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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
27:52
An Introduction to Sophistry
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Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
I hope you're doing well.
So this is a talk about sophistry, and if there is one thing that you need in your intellectual ammunition to make your way across the treacherous Mordor lava-filled plains of orc-ridden lies that mostly make up modern political culture, you need to know about sophistry.
Now, Originally, sophistry simply meant being able to make really good arguments.
It didn't have the negative connotation that it has now.
Socrates was actually quite complimentary towards some sophists, even sending one of his students to go and learn under a sophist, so there was some good stuff that happened in the realm of sophistry, but it got a progressively worse and worse reputation as time went forward.
So for those who don't know, Socrates was one of the earliest philosophers.
Philosopher means lover of wisdom, and that means the pursuit of important truths for their own sake, not for the sake of changing or manipulating or getting things out of others.
A politician will tell you what you want to hear, and will appeal to your vanity, and will appeal to your insecurity, and will appeal to your base fears.
A lover of wisdom, a philosopher, will find out, seek out, and develop the most relevant and powerful arguments to help you live A better life, and will tell you not what you want to hear, but what, if you wish to pursue virtue, you need to hear.
So simply being able to make good arguments doesn't make you a sophist.
Socrates, of course, went to the oracle at Delphi and said, who is the wisest person in the world?
said, why you, Socrates, are the wisest person in the world.
And he said, well, that can't be right.
I mean, I don't really know anything.
But he said, well, the Oracle can't lie, but I don't know anything.
So what could this mean?
So then he went to examine, to perform the Socratic reasoning, to ask the series of questions designed to uncover wisdom.
He went to all of the leading sophists, all of the leading teachers of his day, and he examined them on what is truth, what is justice, what is virtue, and so on.
And as he examined them, he very quickly found out that they didn't know what they claimed to know.
They did not know what justice was, or truth, or virtue, or all of the important things that philosophers should know.
And so he finally figured it out what the oracle meant.
And the oracle meant that he was the wisest because he knew how little he knew.
And the acceptance of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom.
When we claim to know something that we simply don't know, we become invested in falsehood.
We build Our house is, so to speak, on the cloud castles of irrational superstitions.
And then, when truth tellers come along, we feel our very identities dissolving.
Once someone can get you to build your personality and your sense of identity on a lie, you will become an automatic opponent of the truth.
And that, of course, is in many ways the goal of a sophist.
Sophists were very highly paid back in the day.
We're talking 2,500 years ago in Athens.
They were very highly paid and they refused to teach people who could not afford their teachings.
And so they created a kind of aristocratic class because of course Athens was a pretty primitive form of democracy.
And to be able to go in front of the public and to write and speak in a way that was appealing to the public and the public as a whole, you know, based on the bell curve of intelligence, tends not to be overly focused on long term gains, tends to be focused on short term gains, which was, of course, inherited by Rome, tends to be focused on short term gains, which was, of course, inherited by Rome, which created economic seppuku based upon the endless provision of bread and circuses of free, free welfare state for
And of course, the circuses of free entertainments where Christians had a very bad time playing Hello Kitty.
So sophists were very expensive and refused to teach people who could not pay them.
and And in my own small way, Socrates is one of my greatest influences, which is why I talk to people for free.
I give my books away for free.
I give my podcasts away for free.
I do ask for donations, just as Socrates did.
You know, buy me some lunch and let's talk some wisdom.
You can go to fdrual.com to help out this conversation.
But Sophists Sophism eventually grew into how it's perceived now, which is, you know, really dangerous, slippery, snake oil salesman.
And sophistry now generally means...
Being able to make a worse argument appear the better argument.
And there's a whole lot of logical fallacies which you can easily look up online to sort of figure out how sophistry works.
I want to talk about the philosophy of sophistry, if that makes any sense.
This may come.
Yeah, it may come.
It's a bit of a shock to people who think, oh, this is mostly politics and problems.
No, this is fundamentally a philosophical channel, so I wanted to do some hardcore Philosophy, baby.
So, for example, I mean this is a very common example that is often cited by people on the right in America that when someone criticizes Obama The people on the left say, well, but George Bush was doing this.
