Sophism
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Sophism (gr. sophistes meaning "wise-ist," or one who 'does' wisdom, i.e. who makes a business out of wisdom; cf. sophós, "wise man", cf. also wizard) was originally a term for the techniques taught by a highly respected group of philosophy and rhetoric teachers in ancient Greece.
Today, a sophism generally refers to a particularly confusing, fallacious, illogical and/or insincere argument used by someone to make a point or for other motivations. Sophistry refers to the practice of using such arguments, and is used pejoratively for rhetoric that is designed to appeal to the listener on grounds other than the strict logical cogency of the statements being made.
The Sophists are known today only through the writings of their opponents (specifically Plato and Aristotle), which makes it difficult to formulate a complete view of the Sophists' beliefs. However, their views were much more complex than Plato's depiction.
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[edit] Origins
The meaning of the word "sophist" has changed considerably. Its earliest meaning seems to have been someone who gave sophia to his students, i.e., wisdom made from knowledge. It was a highly complimentary term, applied to early philosophers such as the Seven Sages of Greece.
In the second half of the 5th century B.C., and especially at Athens, "sophist" came to be applied to a group of thinkers and speakers who employed rhetoric to achieve their purposes, generally to persuade or convince others. Many of them taught their skills, apparently often for a fee. Due to the importance of such skills in the litigious social life of Athens, practitioners of such skills often commanded very high fees. The practice of taking fees, coupled with the willingness of many sophists to use their rhetorical skills to pursue unjust lawsuits, eventually led to a decline in respect for practitioners of this form of teaching and the ideas and writings associated with it.
Protagoras is generally regarded as the first of these sophists. Others included Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, Thrasymachus, Lycophron, Callicles, Antiphon, and Cratylus. Socrates was once a sophist but would opt out after ideological differences. Unlike the Sophists, Socrates did not charge for his teaching, or claim wisdom he could pass to others. He engaged men in conversations about assorted topics often ending up in a discussion of justice. Socrates claimed to have a daimonion, a small daemon, that warned him against mistakes but never told him what to do or coerced him into following it. He claimed that his daimon exhibited greater accuracy than any of the forms of divination practised at the time.
According to Plato (a student of Socrates), Socrates was accused of being a Sophist at the Trial of Socrates. It may be that this affected Plato's antagonistic view of the Sophists.
Plato is largely responsible for the modern view of the "sophist" as someone who uses rhetorical sleight-of-hand and ambiguities of language in order to deceive, or to support fallacious reasoning. In short, as someone not concerned with truth and justice. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all challenged the philosophical foundations of sophism.
It seems that some of the sophists held a relativistic view on cognition and knowledge. Their philosophy contains criticism of religion, law and ethics. Though many sophists were apparently as religious as their contemporaries, some held atheistic or agnostic views.
Unfortunately most of the original texts written by the sophists have been lost, and modern understanding of sophistic movement is largely from analysis of Plato's writings. It is necessary to keep in mind that Plato and the sophists had severe ideological differences, and Plato may have modified or slanted actual sophist arguments when he presented them in his writings (ironically, a sophistic technique, in his view), or may even not have fully understood their arguments.
Because of Plato's dominance of western philosophy, his negative characterizations of the Sophists have led to the modern, derogatory meaning of the word "sophistry".
In the Roman Empire, sophists were teachers of rhetoric. For instance, Libanius, Himerius, Aelius Aristides and Fronto were sophists in this sense.
[edit] Modern usage
In traditional logical argument, a set of premises are connected together according to the rules of logic and lead therefore to some conclusion. We can also argue this backward in order to explain ideas. For example, you think of something based on a series of conclusions. A conclusion is a premise, i.e. a statement, based on an inference, that is, a piece of information. If the inference is a fact, then the conclusion has a factual base.
When someone criticizes the argument, they do so by pointing out either falsehoods among the premises or logical fallacies, flaws in the logical scaffolding. These criticisms may be subject to counter-criticisms, which in turn may be subject to counter-counter-criticisms, etc. Generally, some judge or audience eventually either concurs with or rejects the position of one side and thus a consensus opinion of the truth is arrived at.
The essential claim of sophistry is that the actual logical validity of an argument is irrelevant (if not non-existent); it is only the ruling of the audience which ultimately determines whether a conclusion is considered "true" or not. By appealing to the prejudices and emotions of the judges, one can garner favorable treatment for one's side of the argument and cause a factually false position to be ruled true.
The philosophical Sophist goes one step beyond that and claims that since it was traditionally accepted that the position ruled valid by the judges was literally true, any position ruled true by the judges must be considered literally true, even if it was arrived at by naked pandering to the judges' prejudices — or even by bribery.
Critics would argue that this claim relies on a straw man caricature of logical discourse and is, in fact, a self-justifying act of sophistry.
[edit] References
- Kerferd, G.B., The Sophistic Movement, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1981 (ISBN 0-521-28357-4).
- Rosen, Stanley, Plato's 'Sophist', The Drama of Original and Image, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1983.
- Sprague, Rosamond Kent, The Older Sophists, Hackett Publishing Company(ISBN 0-87220-556-8).
[edit] See also
- Sophist
- Second Sophistic
- Truthiness
- F.C.S. Schiller - A pragmatist philosopher during the 20th century who argued that Plato had misrepresented the sophists.
- Robert A. Heinlein - While never discussing the nature of Sophism in his works, Heinlein makes many allusions to it in his novels, including citing the archangel Michael as an eager Sophist, or more precisely, a solipsist.
- The Clouds - A play by Aristophanes that satirizes sophism.
- in the "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" Phaedrus comes to the conclusion after long obsessive studying throughout many years that the Sophists of Ancient Greece were correct, and because of their downfall, logic and modern scientific thought has made the world of technology and art substantially dualistic. And for this reason Quality has been presumed to either not exist, or to be subjective.
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