LOGIC
ON VULCANS AND ANDROIDS by Dr. Dan Sheffler
cience fiction has made popular a certain trope concerning us logicians. The common depiction is that logic is somehow cold and calculating, the activity of a merely robotic kind of intelligence. In the original Star Trek, Dr. Spock captures this stereotype with his pointy-eared precision. In The Next Generation, the role is taken over by the literalist android Data. Both series feature ongoing plots that involve these characters grappling with love and emotion, which are viewed as the truly human side of life, in tension with logic. Data even learns to dream. Students sometimes assume that this is the point of logic class: Emotions get you into trouble, so your parents want you to be more like Spock. The unfortunate side effect of the treatment is that you will be less fun at parties. In defense of logicians everywhere, especially those passionate, very-fun-at-parties Platonic logicians, I submit that this stereotype misses a deep truth about the nature of the human soul. In his well-known essay, "Plato's Theory of Desire," Charles Kahn argues that the strict separation between non-rational desires that motivate us and merely logical thoughts that leave us cold can be traced to Enlightenment thinkers such as Hobbes and Hume. By contrast, the classical theory of Plato sees reason itself as a particular kind of love. In the Republic, Socrates famously divides the soul into three parts: (i) the "rational" part, logistikon; (ii) the "irascible" part, thymoeides; and (iii) the "appetitive" part, epithymetikon. When Socrates claims that the
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Dr. Dan Sheffler is a professor of philosophy with Memoria College and has taught philosophy, logic, Latin, and history at the University of Kentucky, Georgetown College, and Asbury College.
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On Vulcans and Androids
first of these parts ought to rule over the other two, students frequently come away with the impression that the ideal soul is of the Spock type. This impression is sometimes reinforced when students read from translations that choose to render logistikon as the "calculating" part—as though Socrates would have us become a kind of human adding machine. As Kahn points out, however, this typical summary of the Republic neglects to mention that the first part of the soul is also frequently called by other names. Socrates first introduces it under the name philomathes, "that which loves to learn," and he also calls it philosophon, "the lover of wisdom." By contrast, the other parts of the soul are distinguished as their own types of love. The irascible part loves winning and honor (philonikon and philotimon), while the appetitive part loves acquisition and pleasure (philokchrematon). We should not, therefore, understand the conflict between the three parts of the soul as a conflict between cold, calculating reason on the one hand and the warm, alluring impulses arising from the irascible and appetitive parts on the other. Instead, the conflict is a dynamic struggle inside our soul between three distinct kinds of burning desire. According to Socrates, the kind of person we end up being hangs on the answer to the question, "Will the love for truth and wisdom win out over the love for the other two parts?" All these loves are full of force and emotion, and the battle is won by strength and ardor, not by calculating tricks of the android mind. We need a turning of the soul, a kind of repentance, from one set of loves toward the higher love of wisdom. The Platonic model does not, therefore, present us with an ideal of detachment, but rather an ideal of conversion.
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