Specter of Reason

I've just turned my attention to Plato's Cratylus for the first time.  Nothing of significance brought it to my attention, but when I learned it is considered his only sustained treatment of language, and that it deals with the question of whether meaning is natural or conventional, I thought I should become familiar with it.  I have only looked at the very beginning, but already I wish I had more time to explore it and its relation to 20th-century philosophy of language. At the beginning of the dialogue, Hermogenes affirms a view of names which is relativistic:  the designation of a name is entirely dependent on conventional usage.  The rightness or wrongness of word meaning is relative to a linguistic community.  If I use the word "horse" to refer to humans, and "human" to refer to horses, then I am right as far as my own usage goes, though I am not in line with the majority. Socrates leads Hermogenes to find a problem with this view with a curious arg...

The more I look, the more I find evidence that TED is propaganda .  It uses factually misleading yet emotionally persuasive and motivational speeches to sell the idea that creative geniuses are changing the world for the better.  It sells itself as a conveyor of knowledge and as access to the world of the intellectual elite.  Here is how TED presents itself  (the bold is from their own Website): TED conferences bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes or less). On TED.com, we make the best talks and performances from TED and partners available to the world, for free. . . . Our mission: Spreading ideas. We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world. So we're building a clearinghouse of free knowledge from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other. It'...

Provoked by some Facebook posts by Jason Stanley (Yale) and an ensuing discussion with Jason and Michael Morris (Sussex), I've been arguing for a certain interpretation of Plato's distinction between medicine and cookery, or, more generally, between crafts and knacks.  By "crafts" we might take Plato to mean arts or skills, or perhaps even what today would be called "sciences."  The difficult question concerns what Plato means by "knacks," and whether or not they entail a particular kind of knowledge. In Gorgias (463a), Socrates refers to knacks as parts of flattery, which he calls "the habit of a bold and ready wit, which knows how to manage mankind."  In another translation, flattery is defined as "a shrewd, gallant spirit which has a natural bent for clever dealing with mankind."  Both translations indicate that flattery entails knowledge: either it is knowledge how to manage mankind, or it is whatever knowledge is required...