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---
title: "More Exploration of Social Objects"
date: 2022-09-12T22:03:22+01:00
tags: ["relativism","subjectivism","realism"]
topics: ["ontology", "metaphysics"]
image: img/chess-board-resized.jpg
description: Once more, with less feeling...
draft: false
---
## Are Social Objects "*Really* Real"?
There is an intuitive suspicion expressed in common sense, that certain kinds of objects -- namely, objects that seem to be dependent upon social factors -- aren't "*really*, real". The intuition is a skeptical one arising out of a default common sense empiricism. While there may be some nominal understanding or some social agreement about the reality of things like national borders or governments, they're not "*really*, real" in the sense that, say, an airplane, or a boulder, or a dog, are "*really*, real". In contemporary philosophical literature, this distinction is typically understood as an opposition between the realist and antirealist understanding of objects, and is sometimes justified by adding the qualification "social" to the term object. The qualification is correct, but incomplete. This paper will attempt flesh out the notion of a social object, in order to provide a clearer understanding of what is meant by it, and to provide a means by which we might answer the question of whether so-called social objects are in fact, "*really*, real".
## Social Objects
To begin the analysis of social objects, we need to clarify our understanding of the component terms in the question. What are "objects", what does it mean for them to be "real" or "social", and what is it about the social qualification that seems to suggest an ontological demotion?
We have many not-quite substitute terms for 'object'. For example, being, entity, instance, and thing. These are not definitions, but varying attempts to express an idea about the way in which human beings experience the constituents of existence. There are two common sense understandings of this term: (a) that which is *tangible*. Which is to say, that which is numerically distinct, a unity, and perceptible by the senses, and (b) that which is the focus of one's cognition, attention, or emotion. Neither of these definitions accounts for the qualified idea of a 'social' object. While social objects may indeed be at times the focus of attention or emotion, definition (b) seems to not pick out anything in particular. We can focus our attention on a flower, or on a baseball team, or on a project. So, all of these things can be an object in the sense of definition (b). The qualification of social, therefore, appears irrelevent to definition (b), and thus must be an attempt to isolate certain objects from the objects captured by definition (a). In short, a social object is a different kind of object from a tangible object. But what kind of object is that?
Having an outline or rough idea of what social objects are *not* is necessary for a full definition, it is not sufficient. This gray area may be one source for the intuition that social objects are not "*really* real". If they fail to conform to the first definition, and we cannot provide a definition for the other category, then they fail to be real, because to be real just is to be tangible. But, would we then be willing to commit to the notion that, say, the steelworkers union is not real because it does not cast a shadow? Or that, say, the idea of money is not real because we cannot smell it? Intuitively, that seems to be a mistake. We want to say that both are yet somehow real. How are we to justify the intuition to *not* reject the reality of unions and money?
The examples of money and unions suggest another layer of analysis. There are at least two senses in which an object that is not tangible can be said to be 'social'. In the first sense, it is a plurality of individual humans gathered and organized for a common purpose. Examples would indeed include a steelworkers union, but also a classroom, a sports team, a philosophical society, a government, or even a nation. In the second sense, a social object is a sort of hybrid individual. It is a composite object, consisting of both a tangible and a social component. Individual bits of currency, and student identification cards would count among such objects, but also such things as chess sets, flags, and planets. Finally, there is yet a third sense that is a bit more subtle than the others. This is the social object that is a "doing" rather than just a "being". The best example of this, is the distinction between a chess *set*, and a chess *match*. More broadly, if we think of a chess match as an *event*, then we might also ask if, say, the French Enlightenment or The Assault on Normandy (aka 'D-Day') are social objects.
Having identified the three kinds of social objects, the question of whether there is any sense in which any of these three kinds of social objects can be count as real in the same sense as a tangible object, or whether there is some other sense of real that might be analogous or equivalent to the reality of a tangible object. I will now examine each of these three notions of social object, and provide some reasons for judging the extent to which they are "really, real".
## Social Objects as Collective Social Beings
It can be argued that social objects of the collective kind are in fact *more real* than their constituent parts, as is seen in Hegel's theory of objective mind (Quinton 1976). Hegel couched his theory in the context of the life of the state in history, but it could also be applied to something a bit less intimidating, like a sports team. The 1984 Chicago Cubs, picks out a social object we can classify as a team. On Hegel's account, there is (analogously), a spirit of baseball, out of which the team spirit of the 1984 Chicago Cubs becomes a concrete universal (a concept somewhat analogous to the concrete universal of a color, for example). The team's individual members have their reality as that team, and the team 'only is, as an organized whole' (Quinton 1976, 6). To pick out individual team members when talking about the team, is to abstract away from the team, rather than to explain it by reducing it to its individuals. This might be thought of as a sort of supervenience view of social institutions, but this is still slightly misleading. The substantial reality is the idea that the group actualizes an already existing spirit, and the individuals in the group are only important insofar as they actualize the spirit of baseball in its concrete form of the the 1984 Chicago Cubs.
This view implies an ontology that not only extends beyond the material, but also extends beyond the individual mind (if we take mind to be immaterial). In other words, it posits the ontological reality of a realm of spirit, which has a causal power in the material to the extent that it can give existence or being to certain arrangements of individuals as groups, by giving the group a coherent *meaning*. Hegel called collective beings like states, 'substances', and argued that they are 'actualized' in the material stuff of individuals (Hegel 1807). This is characterisitc of the language of Aristotle, but the concept of the national spirit is more akin to the concept of the Platonic Form, because Hegel's own conception of the spirit of a collective being was one of transcendence, not immanence. To put it another way, Hegel's idea of the collective being is much more akin to the idea of the Catholic Holy Spirit, than it is to the idea of the school spirit of a typical American high school.