This is called an ad hominem to cook.
And this means, basically, if somebody accuses you of something, you turn around and say, well, this person was much worse.
And the mob goes over there and stones that guy instead of you.
And the fact that they're basically saying, I'm not hungry because there are hungrier people in the world, which is Of course there are hungrier people in the world, but this doesn't mean that you're not hungry.
So I think it's important to know what sophistry is, and these are my perspectives and arguments, so take them with as many grains of salt as you can conceivably find.
But I believe that sophistry is the direct opposite of philosophy, because sophistry attempts to mimic philosophy and there is no greater enemy to a thing than its predatory mimic, right?
So I don't know if you've seen the reboot of Battlestar Galactica with the glowing orgasm backbones, but of course in the original Battlestar Galactica from when I had hair, this was, you know, they were robots and made of, you know, big silver aluminum cans.
So you knew they were robots and they couldn't blend in.
In the second round of Battlestar Galactica, the robots mimic almost perfectly human beings, which makes them incredibly difficult to figure out and ferret out.
So they're a greater enemy, so to speak, because they can mimic human beings.
And because sophistry strives its very mightiest to imitate philosophy, it is the greatest enemy of philosophy.
Like if you bring some rational argument to me, and I say, Montana, ole, fatang, fatang, biscuit, barrel, potato head, noogie doogie, then you'll say, well, I'm not sure what you're saying, but I'm pretty sure that's not philosophy.
Whereas if I come back with a seemingly rational argument, then you are going to get probably sucked in to my crazy sophist planet and end up making the...
The worst mistake of philosophy which is to extend the respect of rational argument to people who are not using rational arguments and who are using the opposite of rational arguments which is something that vaguely looks like a rational argument but is not.
Like if some young man pulls out a, I don't know, a giant Swimming pool flotation ring.
And there are cops around.
They're going to be like, well, I guess he's going swimming somewhere.
I wonder what's going to happen.
But if he pulls out a toy gun, then he has a different kind of danger, right?
I mean, this is a very different situation for the police, or pretty much for anyone around for that matter.
Because the toy gun looks like a gun, and therefore is much more dangerous in its appearance than a big flotation ring.
And in the same way, because sophistry looks like philosophy, it's that much more dangerous.
And sophistry, of course, involves lying, but in a very subtle way, in a misdirection way.
Like the aforementioned argument where I say Obama did something bad, and people say, well, George Bush did something bad, or worse, or whatever, right?
That's not a blah-blah-blah, it's not a blarp, it's not just an irrational rainbow spray of subatomic memes, it is a seemingly rational or seemingly empirical response to an argument.
And so because sophistry mimics philosophy but sort of corrupts and subverts philosophy, then it is much more dangerous.
Okay, last example.
So if I hand you some, you know, three witches of Macbeth, bubble, bubble, toil and trouble, goblet of some liquid that is bubbling and smoking and shooting out snake tongues and so on, you're probably going to be unlikely to drink it.
But if I say, hey man, have a coke, you know, and you drink the coke but it's got poison in it, the fact that it's camouflaged as something you can drink It makes it much more dangerous than something that's obvious in that way.
Now, there are a few ways that I have found over the years to figure out if you're dealing with somebody who is a sophist.
Now, a sophist doesn't have to be somebody who's intellectually committed to misdirection and redirection and fogging and obfuscation and so on.
It can be someone who just has those habits.
And so it doesn't have to be sort of a Dr. Fu Manchu stroking the bald cat in a giant Captain Kirk chair.
Bond villain style of interaction.
It just can be somebody who has these habits.
These habits can be unconscious.
Um, sophistry fundamentally is the, is the fear of being found out for your motives.
And whereas a philosopher wishes to tell you the truth that is relevant, important and actionable, a sophist wishes to infest you with misdirection and bewilderment and activate your fear response, your fight or flight responses so that you do what the sophist wants.
I mean, in my show I don't tell people what to do.
I sort of give them advice or arguments or thoughts or perspectives or evidence or data.
I don't tell people what to do.
A sophist wants you to do something and, like water going down a mountainside, will find any path to get to the destination.
So philosophy, of course, starts with definitions.
