,
at different stages of release are making different errors,
and yet, getting closer to the truth.
So, Plato's sort of saying to all of us,
all of us are these prisoners.
If you remember, the context of this discussion was,
"What's the most important thing to know?"
The truth, the good.
That's what we all want, but none of us fully understand it.
So what's that like?
That's like being in this cave.
That pertains to all of us.
So the goodness of diversity, for Plato, is predicated
on the fact that no one knows the truth fully.
Whatever I may know, you may not, and vice versa.
We can help each other along, to make progress
by rationally discussing and debating with one another.
Respect sort of flows from that.
This ascent, this path upward, out of the cave, is difficult
for everyone, and therefore,
we should respect anyone who's engaged in this ascent,
even if they're at a different stage than we may perhaps be.
We owe it to ourselves, to make this effort to climb up out
of the cave, because it's good for all of us.
It's good for me, it's good for you,
it's good for the community.
So we owe it to ourselves, that's our own responsibility
to ourselves, as individuals and to ourselves as a community.
The sense of the value of integrity for Plato hinges
on the fact that there is a truth,
and even if no one knows it fully,
that's what we need to aim for.
Aim for the truth, and let that be your guide.
How can we figure out the truth, given the diversity of opinions?
In an academic setting, or even in a scientific
or research setting, or a more community wide setting,
rational debate, discussion, is the only method to sort
of sift out, among the opinions, the ones that pass the test
of logic and research and evidence.
So the truth shall be our guide.
And finally, fairness, as a value.
Look, we're all struggling.
Maybe none of us are at the very bottom of the cave,
but none of us have seen the sun either,
so we're all struggling, Plato thinks.
And yet, we all have the same, exact goal.
The truth.
The good. So we should be fair, and even handed in our dealings
with one another, if we come across someone
with a different opinion from ours, it's best not
to just shut them down, but to engage in debate
with them and discussion.
For all we know, at our stage of ignorance,
you may have something to teach me,
that I had never even conceived of, and vice versa.
So we can help one another out;
we can help one another make progress,
by helping each other think about things in a new way.
So, maybe after all, Dr. Jenkins,
our illustrious president, and Plato, are besties,
even though they never even met each other
in actual life, of course.
Okay, so thank you.
[applause]