Passinsky (2020) makes reference to Orwell's "England Your England", and suggests that Orwell agreed with the antirealist in denying that such things as nations were "really 'out there' in the world". In fact, Orwell seems to take the Hegelian view in his answer to his own question.[^1]
> "Yes, there is something distinctive and recognizable in English civilization... it has a flavour all its own... it is continuous, it stretches into the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature. What can England of 1940 have in common with England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be *the same person*... above all, it is your civilization, it is *you*. However much you hate it or laugh at it, you will never be happy away from it for any length of time... Good or evil, it is yours, and you belong to it...".
For the purposes of his essay, Orwell drew no significant distinction between the concept of nation, country, and even civilization. He believed in a transcendent British national spirit that animated the whole, and permeated the souls of each individual Briton that belonged to that whole. They depended upon Britain for their British identity (indeed, for their very existence), not the other way around. Very much an analogy of the Hegelian national spirit.
A disciple of Quine might find that this kind of ontological realism comes at far too high a price. Having to commit to an entire transcendent immaterial realm of spirits of reason and identity that give material its meaning and definition would be an extreme extravagance for anyone who preferred Occam to Bonaventure. One alternative to a Hegelian "jungle" ontology (as Quine would put it), would be to turn the concept on its head. Which is to say that such things as teams are *emergent* social objects. Both transcendence and immanence are concepts of objectivity that do not depend *necessarily* on any particular individuals for their reality. But emergence does imply a direct dependence relation. A physical analogy might be the sound that a corrugated tube makes when you swing it round your head. That sound is an emergent property entirely dependent on the particular physical conditions. The tube must be of a particular shape and size, and your motion must be of a particular character, in order produce just that sound.
Likewise, with collective social objects like teams. The team that included Rick Sutcliffe, Ryne Sandberg, and Gary Matthews would not have been the same team, if it hadn't included those athletes. The 1984 Chicago Cubs (and the emergent team spirit), depends for its reality on the presence of the tangible individuals that constitute the team at that particular time. If Rick Sutcliffe, Ryne Sandberg, and Gary Matthews were not a part of the team, it wouldn't *be* the 1984 Chicago Cubs (Theseus notwithstanding). Those men had to come together at that time, to produce that team (and whatever spirit was said to be had of it).
A more general political analogy for this, can be seen in Rousseau's notion of the general will. The entity has no reality, until a particular group of like-minded individuals comes together and unanimously agrees to be governed in a certain way. It is in the precise moment in which they come to unanimous consensus, that the general will is birthed into existence -- and the moment that these individual cease to consent to the contract, the general will ceases to exist. On this view, the general will is as real as the the individuals that constitute it, because it emerges as a property of the collective agreement (just like the sound emitting from the spinning corrugated tube is just as real as the tube). However, it depends entirely on the individuals constituting it for its reality, unlike the Hegelian spirit of the state.
But would this satisfy the Quinian? Would Quine accept the concept of a general will into his ontology? Probably not. Quine's eliminativism seems to suggest the necessity to roll back collective notions entirely, until we are left with individuals over which we can quantify variables. In the same way there can be no "average American", there can be no "steelworkers union" or "1984 Chicago Cubs". Terms like "team", and "union", and "nation", are just labels of convenience attached to aggregations of individuals, in order to reduce a cognitive load in the act of communicating, or to reduce the practical or logistical problems inherent in organizing groups of people. Quine's nominalist eliminativism is attractive, because it helps to highlight one way in which subject and object can be demarcated. If we can reduce collectives to individuals, then we can get to something "real". Indeed, contra my own suggestion above, Passinsky (2020) suggests that this is the source of the antirealist intuition about social objects: the degree to which they depend on the subjective is the degree to which they are not real. To put it in terms of a question, we might ask, where does object stop and subject start? One answer to that is indeed to insist on tangible individuals as the standard of what is real. As we will see, however, it is not so easy to stop even at the level of the objective individual.
## Social Objects as Composite Individual Beings
Earlier, we gave a definition for something called a *tangible*: a unity which has an independent numerical identity, and can be *sensed* or *perceived*. Let's call this common-sense realism. What J.L Austin famously called the reality of "moderate-sized dry goods" (Austin 1979, 8). Interestingly, Quine was also unsatisfied with this definition. He did want to say that real objects were just those objects over which we could bind a variable to a quantity (Quine 1980, 12). However, he broadened the concept far beyond tangibility, when he further argued that quantifiable objects were really only those for which scientific inquiry could provide a satisfying theory (Quine 1980, 44). So, atoms and quarks and elements and forces and fields are given the status of objects because the scientific community has given them to us, in the form of convincing theories. This view has become a dominant feature of contemporary common sense. In a moment, we'll see why this is a problem.