So if you don't have definitions, Then you have a big problem talking about anything.
So people talk about what is the good or what is virtue?
How should we help the poor?
How should people be educated?
And so on.
And if nobody has a definition of what virtue is, then you are in the land of Sophistry.
So if somebody refuses or avoids definitions, then that is really important.
It's good to help the poor, right?
This is what a sophist would say and would imply that the existing government system of coercive redistribution of wealth Not that wealth is exactly distributed to begin with, but if somebody opposes the welfare state, then the Sophists will say, well, then you oppose helping the poor, and you are a cold-hearted Koch-sponsored monster, or whatever.
And so that's what the Sophists will do, because the question is, what is virtue?
has not been defined.
So that's fundamentally important as well.
People who reject or refuse definitions or want to skate past them or jump over them are almost certainly sophists.
People who won't build an argument step-by-step are almost certainly sophists.
So if somebody... I think the Socratic questioning is you continue to ask questions that Parse out what the person is trying to say.
You try to break down someone's argument into syllogisms or their component parts.
One of the most ancient syllogisms is, all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.
There's an argument, you assemble it, you get to a conclusion that is true.
You could say, I am on a plane to Johannesburg.
Sorry, I'm on a plane.
The plane is going to Johannesburg, therefore I am going to Johannesburg.
So you try to break someone's perspective or argument down into its component parts.
If they resist that process, they are a sophist.
Because if somebody comes to me and says, Steph, what is virtue?
Well, I've got endless podcasts and articles.
I've written a whole book on how secular ethics can be justified called Universally Preferable Behavior, A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics.
You can get it for free at freedomainradio.com slash free.
So if somebody comes to me and says, well, Steph, what is virtue?
Well, I wrote a whole book on what is virtue and articles and podcasts.
And I've had many, many debates on this show about that.
Talked about how to explain it to children and all that kind of stuff.
Now, that doesn't mean that I'm right, but it means I have no problem breaking down my argument into its components, syllogisms, into the building blocks of what an argument is.
And, by the way, writing a book on ethics is a confession that beforehand I did not know what ethics is.
Some people think I'm arrogant for writing a book on ethics.
No, no, no, no.
It's a confession of humility.
I did not know what ethics was, although I probably thought I lived a good life.
I did not know what ethics was until I actually broke it down into its syllogisms, into its arguments, all the way from sense data through abstract ethics.
So if someone is trying to tell you, for instance, that governments must fund education, Right?
Then they're trying to box you in because then you have to say, well, education is unimportant.
Who's going to say that?
No one.
Or then you have to say, well, something other than the government could fund education.
Uh, and then you're into, um, but the government for sure is going to fund it, but other people might or might not.
So you're going to get a more consistent funding with government education and so on.
So you're into all of these, what I call arguments from effect.
Well, you want the most people to be educated.
You want the poor people to be educated, therefore government schools, right?
Now, if somebody makes that argument, I would come back with, okay, well, what is virtue?
What is goodness?
What is the right way of living?
How do we differentiate good from evil?
Before we start jumping into how should poor people be educated, let's figure out, if you even know, what is good and what is evil?
What is right and what is wrong?
How is something true or false?
Now, most people, i.e.
99.9% of people engaged in any kind of dispute or debate, most people have not Build their arguments up from raw first principles.
That's the job of a philosopher.
To assume you know nothing, to build up what you know from raw first principles, from sense data.
from the five senses, from the logic which is derived from the consistent behavior of matter outside, the flesh prisoner of our skulls, and to recognize that concepts are imperfectly derived from instances, which is basically to say that empiricism trumps pure reason.
You build up your whole system of belief from the raw data of sense and logic and the fact that we have concepts because matter behaves in consistent matters.
A tree is something like another tree because there are atoms that behave consistently, which is why we can have concepts and why we know that water is different from sand because H2O is different from the silica that makes up sand.
So you really have to, like Socrates, assume you know nothing.
Hey, do you want to know what I had to accept?
The content of my mind was, when I began, oh lord, 32 years ago, the journey of philosophy.
I'm going to just step down for a moment.
Okay, you see that white space?
