DRAFT 990817 Revised 001129 printout

Handout for seminar 1999-11-10 on sabbatical background of

Platonic Theorizing for Information Technology

Platonic perspectives of IT-problems

by Kristo Ivanov

Umeå University, Department of Informatics, S-901 87 UMEÅ (Sweden).

Phone +46 90 7866030, Fax +46 90 7866550, E-mail: kivanov@informatik.umu.se

 

 

DRAFT 990817 Revised 001129 printout

Handout for seminar 1999-11-10 on sabbatical background of

by Kristo Ivanov

Umeå University, Department of Informatics, S-901 87 UMEÅ (Sweden).

Phone +46 90 7866030, Fax +46 90 7866550, E-mail: kivanov@informatik.umu.se

 

 

The endless cycle of idea and action,

Endless invention, endless experiment,

Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;

Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;

Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,

All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,

But nearness to death no nearer to God.

1.1. Purpose of this confessional-working seminar is the same as expressed in a couple of elaborated excerpts that were published as Ivanov, K. (2000). Platonic information technology. Reading Plato: Cultural influences and philosophical reflection on information and technology. In Proc. of ISTAS 2000, IEEE Int. Symposium on Technology and Society, 6-8 September 2000, Rome, Italy (pp. 163-168). New York: IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers' Society for Social Implications of Technology SSIT.

1.2. The understanding of information technology (IT) and its spread starting from the industrial and post-industrial Western world requires an understanding of both "information" and "technology". Technology in its various historical mechanical, electrical, and nuclear physical forms has been well studied. It is far less known in its newer forms of bio-technology and information technology. Information has been studied in its various contexts of information systems, information management, artificial intelligence, and such. It has not, however, been studied in its essence which would determine also the peculiar character of information technology in its differentiation from other earlier known forms of technology. Philosophy is needed also in order to make sense of the proliferation of opinions about IT resulting from IT-theories, models, methods, conceptual frameworks, and other loosely used terms in what appears to be a relativistic pluralism which also may be a symptom of crisis of disparate Western philosophical currents. Plato and Aristotle together with the Judaeo-Christian thought, may be used as a more unified source of inspiration. The two sections of this paper that follow this introduction consist of two samples out of an ongoing study which starts from an integral reading of Plato's collected works and present slightly edited excerpts out of these works. They are completed with an analysis in the form of comments which show the relevance of the texts for the definition and evaluation of information as it is found in information technology, and its relation to the problems of stability and change. In the subsequent section the criticism of Plato in a recent study of science is briefly considered in order to confirm the continuing relevance of Plato's thought.

1.3. With the drawing of this Love and voice of this Calling

1.4. We shall not cease from exploration

1.5. And the end of all our exploring

1.6. Will be to arrive where we started

1.7. And know the place for the first time

1.8. The following commented headlines which are not yet elaborated help also to explain the purposes of the text.

1.9. Thomas Stearns Eliot's quotations abobe are from Eliot, T. S. (1963). Collected poems 1909-1962 . London and Boston: Faber and Faber. They express aptly my sense of crisis triggered locally by the development at the university in general and IT in particular, with the post-positivistic systems trend being followed by marxian and design trends.

1.10. The continuity of my research with my earlier documented research plans in the "Prefekttestamente" (Department chairman's report and last will, seminar held on June 10th and 11th 1998, last version of June 30 1998, item #8), which is to be found in my computer's Public-folder or in our computer jupiter.informatik.umu.se, in the folders <Gemensamma original> and <Ivanov>. A related relevant background-document is the handout summarizing my seminar on our research education "Seminar-FoUtb 980408" (held on April 8th 1998, revised version 980501, esp. items # 5 and 7-9), also to be found in the above mentioned folders.

1.11. This and the following seminar(s) with respective materials seen as trip report and sabbatical report.

1.12. After 40 years in the field, on technical, psychological, and social basis, and after 30 years at academia. Present lack of historical perspectives, even at a rough level like those advanced by Ivanov, K. (1999), En enastående intellektuell gestalt, in J. De Geer (Ed.), Vänbok till Tage Lindbom, Skellefteå: Norma.

1.13. My role: cf. political economics on "comparative advantages". Cf. mainstream vs. counterpoint research, with sacrifice of recurring empirical project work but with personal experience of repeated equivalent empirical findings, "failures", etc.) Possible integrative role of "university" which is being changed: research group(s), cross-contact between advisors, range of department's graduate competence.

1.14. The role of empiricism in my earlier career in computer-supported engineering, manufacturing IT-business, and library. Empirical research indicated different expressions of recurrent basic facts that continue unexplained. Rediscovering of apparent irrationalities consistent with application of my hypersystem approach (HySy) to explain e.g. different conceptions and uses of Lotus Notes as network, database, wordprocessing into spreadsheets. My dissertation still congruent with our latest research, in addressing transperspectivity for the challenging of views and stimulating imagination.

1.15. I am conscious of the puer-senex archetype phenomenon in Hillman, J. (1979). Senex and puer: An aspect of the historical and psychological present. In J. Hillman, et al. (Ed.), Puer papers (pp. 3-53). Irving, Texas: Spring. The import of aging.

1.16. Examples of weak uncritical scientific attitudes in university research environments and faculty's previsions. Not only untrendy "definitions". E.g. C-D courses attendance as function of quality vs statistics, or success =popularity-demand or Alta-Vista hits or web-statistics for visits of home-pages as indication of quality of web-design or of scientific quality, analyze fluctuations of number of students demanding our undergraduate education, or Churchman's vs. Simon's citation index, or the former not having written about I.S. Ranking of universities, freedom of research, affirmative action, nazist seminar. Internet economy or old "administrativ data processing ADB" which still exists as at strike-hit BNF in Paris (October 1998), airports and airline-bookings and in quantitative methods as they appear in industry and business. An increasing part of research goes to "web-design" and "experimenting" with released software? Cf. the rhetorical counterquestion "do you, then, prefer to minimize demand-statistics?"

1.17. My experience of mentorship and graduate students' advisor: risk of becoming an encyclopedic consultant who edits executive summaries and helps to streamline feasible dissertations? Gap towards PhD colleagues who cannot bridge my wider gap towards undergraduate students, with consequent difficulty to create midway study opportunities in final examination work (C-D uppsatser). Cf. Platonic-Jungian lack of systematization. My consciousness of, and prevision that the direction of my development would widen the gap. An apparent gradual neglect of the "system approach" in undergraduate literature in also mirroring this trend.

1.18. Empiricism and the present questioning of philosophy in IT. Is "philosophy" useful and is it a philosophy in the flesh which is empirically relevant or responsibly testable and based on deep knowledge of what it criticizes? Cf. Habermasian technical, hermeneutic, emancipatory (+Weltanschauung +existential) interests: my research as "existential"?. Does philosophy reflect only on words or also on bodily experiences. But: philosophy≈discussion on how to think, including relation to empirical action and emotion, and to theology ≈discussion of ultimate presuppositions. (IT)-concepts vs. percepts, body vs. mind. Importance of definitions (cf. the FRISCO report www.wi.leidenuniv.nl/~verrynst/ frisco.html). E.g. design or creation, system or whole, designer or legislator, interaction or motor response, body or perception, creativity or change or innovation, technical bricolage or mythical reflection, alignment or adaptation, practice or praxis or empiricism, experimenting or experience "erfarenhet-upplevelse", theory or frameworks, understanding or intelligence or learning, success or implemention, illustration or example, image or figure of thought, perspectives or points of view or views, parti-formats and representations, character and judgment, flow and fitness, care or interest, cultivation or evolution, hospitality or trust, project or organization (cf. Kallinikos' struggle in Technology and society, etc.). And cf. gap between software practice and social thinking (vs. software thinking and social practice?). Research empiricists as "Sophists" opposing Socratic philosophy, or voyeuristic parasites of doers who design and use the technology, or symptoms of empiricism of "crisis" (Lindbom 1999)?

1.19. I am conscious of the dangers of "infinite regress" (legitimate if no linear beginning, cf. Eliot-quotes & Lindbom 1999) in following postromantic or postmodern design-civilization (in Spengler's meaning) back to Nietzsche and Kant through Lyotard's Lessons on the Analytics of the Sublime, and further back to Renaissance, Aquinas, Aristoteles, Plato, And what about Eastern wisdom as applied in theorizing about improvisation and intuition, or about bricolage and myths borrowed from anthropology & ethnographic studies, etc? Why Kant not enough: less clear and more polemical than Plato and Aristotle while he himself had the benefit of their basis. The alternative is to be "seduced" by Kant in the sense that to be able to follow him at all is a prohibitively heavy investment of time with scanty possibilities to be able to prove him wrong as his critics could try. And Kant is heavily used in legitimating aesthetic science.

1.20. Why Plato (and Aristotle): I could have tried to create "executive summaries" through secondary sources like encyclopedias or MacIntyre, A. (1998), A short history of ethics (chap. 8, pp. 85-109 "Postscript to Greek ethics"), or Rothenberg, D. (1993), Hand's end: Technology and the limits of nature, or Mitcham, C. (1994). Thinking through technology: The path between engineering and philosophy . Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. (Esp. pp. 105ff, 228ff.), or Flusser, V. (1999), The shape of things: A philosophy of design or his chapters 30-32 in his recent book in portuguese on Philosophical Fictions. But my focus is not on ethics, nature vs. technology, or design in general but rather in particular on information, knowledge & technique which must be understood at a basic level.

1.21. Why Plato. Did we need heideggerian "breakdown"? Understand how design, knowledge and technique was conceived before the anglo-american word "design" was launched, and why it became so attractive. Ferry's "Homo aestheticus" and or Spengler's the "Decline of the West" seem to give a definite but incomplete answer. Consider Jungian ego-inflation, or popularly assumed Kantian autonomous intuitive "genius", bolstering "Faustian" feelings of creativity. Avoidance of anxiety when relieved from responsibility thanks to the legitimation provided by the encouragement to improvise and rely on "experimenting" trial & error? Cf. Maffesoli, M. (1996), Éloge de la raison sensible. Spengler's paradoxical recommendation would be to forget second or third-rate social science as philosophizing, in favour of satisfactorily good engineering, but this would be done within the frame of a "decline of the West" which is far more problematic than Lindbom's Västerlandets framväxt och kris (1999).

1.22. I wished I had had time, before philosophizing, to write down and contribute my own (cf. Eliot quotes) views improving the understanding and application of core concepts like "success" or "design" of computer application or commenting constructively others' work, books and seminars, as it is done in our latest departmental dissertation. Such a task would also be a sort of empiricism. Cf. the reliance of empirical work on Marx, Habermas, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Foucault, Mark Johnson, Giddens, Ciborra, Orlikowski, Buchanan, Maldonado, and their key-terms which easily get misused as catchwords. My intention of synthesizing comments on our local graduate students' and advisors' work was inhibited by delays and failures in satisfying my request for feedback on others' most important personal references.