On the Aristotelian view, all real objects are construed to be substances (Aristotle Metaphysics Z.3-Z.11). A substance is the indissoluble composition of *form* and *matter* (a concept called a "hylomorph"). Matter is the material stuff of the composition: dirt, or iron, or wood, or wool, for example. But what is form? In the simplest terms, Aristotelian form is the *definition* of the object. The definition, in turn, is the specification of the object in such a way that picks out the *essence* of the thing. As Aristotle says "*by form I mean the essence of each thing and the primary substance*" (Metaphysics 1032b1), and "*by the substance without matter I mean the essence*" (Metaphysics 1032b14). So, the *essence* of a thing, finally, is that which makes the thing *what* it is. In even simpler terms, it is that which enables us to name a being.
Intrinsic to Aristotelian form, therefore, is the way in which man relates to what he finds in reality. To put it in more modern terms: objects are indeed constituted in part, by our understanding of them. Trees are not trees *until* we discern the *nature* of trees -- and the nature of trees can be found in how they came to be, what they are made of, how they differ from other objects, and what they are for (i.e. the four causes). Until then, they are merely unsubstantial objects, perhaps numerically distinct from other objects, but indefinite and unnamed, like the bronze of a statue, before it is forged into something recognizable.
What is interesting about this theory, is that it extends to social objects in the sense we are considering now. Such things as denominations of currency or borders can be analyzed in terms of their *matter* and their *form*, where the *form* would include the meaning assigned to an object by social agreement. A heavily modified version of this view is taken up by Passinsky (2020). For Passinsky, social objects are *constituted* rather than *composed*. Which is to say, rather than matter and form functioning as co-equal constituents of a hylomorph, material constitution and response-dependence are in a hierarchical "irreflexive and asymmetric dependence relation", where (in Aristotelian terms) the 'form' is dependent upon the 'matter' for its constitution, and the 'matter' is grounded in the 'form'. Passinsky invokes the example of clay and statue in which the clay constitutes the statue and statue grounds the clay. On this view, however, the statue could not be a statue if it were not 'taken to be' a statue, by 'those with the appropriate social standing' to take it as a statue. This raises an interesting problem in other contexts. Let's have a look at different example, to clarify.
There is a consistent experience of the celestial bodies we call planets, up there in the heavens, exhibiting certain properties, and behaving in certain ways. However, there is also continuous dispute over them. Astronomers have been arguing for decades over whether Pluto actually is a planet or not. Before that, they were arguing over whether there was a Pluto at all (whether planet, or not), because observations of the orbits of other planets did not conform to the expectations derived from Newtonian calculations. In a moment, we will see why this is significant, but the focus for now, is a bit different.
The question of whether or not there *is* a Pluto, is a question of its *thatness*. In other words, *that* it exists. The question of whether or not Pluto is *a planet*, is a question of its *whatness*. In otherwords, *what* exists. The former is almost entirely an empirical question. When we look up at the night sky, in the right place, at the right time, do we we see something? And can we distinguish it numerically from other somethings that we’ve already seen? There is a minimal amount of social negotiation involved in this, but only to the extent of experiential corroboration. You would be asking your colleague, do you have the same visual experience that I have (or, do your experiments produce the same results)? Assuming you both have reasonably good equipment, are competent with telescopes, and are visually healthy, you’ll come to more-or-less the same answer (as indeed we have, in the case of Pluto). The latter question, however, is a question of identifying *the nature* of the thing seen. Do you see *what* I see? Do you see a *planet*? Today your colleague is likely to say, "no, I see an asteroid" (or a planetoid). The answer you got would depend mainly on the outcome of social negotiations that took place around the time that you asked. In 1966, he would likely have answered, yes, he sees a planet. When the relevant practical authorities cannot come to a consistent consensus on whether or not Pluto is a planet, does it cease to be one? Or, are the various nit-picks of astronomy nerds just so much irrelevant noise to silent Pluto, as it continues its journey around the sun regardless of what they want to call it? It's not clear how to answer that question.
In contrast, returning to the question of tangibile individuals, quite a lot of what counts as a 'real thing' in science is only taken to be so by virtue of consensual agreement amongst the 'relevant authorities'. In other words, those things are objects in spite of the fact that they do not satisfy the definition of tangible, in *any* sense. We might be comfortable admitting things like skin cells and paramecium and even molecules into our collection of tangibles because, although they are not directly sensible, they are sensible with the aid of special tools like microscopes or other equipment (as is the case of many airborne chemicals or nuclear particle radiation), in addition to being outfitted with coherent scientific theories. But there are many more of these things that are insensible even with the aid of special tools, regardless of scientific theories about them.
The common strategy for avoiding this problem, is to say that we sense the effects of those objects, and can infer the presence of the object from the effects. However, it is exactly the opposite process that is taking place in much of fundamental science. We observe some phenomenon, such as the tendency of large masses to move toward each other, or to move in relation to each other in predictable ways. Then, we attempt to exlain what we observe. In attempting to explain the attractive tendency, for example, we posit the entity of gravitation, which would count as the causal source of the phenomenon of attraction. In science, these posited entities are then shopped around in search of agreement. As noted above, this is also the story of Pluto. To be fair, that agreement is normally conditioned on the satisfactory use of a rigorous method that relies on the presuppositions of mathematical order and reliable empirical experiences (of various sorts). However, it is still the case that adherence to a common social ritual of persuasion is what establishes the reality of these objects when they are posited, not their direct tangibility (Kuhn 2012).[^2] In short, many of the objects given to us by science, are social objects, at least for some period of time (until they are either validated or falsified empirically, or reorganized or restructured by new scientific paradigms). In some sense, those objects are more social than money or identity cards. Yet, for the most part, we take those objects to be as real as the plate of eggs in front of me now, or the coat hanging on the hook at my front door.
