Solitary Man

Am I the only one who sees a contradiction?

Julian

Well, the line between the presocratics and the sophists is a fuzzy one, at best. Surely, the sophists were the direct heirs of the presocratics and besides, most of the delineations of schools of philosophy make little sense in the 5th century. Call him a presocratic then, if you must, but the point remains.
I don't see how you can argue anything else. Consider that other people were not, in general, attacked on those grounds. Consider that he was a strong supporter of Pericles and that Pericles' closest friends all came under attack by the same people around the same time. Of course, he did lay himself open to the attack but I doubt it would have come if he hadn't had the associations that he did. Much of Pericles' nature is ascribed to Anaxagoras, he would be a prime target. I am not saying that he didn't have strong atheistic (agnostic, really, using modern terminology) tendencies, just that he could have gotten away with it had he chosen his friends more carefully.

Julian

Jeffrey Gibson

All good points.

But they hardly mitigate the fact that, contrary to Jay's claim, there were indeed ancients who did think in terms of falsifying subjects. (How does one falsify a predicate/verb, anyway? And is "exists" a predicate? Certainly Russell, the authority to whom Jay appeals to support his [Jay'] claim did not believe so, as his [Russell's] discussion of the validity of the ontological argument clearly shows.

And Critias could get away with writing what he did if he was simply summarizing someone else's argument, yes?

Jeffrey

Julian

I agree with you. I don't think that they were particularly good at it, however, their dismissals being little better than the original assertion. You refer to Lucian's The Way to Write History elsewhere and that is actually a pretty good source for examples where he points out a number of things written in histories that weren't in fact true. He is not entirely convincing, though, because of the high esteem in which he holds Herodotus, who was less concerned with the facts than he was with the didactic angle. More understandbly to be admired, which Lucian does, was Thucydides and Xenophon. But I digress.

BTW, your source on Anaxagoras that you linked to earlier mentions at the very end states that "Although Anaxagoras' indictment for impiety was probably as much political as a sign of his danger to public religion (attacking Anaxagoras was an indirect attack on Pericles), he was seen as important and influential enough to qualify to some as an enemy of the polis." [emphasis mine]
Well, to be technical about it, I don't think that you can falsify an intransitive verb without a transitive auxiliary. I would have to take a closer look at some Greek examples to be sure it is quite the same but that really isn't the point. I haven't read the particular Russell which is referenced and we don't have most of Anaxagoras' writings. My impression of Anaxagoras was that he simply left the gods out of his concepts altogether. Since the universe no longer needs divine movers he is open for an attack of impiety, in reality I suspect that he didn't care and left them out as unnecessary.
That depends. The Greeks thought that one learned and grew wise through pain and suffering but that the pain and suffering didn't necessarily have to be one's own. One could learn from others, and the tragedies served this purpose. One could certainly put words of impiety into the mouth of a character but if that was to be perceived as the winning view, i.e. the lesson conferred by the author, I suspect that there would be trouble. As such it is not the utterance but the purpose the utterance serves. Meletus talks openly about atheism but he does so for the purpose of accusing Socrates.

My point about Critias getting away with it would be his status as one of the Thirty Tyrants. Besides, I still think that Euripides wrote it.

I do wish that we could find some really good, concrete examples of arguing against the existence of people written BCE. While I see many things that indicate or imply such suppositions, I don't see a good hard and fast example. I am sure that they exist, they are just beyond my limited pool of knowledge.

Julian

Toto

I skipped past that, but even there, it appears that Tatian is saying that the Greeks treat these personages as mere fiction, although it is not clear that he [Tatian] approves. Turning an ancient tale into allegory is a way of saving it. I still don't see an example of someone attacking a religion for being associated with a non-existent founder.

But I admit to not having read Tatian that closely.

Jeffrey Gibson

Earlier, the entry says "The charges against Anaxagoras may have been as much political as religious"

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

Here is Russell's essay "On Denoting"

Could you please show me not only where within this essay Russell speaks about Aristotle and/or the difficulties with Aristotlean logic, but where within his discussion of the expression "the King of France is bald" he demonstrates "the problem" that you say he demonstrates there or in any way hints that from what he says we have reason to conclude that the ancients thought in terms of falsifying predicates, but not in terms of falsifying subjects/nouns?

Jeffrey

aa5874

But Roman numerals do not use the decimal numbering system, 0-9, they have symbols to represent any number. So, as you already know, 10=X, L=50, C=100 and D=500 etc, and the latin word for "nothing"="nusquam".

Don't you think the Romans understood what zero food or zero water meant?


If in Aristotelian logic, "A statement must be either true or false" then this logic is valid for both assertions, that is:

"The present King of France is bald" is false, not true, if there is no present King.

"The present King of France is not bald" is false, not true, if there is no present King.

Aristotelian logic, in this case, as you have stated it, then does not mandate that the opposite of a false statement must be true. It only signifies that a statement is either true or false.

In logic, each statement must be examined independently for its logical truth.

Ben C Smith

The quote that started this thread was:

This is worded rather vaguely. If the main point is that the ancients did not feel they could prove that a god did not exist, or that the ancients did not in fact prove such a thing to our modern satisfaction (their standard of proof being different than ours or some such), then I may concede the point. If, however, the emphasis is on the idea of holding that a god did not exist, contrary to what others were claiming, then I think Tatian answers that question.

In the OP Jay expanded gods to gods or humans:

And Malachi151 himself had written:

With the word proven in quotation marks, I am not certain how much or what kind of emphasis to give it.

It certainly can be. But surely allegorizing the gods or the heroes is the last resort for those who already have reason to doubt the literal existence of gods or heroes. Maybe I am mistaken. But how many Christians allegorized the creation story before evolution came along? Do you not think that allegorizing Zeus is an indication that somebody is already doubting the existence of Zeus?

Ben.

Malachi151

See my reply here:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...70#post5067970