Herbert Hrachovec * Socrates, Truth and Peer Production (was: [ox-en] Conference documentation)

Hi list!

Below is the talk from Herbert Hrachovec in a transcripted version.
See the PDF on the conference site for the pictures.


						Grüße

						Stefan

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Socrates, Truth and Peer Production
===================================

:Author: Herbert Hrachovec
:Organization: Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna

Artisans and Social Skills
==========================

Democracy and the Division of Labor
-----------------------------------
 
The Athenian city-state was based on a fairly well developed exchange
economy, comprising the usual variety of occupations: farmers,
artisans, merchants, entrepreneurs ...

Its political system was carefully constructed to prevent oligarchic
or plutocratic power structures.

Most of the executive and judicial bodies were determined by rotation
and by lottery, diminishing the possibility of an entrenched
bureaucracy. Of course, educated elites with good speaking ability
could be highly influential within assemblies, but they had to operate
within the discursive context of the *demos*, the body of citizens.

Athenian Democracy
------------------

[See graphic on p.2]

The Athenian constitution gives rise to the following questions:

* In a society of farmers, artisans, merchants etc.

* Lacking authoritarian control

* Which principles and abilities should prevail?

* How should this question even be approached?

Socrates and the Sophists
=========================

What cost Wisdom?
-----------------

  Then I, noting the man's gallant spirit and the flutter he was in,
  remarked: Well, what is that to you? Has Protagoras wronged you? At
  this he laughed and, Yes, by the gods! he said, by being the only
  wise man, and not making me one.

  But, by Zeus! I said, **if you give him a fee and win him over he
  will make you wise too**. Would to Zeus and all the gods, he
  exclaimed, only that were needed! I should not spare either my own
  pocket or those of my friends.

  -- (Protagoras 310d-e)

Cash value
----------

  Thrasymachus said, "if I show you another answer about justice
  differing from all these, a better one -- what penalty do you think
  you deserve?" "Why, what else," said I, "than that which it befits
  anyone who is ignorant to suffer? It befits him, I presume, to learn
  from the one who does know. That then is what I propose that I
  should suffer." **"I like your simplicity," said he; "but in
  addition to 'learning' you must pay a fine of money.**"

  -- (Republic 337d)

Two Options
-----------

[See graphic on p.4]

Socratic Peer Review
--------------------

  "Did you hear," said I, "all the goods that Thrasymachus just now
  enumerated for the life of the unjust man?" "I heard," he said, "but
  I am not convinced." "Do you wish us then to try to persuade him,
  supposing we can find a way, that what he says is not true?" "Of
  course I wish it," he said.

  "If then we oppose him in a set speech enumerating in turn the
  advantages of being just and he replies and we rejoin, we shall have
  to count up and measure the goods listed in the respective speeches
  and we shall forthwith be in need of judges to decide between us.
  But if, as in the preceding discussion, we come to terms with one
  another as to what we admit in the inquiry, **we shall be ourselves
  both judges and pleaders**." "Quite so," he said."

  -- (Republic 348a)

Peer Productivity
-----------------

  But about this business of finding the way to be as good as
  possible, and of managing one's own household or city for the best,
  it is recognized to be a disgrace for one to decline to give advice
  except for a payment in cash, is it not?

  ...

  The reason evidently being that this is **the only sort of service
  that makes the person so served desire to do one in return** and
  hence it is felt to be a good sign when this service that one has
  done is repaid to one in kind; but when this is not so, the contrary
  is felt. Is the case as I say?

  -- (Gorgias 520e)


Plato's Open Cave
=================

Stupidity of the Crowds
-----------------------

**Consider**:

  ... the man who thinks that it is wisdom to have learned to know the
  moods and the pleasures of the motley multitude in their assembly,
  whether about painting or music or, for that matter, politics?

  For if a man associates with these and offers and exhibits to them
  his poetry or any other product of his craft or any political.
  service, and grants the mob authority over himself more than is
  unavoidable, the proverbial necessity of Diomede will **compel him
  to give the public what it likes**, but that what it likes is really
  good and honorable, have you ever heard an attempted proof of this
  that is not simply ridiculous?

  -- (Politeia 493e)

Wisdom of the Few
-----------------

  Can the multitude possibly tolerate or believe in the reality of the
  beautiful in itself as opposed to the multiplicity of beautiful
  things, or can they believe in anything conceived in its essence as
  opposed to the many particulars?" "Not in the least," he said.

  **Philosophy, then, the love of wisdom, is impossible for the
  multitude.** " "Impossible." "It is inevitable, then, that those who
  philosophize should be censured by them." "Inevitable." "And so
  likewise by those laymen who, associating with the mob, desire to
  curry favor with it." "Obviously."

  -- (Politeia 493e)

The Bald-headed Tinker
----------------------


**Consider**: 

  ... the ambition and aspiration of that multitude of pretenders
  unfit by nature, whose souls are bowed and mutilated by their vulgar
  occupations even as their bodies are marred by their arts and
  crafts.

  Is not the picture which they present," I said, "precisely that of a
  little bald-headed tinker who has made money and just been freed
  from bonds and had a bath and is wearing a new garment and has got
  himself up like a bridegroom and is about to marry his master's
  daughter who has fallen into poverty and abandonment?"

  "And so when men unfit for culture approach philosophy and consort
  with her unworthily, what sort of ideas and opinions shall we say
  they beget?"