1.23. Why Plato: The roots of the design approach, are not satisfactory in Buchanan, R. (1995). Rhetoric, humanism, and design. In R. Buchanan, & V. Margolin (Ed.), Discovering design: Explorations in design studies are not satisfactory. Ferry, L. (1993). Homo aestheticus : the invention of taste in the democratic age, however, as well as the review of "romanticism" in Lindboms's Fallet Tyskland (1988), addresses the aestheticizing philosophizing behind design, and push the reader back to Plato, enabling to make sense of the political discussions in e.g. Selle, G. (1973). Industriell formgivning: Sociala utopier och ideologier . Lund: Studentlitteratur. (Orig. Ideologie und utopie des Design – Zur gesellschaftligen Theorie der industriellen Formbebung.)

1.24. Why (not) Plato, in face of the absurdity of my situation? The paradox confronting me, having to read hundreds of manuscript pages saturated with references to many new fashionable trend-names renewed every 5 years, while tens of top quality book await me to be read in order for me to be able to orient my graduate students ≈instructors of undergraduate students, and while I myself cannot expect to be read or obeyed in my recommendations for readings.

1.25. Why Plato? Cf. increasing references to pre-Socratics especially through Heidegger. Cf. also Plato's importance for following discussions about Western thought and its technology (and its science and technology) in e.g. Lindbom,Västerlandets framväxt och kris.

1.26. Why Plato? Churchman has written in Plato's style. Cf. the postgraduate and undergraduate & graduate students' frustration and misunderstandings (e.g. that Churchman did not write on information systems) when they have read text written in a Socratic style. And Socrates was condemned to death!

1.27. Why Plato? Our historical ground for discussion of what knowledge (or information) is or should be, as in "knowledge management" (Ulrike Schultz's seminar 991012, and her suggestions on the desirability of ignorance?).

1.28. Sense of crisis: the absurdity of the "change"-trend, no standards and no extrapolation possibilities on "growth", "progress" or "strategies".Cf. "Top managers of big firms devote the bulk of their efforts to formulating strategy, though there is remarkably little agreement about what it is" in The Economist, (March 20th 1993, pp 80-81, 96), also in relation to education and infinite regress of ex-post research.

1.29. My partial concern for the development of postgraduate careers, perceived to be in direction of postmodern relativistic pluralism and tolerance which can be tolerance which may be indifference or not caring for closest colleagues' work, face to the alternative opportunities opened by consensual net "communities". Why different and isolated commitments? I realize the possible importance of esoterism as explained by Lindbom (1999).

1.30. Why Plato: the search for bridges to ethical and political discussion, through philosophy, to theology. But I do not mean that "all" should be trying to do that.

1.31. Why Plato: if one means to take seriously the requirement of dialogue and "understanding", and understanding nature vs understanding others who challenge us because they are indeed radically different from us, like in an ethnographic study of the "savage mind", or being able to stand in or take in "different perspectives". Cf. also the requirement of client – if not market – orientation. It is a matter of different social organization, and different mentality of people, like Tage Lindbom in his authorship, and the relationship to "traditionalist conservatism" (cf. www.panix.com/~jk/trad.html). And if we do not wish to read dead or old authors why should older people read young authors if not as occasional daily news?

1.32. Why Plato: For understanding Kant's adduced aesthetics which includes the "sublime" as mentioned by Simon Niedenthal from från Art Center College of Design, on 991008 in the seminar on ACCD: Six St. Jeromes. Notes on the Technology and Uses of Computer Lighting Simulations. Also reference to the "philosopher king" by Victor Kaptelinin and Hans-Erik Nissen in the seminar 991013 on the Dagstuhl conference on the gap between social thinking and software practice.

1.33. Why Plato: possible solution to the paradox implied by my judgment that it is not worthy at the available intellectual level to try to review or criticize so many new trend-names arising among different people in the field in general, and in our department in particular. Consider the more advantageous alternative to try to write directly something good and valid as motivated by trying to help (among others) the own community, especially when it is not anymore, at advancing age, a question of trying to make career by means of "socializing" publications. Implications for teaching of students and for their own career planning, comparing with the circle of young intellectuals around Tage Lindbom? Publish or perish or a third way suggested also by my own or Lindbom's (90th birthday recently celebrated by De Geer's editing of Vänbok published by Norma in Skellefteå, and by Martin Lindström in Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift nr. 2, 1997) or Richard Matz's (Sammanbrott och gryning, Pan Norstedts 1971) or Vilém Flusser's careers and "failures" by graduate students. Go through my selections out of Plato, or Kant, or Tage Lindbom with special reference to IT, or go through recently published trend-articles with school-building potential with the purpose of submitting them to a severe critique?

1.34. Why Plato: enables and facilitates the review of many interesting and relevant but problematic new books like chap. 30 on "artistic vs. scientific creation" in Flusser's recent Philosophical Fictions. It can be sign of cultural crisis if one perceives that an understanding of Plato is necessary in order to understand why chapters 2-3 in Lindbom (1999),Västerlandets framväxt och kris , complete Ferry's explanation in his Homo Aestheticus of the problems implicit in Flusser's thought which also is basis to his philosophy of design in the newly published The shape of things-A philosophy of design.

1.35. Why Plato (and Aristotle): suspicion of increased misunderstandings and misuse in IT-research by third-hand references to Kant (through Makkreel), Heidegger (through Winograd), Aristotle (through Nussbaum), but, symptomatically not to Plato, and this is done without even the qualification of "Kantian", "Heideggerian" or "Aristotelian" (as Churchman in The Design of I.S.).

1.36. Crisis: scientific-strategic cultural crisis also in the paradoxical problem that academic refutation of many present and emergent IT-schools of research is seen to require "empirical" research which in turn requires economic and political basis which would distort its nature and possibilities. Consider also that several approaches to e.g. design may sometimes have a strong financing but report no common intellectual background in the form of, for instance, common references. Cf. Dubuisson, S., & Hennion, A. (1997), Le design: L'objet dans l'usage: La relation objet-usage-usager dans le travail de trois agences, Paris: Les Presses de l'École de Mines, and R. Buchanan, & V. Margolin (Eds.) (1995), Discovering design: Explorations in design studies . Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press. See also the seldom acknowledged sense of crisis sometimes acknowledged as in Wigley, M. (1998), Whatever happened to Total Design? in Harvard Design Magazine, (Summer), 18-25, also an example of a journal source which seems to be seldom referenced in Scandinavia.

1.37. Crisis: why the "China twist" as indicated in my Ivanov, K. (1997). Strategies and design for information technology: Eastern or neo-romantic wholes, and the return to Western systems and its later revised shorter version of the paper co-authored with Ciborra, (1998). East and West of IS, in Proc. of ECIS'98. Cf. Flusser's hint of the why of the China crisis twist on pp. 110 in his Philosophical Fictions. The China-twist can also be the rebirth of a superficial or unconscious Nietzsche-cult, as also apparent in the opposition intellect vs blood in Spengler, O. (1981-1983/1918). The decline of the West - (2 Vols.) . New York: A. Knopf.

1.38. Crisis: my attitude perhaps should have been the same as at the beginning (1) of Jung's professional life according to his auto-biographical notes. Not to teach (except in socratic dialectics?) until one has something to say that is not only convincing but also corresponds to own convictions.

1.39. My concern: unnoticed "deconstruction" of the psyche and reason, and TV or VR as games and gambling vs programmatic educational visualizations and playfulness. Cf. Sass, L. A. (1992). Madness and modernism, New York: Basic Books, and Reichmann, S. (1993). Kulturen utan Gud, Stockholm: Interskrift.

1.40. Why Plato and my way "on the shoulders of giants": my dissertation results still holds, for instance, for appreciating the "transperspectivity" of Mark Johnson, because it happens to rests on the traditions of Western philosophy leading further to the "romanticism" of Jung and of the I Ching (cf. the recent "chinese" twist). From the unprofitable Jung and I Ching to the Bible (and lately the Jerome Biblical Commentary) and theological matters clarified by Plato and Aristotle, revived by equally unprofitable numerous books by T. Lindbom. Your way is your choice of family and friends and determines who you are to become through your choice of influences and where you want to go. Cf. various metaphors of knowledge and their implications for "pluralism". My perceived paradoxical sacrifice of "career" or at least of "influence".

1.41. Why Plato: a better understanding of Christianity related to science. Paul "Christianizes" Platonism, and theological questions stand at the basis of an understanding of technology, cf. especially Mitcham, C., & Grote, J. (Ed.) (1984), Theology and technology: Essays in Christian analysis and exegesis. Lanham: University Press of America. (Esp. pp. 3-42, 53-119, 193-225. Bibliography of 478 entries.)

1.42. Example of a modern "platonic" problem: body-mind and Paul's anthropology: inability to observe the Mosaic law stems in part from the carnal condition of a human being as sarkinos. What does Paul mean by this? To explain, we must try to ascertain what he means by soma, "body," sarx, "flesh," psyche, "soul," pneuma, "spirit," nous, "mind," and kardia, "heart." In Brown, R. E., Fitzmyer, J. A., & Murphy, R. E. (Ed.) (1993). The new Jerome biblical commentary. London: Geoffrey Chapman, p. 1406, and see also the essays on e.g. criticism, hermeneutics, and mythopoieic thought, pp. 1135, 1146, 1288). Note that the structure of thought or of the so-called mind is basic to the study of design processes especially if attempts are done to keep them isolated from the social dimension of politics.

1.43. Beginning to summarize: my conception of my responsibility in this university and this department: compare with "comparative advantages" and "bottleneck" metaphors. Relate to the comparative advantages of the university vs. of product development departments of firms, consultancies, or technological or business schools. Dialog with students.

1.44. My pedagogical problem: in contrast to others I cannot expect that my students will read the litterature which I have used or will have to use, and cannot expect help in my task. The dilemma of experiencing insight with increasing burden of expressing extense thoughts with decreasing physical energy, and at the same time avoiding to appear as overbearing ("jantelagen") in a "democratic" environment where, by sure, lip-service is paid to "personal silent knowledge" and "bodily experience" but age and life in the body - experience do not count so much. The consequent search for en "grundbult" (not in Kenneth Ahl's spirit) or for a "main key". The "socratic" dilemma of thought vs. political action (ref Churchman vs. Ackoff, or Koestler's yogi vs. commissar, or Spengler's nietzschean intellect vs. blood). Cf. crisis-consciousness.

1.45. My research attitude: Socratic, but Socrates was condemned to death. Analog to a psychotherapeut or its modern successor, the strategic consultant. Refer back to Eliot's quotations. and concerning my future plans: I refer to my "prefekttestamente" and to October 2002.

1.46. So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years–

1.47. Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres–

1.48. Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt

1.49. Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure

1.50. Because one has only learnt to get the better of words

1.51. For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which

1.52. One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture

1.53. Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

1.54. With shabby equipment always deteriorating

1.55. In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,

1.56. Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer

1.57. By strength and submission, has already been discovered

1.58. Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope

1.59. To emulate–but there is no competition–

1.60. There is only the fight to recover what has been lost

1.61. And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions

1.62. That seems unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.

1.63. For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not out business.

1.65. Ferry, L. (1990). Homo aestheticus: L'invention du goût á l'age démocratique . Paris: Grasset. (English trans.: Homo aestheticus : the invention of taste in the democratic age, trans. by Robert de Loaiza. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1993.)

