| Elements of Epistemology |
Socrates by Jacques-Louis David (1787)

About Socrates Plato describes Socrates' (c. 9550 HE, 450 BCE) shabby appearance and tattered clothes. Socrates was appreciated by few and hated by many, as he sought the intellectual and moral improvement of society that, he thought, could be achieved by humanistic education.
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Hemlock
(Conium maculatum) |
This collided with doctrines of religious moralists who want to improve society by religious indoctrination and by punishments meted out by the law. This ideological conflict was resolved not by a Socratic dialogue, but by a judicial decree. Socrates' teachings were judged as corrupt and Socrates was executed.
Over two millennia later, Socrates is still remembered, as his accusers did not realize that a better strategy would have been to accuse him of moral turpitude, and drug addiction. After all, he chose to drink hemlock, didn't he?
Socrates'
Core Thesis Socrates maintained that humans do not
knowingly act evil. We do what we believe is the best. Improper conduct is the
product of ignorance. The way to achieve a better society is through education.
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The opposing view is that a better society must be maintained by punishments. This line of reasoning rests on the assumption that God gave us the free will to choose between good and evil. To restrain the evil; freedom has to be taken away from the guilty by incarceration or by the termination of life. To prevent the evil, freedom must be curtailed by pressures toward the moral rectitude by an elaborate system of rewards and punishments. The core postulates of this system are in the belief in God and in the belief of an afterlife. Thus, this system of rewards and punishments can include promises which fulfillment does not require tangible expenditures and cannot be verified, extended into eternity and intensified by fantasies of bliss in heaven and of suffering in hell. Within this cognitive framework, there is no escape, not even by suicide, which lands you in Hell. However, inflicting death upon others, as in a jihad, earns you into paradise plus the seventy one maidens bonus.
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Terrorist Samson killed about 3,000 persons. |
Number of persons killed during the air raids on the U.S. territory within the framework of some of the air raids by the U.S. on the territories of others. |
Samson and
DelilahDuring
one of the numerous wars
between Israelites and Philistines, the leader of
The temple was crowded with about three thousand men and women. When they stood him among the pillars, Samson prayed to the Lord, reached toward the two central pillars and pushed with all his might. The temple collapsed, killing all the people in it.
Religious justifications of terrorism can be found in both the Qur'an and the Bible. The Bible also includes a remarkably close estimate how many people can be killed by collapsing a large building.
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The Play of Shadows
The shadow play was introduced to the West by travelers who witnessed it in
puppetry in which flat cutout figures are held
against a translucent screen and illuminated by a lamp from behind. The Chinese
also perfected the making of tinted translucent materials used to produce
colored shadows. Sometimes, the figures had grotesque shapes and ornamentation.
The art of shadow puppetry followed the Silk Road to
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Parable of the Cave bears a marked resemblance to the shadow play. It was narrated by Plato (c. 9600 HE, 400 BCE), a student of Socrates. This parable follows an interesting course: Imagine prisoners in an underground cave with their necks chained so that they can only see before them. Behind them a fire is blazing at a distance. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way. In front of the prisoners there is a wall on which the prisoners see the shadows of events taking place on the raised way. To them, the truth is literally nothing but the shadows of the images.
The Knowledge will Set You Free One of the prisoners escapes, returns to the cave, and tells the others about the world above. After prisoners leave the cave, they initially think that the shadows are truer than the visible objects, only gradually grasping the reality. The meaning of this allegory is that mediated images are the world of those who live in the cave. To be free, we have to ascent upwards, into the world that could be correctly perceived and interpreted. Among the tasks of social sciences is to lessen the irrationality of the society, to improve critical thinking of its members, and to enable us to see issues and events as they are and not as the puppeteers would like us to believe. To dispel shadows and to cast the rays of light.