Thus, while I agree with Passinsky (2020), that "*ordinary material artefacts like tables... can be brought into existence by lone individuals*", it is not clear that objects like the Runnymede Charter Table, or the Table of the Last Supper, or even a chess table, can be brought into existence by a lone individual, because these objects require the stuff of social history for their complete constitution. Without social agreement about what these things are (and not simply whether these things are), they lack their full nature. In Passinsky's terms, they rely on a response-dependence condition, just as much as money and borders do. Likewise, with Pluto.
## Social Objects As Doings
The last kind of social object to be considered is the kind of object that arises out of human behavior, rather than simply an arrangement of human beings, or the meaning assigned to (or identified in) a tangible. These objects are characterized as distinct from the others, in virtue of their *duration*, in addition to their spatio-temporal location. While the 1984 Chicago Cubs have a specific time and place in which it exists as a team, in a roughly static sense, the 1984 Cubs Home Opener game, on the other hand, *occurred over a period of time* (namely, over a span of about two and a half hours on Tuesday, April 3rd). In addition to this, though, the activity was also characterized by something that seems common to collective social objects in general: an agreed-upon common set of rules, and functional roles played by the participants of the activity.
Passinsky (2020) referenced Searle's idea of "constitutive" rules, when outlining her own notion of the constitutive, in contrast to the Searle concept. Searle (1995) uses the rules of the game of chess as an example of what he calls the "constitutive" construction of a social object.[^3]
> It is not the case that there were a lot of people pushing bits of wood around on painted boards, and in order to prevent them from bumping into each other, all the time and creating traffic jams, we had to regulate the activity. Rather, the rules of chess *create* the very possibility of playing chess. The rules are *constitutive* of chess in the sense that playing chess is constituted in part by acting in accord with the rules. If you don't follow at least a large subset of the rules, you are not playing chess... institutional facts exist only within systems of constitutive rules. The system of rules create the possibility of facts of this type.
What Searle is describing, however, is not merely a static object like a chess set, or the constitution of a government. He is describing activities that conform to certain socially accepted sets or systems of rules. For the statement "I mated you in 5" to be a *fact*, it must be the case that you and I were engaged in an activity in which we were both conforming largely to the set of rules that constitute the game of chess, as it is being played. A chess game, in other words, is not just the chess set. It is the chess set, the chess rules, and the activity of moving bits of wood around according to the rules, on a painted board.[^4]
Games are the obvious example of a social object as a "doing" rather than a "being", but the criteria we've set here could be applied in lots of other circumstances. Wars, for example. They involve highly structured social groups, extremely complex sets of rules, sophisticated collections of roles and responsibilities, and have a definite duration in addition to a definite place. For example, The American Civil War, the War of the Roses, and the Franco-Prussian War. Even were these events are apparently chaotic and indeterminate, they still tend to conform to the criteria, as in the Mongol Invasions, or the American Viet Nam war. What's more, there are many, many facts about these events. Facts we take to be as real as weather reports from the times these events occured. Perhaps this is why games and ware are often treated as analogous to one another.
Less clear, might be broader social movements, like the French Enlightenment, or the Fall of Rome, or the rise of the Bolsheviks. These things do not seem to conform to the criteria, apart from the fact that they had a duration (varying in length, depending on which historian you talk to), and various social roles. Even less clear than that, are things like individual human projects, like the construction of the Empire State building, or the construction of the railroad system in America in the 1860s. There seems to be conformity to some of the criteria: definite duration, certain kinds of context dependent rules, functional roles, and obvious facts. But there still seems to be something intuitively wrong with calling the westward expansion of the railroad, a "social object", even the sense that we would call the 1984 Cubs home opener a "social object".
Perhaps the best way to make sense of this is to appeal to Searle's more controversial notion of "regulative" rules.[^5] An event or a happening is only a "social object", when the rules by which the individuals involved in the event behave, are constitutive of the activity, rather than regulatory of it. So, a chess match, a graduation ceremony, a classroom lecture, and perhaps only certain activities of the state (say, elections, or swearing ceremonies, or congressional hearings), would count as "social objects" of the "doing" kind. While activities like road construction, philosophically motivated social movements, and backyard barbecues would count only as events, and not as objects.
There is unfortunately no more room to explore this idea. Suffice it to say, that when we think about objects like "the game of chess", or "the Tokyo Accords", or even "the Runnymede Charter table", it is not at all clear that we are only talking about an inventory of items.
## Conclusion: Reality And Its Discontents
The upshot of all of this, is that it is beginning to look like it is not possible to escape the fact that the reality of beings (both collective and individual) just is a relation between the intelligibility of existence itself, and the intellect that does the work of intelligent discernment. Since that intellect resides (so far as we are aware) in the skulls of human beings, some degree of subjectivity will always be present in the composition of every object. What is "really 'out there' in the world", is out there in the world, because we can discern it. And, we can discern what is out there, because what is out there, is discernable. The mode of discernment, on this view, is instrumental rather than fundamental, and it is context dependent. For those objects that require rational discernment, we apply a rational method. For those objects that require empirical discernment, we apply an empirical method. For those objects that require a moral discernment, we apply a practical or ethical method. And so on.