1.66. Giovanni Paolo II. (1998). Fides et ratio: Lettera enciclica circa i rapporti tra fede e ragione . Milano: Paoline. (English trans. at http://www. vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_15101998_fides-et-ratio_en.html),

1.67. Goffi, J.-Y. (1996). La philosophie de la technique . Paris: PUF (Que Sais-Je?). (2nd ed. First ed. 1988.)

1.68. Gras, A. (1997). Les macro-systèmes techniques . Paris: PUF.

1.69. Kenny, A. (1993). Aquinas on mind . London and New York: Routledge.

1.70. Maldonado, T. (1993). Reale e virtuale . Milano: Feltrinelli. (1st ed. 1992.)

1.71. In writing this paper I am conscious that it counters a dominant attitude against philosophy in the scientific IT-community. This attitude which also implies a dislike for older emphasis on definitions and testing of validity claims is sometimes masked behind the requirement that a legitimate philosophical interest be "empirically relevant". A dislike for definitions is, for instance, expressed when somebody emprehends empirical research on the use of IT for enhancing creativity in design without bothering to define what is to be meant by creativity or by other substitute words like imagination or fantasy. One hidden presupposition of such requirement of empirical relevance seems often to be that there is no meaning in requiring that empirical work be philosophically relevant or be evaluable for its worth. Because of some reason it is philosophical work that must prove its worth empirically, whatever that means when empiricism itself is not supposed to be defined or questioned.

1.72. To the extent that we take the anti-philosophical attitude seriously some insight into this conundrum is supplied by a section of this paper dealing with "Against philosophy" below, in Plato's own reflections over opposition to philosophy. Cf. "Against philosophy" below. For the rest it may be noted that much of design theory today with its emphasis on visualization, has an often unacknowledged dependence upon romantic philosophy. Such dependence can be ignored in works that are framed in terms of so called cognitive science but it is clearly manifested in cultural criticism which considers the present status of Western society with reference to both romanticism and Greek philosophy. So, it is the case that studies of the development of crisis of the West[1] dedicate whole chapters to Platonism and to Aristotle reminding the readers that much of our IT-design theories are ignoring the political and spiritual dimensions of design. Similar reminders on the importance of Plato are to be got when studying romantic and post-Kantian philosophy that underscore much of the thinking in IT-design in the context that is very relevant to the present issue of researchers' responsibility.[2]

1.73. To make things more difficult in the appreciation of this paper, "Platonic IT" may be interpreted as analog to platonic love, which in the superficially popular version is equated to a sort of nominal love without concretion and consequences. The answer to such analogy will be to direct the reader to a better acquaintance with the meaning of love in general, and platonic vs. so called erotic love in particular, in order that the analogy gets its proper meaning.

1.74. This paper was written in the conviction that the discipline of informatics, for all the assurances about the advent of "the new informatics" which is a "design science", etc. is in serious crisis which, however, is not necessarily deeper or more serious than the crisis of Western thought in general. While fragmentation in different and isolated schools is sometimes taken to be a mark of vitality and crativity, it is very probable that the relative isolation of most of these schools, depending upon hidden different presuppositions and upon inconsistens language and terminology, is, rather, a sign of crisis. It is my belief that many presuppositions can be made conscious, and language can be purified,

1.75. Isolated arguments that are quoted require to be put in the context of the respective works, and of the total work by Plato.

1.76. Duplications of some paragraphs when they forcefully can be said to belong to more than one section.

1.77. Edited text in order to make it more readable without its context, while at the same time taking into account that context.

1.78. I do not take a stand on the value of Plato's thought for our contemporary problems but I assume it (with knowledge of, and reference to, key contributions by post-Socratic Western philosophy, in particular Kant's critique as reference point but not necessarily "basis" for modern philosophy and late returns to pre-Socratic thought). But note that mistakes were to great extent caused by limited power (instruments) of observation that are now available thanks also to old work and valid methods.

1.79. Plato about the dangers and limitations of writing at all.

1.80. Empirical work as a drug delaying, especially in academia, a normative critical appreciation and purposiveness of research.

1.81. "My anxiety will be not to convince my audience, except incidentally, but to produce the strongest possible conviction in myself."[3]

1.82. "But with the advance of age, when the soul begins to attain its maturity, they should make its exercises more severe, and when the bodily strength declines and they are past the age of political and military service, then at last they should be given free range of the pasture and do nothing but philosophize."[4]

1.83. Empirically relevant philosophy OK but philosophically relevant empiricism? And what is "action"? How this written material can be "applied"?

1.84. What "is" informatics?

1.85. Body and mind, + flesh and soul and spirit?

1.86. Definition ("game") and cognition vs recognition (it can be something else than that I believe it to be).

1.87. Vico's language about bodily experiences

1.88. Reflection is about what has passed, vs. flow≈phenomenological flux, ref Schütz≈Husserl+Bergson

2.1.1. Rhetoric is a creator of persuasion, the kind of persuasion employed in the law courts and other gatherings, and claims to be concerned with right and wrong. Rhetoric seems to possess almost superhuman importance and includes then practically all other faculties under her control. Teachers of rhetoric impart their instruction for just employment and they say are not guilty of wrong employment of the skill [NEUTRAL TECHNIQUE]. The craft is not for this reason evil or to blame, but, rather, those who make improper use of it. But then there is a contradiction regarding the concern for right and wrong. Rhetoric is then not an art but only a kind of routine and a knack that produces gratification and pleasure, a part of an activity that includes cookery and is but the occupation of a shrewd and enterprising spirit, and of one naturally skilled in its dealings with men, a flattery. If one considers that difference between apparent and real health of bodies and souls, sophistic is to legislation what beautification is to gymnastics, and rhetoric is to justice what cookery is to medicine. Sophist and rhetorician, working in the same sphere and upon the same subject matter, tend to be confused with each other. For if the body was under the control, not of the soul, but of itself, and if cookery and medicine where not investigated and distinguished by the soul, but the body instead gave the verdict, weighing them by the bodily pleasures they offered, all things would be mingled in indiscriminate confusion [PM]. Rhetoric is the counterpart in the soul of what cookery is to to the body.[5]

2.1.2.1. Rhetoric is a textual equivalent to design theory inasmuch the classical theory of design as represented by Vitruvius is considered to have been formed as an adaptation of rhetoric to the needs of architecture [REF BUCHANAN]. In approaches to design it has been pointed out that it is important to check the quality of a particular design by appeal to "the right feeling", to the experiencing of "flow", or to the importance of trusting one's own feeling of conviction as an equivalent to ethics, an ethics of personal conviction. The text above raises the need of a definition or determination of the difference between such a feeling and sheer conviction arising from persuasion. If we, furthermore, consider the late appeals to the importance of the "body" or or perceptions in design creativity then appears the question of whether such appeals to the body are not theoretically a self-fulfilling prophecy in their justification of the confusion between conviction by aesthetic pleasure of beautification, and ethical "health". The body under the control of itself recalls also the auto-poietic issue of self-reference where the criterion of survival is a particular kind of pleasure (of survival) or avoidance of pain of the death process. The observation that rhetoric is not an art but rather a kind of routine or a knack (belief without knowledge) removes it further away from science (belief with knowledge). The observation that rhetoric seems to possess almost superhuman importance and includes practically all other faculties under her control recalls the claims of design theory of being an all-encompassing knowledge applicable to design of all things and organizations.

2.1.2.2. The reference to a "shrewd and enterprising spirit, and of one naturally skilled in its dealings with men" is to be related to what today in the so called social competence that is expected and required from personnel dealing with IT-projects and IT-research. Such a social competence is certainly a main component in the formation of consensus in local subcultures of the modern scientific pluralistic community, as well in the academic community at-large where management by consensus is often equated to genuine democracy. The observation that teachers of rhetoric impart their instruction for just employment and they are not guilty of wrong employment of the skill, or that the craft is not for this reason evil or to blame, but, rather, those who make improper use of it recalls also the liberation of the shrewd and enterprising IT-expert with his essentially instrumental technique from any ethical responsibility in the application of his technique.

2.2.1. One supposes, as the name implies, that a Sophist is one who has knowledge of wise things. One could say the same of painters and builders, that they are those who have knowledge of wise things. But if they were asked what sort of wisdom painters understand, we should reply, wisdom concerned with the making of likenesss, and so on with the others. If then we were asked what sort of wise things the Sophist has knowledge of, what should we answer? Of what is he the master? The only answer we could give is that he is master of the art of making clever speakers. It invites the further question, On what matter does the Sophist make one a clever speaker? Do you realize the sort of danger to which you are going to expose your soul? The Sophist is really a merchant or peddler of the goods by which a soul is nourished. So too those who take the various subjects of knowledge from city to city, and offer them for sale retail to whoever wants them, but it may be that some of these men also are ingorant of the beneficial ot harmful effects on the soul of what they have for sale, and so too are those who buy from them, unless one of them happens to be a physician of the soul. Indeed the risk you run in purchasing knowledge is much greater than that in buying provisions. When you buy food and drink you can carry it away from the shop in a receptacle, and before you receive it into your body by eating or drinking you can store it away at home and take the advice of an expert as to what you should eat and drink and what not, and how much you should consume and when; so there is not much risk in the actual purchase. But knowledge cannot be taken away in a parcel. When you have paid for it you must receive it straight into the soul. You go away having learned it and are benefited or harmed accordingly.[6][cf. NEGATIVE VALUE OF INFORMATION]

2.2.2. A phantom, for example, a painter, will paint us a cobbler, a carpenter, and other craftsmen, though he himself has no expertness in any of these arts. Nevertheless is he werea good painter, by exhibiting at a distance his picture of a carpenter he would deceive children and foolish men, and make them believe it to be a real carpenter. And when anyone reports to us of someone that he has met a man who knows all the crafts and everything else that men severally know [cf. AI KNOWLEDGE-BASES], and that there is nothing that he does not know more exactly than anybody else, out tacit rejoinder must be that he is a simple fellow, who apparently has met some magician or sleight-of-hand man and imitator and has been deceived by him into the belief that he is all-wise, because of his own inabiblity tu put to the proof and distinguish knowledge, ignorance, and imitation.[7]

2.2.3. When one who is known by the name of a single art appears to be the master of many, there is something wrong with this appearance. If one has that impression of any art, plainly it is because one cannot see clearly that feature of it in which all these forms of skill converge [cf. VISUAL VR], and so one calls their possession by many names instead of one. Suppose a man professed to know how to produce all things in actual fact by a single form of skill, in some kind of play, like imitation. The man who professes to be able by a singe form of skill, to produce all things, when he creates with his pencil representations bearing the same name as real things, he will be able to deceive the innocent minds of children, if he shows them his drawings at a distance, into thinking that he is capable of creating, in full reality, anything he chooses to make.Then we must exptect to find a corresponding form of skill in the region of discourse, making it possible to impose upon the young who are still far removed from the reality of things, by means of words that cheat the ear, exhibiting images of all things in a shadow play of discourse, so as to make them believe that they are hearing the truth and that the speaker is in all matters the wisest of men. It is inevitable that, after a long enough time, as these young hearers advance in age, and, coming into closer touch with realities, are forced by experience to apprehend things clearly as they are, most of them should abandon those former beliefs, so that what seemed easy, difficult, and all the illusions created in discourse will be completely overturned by the realities which encounter them in the actual conduct of life.[8]