Ooh, okay, in the podcast, imagine you're inside a hermetically sealed ping pong ball where you can't have shows too long because you'll run out of air!
Okay, you see that white space?
That was the content of my mind, which I had to scrub blank before attempting to learn anything.
And I'm back!
Look!
See how I'm slowly coming into focus?
That's philosophy, baby!
So, most people, when they're making an argument, have not started from the blank wall and built their beliefs up systematically, piece by piece, assuming they know nothing from raw sense data and logic.
Just haven't done it.
Why?
Because they're out enjoying themselves rather than plowing their way through grad school attempting to write a pretty comprehensive theory of Western philosophy.
Philosophy nerd alert!
Yes, indeed.
I really should come in a pest dispenser with the others.
But anyway.
So when somebody puts forward a moral argument and you say, well, what is virtue?
What is truth?
What is goodness?
Before we get to all of that, then you have to ask them, how are they building up their argument?
Very, very few people have ever done that.
Now, if a mathematician puts forward an argument, you can ask him to take you all the way from the times table through algebra, through vector calculus, through, you know, you name it, functions and relations.
You can ask him to take you all the way through the steps.
It may take a long time, but he can get you there.
Because he started with Goo Goo Ga Ga blowing spit bubbles and fighting against the wall like we all did.
And then he learned numbers, counted his fingers, and he ends up with the highest abstractions in mathematics.
He can take you through the whole step.
In the same way, a competent philosopher who puts forward an argument can have that argument broken down to its absolute raw constituent components and will be able to build it back up again from scratch.
From assuming the blank wall of nothingness, you can then get an argument.
Sophists don't do that.
Sophists figure out what moves people emotionally.
And what moves people emotionally is desire and fear.
Desire to be thought well of and fear of being thought badly of.
Because we are.
A social species.
We are not cats, we are dogs.
We are bound together in the web of social approval, which is why philosophy tends to be so powerful and why sophistry is so effective.
This idea that if you want to help the poor, you've got to have a government program plays into people's desire to help the poor, of course, plays into people's desire to want to be thought well of.
If I oppose this government program, people are going to think I don't like the poor.
It's going to make me look cold and mean.
Therefore, yay, government program!
I don't want to make this a sort of political argument.
It really could be about anything.
It could be about immigration.
It could be about aid to single mothers.
It could be any number of things.
And so we want to be thought well of and we're afraid of being thought badly of.
And so a sophist will play on that kind of situation.
You know, there was the argument that was made by a number of people.
If you don't vote for Obama, you must be a racist.
In other words, apparently it's not racist to take Obama's biracial nature into a primary consideration when you are voting.
Apparently only focusing on his race is not racist, but evaluating his policies and his thoughts and arguments, apparently that is racist.
So, a sophist is unable to break down his or her arguments into their component pieces.
So, when you take the Socratic approach and you say, well, how do you know?
Before we get into, you know, how should money be herded around the economic plane by the endless flamethrowers of government power, how about we actually figure out how you know truth from falsehood?
This should be really the peak of a long chain of reasoning and anybody who wants you to accept the conclusions without wanting to step you through the premises, the syllogisms, the arguments, the axioms and so on.
Anyone who's not willing to step you through the argument but wants you to accept the conclusion is a sophist and is using that argument in an emotionally manipulative way in order to get you to do what he or she wants, and that is a very, very dangerous position to be in.
Because somebody who doesn't want to bring you arguments from first principles, but simply wants you to obey their conclusions, I mean, they're kind of a social fascist.
That's a strong way of putting it.
a fascist with a gun to your head, but they are definitely attempting to control you and get you to do what they want by using the appearance of philosophy.
Philosophy is supposed to empower others.
It's supposed to get you to think.
It's supposed to be able to train you to evaluate information and arguments on your own.
It's supposed to, you know, make you independent, right?
Or as Nietzsche said, it is a poor student who does not repay his master by outgrowing him and repay his teacher.
So, So sophistry wants you to obey emotionally laden non-arguments.
Whereas philosophy says, look, if I teach you first principles, you don't need me, you don't need anybody.
You need to think for yourself.
And sophistry is designed to make you dependent upon the approval or disapproval of the sophist.