Rather than rendering the objects of that discernment *less* real than those that are grasped via mere sense perception, it also seems that certain kinds of discernment actually *contribute* to the reality of the object. So, as Aristotle understood, some objects are *more real* by virtue of the fact that we have had to explain them, than those objects that we have not (or cannot). This includes at least some of the so-called social objects.
[^1]: Orwell, George, England Your England, 1941, Pp. 2-3
[^2]: See Kuhn Chapters 3, 4, and 5, in which he argues that scientific theories are the outcomes of a shared set of paradigmatic examples, combined with a commonly understood set of rules for their use, that are then propagated across scientific disciplines by a process of indoctrination - meant in a non-perjorative sense - and various kinds of social enforcement.
[^3]: Passinsky is contrasting Searles notion of *counting as*, with her own notion of *constitutes*, but I want to use Searle for a different reason. Namely, that implied in the example of the chess game is the fact that social reality is not merely collections of items, but a forum for action, and that some actions, when engaged in socially, can count as objects in their own right.
[^4]: To be clear, I am not suggesting that Searle would have called a chess match a social object. He does not seem to think in these terms at all. I am simply suggesting that his example independently evokes the notion of another class of social object he may not have thought of -- and perhaps would not even agree with.
[^5]: See Passinsky for references discussing the controversy.

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---
title: "Protagoras, Homo Mensura, and Self Refutation"
date: 2022-09-02T01:04:51+01:00
tags: ["relativism","ontology","self-refutation"]
topics: ["metaphysics", "logic"]
image: img/Protagoras-Resized.jpg
description: An analysis of man as the measure of all things
draft: false
---
### Is *Homo Mensura* Self-Refuting?
Plato's Theaetetus involves a famous exchange between Socrates, an old mathematician named Theodorus, and his brilliant young pupil named Theaetetus, in which they attempt to answer the question of what is knowledge. The common denominator in this exchange, is that Protagoras is an old friend of Theodorus, and Theaetetus has adopted Protagorean relativism as his own doctrine. The exchange between Socrates and the two men is (in addition to attempting to discover a theory of knowledge in general) is at least in part intended to demonstrate that the doctrine of Protagoras is self-refuting. This essay will provide a brief overview of the key interpretations of the doctrine of Protagoras, cover the basic arguments and their criticisms by various philosophers[^1], and then render a judgement (ironically?) in conclusion.
The first statement of the famous doctrine of Protagoras comes just before 160e in the dialogue: "*that man is the measure of all things*". But the work of analysing what that means does not really begin until 161c-d, where it is restated as: "*a thing is, for any individual, what it seems to him to be*"[^2] In his initial objection, though, Socrates rapidly restates the thesis in yet other new ways: "*whatever the individual judges by means of perception is true for him*", and "*only the individual himself can judge of his own world*", and "*what [a man] judges is always true and correct*", and again later at 162d, "*a thing is for each man what it seems to him to be*".
Each of these restatements connotes a different sense of the doctrine, and sometimes, even a different meaning. In offering up all these restatements, it is unclear whether Plato is attempting to grapple with the concept, or to lampoon it. Just before this, Socrates is asking why Pig is not the measure of all things, which is clearly meant as a jibe. Indeed, at one point, Socrates pokes fun at himself by referring explicitly to Protagoras coming back from the dead to chastise him, for his straw men. Still, as Fine (1998) points out, nothing of the real Protagoras survives to modern day. So, all we can do is work with what Plato has given to us. If that's good enough for his portrayal of Socrates himself, then it should be good enough for his portrayal of Protagoras (who, by the way, elsewhere gets his own eponymous dialogue as well).
So, assuming these various restatements of the measure doctrine are good faith attempts to understand it precisely, they could be classified into three broad categories:
1. What Burnyeat (1976) calls "private worlds"
2. What Fine characterises as Burnyeat's theory of belief
3. What is typically called *alethic relativism*
The task at this point, is to examine each interpretation, determine if it makes sense for Protagoras to intend for that interpretation of his theory, and if so, if that interpretation would bind him to a self-refuting theory or not.
### Private Worlds
The first interpretation is a relativism that derives its ontology in part from the radical eliminativist (or 'process ontology') view of Heraclitus, who's presence is large in this dialogue. Namely, that reality (if that word can be used) consists in no stable objects, not even selves. There is only "flow" or "flux", which is in constant motion, and at indeterminate and ephemeral moments, that flux coalesces into an experience had by a subject. Fine (1998) paraphrases Burnyeat's understanding in much more concrete terms, using Socrates' example of the wind:
> "*each of us lives in a private world in the sense that the objects I have access to are different from the objects you have access to, and none of these private objects persists for longer than a moment. So, when I say that the wind is cold and you say that it is not, we do not contradict one another, since we are talking about different winds... Whatever I say about the objects in my world, is true of those objects, and whatever you say about the objects in your world is true of those objects.*"
On this view, Protagoras is arguing that every subject has his own objects, and as such, any assertion about those objects would be necessarily true because no two subjects share the same objects, and no perception by any subject could be a perception of anything but that subject's objects. But it is not at all clear how, in the process ontology of Heraclitus, there could be such stable things as "each of us", and "subjects", and "objects" and "I" and "you" and "the world", let alone say anything true about them. Fine (and presumably Burnyeat) are describing all more-or-less stable identities, that not only persist but in the case of rational perceivers, include a memory of that persistence.