  -- (Republic 495e)

Bottom Up
---------

[See graphic on p.7]


The Politics of the Cave
=========================

Whose Chains Get Broken?
------------------------

**Jacques Rancière:**

  At this point, I stumbled across the famous passage in Book II of The
  Republic where Plato speaks of the workers who have no time to do
  anything but work, and the passage in Book VI where he criticizes the
  'little bald tinker' and those with 'disfigured bodies' and 'battered
  and mutilated souls' who 'betake themselves to philosophy'. I
  recognized that the structure was the same.

  It was a largely empirical structure relating to the temporality of
  the worker's activity. And there was a close correspondence between
  that structure and **the fully elaborated symbolic structure that
  denied the worker access to the universal logos** and, therefore, to
  the political.

The Promethean Threat
---------------------

  The absolute simplicity of artisans, their absolute lack of leisure,
  and the endless process of perfecting their trade must be postulated
  to exorcise the Promethean threat: not that workers would become or
  seek to become gods, but that they would set in motion a city of
  productive work that is at the same time a city of absolute artifice
  **a city producing its discourses as its tools -- in a word, a
  democracy**, or, what comes down to the same thing for Plato, a
  technocracy where the power of the tradesmen and that of the people
  are equivalent.

  -- (Jacques Rancière, The Order of the City, Critical Inquiry 30/2, p. 280)

Governing by Detachment
-----------------------

The Platonic scenario, according to Jacques Rancière, rests on those
presuppositions:

* Workers are restricted to their specific area of competence

* Imitation and Art are not allowed to transgress the boundaries
  established by the division of labor

* The Rulers determine the state's Founding Myth. Their's is the
  license to lie.

..

  "The artisan in his place is someone who, in general, does nothing
  but accredit, even at the cost of lying, the declared lie that puts
  him in his place."

  -- (Rancière p.291)

Platonic Communism
------------------

The so-called "common good" is put in the care of the intellectuals.
Abdication is the prerequisite to domination.

  "In short, to say that the worker cannot be a guardian or warrior is
  simply to say that he is unworthy of being a communist.

  Work and community are strictly antagonistic. Communism is not the
  fraternity of the classless society but the discipline of a class
  domination ideally removed from the logic of work and property.

  For the city to be well organized, it is necessary and suffcient
  that the authority of the dominators over the dominated be the
  authority of communists over capitalists."

  -- (Jacques Rancière, The Order of the City, Critical Inquiry 30/2, p. 283)

Open Source Truth
=================

Professionalism
---------------

Against parvenue socialism: Getting rich does not overcome domination.
Superior insight is still the crucial element of politics. It can be
provided by experts:

  "Now I observe, when we are collected for the Assembly, and the city
  has to deal with an affair of building, **we send for builders to
  advise us on what is proposed to be built** ... and so in all other
  matters which are considered learnable and teachable: but if anyone
  else, whom the people do not regard as a craftsman, attempts to
  advise them, no matter how handsome and wealthy and well-born he may
  be, not one of these things induces them to accept him; they merely
  laugh him to scorn and shout him down, ... ."

  -- (Protagoras 319b)

Back to Square One
------------------

Yet - after all those years - the Socratic challenge remains:

  "But when they have to deliberate on something connected with the
  administration of the State, **the man who rises to advise them on
  this may equally well be a smith, a shoemaker, a merchant, a
  sea-captain, a rich man, a poor man, of good family or of none**,
  and nobody thinks of casting in his teeth, as one would in the
  former case, that his attempt to give advice is justified by no
  instruction obtained in any quarter, no guidance of any master; and
  obviously it is **because they hold that here the thing cannot be
  taught**."

  -- (Protagoras 319d)

Teaching Wisdom, Second Take
----------------------------

Socratic *aporia* may be overcome by various means:

* if you can pay for private tutors (The Sophists)

* if you decide to change your life (The Platonists)

* if you assume a role within the symbolic order maintained by the
  State (Gramsci, Rancière)

Start with the Cave. Break free of Chains. Aspire to Knowledge. You
are still under the control of a superior force.

Dilemma
-------

The problem with democratic aspirations is the interference of two
distinct forces:

* The Ascent to Wisdom: Enlightenment

* The Distribution of Resources: Egalitarianism

**Truth** at cross-purposes with **Property**

  Excluded from leisure and dedicated to the ceaseless fabrication of
  commodities, the worker is condemned to the shameful privileges of
  thrift, accumulation, and wealth. He is always a potential
  capitalist, and, for this reason, the philosopher can stigmatize him
  while reserving to highborn souls the symbolic currency of honor and
  power associated with the rulers' lack of ownership.

  -- (Jacques Rancière, The Order of the City, Critical Inquiry 30/2, p. 283)

**Unless:** Enlightenment and Egalitarianism can be merged. Upward
mobility can be made compatible with societal polymorphism. First
class achievers commute with everyday citizens.

Non-commercial Network Cooperation
----------------------------------

[See graphic on p.12]

Polymorphism
------------

.. rubric:: Truth is neither the expertise of the philosopher-expert,
   nor the distributed melange of contributions. It is a
   multifunctional tool.

..

  "It is right for the shoemaker by nature to make shoes and occupy
  himself with nothing else, for the carpenter to practice carpentry,
  and similarly all others."

  -- (Republic 443c)

[See graphic on p.13]

On Unity and Diversity
----------------------

Is this correct? Yes or No.

Does this fit into a pattern of argument? Explain.

[See graphic on p.13]

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