On June 7, 2025, five of us finished our exploration of Rebecca Goldstein’s Plato at the Googleplex. We started this discussion with Goldstein’s description of tyrants controlling the government, and their rule becoming a vengeful lawlessness that whetted their appetite to extract more wealth from citizens. Their wealth increased as they strengthened their grip on power. Voting was restricted to the few. Those out of favor were brought up on trumped-up charges. Foreign workers who were never allowed to become citizens were vulnerable. Many in our discussion thought this described current events, but this also happened after Athens surrendered at the end of the Peloponnesian War. The Spartans installed an oligarchical government of the Thirty Tyrants. One survivor still scurried around Athens, conducting his philosophical inquiry and dialoging with whoever wanted to converse. The Thirty thought Socrates harmless and left him alone. Is being ignored collaborating? Eventually, the Athenian exiles successfully overthrew the Thirty Tyrants, restoring the original government. They decided to grant amnesty to collaborators to avoid messy legal proceedings.
Socrates continued his philosophical inquiry and asked questions that offended a faction within the restored democracy. His words were harsh enough for Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon to accuse Socrates of atheism and introducing new gods that corrupted the youth. During the trial, Socrates mocked the obvious contradiction in the accusation. Goldstein also categorized the accusers’ argument as BS (an abbreviation for an expletive), agreeing with Harry Frankfurt, another philosopher, that adherence to truth is civilization’s foundation. Without respect for the truth, BS crumbles that foundation, and BS got Socrates convicted and condemned to die by execution. How is that a life worth living?
In the fourth Goldstein dialogue, Roy McCoy, a newscaster, interviews Plato. McCoy takes issue with Plato’s pursuit of beauty, truth, and goodness, and striving to understand the cosmos to internalize its goodness. In contrast, McCoy feels Americans are practical and focused on the here and now, and the cosmos exists because we look at it. He chides Plato for extolling the study of mathematics to reach those transcendentals, and Pythagoras made his life a living hell in the seventh grade. What is so great about taking the virtuous path to these transcendentals? Are there better things to do? Is choosing the path of virtue worth the effort? Is there any pleasure in mastering a skill?
In the last fictional dialogue, Plato is curious to see his brain in an fMRI scan. He discusses the fMRI with Dr. David Shoket, a neuroscientist, and his graduate student, Agatha Fine. Dr. Shoket explains that the fMRI magnetizes the iron in red blood cells as it deoxygenates, marking when a neuron fires. Plato wonders, since it takes several milliseconds for neurons to fire, and two seconds for the fMRI to make a measurement, how accurate is this measurement of neural activity? Shoket was startled that Plato was well informed about neuroscience, but recognized that Plato’s question was an acknowledgement of Shoket’s expertise. Agatha noted that Plato was an expert in philosophy, but Shoket retorted that he presents scientific data and that philosophical data is an oxymoron. Shoket feels that the philosophers may have held the fort, but scientists are the cavalry who save the day and get things done. Plato asked, Is there a correlate of neural activity for an idea, images the mind sees, or even for decision making? In Plato’s allegory of the cave, is the scientist, not the philosopher, who breaks free from the cave and sees things as they are? Shoket concedes that neuroscience has yet to turn that information into knowledge. No neural correlate can explain why Socrates chose to stay and not flee his execution, or answer whether his life was worth living.
Goldstein’s Plato is “an impassioned mathematician, a wary poet, an exacting ethicist, a reluctant political theorist…keenly aware of the way assumptions and biases slip into our viewpoints…and devised a field devoted to exposing these assumptions and biases.” What must we do to render the cosmos and our lives coherent? Do we still need Plato to make our lives worth living? Why won’t philosophy go away? Do we need it to turn information into knowledge?
We invite you to continue our conversation about Daniel Dennett’s From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds, B105.C477D445 2017, on June 21, 2025, from 2 PM to 4 PM.