2.2.4. There are two forms of imitation. One art is the making of likenesses. The perfect example of this consists in creating a copy that conforms to the proportions of the original in all three dimensions,and giving moreover the proper color to every part. The other form is of those sculptors or painters whose works are of colossal size. If they were to reproduce the true proportions of a wellmade figure [FERRY], the upper parts would look too small, and the lower too large, because we see the one at a distance, the other close at hand. So artists, leaving truth to take care of itself, do in fact put into the images they make, not the real proportions, but those that will appear beautiful. The first kind of image, being like the original, may fairly be called a likeness (icon). The other, the kind which only appears to be a likeness of a well made figure because it is not seen from a satisfactory point of view, but to a spectator with eyes that could fully take in so large an object [SYSTEM] would not even like the original it professes to resemble, we may call it a semblance (fantasma). We are faced with an extremely difficult question. We are faced with an extremely difficult question. This "appearing" or "seeming" without really "being", and the saying of something which yet is not true – all these expressions have always been and still are deeply involved in perplexity. It is extremely hard to find correct terms in which one may say or think that falsehoods have a real existence, without being caught in a contradiction by the mere utterance of such words. [9] We ought to begin by studying "reality" [VR] and finding out what those who use the word think it stands for. One party affirms that real existence belongs only to that which can be handled and offers resistance to the touch. They define reality as the same thing as body. Their adversaries mantain that true reality consists in certain intelligible and bodiless forms. In the clash of argument they shatter and pulverize those bodies which their opponents wield, and what those others allege to be true reality they call, not real being,but a sort of moving process of becoming [cf.CHANGE]. I suggest that anything has real being that is so constituted as to possess any sort of power either to affect anything else or to be affected [PRAGMATISM]. I am proposing as a mark to distinguish real things that they are nothing but power. We have intercourse with the becoming by means of the body [BODY-CHANGE] through sense, whereas we have intercourse with real being by means of of the soul through reflection. Intercourse is the experiencing of an effect or the production of one, arising, as the result of some power, from things that encounter one another.[10]

2.3.1. The name of a thing is an instrument. When we name we give information [INFORMATION DEF] to one another and distinguish things according to their nature. Then a name is an instrument of teaching and of distinguishing natures, as the shuttle is of distinguishing the threads of a web. The weaver is the one who uses the shuttle well. When the weaver uses the shuttle he will be using well the work of the skilled carpenter. In an analog way the teacher who uses the name will use the work of the maker of names, that is the legislator. When the carpenter makes shuttles he will look to that which is naturally fitted to act as a shuttle. And whatever shuttles are wanted, for the manufacture of garments, thin or thick, of flaxen, woolen or other material, all of them ought to have the true form [DESIGN] of the shuttle, whatever is the shuttle best adapted to each kind of work, that ought to be the form that the maker produces in each case. And the same holds of other instruments. When a man has discovered the instrument which is naturally adapted to each work, he must express this natural form, and not others which fancies, in the material, whatever it may be, which he employs. The one who is to determine whether the proper form is given to the shuttle, whatever sort of wood may be used, is not the carpenter who makes, but the weaver who is to use it. In an analog way he who will be best to direct the legislator in his work will be [USER] the user, and this is he who knows how to ask questions, that is a [SYSTEMS ANALYST-SYSTEMS PHILOSOPHER-DESIGNER] dialectician. The work of the legislator is to give names, and the dialectician must be his director if the names are to be rightly given. Things have names by nature, and not every man is an artificer of names, but he only who looks to the name that each thing by nature has, and is able to express the true forms of things in letters and syllabes, that is the natural fitness of names [FLOW?].[11]

2.3.2. What is true about numbers, which must be just what they are, or not be at all, does not apply to that which is qualitative or to anything which is represented under an image. We must find some other principle of truth in images, and also in names, and not insist that an image is no longer an image [depiction, descritpion] when something is added or subtracted. Images are very far from having qualities which are the exact counterpart of the realities which they represent. The effect of names on things would be ridiculous if they were exactly the same with them. For they would be the doubles of them, and no one would be able to determine which were the names and which the realities. Have the courage to admit that one name may be correctly and another incorrectly given, and acknowledge that the thing may be named, and described, so long as the general character [QUALITY AESTHETICS SUBJECTIVE VS. QUANTITATIVE] of the thing which you are describing is retained. We must find some new notion of correctness of names or representations of things.[12]

2.3.3. The nobler and clearer way to learn things is not to learn of the images, but to learn of the truth. How real existence is to be studied or discovered is, we suspect, beyond us, but we admit so much, that the knowledge of things is not to be derived from names. They must be investigated in themselves. Let us not be imposed upon by the appearance of a multitude of names given under the mistaken opinion of the idea that all things are in motion and flux [PM PLURALISM]. Having fallen into a kind of whirlpool themselves, the givers of names are carried round and want to drag us in after them. Then let us seek the true beauty, not asking whether a face is fair, or anything of that sort [DESIGN], for all such things appear to be in flux, but let us ask whether the true beauty is not always beautiful.[13]

2.3.4.1. Information technology seen as an instrument is closer to the instrumentality of names, of giving information, rather than the instrumentality of conventional technology as expressed in, say, the shuttle for the weaver. The maker of names is the legislator but the user who must direct his work is the dialectician who knows how to ask questions. In the IT-field the maker or "carpenter" of names is the designer who knows the relation between form and material and knows how to expresses the form in the material, but the determiner of the natural form adapted to the particular work will be the educated dialectical philosoper-user who knows how to ask questions. The blurring of information with other techniques and of the different roles under the name of designer, combined with a distrust if not outright rejection of philosophy in design amounts to a turning of systems analysts into either uneducated users who do not know how to ask questions socially, relying rather on their own intuition, or into maker technicians who assume that the forms have been rightly determined. The integration of dialectics in the design of information systems was shown in dialectical inquiring systems[14], but its disregard in the more recent trend of design theory coupled to emphasis on perception, body, and (political or social) "practice" indicates a regress into the subjectivistic thinking of variants of empiricism and postmodernism.[15]

2.3.4.2. The text above goes further in remarking that too many of today's philosophers and strategists of adaptation to "change", in their search after the nature of things, get dizzy from constantly going round and round, imagining that the world is going round and round and moving in all directions, and that this appearance, which arises out of their own internal condition, they suppose to be a reality of nature. "Having fallen into a kind of whirlpool themselves, the givers of names are carried round and want to drag us in after them": this appears to be an apt description of our postmodern trends towards pluralism, flexibility and change, where IT has often proved to be inimical to necessary change and, yet, is hoped to enable us to cope with change.

2.3.4.3. The discussion that follows, concerning the nature of representations, textual or visual, recalls the question of names or words, and images. The apparent rigor of mathematical or "depictive" representations is rejected in favor of textual and qualitative representations which, in any case, are necessary but are not to be confused with the truth of the thing. The requirement that we must find some new notion of correctness of names or representations of things seems to be a prelude to our newly discovered aesthetic dimension in, for instance, virtual reality. The difference, of course, is that in Plato's text the importance of this sort of representation does not obfuscate the severe requirement of distinguishing between virtual and real, or, we could say with Singer, between ideal and real[16], in the name of multiple perspectives which claim to substitute the Kantian "thing in itself". The final appeal to investigate the things in themselves seems to be a welcomed humble recognition of the need of some sort of phenomenology. The humility of the expectation, contrary to contemporary brands of phenomenology is, however, expressed in the statement that "how real existence is to be studied or discovered is, we suspect, beyond us, but we admit so much, that the knowledge of things is not to be derived from names".

2.4.1. Let us create a city from the beginning, in our theory. Its real creator, as it appears, will be our needs: food, housing, raiment, etc. One man is naturally fitted for one task, and another for another. If one lets slip the right season, the favorable moment [IMPROVISATION KAIROS LATOUR-CIBORRA-CHINA] in any task, the work is spoiled. The result, then is that more things are produced, and better and more easily when one man performs one task according to his nature at the right moment [DIVISION OF WORK, KAIROS, TAYLOR, ADAM SMITH], and at leisure from other occupations. [SYSTEM][17]

2.4.2. The true state – the healthy state, as it were – will aim at the satisfaction of legitimate needs. But if we contemplate a fevered state, couches will have to be added thereto, and tables, and other furniture, yes, and relishes and myrrh and incense and girls and cakes. And the requirements we first mentioned, houses and garments and shoes, will no longer be confined to necessities, but we must set painting to work and ombroidery, and procure gold and ivory and similar adornments. For that healthy state is no longer sufficient, but we must proceed to swell out its bulk and fill it up with a multitude of things that exceed the requirements of necessity in states, as, for example, the entire class of huntsmen, and the imitators, many of them occupied with figures and colors and many with music – the poets and their assistants, rhapsodists, actors, chorus dancers, contractors – and the manufacturing of all kinds of articles, especially those that have to do with women's adornment.[18]

2.4.3. There is no man whose natural endowments will ensure that he shall both discern what is good for mankind as a community and invariably te both able and willing to put the good into practice when he has perceived it. If ever, by God's mercy, a man were born with the capacity to attain this perception, he would need no laws, to govern him. No law or ordinance whatever has the right to sovereignty over true knowledge. But as things are, such insight is nowhere to be met with, except in faint vestiges, and so we have to choose the second best, ordinance and law. Now they can consider most cases and provide for them, but not all. The different cases are countless and their circumstances are widely unlike. So it is equally impossible to leave everything to the discretion of the courts and to leave nothing. One issue, indeed, we cannot avoid leaving to their discretion in all cases, that of the occurrence or nonoccurrence of the alleged event. The question, then, is which are the points to be thus dealt with by statute, and which should be entrusted to a court's discretion.[19][DESIGN SUBJECTIVE JUDGMENT, IMPORTANCE OF FACTS VS POSITIVIST & MEASURE OF NEEDS VS DESIRES]

2.4.4.1. This introduces the design of a city in the "Republic", and points to a basic theory of design which – like the design of the human body in Timaeus[20] – is remarkably different from other theories of design that have been launched in the IT-field[21]. For one, is takes its starting point in an enumeration of needs or, in a certain sense, is teleological, aiming at necessary vs. desired goals or objectives. The various needs represent in turn as many "subsystems" whose exchanges include economics. We find there also the pristine recognition of a principle of systemic division of work and skill which today is "democratically" supposed to be uniformly distributed or is brushed away as "Tayloristic" in favour of the pre-industrial noble artisan skills. It is important to observe that the design of a "city" is closer to the design of an information system in its social och human context than the design of an inanimate object seen as a tool or an artefact.

2.4.4.2. The reference to the "fevered state" introduces, in one way, considerations of what could be called aesthetics but is, rather, closer to the attractions of consumerism and to certain brands of "client-market orientation". Legitimate aesthetics as such is properly acknowledged and considered in other contexts labeled often as beauty[22].

