The Problem With Letters

In an interesting aside at the end of the Phaedrus Socrates bends his wicked wit on the invention of letters themselves. Having already proved the evil of a rhetoric that does not base itself upon some knowledge of universals, of the good, he moves on to the dangers of letters.

These letters he says in his myth of Theuth "will create forgetfulness in your learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to external written characters and not remember of themselves." This he equates to "having the show of wisdom without the reality." This particular danger seems interesting. History has proven that the test of the educated person has continued to be the knowledge he or she is able to gain and make their own, having it "graven in [their] soul" as Socrates says a little later. Interestingly, there are those who contend that the internet will bring about the very revolution against the definition of knowledge that Socrates here predicts of books. Indeed I have heard it argued by prominent figures (not in education, but rather a business man if I remember correctly) that the definition of an educated person must change, that it cannot any longer be a question of the knowledge one carries around in their own minds, but rather the ability to parse and process the knowledge made available to us by the internet. Circles, circles...Socrates would cry. I don't believe that such a transition will ever take place because such a person has no basis on which (other than cold logic) to decide whether or not that information they are processing is true. Considering the number of times that truth is stranger than fiction, how can we count on a mind unfilled except with skill based knowledge to know truth? This would be, I think, Plato's concern; it is certainly mine.

While there may or may not be capital T truth out there as Plato believed - and if there is we certainly have imperfect access to it at best - I do believe there is objective little t truth. To dismiss truth as a fiction, or deny our ability to access it (which is the same thing in different wrapping) is dangerous indeed.

Socrates points to the danger of the man with the empty head who simply is a processor of information: Speeches, he says, have "the attitude of life." However, "if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves."

This statement could easily be dismissed as part of tyrranical Plato's desire to control the unwashed masses' access to information. Save it for the few of us worthy of leaving the cave. If this were all there was to it I would agree and dismiss it, firmly. However, I don't think this knew version of the educated person is even possible. Without the undergirding of a basis of knowledge, there are no guideposts by which to interpret the deluge of information, the sea of data that is constantly, not only at our fingertips, but spilling at us, over us, into us as much as we'll let it. It becomes absolutely meaningless. Completely relative. As Plato's Socrates suggests it cannot answer for itself, and if no one is able to answer for it, if there are no guidposts in the background to measure the information against, just "skills" that would theoretically allow you to determine its value, than how is there any distinction between fact and falsehood? We are left either with some who know, and beomce the guide posts (in which case knowledge would give them ultimate, near godlike power), or we are left adrift, ever learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. If truth doesn't exist, that's no big deal. If it does, at all, in any sense, it is a horrible travesty.