Protagoras himself (through the mouth of Socrates), does seem to suggest the more 'solid' Heraclitean 'private world', at 166c:
> "*...Show a little more spirit, my good man,' he will say, 'and attack my actual statement itself, and refute it, if you can, by showing that each man's perceptions are not **his own private events**; or that, if they are **his own private events**, it does not follow that the thing which appears 'becomes' or if we may speak of being, **'is' only for the man to whom it appears**...*" [emphasis added]
But he does go further in the same passage, to suggest a kind of ontological power over the objects in that private world, at 166d:
> "*...the man whom I call wise is the man who can change the appearances -- the man who in any case where bad things both appear and are for one of us, works a change and makes good things appear and be for him...*"
Now, not only are we talking about two different winds, one for you and one for me. Not only are we talking about two different seemings, one wind cold, and one wind hot. Now, we are talking about the power to make the wind that *is and feels* cold for me *feel and be* warm for me. Is that what Protagoras means when he lauds those who 'work a change' and 'make' good things appear for them? This seems a bit too far a stretch. In fact, in the context of Plato's ongoing criticism of the Sophists, it might be suggested that this is actually just an allusion on Plato's part, to their very condemnation: those who make the worse appear the better. What's more, in the same passage (just a paragraph later at 166e), the healthy man and the sick man do not seem to possess this magical power, despite their living in two different alethic universes.
Thus far, "private worlds" interpretation is plausible, as far as trying to understand what Protagoras is positing in the measure doctrine. But it doesn't last long. Because as soon as Protagoras (via Socrates) establishes two incommensurable private universes, he thus proceeds to collapse them into a categorically different unity at 167a:
> "*What we have to do is to make a change from the one [the sick] to the other [the healthy], because the other state is **better**. In education, too, what we have to do is to change the **worse** state into the **better** state; only whereas the doctor brings about the change by the use of drugs, the professional teacher [Sophist] does it by use of words. What never happens is that a man who judges what is false is made to judge what is true... when a man's soul is in a pernicious state, he judges things akin to it, but giving him a sound state of the soul causes him to think different things, things that are good. In the latter event, the things which appear to him are what some people, who are still in a primitive state, call 'true'; my position, however, is that the one kind are **better** than the others, but in no way truer*"
What Protagoras now wants to do, is to make a distinction between *truth* and *goodness*, and to say that truth is relative, but goodness is universal. For, how else are we to judge the *better* and the *worse*, without appeal to some objective standard, which is shared by both the sick and the healthy man, and the judge? The Protagoras that Socrates has constructed is saying that we should move the sick man to health, and when we do, then what is true *for him* will correspond to what is *better*. The sick man's food is bitter. The healthy man's food is savoury. Savory is better than bitter. Job done.
The point here, is that on this reading, the "private worlds" interpretation of Protagoras requires Protagoras to engage in *two opposing theories at once*: both relativism and absolutism. They're not contradictory in the strictest sense, since they point to different categories of reality. But they are uncomfortably inconsistent. Relativism about ontological truth, absolutism about normative judgement. The original doctrine states that man is the measure of *all* things. So, would that not include normative judgements of better and worse? In other words, in the same way that something is *true for A*, can it not also be said that something is *better for A*? If not, why not? Protagoras offers no explanation.
What's more, the second half of the doctrine says (152a): "*of the things which are, that they are, and of the things which are not, that they are not*". So, it also makes little sense to ascribe the properties of sickness and health to a man, since it is not up to anyone but that man whether he is sick or healthy. He is his own measure. What is the doctor doing, exactly? If the application of medicines does *in fact* move a man from sickness to health, then the doctor is engaging in an objective exercise, and Protagoras is incorrect. But if it is up to the patient to decide for himself whether he is sick or healthy, then the doctor is merely engaging in some sort of sympathetic pandering. Likewise for the "professional teacher". The point is, that the normative judgements about states requires factual judgements about states. It makes no sense for me to say you are better or worse off, if I can say nothing about whether you are healthy or sick. Even if I rely on you to relay to me your status, I am in no position to offer up a normative judgement of that status. What would it even mean for me to say one is better than the other?
So, in the end, the "private worlds" understanding of the doctrine of Protagoras is incoherent. If this is indeed what Protagoras intended, then his doctrine is indeed refuted. However, if this is not what Protagoras intended, then we must proceed to examine the other possible interpretations. As mentioned before, we cannot really know what Protagoras intended. So, we rely on Plato to relay it to us through the mouth of Socrates. That being the case, proceeding is a necessity.
### Truth As Belief
Fine (1998) makes a further distinction, arguing that Burnyeat (1976) has two interpretations of the "private worlds" theory. The first, as a literally true representation of Heraclitean ontology, which we have just addressed. The second, as a metaphor for belief. This second interpretation needs further explanation. Part of the dispute between Burnyeat and Fine, is whether or not interpretations (2) and (3) above are *synonymous*. In other words, when I say "X is true for me", all I am really saying, is "I believe that X"; the meaning of the latter exhausts the meaning of the former. To put it more plainly, truth is not conditioned by a perception or impression, but by *belief*. Fine takes Burnyeat to be suggesting this theory as an interpretation of Protagoras, partly from this passage in the Burnyeat essay:
> "*Why is it an objection to Protagoras that, on his own showing, if no on believes his theory it is not true for anybody? Protagoras might for various reasons be embarrassed to admit this, but would he be refuted? Is it so surprising that a theory according to which all truth is relative to belief should itself be no more than a relative truth, true only for someone who believes it?*"
The key phrase here is "relative to belief". For this to work, however, requires taking the various words used by Socrates and Theaetetus -- "seems", "appears", "judges", and "percieves" -- to be varieties of *belief* rather than kinds of sense experiences; or rather, are *snynonymous* with sense experiences. As Fine puts it:
> *[Burnyeat] says that appearances are true; and it is beliefs [about e.g. apples], rather than things like apples, that are true... If a person's world is constituted by her appearances, and if appearances are just beliefs, then the notion of a person's world is just a metaphor for a person's beliefs...*
Fine's understanding of Burnyeat matches my own. The central question here, however, is not to adjudicate the dispute between Fine and Burnyeat. Rather, it is the question of whether the belief interpretation of Protagoras' measure doctrine makes any sense. The hope was that one of the two would provide a clear answer in an example from the text. However, neither seems to have spent much space in their essays on the actual text of the Theaetetus, in disputing this point.