2.5.1. The primary classes of men are three, the philosopher or lover of wisdom, the lover of victory, and the lover of gain [MARX]. And there are three forms of pleasure, corresponding repectively to each. The financier will affirm that in comparison with profit the pelasure of honor or of learning are of no value except in so far as they produce money. The lover of honor regards the pleasure that comes from money as vulgar and low, and again that of learning, save in so far as the knowledge confers honor, mere fume and moonshine. And the philosopher will think that these pleasures are far removed from the true pleasure of knowing the truth and the reality, and being always occupied with that while he learns. He will call them the pleasures of necessity [CF NEED VS DESIRE - OF PLEASURE AESTHETICS], since he would have no use for them if necessity were not laid upon him. Since there is contention between the several types of pleasure and the lives themselves, not merely as to which is the more honorable or the more base, or the worse or the better, but which is actually the more pleasurable or free from pain, how could we determine which ot them speaks most truly? If things are to be judged rightly they must judged by experience, intelligence, and discussion. The philosopher must needs taste of the other two kinds of pleasure from childhood, but the lover of gain is not only under no necessity of tasting or experiencing the sweetness of the pleasure of learning the true natures of things, but he cannot easily do so even if he desires and is eager for it. The lover of wisdom, then surpasses the lover of gain in experience of both kinds of pleasure. And honor, if the three classes of men achieve their several objects, attends them all so that all are acquainted with the kind of pleasure that honor brings, but it is impossible for anyone except the lover of wisdom to have savored the delight that the contemplation of true being and reality brings. Then, as so far as experience goes, he is the best judge of the three. And, again, he is the only one whose experience [EXPERIENCE SENSATION PRACTICE] will have been accompanied by intelligence. And yet again, that which is the instrument of judgment, words and discussion, is the instrument mainly of the philosopher. Now, if wealth and profit, or if honor, victory and courage were the best criteria by which things are judged, the things praised and censured by the lover of gain or by the lover of honor and victory would necessarily be truest and most real. But since the tests are experience and wisdom and discussion, it follows that the things approved by the lover of wisdom and discussion are mos valid and true.[23]

2.5.2. The mind contemplates some things through its own instrumentality, others through the bodily faculties [VR BODY]. Existence, likeness and unlikeness and sameness and difference, and about 'honorable' and 'dishonorable' and good and bad, those again seem to me, above all, to be things whose being is considered, one in comparison with another, by the mind, when it reflects within itself upon the past and the present with an eye to the future [IMPROVISATION PRAGMATISM]. The hardness of something hard and the softness of something soft will be perceived by the mind through touch, but their existence and the fact that they both exist, and their contrariety to one another and again the existence of this contrariety are things that the mind itself undertakes to judge for us, when it reflects upon them and compares one with another. It is not true, then, that whereas all the impressions which penetrate to the mind through the body are things which men and animals alike are naturally constituted to perceive from the moment of birth, reflections about them with respect to their existence and usefulness only come, if they come at all, with difficulty through a long and troublesome process of education? It is impossible to reach truth when cannot reach existence, and if a man cannot reach the truth of a thing, he cannot possibly know that thing. If that is so, knowledge does not reside in the impressions, but in our reflection upon them. It is there, seemingly, and not in the impressions, that it is possible to grasp existence and truth. Then, perception [PERCEPTION] and knowledge cannot possibly be the same thing. And knowledge cannot be said to be judgment as a whole, because there is false judgment, but perhaps true judgment is knowledge.[24] [NO CONCLUSION, BUT STILL TRUTH VS. "LESSONS", KNOWLEDGE MGMT X DEF?]

2.5.3. In the case of objects one does not know and has never perceived, there is, it seems, no possibility of error or false judgment, but it is precisely in the field of objects both known and perceived that judgment turns and twists about and proves false or true–true when it brings impressions straight from their proper imprints, false when it misdirects them crosswise to the wrong imprint.[cf. MEMORY RECALL PERCEPTION]. The difference between true and wrong judgment is said to arise in the following way. When a man has in his mind a good thick slab of wax, smooth and kneaded to the right consistency, and the impressions that come through the senses are stamped on these tables of the "heart"–Homer's word hints at the mind's likeness to wax–then the imprints are clear and deep enough to last a long time. Such people are quick to learn and also have good memories, and besides they do not interchange the imprints of their perceptions but think truly. These imprints being distinct and well spaced are quickly assigned to their several stamps–the 'real things' as they are called–and such men are siaid to be clever. When a person has what the poet's wisdom commends as a 'shaggy heart', or when the block is muddy or made of impure wax, or oversoft or hard, the people with soft wax are quick to learn, but forgetful, those with hard wax the reverse. Where it is shaggy or rough, a gritty kind of stuff containing a lot of earth or dirt, the impressions obtained are indistinct; so are they when the stuff is hard, for they have no depth. Impressions in soft wax also are indistinct, because they melt together and soon become blurred. [PRECISION-ACCURACY AVH] And if, besides this, they overlap through being crowded together into some wretched little narrow mind [NARROWMIND], they are still more indistinct. All these types, then are likely to judge falsely. When they see or hear or think of something, they cannot quickly assign things to their several imprints. Because they are so slow and sort things into the wrong places, they constantly see and hear and think amiss, and we say they are mistaken about things and stupid....We must account for false judgments in some other way than as the misfitting ot thought and perception, and we must describe what knowing is like, and what knowledge is.[25]

2.5.4. Well, thinking and discourse are the same thing, except that what we call thinking is, precisely, the inward dialoge carried on by the mind with itself without spoken sound, whereas the stream which flows from the mind through the lips with sound is called discourse. And further, assertion and denial occur is discourse. When this occurs in the mind in the course of silent thinking [TACIT KNOWLEDGE], we call it judgment [JUDGMENT]. Judgment occurs not independently but by means of perception; the only right name for such a state of mind is 'appearing' [FLOW NOTITIA]. Well, then, since we have seen that there is a true and false statement, and of these mental processes we have found thinking to be a dialogue of the mind with itself, and judgment to be the conclusion of thinking, and what we mean by 'it appears' a blend of perception and judgment [AESTHETICS], it follows that these also, being of the same nature as statement, must be, some of them and on some occasion, false.[26]

2.5.5. Though a person holding any opinion at all must hold in in fact, yet it might sometimes have reference to what was not a fact, either of the present, the past, or the future. And there, I think, lay the source of our false opinion, of our holding opinions falsely. Well then, should we not ascribe a corresponding condition, as regards these references, to pains and pleasures? I mean, that though anyone who feels pleasure at all, no matter how groundless it be, always really feels that pleasure; yet sometimes it has no reference to any present or past fact, while in many cases, perhaps in most, it has reference to what never will be a fact. And the same principle will hold good in respect to fear, anger, and all such feelings, namely that all of them are sometimes false.[27][AESTHETICS & VS FEELINGS ALWAYS RIGHT ≈COTTINGHAM]

2.5.6. We may take it that any human being is one person, but one person who has within himself, as a pair of unwise and conflicting counselors, whose names are pleasure and pain. He has, besides, anticipations of the future, and these of two sorts. The connom name for both sorts is expectation, the special name for anticipation of pain being fear, and for anticipation of its opposite, confidence. [HOPE]And on the tops of all, there is judgment, to discern which of these states is better or worse, and when judgment takes the form of a public decision of a city, it has the name of law. Let us look at the whole matter in some such light as this.[THINKING METAPHOR] We may imagine that each of us living creatures is a puppet made by gods, possibly as a plaything, or possibly with some more serious purpose. That, indeed, is more than we can tell, but one thing is certain. These interior states are, so to say, the cords, or strings, by which we are worked; they are opposed to one another, and pull us with opposite tensions in the direction of opposite actions, and therin lies the division of virtue from vice. In fact, so says our argument, a man must always yield to one of these tensions without resistance, but pull [CF WILL] against all other strings–must yield, that is, to that golden and hallowed drawing of judgment which goes by the name of the public law of the city. [VS POSTMODERN SUBJECTIVITY] The other are hard and ironlike, it soft, as befits gold, whereas they resemble very various substances. So a man must always co-operate with the noble drawing of law, for judgment, though a noble thing, is as gentle as free from violence as noble, whence its drawing needs supporters, if the gold within us is to prevail over the other stuff. In this wise our moral fable of the human puppets will find its fulfillment. It will also become somewhat clearer, first, what is meant by selfconquest and self-defeat, and next that the individual's duty is to understand the true doctrine of these tensions and live in obedience to it, the city's to accept this doctrine from god, or from the human discoverer, and make it law for her converse with herself and other societies. This will lead us to a more exact articulation both of vice and of virtue, and the elucidation of the subject will presumably throw further light on education and institutions at large.[28]

2.5.7. The chief value of all things which have an attendant charm lies in this mere charm itself [AESTHETICS], in their rightness in some sense, or, finally, in their utility. For example, meat and drink, and articles of nutriment generally, are attended bu a charm which we call flavor. As to rightness and utility, it is precisely what we call wholesomeness of the various viands which is also their true rightness. Again, the act of learning if attended by a charm, a gusto, but it is the truth of what is learned which gives it its rightness and utility, its goodness and nobility. [PED LEARN≠LEARN RIGHT] And of the various arts of imitation which work by producing likenesses, if they are so far successful in giving rise to an attendant pleasure, charm will be the right name for it, whereas their rightness depends not on their pleasantness, but on accurate correspondence in quality and magnitude. Thus, the only case in which it will be right to make pleasure our standard of judgment is that of a performance which provides us with neither utility, nor truth, not resemblance, though, of course, it must do us no harm either. It will be an activity practiced solely with a view to this concomitant charm, which is very properly called pleasure, unattended by any of the results just specified. We can also use the name play for it in cases where it does neither harm nor good worth taking into serious account[29].[WHY AESTHETIC VR-PLAY]

2.5.8. A man's feeling of pleasure, or his erroneous belief, is never a proper standard by which to judge of any representation and proportionality. [VS AESTHETICS] Since music [MUSIC≈≈] is an art of producing likenesses or representations, citizens should aim not at a music which is pleasing, but at one which is right. A man who is to make no mistake of judgement about a particular production must, in every case, understand what that production is. If he does not understand what it is, what it is meant for, or of what it in fact an image, [IMAGE VISION] it will be a long time before he will discern the rightness or wrongness in the artist's purpose. One who is to be an intelligent judge of any representation, whether in drawing, in music,or in any other branch or art, must have three qualifications. He must understand, first, what the object reproduced is, next, how correctly, and third and last, how well a given representation has been effected, in point of language, melody, or rhythm.[30]

2.5.9. When a poet takes his seat on the Muse's tripod, his judgment takes leave of him. He is like a fountain which gives free course to the rush of its waters [IMAGINATIVE CREATIVITY], and since representation is of the essence of his art, must often contradict his own utterances in his presentations of contrasted characters, without knowing whether the truth is on the side of this speaker or of that. Now it is not the legislator's business in his law to make two such statements about one and the same topic, he has regularly to deliver himself of one pronouncement on one matter.[31][VS DIALECTIC CONTRADICTIONS]

2.5.10.1. The statement that "Again, the act of learning if attended by a charm, a gusto, but it is the truth of what is learned which gives it its rightness and utility, its goodness and nobility" explains why, when it is ignored, it easy to fall into the remarkable attitude of seeing learning, vaguely associated with creativity, as a good in itself. Learning, like creativity, is regarded as a good in itself, disregarding whether what is learnt or created is a good or bad, right or wrong thing.

