By JOSE LUIS VENTURA
It is often said that in an informal setting it is easy to tell who is taking the position of the philosopher. The person with a philosophical attitude wonders about the sense in which this or that term is used. The investigation about the meaning with which the terms are used is essential to be able to communicate and try to talk about the same thing. With this we save much of the confusion in dialogue explorations. Actually, conceptual analysis is a fundamental part of philosophical work. On this essential question Francisco Bravo dedicated a book entitled: Tplatonic theory of definition, published in 1985 and republished in 2002 by the Faculty of Humanities and Education of the UCV. It is a work that is the product of an academic stay in Oxford and that he developed in parallel with the translation that he made of JL Ackril’s text on Aristotle. .
The fundamental contribution of this book is to demonstrate how the question of definition is not an exclusively Socratic problem, but rather that Plato deals with it throughout his entire work and under different approaches. In other words, the concern for the definition would suppose different methodological strategies according to the type of problem dealt with. Hence, Bravo thinks and exposes a Theory of definition in the work of the Athenian. It is an evolutionary process that covers, from the initially Socratic questions, with what is related to the castsor rebuttal and epagoge or formulation of a general judgment, until reaching different properly platonic approaches, which go from the synthesis and the Diaresis or meeting and dividing, until arriving at the method of the paradigm. This work by Bravo thoroughly and rigorously examines these issues. I just want to remind you that defining is not simply enclosing the meaning of a term in words, defining involves examining premises and subjecting them to examination.
Those of us who have been students of Bravo and continue with the teaching of ancient philosophy, continue to rely on his texts and deal with the question of definition in Plato. As an example and as a tribute to the master, we could recall the importance of a platonic dialogue such as the Meno. This dialogue examines the concept of earring or virtue. In principle, the methodological priority of the philosophical question about the nature of virtue is established, that is, what is virtueon the sophistical question about how is it acquired. The first refers to you areor what is X. Once said priority of the what about him Whatwe proceed to examine two central hypotheses about the nature of earring. The first one involves identifying earring with episteme or knowledge. To do this, he elaborates the following reasoning: 1) If earring it is episteme, then it must be teachable. 2) And if virtue is teachable, then there must be teachers and disciples of virtue. Once these premises have been established, we pass on to the examination of whether or not there are teachers and disciples of virtue. Through an observational review, it is verified that there are no disciples of virtue, as well as teachers of them. Faced with this denial and by causal reasoning, the initial hypothesis is denied, according to which earring it is episteme. The intuitive use of the logical rule of Modus tollendo tollensIt’s fundamental. Thus, to define is also to refute (casts) as Socrates has said. Putting us in the way of knowing that he is not X and forcing us to keep digging.
The philosophical investigation of the conceptual analysis of Menocontinues with the hypothesis that identifies earring with alethes doxa or true opinion. I will not examine it here, suffice it to say that it proceeds in the same way, looking for counterexamples centered on empirical observation to refute this hypothesis. In any case, the conceptual or definitional analysis carried out by Plato starts from intuitions, supposes a logical process of revision of the premises and is complemented by an observational stage. In other words, conceptual analysis does not occur separately from observation. Even more, he does not keep intuition without further ado, he subjects it to argumentative rigor. In fact, that is what E. Gettier did, with his famous article: Is justified true belief knowledge? Demonstrating the inconsistency of an idea like that of true opiniondeveloped by Plato. Be that as it may, as Knobe and Nichols state in their text on the experimental philosophy, in this dialogue we do not proceed by asking what is your conception of knowledge? or what do the Athenians understand by knowledge? Plato assumes a general and unique nature to each concept and that is what he examines and submits to logical revision.
Beyond the Socratic trap of refutation, the definitions of form Y color elaborated in the Meno they show us that it is possible to define and that these are paradigmatic definitions. But if that is so from the perspective of conceptual analysis, it is important to understand that in Platonic philosophy we find a multiplicity of research methods, as Bravo has masterfully pointed out. In any case, the different platonic methods help us to ask ourselves if conceptual analysis is a method or it is about several methods. With Bravo we know that there are many methods of definition and that this is just one way of doing philosophy. It is necessary to continue investigating.