What can be found in the text, however, is not an iteration of the doctrine cast in terms of belief, but lots of uses of the word belief, which carry the connotation of *confidence in an opinion*, or *commitment to a truth*. In Socrates first serious engagement with Theodorus, for example, the word suddenly pops up no less than four times (170a-c):
> "*...there is no one in the world who doesn't believe that in some matters he is wiser than other men... you find also men who believe that they are able to teach... men do believe in the existence of both wisdom and ignorance... they believe that wisdom is true thinking...*"
There are two ways to read these statements. First, as Socrates making assertions about what all men take to be true *for themselves*. The second, as Socrates making assertions about what is true *of what all men take to be true*. I think the latter interpretation makes more sense coming from Socrates. It is the statement that for all men M, M implies belief (a | b | c). And it is either true or false *simpliciter*, based on the substitutions. The former interpretation is the way in which Protagoras would formulate the case. However, the problem here is whether we can take those *men's beliefs* to be synonymous not just with *truth claims*, but with the *truth*. In other words, When Socrates says that all men believe that wisdom is true thinking, is it then the case that *it is true* that wisdom is true thinking? or is it merely the case that it is true *that all men believe* that wisdom is true thinking? If the former, then we have a theory of belief as truth. If the latter, then we do not have such a theory. We just have Socrates trying to make a universal generalization look like an absolute.
The latter is the more convincing interpretation in the context in which these passages are found. If that is the case, it might provide one explanation for the apparent attempt to "sneak" absolutes into statements of Protagorean relativism (creating a question-begging situation), found in many modern criticisms of this part of the argument. In other words, it is precisely what Plato or Socrates would have presumed to be the case: that truth is absolute, and it can be seen in the fact that some facts seem to be accepted universally. But also, more importantly for the investigation here, it renders the belief interpretation much less convincing than it had seemed at first. Protagoras would indeed not have accepted this presumption. He would have insisted on the "for themselves" formulation of Socrates assertions. Since this interpretation fails that first test, we need not bother with examining it against the second test of whether it binds Protagoras to a self-refutation. As such, we move to our third interpretation.
### Alethic Relativism
Earlier, we saw how the radical subjectivism of the "private worlds" interpretation turned out to be both untenable, and probably not the view of Protagoras, and we have just seen how the equation of truth and belief is probably also not the view of Protagoras. This leaves us with Alethic Relativism, as the only remaining possibility.
The basic idea of alethic relativism, is that what is true for one, may not be true for another, and as put by Baghramanian and Carter (2022), "*there is no context-independent vantage point to adjudicate the matter. What is true or false is always relative to a conceptual, cultural, or linguistic framework.*" While this turn of phrase looks nearly identical to the concept considered in the "private worlds" section, there is one significant change. It does not posit independent, incommensurable "worlds" which function as the subject-dependent truth-makers for truth claims about those worlds. Instead, what is asserted is that the predicate "is true" is a deceptive two-place term which always includes (hidden or not) a term qualifying the first. There is no requirement that the correspondence take place in a unitary reality. More to the point, the correspondence ocurring between a subject and any given slice of a unitary reality need not be the same correspondence taking place between any other subject and that unitary reality. To borrow a phrase common in pop culture today, something can be true "*from a certain point of view*".[^3]
On this understanding, the example of the doctor and the professional teacher make much more sense. Now, instead of incommensurable individual worlds, it is possible to construct social realities out of agreements between individuals, and pragmatism can function as a substitute for aletheia. Indeed, this is precisely the the point of what Burnyeat (1990) calls the "New Formulation". The sick man and his doctor come to an agreement about the doctor's expertise, and what constitutes a better state of health, and they engage in the project together. Whether or not that project would work for anyone else is irrelevant, and not conducive to the present concern. But that capacity to engage socially requires a common reality in which the two can meet and negotiate terms.
Burnyeat (1990) uses the dialectic around "advantage" to make this point, and in his footnotes, says "the New Formulation employs a somewhat different vocabulary from the Defence. The key word in the Defence was chrestos, translated 'sound', 'wholesome'. This is now replaced by 'sumphereon', 'advantageous', or 'in one's interest'.." It's the "*in one's interest*" part that is most interesting, here. This suggests precisely, the "*true for me*" formulation of the early statements of the doctrine. But, it's framed in terms of what is *valued* rather than *what is judged true*.