2.5.10.2. There are clear tendencies in late theoretization of the design of computer artifacts to appeal to the importance of good design of play, improvisation, bricolage, and such. In the light of the text above, play being "the only case in which it will be right to make pleasure our standard of judgment" it can be the case that such tendencies are fostered by the attraction of procuring pleasure to the disadvantage of genuine ethical concerns. Alternative but equivalent explanations of the tendencies are to be found in the emphasis on the "body" with its sensory pleasures or stimulations of an undefined creativity.[32] Another alternative is the belief in an immanent order of nature that does away with the need of a purposeful intelligence behind nature or behind "naturally" found human organizations: teleology, immanent as well external, is dispensable, and totally non-telic processes of chance variations come to characterize what it called evolutionary thinking[33].

2.5.10.3. Ultimately these discussions correspond to the controveries about the place of aesthetics in relation to information, knowledge, and ethical action, where the problematic Kantian approach in the third critique (of judgment) needs to be critically appreciated in the light of new readings of Plato's work.[34]

2.6.1. It is indeed no trifling task, but very difficult to realize that there is in every soul an organ or instrument of knowledge that is purified and kindled afresh by such studies [of the science of arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy] when it has been destroyed and blinded by our ordinary pursuits, a faculty whose preservation outweighs ten thousand eyes.[35]

2.6.2. Tragic poetry and all other imitative arts seem to be a corruption of the mind of all who do not possess as an antidote a knowledge of its real nature. In considering what imitation is, taking, for example, couches or tables, there are three couches, made by the painter, the carpenter or cabinetmaker, and [the idea] God. Painting is directed to the imitation of appearance as it appears, and not of reality as it is. It is an imitation of a phantasm, not of truth. The mimetic art is far removed from the truth, and this is the reason why it can produce everything, because it touches or lays hold of only a small part of the object. [VS VR (MOST VISUAL) MOBILIZATION OF SENSE PERCEPTION EMBODIED COGNITION] A phantom, for example, a painter, will paint us a cobbler, a carpenter, and other craftsmen, though he himself has no expertness in any of these arts. Nevertheless is he were a good painter, by exhibiting at a distance his picture of a carpenter he would deceive children and foolish men, and make them believe it to be a real carpenter.[36]

2.6.3. The poet himself, knowing nothing but how to imitate, lays on with words and phrases the colors of the several arts in such a fashion that others equally ignorant, who see things only through words, will deem his words most excellent, whether they speak in rhythm, meter, and harmony about cobbling or generalship or anything whatever. So mighty is the spell that these adornments [AESTHETIC] naturally exercise[37].

2.6.4. There are three arts concerned with everything, [DESIGN SYSTEM] the user's art, the maker's, and the imitator's. The beauty, the rightness of every implement, living thing, [NONHUMAN] and action refer solely to the use [USE] for which each is made or by nature adapted [DARWIN?]. The user, possessing knowledge, reports about the goodness or the badness of anything he knows most by experience, and the maker, believing, will make it. The maker will then have right belief, [MAKER ≈SYSANALYST/PROGRAMMER ≠DESIGNER] but the user will have true knowledge. The imitator [VR] will have neither knowledge from experience of whether the thing is or is not beautiful and right, nor will he have right opinion from compulsory association with the user who knows. [CONSULTANT] Then the imitator will neither know nor opine rightly concerning the beauty or the badness of his imitations, but the thing he will imitate will be the thing that appears beautiful to the ignorant multitude. His imitation will be a form of play, not to be taken seriously.[38]

2.6.5. This business of imitation is then concerned with the third remove from truth, and its function and potency is related to the element in man, or part of the soul that reasons and calculates. The same things appear bent and straight to those who view them in water and out, or concave and convex, owing to similar errors of vision about colors, and there is obviously every confusion of this sort in our souls. [FERRY AESTHETICS VS VR] And so scene painting in its exploitation of this weakness of our nature falls nothing short of witchcraft, and so do jugglery and many other such contrivances. Measuring and numbering and weighing proved to be most gracious aids to prevent the domination in our soul of the apparently greater or less or more or heavier, and to give control to that which has reckoned and numbered or even weighed, i.e. the function of part of the soul that reasons and calculates.[39]

2.6.6. This isolation of everything from everything else [VS SYS] means a complete abolition of all discourse, for any discourse we can have owes its existence to the weaving together of forms. We have next to consider whether 'not being' blends with thinking and discourse. If it does not blend with them, everything must be true, but if it does, we shall have false thinking and discourse, and if falsity exists, deception is possible. And once deception exists, images and likenesses and appearance will be everywhere rampant.[40]

2.6.7. We got hold of, and expressed, the idea that gold is beautiful or not beautiful according as it is placed in an appropriate setting, and similarly with everything else to which this qualification can be added. Now consider this appropriateness, [AESTHETICS] and reflect on the general nature of the appropriate, and see whether it might not be beauty. The question if whether we define the appropriate as that which by its presence causes the things in which it becomes present to appear beautiful, or causes them to be beautiful, or neither. If it is that which makes things to appear beautiful. But then the appropriate is a kind of fraud in relation to beauty. If the appropriate causes things both to be and to appear beautiful, then it is our conclusion that all established usages and all practices which are beautiful are regarded as beautiful by all men, [KANT AESTHETIC TASTE] and always appear so to them, while we think the exact opposite, that ignorance of them is prevalent, and that these are the chief of all objects of contention and fighting, both between individuals and between states. Ignorance would not prevail if the appearance of beauty were but added to such usages and practices and moreover caused them to appear as well as be beautiful. It follows that if the appropriate is that which causes things to be in fact beautiful, then it would be that beauty for which we are looking, but still it would not be that which causes them to appear beautiful. If, on the other hand, that which causes things to appear beautiful is the appropriate, it is not that beauty for which we are looking. That for which we are looking makes things beautiful, but the same cause never could make things both appear and be either beautiful of anything else. [KANT AESTHETIC BRIDGE] Let then instead assume that whatever is useful is beautiful, [FUNTIONALISM] since we do not say that eyes are beautiful when they appear to be without the faculty of sight, but when they have this faculty. [FUNCTIONALISM] Similarly we say that the whole body is beautifully made, sometimes for running, sometimes for wrestling, and we speak in the same way of all animals. A beautiful horse, or cock, or quail, and all utensils, and means of transport both on land and on sea, merchant vessels and ships of war, and all instruments of music and of the arts generally, and if you like, practices and laws–we apply the word 'beautiful' to practically all these in the same manner. In each case we take as our criterion the natural constitution or the workmanship or the form of enactment, and whetever is useful we call beautiful in that respect in which is is useful and for the purpose for which and at the time at which it is useful. And that which has the power to achieve its specific purpose is useful for that purpose. Then power is a beautiful thing, and the lack of it ugly????[p. 1549 - §295e][41]

2.6.8.1. These statements expose a theory of art and aesthetics that became more controversial after Kant. In any case the theory of appearance as related to reality which is highly relevant to work in visual rality (VR) is far from resolved in present conceptions of aesthetics or their simplifications in design theory with references to improvisation, pluralistic perspectives, viewpoints, frameworks, and such[42]. That "mimetic art is far removed from the truth, and this is the reason why it can produce everything, because it touches or lays hold of only a small part of the object" is highly relevant to computerization in general where it is sometimes wrongly equated with "cognitivization" or narrow use of only the cognitive faculties of the soul. Such conception of mind is indeed a "corruption of the mind of all who do not possess as an antidote a knowledge of its real nature" or, does not have an adequate definition of cognition as related feeling and intuition and to other faculties of the soul or mind. Measuring and numbering and weighing which "proved to be most gracious aids to prevent the domination in our soul of the apparently greater or less or more or heavier" have been reduced, in many computer applications to only numbering, applied to implicit models that are sheer assumed images of reality. In visual interfaces and virtual reality numbering, represented by cartesian analytic geometry, is further masked and further removed from reality with an appeal to aesthetic intuition and assumed rightness of feeling.[43]The statement that "a good painter, by exhibiting at a distance his picture of a carpenter he would deceive children and foolish men, and make them believe it to be a real carpenter" is relevant to the discussion on expert systems, the implication being that the imitation of an expert tends to be most successful with children and foolish men that lack a critical appreciation of reality[44].

2.6.8.2. The statement that there are three arts concerned with everything, the user's art, the maker's, and the imitator's, is interesting not only for its problematization of the absent "designer" but also for its conclusion that the maker will then have right belief, but the user will have true knowledge. The playing down of truth in our postmodern and late theories of design amounts then to a questioning of the knowledge of the user, while at the same time the designer claims to be a self-appointed representative of the user, if not also of the maker. This is consistent also with the abandonment in the IT-field of Marxist theories of users and their political representation – not to mention the connections with design theories of "Arts and crafts" and "Bauhaus" – in favor of rhetoric emphasis on skill and design. If the designer is equated with the role of imitator (of users and makers) then design reveals itself close if not identical to sophistry.

2.7.1. Those who have no experience of wisdom and virtue but are ever devoted to feastings and that sort of thing are swept downward, it seems, and back tothe center, and so sway and roam to and fro throughout their lives, but have never transcended all this and turned their eyes to the true upper region nor been wafted there, not ever been really filled with real things, nor ever tasted stable and pure pleasure, but with eyes ever bent upon the earth and heads bowed down over their tables, they feast like cattle, grazing and copulating ever greedy for more of these delights, and in their greed kicking and butting one another with horns and hoofs of iron they slay one another in sateless avidity, because they are vainly striving to satisfy with things that are not real the unreal and incontinent part of their souls.[45]

2.8.1. I maintain that medicine is under the sole direction of the god of love, as are also the gymnastic and the agronomic arts [cf. cultivation-bricolage]. And it must be obvious that the same holds good of music–which is, perhaps, what Heraclitus meant us to understand by the rather cryptic pronouncement 'The one in conflict with itself is held together, like the harmony of the bow and of the lyre.' Of course it is absurd to speak of harmony as being in conflict, or arising out of elements which are still conflicting, but perhaps he meant that the art of music was to create harmony by resolving the discord between the treble and the bass. There is a kind of discord which it is not impossible to resolve, and here we may effect a harmony–as, for instance, we produce rhythm by resolving the difference between fast and slow. And just as the concord of the body was brought about by the art of medicine, so this other harmony is due to the art of music, as the creator of mutual love and sympathy. And so we may describe music too, as a science of love, or of desire–in this case in relation to harmony and rhythm. It is easy enough to distinguish the principle of Love in this rhythmic and harmonic union, nor is there so far any question of Love's dichotomy. But when we come to the application of rhythm and harmony to human activities–as for instance the composition of a song, or the instruction of others in the correct performance of airs and measures which have already been composed–then we meet with difficulties which call for expert handling. And this brings us to the conclusion that we are justified in yielding to the desires of the temperate–and of the intemperate in so far as such compliance will tend to sober them, and to this Love we must hold fast, for he is the fair and heavenly one. But as for that other, the earthy Love, whatever we have to do with him we must be very careful not to add the evils of excess to the enjoyment of th pleasures he affords–just as, in my own profession, it is an important part of our duties to regulate the pleasures of the table so that we may enjoy our meals without being the worse for them. And so in music, in medicine, and in every activity, whether sacred or profane, we must do our utmost to distinguish the two kinds of Love, for you may be sure that they will both be there.[46]

