Socrates, in his reformulated version of his dictum, still, I think,
owes us an answer to Ella's question.
Why it is that?
I think of as a pluralist challenge
to the Socratic dictum, even the modified one.
But that pluralist challenge is one that Socrates can respond to.
And I think he might respond as follows.
Granted, you might be fully and completely satisfied with the sort of life you're
living, spending most of your days surfing, that's fine.
But think about the process of self examination and
living an examined life of the sort that I'm recommending,
as being something like building up some life insurance against the kinds
of surprises that life has a funny way of throwing at us.
It's not likely that you're going to be able to surf every day for
the rest of your life.
Eventually weather patterns might change because of global warming.
Or you might damage a knee, or you might hurt your back and
find yourself unable to surf as long as you would like to.
You'll probably want to take up something else.
And rather than have to start from scratch,
having thought beforehand about why it is that this life is the one that you choose.
Reflecting on why it is that this life is the one that makes you happy is one will help you
probably move on to a next step thereafter.
So too, each of us has many things that we enjoy, many things that we appreciate, and
my set of things that I enjoy might or might not overlap with yours.
There'll probably be a great deal of divergence, from one person to another.
But in so far as each of us can say why it matters to us,
why we care about the things that we do, we'll be more likely to
move on when one thing becomes less available than it had been before.
Move on to other things that give us satisfaction and make us happy.
Now notice that in so far as we're doing this, in so
far as we're trying to respond to all this challenge, this pluralist challenge,
we're also moving away slightly from Socrates' conception of self examination
or living an examined life, which involves discussing and
debating about the nature of justice, truth, virtue, wisdom, and the like.
And we're moving a little bit more towards a contemporary notion of self examination
that involves a certain amount of introspection,
taking account of our preferences and things that make us happy.
That's something that you don't hear much from in Socrates, but in order for
him to respond adequately to the challenge that Ella and pluralism generally offer,
I think he would have to take a page from a more modern conception of self
examination.
That involves paying attention to what we care about as individuals,
as opposed to these more abstract notions, such as examining justice, truth, wisdom,
knowledge, and the like.
But once we've done that, once you've made that slight concession
to a more expansive notion of what examination is supposed to examine,
then we're trying to understand ourselves, not just these broad concepts,
but individual preferences in things that give us pleasure.
That might be enough to provide an adequate response
to the sort of challenge that the pluralist offers.
Let me say, also, that this presuppose thus far, the nature of knowledge,
and I want to expand on what knowledge is in our discussion.
Knowledge as the way Socrates understands it is different from true opinion.
True opinion is when I've got a belief about a question, and
that belief happens to be true.
And that itself is not knowledge.
Why? Well, I might make a lucky guess.
For example, you might say, hey, there's a jar full of jelly beans in the next room.
How many do you think are in there?
And I say, "hmm 473."
Suppose I'm right.
It was a lucky guess.
I had no chance to ever look at the jar, no idea how big it was,
what the size of the jelly beans were inside of there and so forth.
Even if I guessed right,
I think we would not normally say that I knew how many jelly beans were there.
I just made a lucky guess.