Now, the sophist was dangerous enough prior to the mainstream media.
Mainstream media now can amplify this kind of stuff to the point where people can be subject to these media witch hunts and so on.
And dirt can be dug up and crazy things can be found out and amplified lies can be invented and so on.
And so the power of sophistry has gained a huge boost through the power of the prostitutes.
Sorry, the prostitutes.
Sorry, the reporters, the press.
in being able to amplify this kind of stuff.
So when you are in the presence of a sophist, the sophist will not want you to ask, how do you know what you know?
To ask the Socratic reasoning.
Well, wait a second.
So you're saying that helping the poor is a moral good, And then you're saying that giving money to the poor is the best, if not the only way to help them.
And then you're saying only the government can give money to the poor.
And then you're saying that government has money to give, which it doesn't.
The government has nothing.
It creates nothing.
It can only transfer through force, through taxation.
It can only borrow.
which is to create unfunded obligations on the part of other people if not signed a contract which is illegal outside the government or it can print money which is counterfeiting so the government can create unjust contracts it can steal or it can counterfeit and that's how we can best help the poor so if somebody is not willing to break down their argument from first principles Then you're in the presence of a sophist and you'll feel that pressure in your head and in your heart.
And you'll feel a reluctance to ask for first principles, right?
Because it'll be like, whoa, we're way ahead.
We're not circling back to have you catch up.
Let's just keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.
And when you are in the presence of a sophist, you will feel a very strong emotional reluctance to ask that person for first principles because they're kind of casting this spell, right?
There's a reason why magic is based on words and gestures, because sophistry is a kind of magic that can move mountains and create dams and have it rain gold upon the sometimes undeserving.
A sophist with political power can do, quote, "magical things." I mean, when I played Dungeons and Dragons since a teenager, there was a fireball spell.
And it's like you say these words, "Brrr!" Well, this is, of course, giving the order to shoot a cannon, which only results as a result of sophistry.
So you'll feel this intense emotional reluctance, like you won't want to ask that basic question.
And if you do ask that ancient question, how do you know?
How do you know what you know?
What is virtue?
And so on.
Then the sophist will regard you as French waiters are supposed to, as if they're peeing on you from a great height and you will be mocked and excluded and all that.
So when you feel that pressure to not ask first principles, nobody feels that pressure when they call in to me in these call-in shows.
We're doing one tonight.
It's a Wednesday night and Saturday night at 8 o'clock Eastern.
You can go to freedomandradio.com and figure out how to join and how to listen in.
Nobody has any problem asking me for first principles.
In fact, I find that very good.
I'm very happy to talk about first principles.
Sophists are not.
They resist, strongly resist, first principles.
They will distract.
They will avoid.
They will insult.
They will roll their eyes.
They will do all of the emotional tricks.
That somehow stamp you with the wagging finger mom word inappropriate or something like that.
And that's how you know that you are in the presence of a sophist.
So ask the Socratic questions.
Ask the person to build up their argument from first principles.
The old thing, explain it to me like I'm three years old, like I know nothing, like my head is the inside of a ping pong ball, like I'm auditioning for the Lego movie 2.
That is what you want people to do, and most people will strongly resist that.
Or they'll talk about tradition, or law, or all of these things which are not philosophical arguments.
The law, fundamentally, is an opinion with a gun, and tradition is mostly the accumulated prejudices of prior sophists.
So, if somebody comes up with a moral argument to you, and you ask them to break it down into first principles, and they resist, you know you are in the presence of a sophist, and please, please do not Dishonor philosophy by pretending that sophistry is philosophy.
I don't care if the robot's spine glows nuclear pink.
Don't have sex with the robot and think you're going to make another human being.
So I just wanted to leave you with a quote from William Cowper of the Progressive Era.
As creeping ivy clings to wood or stone and hides the ruin that it feeds upon, so sophistry cleaves close to and protects sin's rotten trunk, concealing its defects.
And if we substitute irrationality for sin, Which is the Hades of philosophy.
I think we can see where old Bill Cowper was coming from.
So, fight for the truth, resist sophistry, and save mankind in the process.
Thank you so much!
Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
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