2.8.2. God is altogether simple and true in deed and word, and neither changes himself nor deceives others by visions or words or the sending of sings in waking or in dreams. This is our second norm or canon for speech and poetry about the gods–that neither are they wizards in shape shifting [JUNGIAN TRICKSTER] nor do they mislead us by falsehoods in words or deed. Furthermore, if our guardians of the state are to be brave, we must extend our prescription of their education to include the sayings that will make them least likely to fear death. [cf. JULLIEN CHINA MANIPULATION] We must exercise supervision in matters of tales about the underworld, over those who supply them and request them not to dispraise in a undiscriminating fashion the life in it.[47]

2.8.3. The overseers of our state must cleave and be watchful against its insensible corruption. They must throughout be watchful against innovation in music and gymnastics counter to the established order, and to the best of their power guard against them, fearing that anyone says that that song is most regarded among men 'which hovers newest on the singer's lips', lest haply it be supposed that the poet means not new songs but a new way of song and is commending this. But we must not praise that sort of thing nor conceive it to be the poet's meaning. For a change to a new type of music is something to beware as a hazard of all our fortunes. For the modes of music are never disturbed without unsettling of the most fundamental political and social conventions.[48]

2.8.4. Whenever we have to accord praise or blame to an argument on the score of its lengh of its brevity we must never forget the second section of the art of measuring, and it is this standard we must always apply in judgments like these–the standard of suitability [FITNESS-RIGHT FEELING]. But even "suitability" is not in every case an adequate criterion. For instance, we shall not look for such length in an argument as is 'suitable' for giving pleasure, except as a very incidental consideration. Again, ease and speed in reaching the answer to the problem propounded are most commendable, but our principle requires that this be only a secondary, not a primary reason for commending an argument. What we must value first and foremost, above all else, is the philosophical method itself, and this consists in ability to divide according to real forms. If, therefore, either a full-length statement of an argument or an unusually brief one leaves the hearer more able to find real forms, it is this presentation of it which must be diligently carried through; there must be no expression of annoyance at its length or at its brevity as the case may be. Furthermore, if we find a man who criticizes the length of an argument while a discussion like the present one is in progress and refuses to wait for the proper rounding-off of the process of reasoning, he is not to be permitted to escape thus with a mere grumble that 'these discussions are long drawn out'; he must be required to support his grumble with a proof that a briefer statement fo the case would have left him and his fellow disputants better philosophers, more able to demonstrate real truth by reasoned argument. Blame and praise on other grounds, aimed at other merely incidental traits in our discourse, we must simply ignore and act as though we had not heard them at all.[49]

2.8.5. We may divide the knowledge involved in our studies into technical knowledge, and that concerned with education and culture. Then taking the technical knowledge employed in handicraft, let us consider whether one division is more closely concerned with knowledge, and the other less so. We should then mark off the superior types of knowledge in the several crafts. If, for instance, from any craft you substract the element of numbering, measuring, and weighing, the remainder will be almost negligible. For after doing so, what you would have left would be be guesswork and the exercise of your senses on a basis of experience and rule of thumb, involving the use of that ability to make lucky shots which is commonly accorded the title of art or craft, when it has consolidated its position by dint of industrious practice. We find plenty of it, to take one instance, in music, medicine, agriculture, navigation, and military science. Building, however, makes a considerable use of measures and instruments,and the remarkable exactness thus attained makes it more scientific that most sorts of knowledge. Let us then divide the arts and crafts so called into two classes, those akin to music in their activities and those akin to carpentry, the two classes being marked by a lesser and a greater degree of exactness, respectively. We find fixity, purity, truth, and what we have called perfect clarity in those things that are always, unchanged, unaltered, and free from all admixture, or in what is most akin to them. Everything else must be called inferior and of secondary importance. The names of reason and intelligence, that command the greatest respect can be properly established in usage as precisely appropriate to thought whose object is true being. Then, here, we have at hand the ingredients, intelligence and pleasure ready to be mixed, in the materials in which, or out of which, we as builders are to build our structure. But to mix with reason the pleasures that always go with folly and all other manner of evil would surely be the most senseless act for one who desired to see a mixture and fusion as fair and peaceable, so that he might try to learn from it what the good is, and what form he should divine it to possess. In our present discussion we have then created what might be called an incorporeal oredered system [cf. SYSTEM] for the rightful control of a corporeal substance in which dwells a soul. But any compound, whatever it be, that does not by some means or other exhibit measure and proportion, is the ruin both of its ingredients and of itself. So now we find that the good has taken refuge in the character of the beautiful [cf. ethics vs. aesthetics], for the qualities of measure and proportion invariably, I imagine, constitute beauty and excellence. And of course we said that truth was included along with these qualities in the mixture. Then if we cannot hunt down the good under a single form, let us secure it by the conjunction of three, beauty, proportion, and truth, and then, regarding these three as one, let us assert that that may most properly be held to determine the qualities of the mixture, and that because that is good the mixture itself has become so. Is it then pleasure or intelligence that is more akin to the highest good? If we examine each of our three forms, beauty-truth-measuredness, separately in relation to pleasure and reason, we will find that reason is the more akin to truth. The first possession is secured for everlasting tenure somewhere in the region of measure–of what is measured or appropriate, or whatever term may be deemed to denote that kind of quality. The second lies int the region of what is proportioned and beautiful, and what is perfect and satisfying–whatever terms denote that kind of quality. If we put reason and intelligence third, you won't be very wide of the truth. Nor again, if beside these three you put as fourth what we have recognized as belonging to the soul itself, sciences and arts and what we called right opinions, inasmuch as these are more akin than pleasure to the good. And as fifth, the pleasures which we recognize and discriminate as painless, calling them pure pleasures of the soul iself–some attaching to knowledge, others to sensation. Reason has been found ever so much nearer and more aking than pleasure to the character of the victor, and pleasure will take fifth place. An not first place, no, not even if all the oxen and horses and every other animal that exists tells us so by their pursuit of pleasure. It is the animals on which the multitudes rely, just as deviners rely on birds, when they decide that pleasures are of the first importance to our living a good life, and supposed that animals' desires are authoritative evidence, rather than those desires that are known to reasoned argument, divining the truth of this and that by the power of the Muse of philosophy.[50]

2.8.6. One who is to be an intelligent judge of any representation, whether in drawing, in music,or in any other branch or art, must have three qualifications. He must understand, first, what the object reproduced is, next, how correctly, and third and last, how well a given representation has been effected, in point of language, melody, or rhythm. Now we must not omit the full explanation of the difficulty of music. There is much talk about musical imagery than about any other kind, and this is the very reason why such imagery demands more cautious scrutiny than any other. It is here that error is at once more dangerous, as it encourages morally bad dispositions, and most difficult to detect, because our poets are not altogether on the level of the Muses themselves. They would never make a pretended presentation of a single theme out of a medley of human voices, animal cries, and noises of machinery. Whereas our mere human poets tend to be only too fond of provoking the contempt of those of us who, in the phrase of Orpheus, are 'ripe for delight', by this kind of senseless and complicated confusion. In fact, not only do we see confusion of this kind, but our poets go still further. They divorce rhythm and figure from melody, by giving metrical form to bare discourse, and melody and rhythm from words, by their employment of cithara and flute without vocal accompaniment, though it si the hardest of tasks to discover what such wordless rhythm and tune signify, or what model worth considering they represent. Nay, we are driven to the conclusion that all this so popular employment of cithara or flute, not subordinated to the control of dance or song for the display of speed and virtuosity, and the reproduction of the cries of animals, is in the worst of bad taste; the use of either as an independent instrument is no better than unmusical legerdemain. So much for the theory of the thing. But, after all, the question for ourselves is what kind of music our citizens are to practice, not what they are to avoid. The general public are simply ridiculous in their belief that men are adequate judges of what is good or otherwise in melody and rhythm, if they have merely been drilled into singing the flute and marching in step, though it never occurs to them that they do the acts without understanding anything about hem. Whereas, of course, any tune is correct if it has the proper constituents, incorrect if it has unsuitable ones. [51]

2.8.7. One type of physician treats us, when we call him in, in one way, and a second in another–but let us remind ourselves of the difference between the two methods. There are physicians, and again there are physicians' assistants, whom we also speak of as physicians. All bear the name, whether free men or slaves who gain their professional knowledge by watching their masters and obeying their directions in empirical fashion, not in the scientific way in which free men learn their art and teach it to their pupils. You have observed that as there are slaves as well as free men among the patients of our communities, the slaves, to speak generally, are treated by slaves, who pay them a hurried visit, or receive them in dispensaries. A physician of this kind never gives a servant any account of his complaint, nor asks him for any; he gives him some empirical injunction with an air of finished knowledge, in the brusque fashion of a dictator, and then is off in hot haste to the next ailing servant–that is how he lightens his master's medical labors for him. The free practitioner, who, for the most part attends free men, treats their diseases by going into them thoroughly from the beginning in a scientific way, and takes the patient and his family into his confidence. Thus the learns something from the sufferers, and at the same time instructs the invalid to the best of his powers. He does not give his prescriptions until he has won the patient's support, and when he has done so, he steadily aims at producing complete restoration to health by persuading the sufferer into compliance. [cf. participation-implementation]. Now, which of the two methods is that of the better physician or director of bodily regimen? That which effects the same result by a twofold process or that which employs a single process, the worse of the two, and exasperates its subject?[52]

2.8.8. That was no unhappy simile by which we liken all existing legislation to the treatment of unfree patients by unfree physicians. You may be sure that were one of these empirical practitioners of the healing art, so innocent of the theory of it, to discover a free physician conversing with his free patient, to hear him talking almost like a philosopher, tracing the disorder to its source, reviewing the whole system [SYSTEM] of human physiology, his merriment would be instantaneous and loud. His language would be no other than that which comes so pat from the lips of our so-styled physicians. This is not to treat the patient, fool, but to educate him–as though he wanted to be made a medical man, not to recover its health! The speaker might be in the right of it,if only he also understood that any man who treats of law in the atyle we are now adopting, means to educate his fellow citizens rather than to lay down the law to them. We are fortunate in our present position, because we are under no obligation to lay down the law. We are free to pursue our own reflections on all points of political theory, to ask either what would be the ideally best legislation, or what is indispensably requisite as a minimum. We are not in the position of the stateman driven by the stress of some dire necessity to produce his laws on the instant, because tomorrow will be too late. Our case, is more like that of a stonemason os some such workers at the beginning of their operations. We are free to collect our materials in the mass before we proceed to select those which will suit the future construction, and we can make the selection itself at our leisure. So we will take ourselves to be erecting or present edifice, not under pressure, but with undiminished leisure to lay up some of our material for future employment while we work the rest into our fabric. Thus we may rightly think of our body of law as composed partly of statutes actually imposed, partly of material for statutes. At all events, our digest of law will be more scientific, and we will give serious attention to the compositions of others.[53]