If we trust Plato, that what Protagoras intended was a theory not of relative truth, but of *relative value*, then Alethic Relativism is not at all the right characterization of the theory, but rather, *moral* relativism. But this would mean we should have seen all sorts of examples in the dialogue of *value* comparisons, of the relative meanings of good and bad, and of better and worse. Yet, they do not come until just before the Digression, and then, only in relation to *practical* advantage (as in the city), or personal health. Let us recall that the original statement was that "man is the measure of all **things**" and the judge of what **is** and **is not**. These are ontological assertions, not deontological.
Thus, the Alethic Relativist position seems the most reasonable interpretation of Protagoras' position. What remains to be discovered, then, is whether or not Plato has shown his doctrine, *understood as Alethic Relativism*, is self-refuting. Here, again, I am relying on Baghramanian and Carter (2022) for the sake of a concise statement of my own understanding. They summarize the argument at 171a-c as such:
1. Most people believe that Protagoras' doctrine is false
2. Protagoras believes his doctrine to be true
3. Protagoras must believe his oppnonents view is true (because of 2)
4. Therefore, Protagoras must believe that his own doctrine is false (which contradicts 2)
As Fine and Burnyeat have both rightly pointed out, this formulation of the argument is lacking the two-term predicate, without any justification for omitting it. Thus, it is an obvious case of question-begging. If reconstructed with the two-term predicate, we would have the following:
1. Most people believe that Protagoras' doctrine is false *for them*
2. Protagoras believes that his doctrine to be true *for him*
3. Protagoras must believe that his opponents view is true *for them* (that they think the doctrine is false, for them)
4. Therefore, Protagoras must believe that his own doctrine is false *for them* (reaffirming 1)
On this formulation, the argument is valid and non-question-begging, but simply affirms Relativism by example. So, at long last, we can finally see that it it is straightforward that Plato has *not* shown that the Protagorean doctrine of *homo mensura* is self-refuting.
## Conclusion
There are a number of lingering questions i have about this analysis. First, I cannot help but wonder what sense it makes to construct an analytical criticism of a relativist doctrine. The whole project seems non-sensical. Analytical criticism relies for its credibility on the presumption of the authority of logic, which is grounded in the correspondence theory of truth, which in turn assumes absolutism (in such things as the law of the excluded middle, and the law of identity). I suppose it might be possible to rewrite the analysis from the perspective of a coherence theory, beginning with certain fundamental axioms we might be able to derive from the dialogue. But then, the danger is that we'd just be engaging in a circular affirmation of the assertions of the Protagorean doctrine. So, it is not at all clear to me how much value an analysis like this (or indeed, even Fine's or Burnyeat's), even has.
Secondly, I am dogged by the nagging sense that the entire dialogue is a red herring. If one looks at the vast majority of examples provided, when considering whether something is "true for me", we get a range of highly subjective qualities like taste and touch. Food is savory or bitter. Wind is cold or warm. Where they are less subjective, they are still controversial. A stone is white, and so forth. The point I'm driving at here, is that the assertions being made are not actually *about the objective world*. They're about the qualitative sense experience of that world. If Plato had been able to make the distinction between an objective property, and a subjective qualia, then perhaps this entire dialogue would have been rendered moot. In other words, the fruit is not sweet. The fruit just *is*, and when I put it on my tongue, sweetness happens to me. From an objective point of view, there is a reductive biochemical interaction that can be supplied as an explanation. Thus, there is no longer any conflict between the way the world *seems to me*, and the way the world really is.
Thirdly, why is Socrates tasked with providing a defense of Protagoras? Why not Theodorus? Why does Theodorus put up such a resistance? The script itself offers up a few superficial excuses. Theodorus is old and tired, Theodorus doesn't understand dialectic, Theodorus doesn't want to besmirch his dead friend, and so forth. For that matter, why not just have Protagoras himself? As noted above, he has his own eponymous dialogue. Why not one more (after all, Alcibiades got two). I think there is something dramatically devious about putting the defense of relativism in the mouth of an Platonic realist and an absolutist. It lends the relativist a degree of authority he would not otherwise have. It also puts the absolutist in the position of offering up back-handed alethic realism defenses for relativism itself. In other words, Socrates refutation of alethic relativism can simply be compartmentalized as yet another set of views one could hold relatively: the absolutist set.
Finally, while I do think this shows that Plato's refutation is insufficient, I'm not convinced this means Protagorean Relativism is true. Not even "true for me". But that thought alone, breaks the necessity of binary logic. If it's not untrue, and it's not true, then what is it? All of this suggests that something rather important is missing from my understanding of the problem. I wish I knew what that was.
[^1]: For the sake of brevity, I have restricted my analysis to a summary of the debate between Myles Burnyeat and Kit Fine. Additional sources were examined, but references will largely be from their three papers. The reference list at the end will include all research.
[^2]: In other translations, this is cast as "what appears is" (Jowett), and "what appears to each one is to him" (Tufts). The reason I'm rasing this concern, is because there seems to be quite a lot of dispute between Burnyeat, Fine, and others, about precise meanings of words like "seems", "appears", and "perceives", and the use of phrases like "seems to X" or "true for X". Depending on the translation, you get all of these, some of these, or none of these. For my part, I am using the Hackett (Levett) because that is what was recommended for the class, but it will obviously color the analysis.
[^3]: Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, 1983. The ghostly Obi Wan Kenobi explains to Luke Skywalker why he originally told Luke that his father was dead, even though Obi Wan knew his father was not dead.