2.8.9. If one slay a free man by one's own act but the deed be done in passion, there are, first, two cases to be distinguished. It is an act of passion when a man is done away with on the impulse of the moment [IMPROVISATION], by blows or the like, suddenly and without any previous purpose to kill, and remorse instantly follows on the act. It is also an act of passion when a man is roused by insult in words or dishonoring gestures, pursues his revenge, and ends by taking a life with purpose to slay and without subsequent remorse for the deed. I take it we cannot treat these as two distinct forms of homicide; both may afirly be said to be due to passion and to be partially involuntary [cf. WILL]. Not but what each of them has a resemblance to one extreme. The man who nurses his passion and takes his revenge not at the moment and on the spot , but afterwards and of set purpose, bears a resemblance to the deliberate manslayer. He who does not bottle up his wrath but expends it all at once, on the spot, without premeditation, is like the involuntary homicide; still we cannot say that even he is altogether an involuntary agent, though he is like one. Hence the difficulty of deciding whether homicides of passion should be treated in law as intentional or, in some sense, unintentional. However the best and soundest procedure is to class each sort with that which it resembles, discriminating the one from the other by the presence or absence of premeditation, and legally visiting the slaughter where there is premeditation as well as angry feeling with a severer, that which is committed on the spur of the moment and without purpose aforethought with a milder, sentence. That which is like the graver crime should receive the graver punishment, that which resembles the lighter, a lighter.[54]

2.8.10. No law or ordinance whatever has the right to sovereignty over true knowledge. 'Tis is a sin that understanding should be any creature's subject or servant; its place is to be ruler of all, if only it is indeed, as it ought to be, genuine and free. But, as things are, such insight is nowhere to be met with, except in faint vestiges, ans so we have to choose the second bes, ordinance and law. Now they can consider most cases and provide for them, but not all, and this is why I have said what I have. You and I are about to fix the penalty of fine to be inflicted on him who wounds another or does him a hurt. Now it is, of course, a proper and obvious comment to make at this point, to say, Wounds? Yes, but wounds whom, and where and how and when? The different cases are countless and their circumstances are widely unlike. So it is equally impossible to leave everything to the discretion of the courts and to leave nothing. One issue, indeed, we cannot avoid leaving to their discretion in all cases, that of occurrence or nonoccurrence of the alleged event. In a state where the courts of law are poor-spirited and inarticulate, where their members keep their convictions to themselves and reach their verdict by a secret vote, where, worst of all, they do not even listen to the case in silence, the legislator is compelled to restrict the court's discretion and to do most the work himself by express statute. But in a community where the constitution of the courts is thoroughly sound, it will be entirely right and fitting that they should be allowed a wide discretion in assessing the fines or other penalties of offenders, but an outline of the law with samples of penalties should be set before the judges as a model to keep them from any infringement of the bounds of right.[55]

2.8.11. In our inquiry on how to get wisdom it eludes us altogether as soon as we turn to any of the branches of understanding that make up the so-called arts, forms of understanding, or other such fancied sciences. The production of barley and wheat and the making of food from them will never make a man wholly wise. It is not so much from science as from a native instinct implanted by God that we all seem to have taken the soil in hand. We may say so much of building in its various forms, and the manufacture of all sorts of furniture, smithwork, carpentry, pottery, weaving, and equally of the provision of tools of every sort; all this is serviceable enough, but its is not imputed as virtue. It is true, again, of the chase in all its forms. The art of the prophet or his interpreter, again, fails us, he knows only what his oracle says–whether it is true is more than he can tell. Now since our necessities are provided by art, but by arts none of which can make a man wise, all that is left over is play, imitative play for the most part, but of no serious worth. For imitation is effected by a great variety of instruments, and likewise of attitudes and those none too dignified, of the body itself in declamation and the different forms of music and all the offshoots of the art in drawing with the numerous variegated patterns they produce in fluid or solid mediums, but none of these branches of imitation makes the practitioner in the least wise, no matter how earnestly he labors. When all is done, what is left on our hands proves to be defense, of a host of clients by a host of means. Its most highly considered and most comprenhensive form, the science of war stands highest in repute for its usefulness, but is most dependent on good fortune, and, from the nature of the case, is assigned rather to courage than to wisdom. As for what is known as the art of medicine, it is also a form of defense. But none of their devices can bestow reputation for the truest wisdom; they are at sea on an ocean of fanciful conjecture, without reduction to rule. We may also give the name to defender to sea captains, but none of them know of the fury or kindness of the winds, and that is the knowledge coveted by every navigator. Nor yet can we give the title to those who profess to defend us by their eloquence in the law courts, and devote themselves to a study of human character based on memories and empirical fancies, while they are far astray from true comprehension of genuine rights. We have still left one claimant to the title of wisdom–a curious capacity which would commonly be spoken rather as native endowment than as wisdom–that seen in the man who learns whatever he studies with facility, has a capacious and trustworthy memory, recalls the relevant and appropriate steps in every situation, and does do without delay. All this will be ascribed by some to a native endowment, by others to wisdom, by others to natural sagacity, but no right-judging man will ever consent to call a person wise on the strength of any of these gifts. And yet there must be some knowledge or other, the possession whereof will bestow wisdom which is wisdom. Then, we must begin for preference, if only we can find a single name for it, by stating what wisdom this is which we hold to be wisdom indeed. As a second best course, if the other prove quite impossible, we must say what and how many are the forms of wisdom by gaining which a man will be wise by our account of the matter. The next, we can raise no objection if our legislator goes on to an imaginative presentation of the gods nobler and better thant hose which have been given in the past. He may make the adoration of them, so to say, a noble pasttime, and so pass his own life in worshipping them.[56]

2.8.12.1. The consideration of music in resolving conflicts recalls the late interest for bricolage, play and improvisation, not the least musical improvisation in jazz, or in dance, as a sort of theorizing in IT and design. What this text in its shortness shows is the possibility of a different, deeper theorizing that the one which has been present in IT, in the sense that the emphasis on music appears as an alternative to the emphasis on architecture which has been common in IT, and Plato doe not show in this context of musical "aesthetics" his usual diffidence towards imitative aesthetics. At the same time, however, "improvisation" has not a self-evident legitimate place in this context as is often claimed in the jazz improvisation adduced in IT, while play has its legitimate place, but as in the sense of playing music, not of playing games[57]- Improvisation is indeed outright banned insofar it be equated to "innovation". The text suggests further a necessary differentiation between more superficial "fun" and legitimate aesthetic appreciation as in the differentiation between two different types of love.

2.8.12.2. What appears here is the well-knows priority established by Platon for mathematics, geometry and astronomy, and the religious soul over the body and other empirical knowledge, as well as the diffidence towards aesthetics as represented by the so-called imitative arts. Such a statement will sharpen the possible understanding and evaluation of the Kantian and post-Kantian romantic or postmodern conceptions of aesthetics and their further applications to the relation to science in general, and IT in particular. The diffidence towards ad-hoc empirical knowledge or so-called silent knowledge can still stand today when the ambitions of such forms of knowledge are extended to cover what Plato thought of as wisdom.

2.9.1. There are works of intelligence and things which some into being through necessity, for the creation of this world is the combined work och necessity and mind. Mind, the ruling power, persuaded necessity to bring the greater part of created things to perfection, and thus this universe was created through necessity made subject to reason. But if a person will truly tell of the way in which the work was accomplished, he must include the variable cause as well, and explain its influence[58].

2.9.2. If mind and true opinion are two distinct classes, then I say that there are self-existent ideas unperceived by sense, and apprehended only by the mind; if, however, as some say, true opinion differs in no respect from mind, then everything that we perceive through the body is to be regarded as most real and certain. But we must affirm them to be distinct, for they have a distinct origin and are of a different nature. The one is implanted in us by instruction, the other by persuasion; the one is always accompanied by true reason, the other is without reason. the one cannot be overcome by persuasion, but the other can. And lastly, every man may be said to share in true opinion, but mind is the attribute of the gods and of very few men. Wherefore also we must acknowledge that one kind of being is the form which is always the same, uncreated and indestructible, never receiving anything into itself from without, not itself going out to any other, but invisible and imperceptible by any sense, and of which the contemplation is granted to intelligence only. Ant there is another nature of the same name with it, and like to it, perceived by sense, created, always in motion, becoming in place and again vanishing out of place, which is apprehended by opinion jointly with sense. And there is a third nature, which is space and is eternal, and admits not of destruction and provides a home for all created things, and is apprenhended, when all sense is absent, by a kind of spurious reason[59].

2.9.3.1. Design as works of intelligence in terms of mind and necessity epitomizes the decision-theoretical approach with its distinction between controllable and non-controllable environmental variables. Creative man was created at the image of God. The theological implications have been noted in the context of bases of design theory as a difference between God in Thomas of Aquinas and Plato's Demiurge who is is limited by what he finds by way of formal possibilities and material medium. Cf. what today is called ideal design and the problems of implementation where play, bricolage, improvisation in a sort of evolutionary process have been substituted for prayer and grace within a Christian framework of ethical action. See further the reference to Aubenque {, 1993 #2376} in Ivanov {, 1997 #2408}.

2.9.3.2. The reference to self-existent ideas unperceived by sense, and apprehended only by the mind, gives some philosophical basis for what elsewhere, without such a basis, has been called figures of thought. Jungian inborn archetypes dwell in a an unconscious realm and are seen as original formal structures to be filled in by instruction and experience. Plato offers an alternative conception requiring only instruction. Learning theories espoused in Western educational applications of IT with their emphasis on learning and persuasion in place of teaching and proof, refer often to democratic advantage of discussion and debate which work for persuasion rather than authoritarian instruction.

2.9.3.3. The rest of the details of the argument point to possiblity that the present infatuation with "change" is conditioned by a disregard for the stable realm of (right and good) ideas and the consequent dependence upon what is "always in motion, becoming in place and again vanishing out of place, which is apprenhended by opinion jointly with sense".

2.10.1. Therefore, when the rhetorician is more convincing than the doctor, the ignorant is more convincing among the ignorant than the expert. Is not the position of the rhetorician and of rhetoric is the same with respect to other arts also? It has no need to know the truth about things but merely to discover a technique of persuasion, so as to appear among the ignorant to have more knowledge than the expert? Must the prospective pupil in rhetoric bring with him knowledge of what is right or wrong. And if he is ignorant will his teacher of rhetoric teach him these things, or will he be utterly unable to teach him rhetoric if he does not beforehand know the truth about these matters? Now the rhetorician must necessarily be just, and the man must wish to do just actions, but it has been said that we should not blame our trainers. If a boxer practices his art in a wrongful manner and does injury, and so too if a rhetorician makes wrongful use of his rhetoric, we should not censure or banish his instructor but rather the guilty man who wrongly employs rhetoric. And in our earlier discussion it was stated that rhetoric is concerned with words that deal, not with the odd and even, but with right and wrong. Now, at the time when this was stated, I considered that rhetoric could never be a thing of evil, since its discourse is always concerned with justice. But when a little later it was said that the rhetorician might actually make an evil use of rhetoric, I was surprised, and considered that what was said was inconsistent, and thought that it was of value to be refuted.[60]

2.10.2. Just as wisdom when it governs our psychological impulses turns them to advantage, and folly turns them to harm, so the mind by its rights use and control of the material assets like wealth and health makes them profitable, and by wrong use renders them harmful. And the right user is the mind of the wise man, the wrong user the mind of the foolish.[61]

2.10.3. A thing would give no benefit, if we only had it but did not use it. But that is not enough to make a man happy, to possess and use good things. He must use them aright. It is, indeed, more harmful if one uses anything wrongly and if one leaves it alone–the firs is bad; the second is neither bac nor good. It is knowledge that produces right use of equipment, and it is knowledge that is the guide which directs action. Then knowledge provides not only good fortune, but also good doing. No ben