Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato artwork

Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

59 episodes - English - Latest episode: 13 days ago - ★★★★★ - 5 ratings

Welcome to Plato's Pod, a bi-weekly podcast of group discussions on the dialogues of Plato held through Meetup.com. Anyone interested in participating, whether to learn about Plato or to contribute to the dialogue, is welcome to join with no experience required! The podcast is hosted by amateur philosopher James Myers and inquiries can be e-mailed to [email protected]. Wherever we go in our discussions we gain knowledge from each other’s perspectives, and for the increase in knowledge we invite everyone to add their voice to the dialogue. Plato, without a doubt, would have imagined no better way than in dialogue for knowledge – the account of the reasons why – to find its home.

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Episodes

Plato's Laws - Book I, Part 2: Mastering Pain and Pleasure in a Virtuous Society

March 16, 2024 17:38 - 1 hour - 104 MB

If the constitution for Crete’s new colony, Magnesia, is to succeed in setting the conditions for virtue among its citizens, self control and courage will be required to conquer the pains but equally the pleasures that visit every human life. This is the conclusion of the Athenian, Clinias, and Megillus in the second part of Book I of Plato’s dialogue The Laws, which highlights the benefits of harmony to a society that equips citizens both to govern and to be governed. Members of the Toronto...

Plato's Laws - Book I, Part 1: A Constitution for Peace and Virtue

March 03, 2024 16:09 - 1 hour - 108 MB

Plato’s Pod began discussing Book I of Plato’s longest dialogue, the Laws, which advances the argument for the constitution of Crete’s new colony to cultivate the virtue of its citizens. It’s unlike the war-focussed constitution of Crete itself, represented in the discussion by the character Clinias, and the laws of Sparta whose spokesman is Megillus, but together with the unnamed Athenian they agree that a society of virtuous citizens will be peaceful and enduring. On February 18, 2024, me...

Plato's Laws - Book X, Part 2: Reason as the Cause in the Middle of It All

February 16, 2024 15:31 - 1 hour - 103 MB

Plato's Pod continues its series on Plato's longest work, The Laws, picking up where we left off two weeks ago with the second part of Book X, near the end of the dialogue. In Book X, the three characters - an unnamed Athenian speaking with Clinias (from Crete) and Megillus (from Sparta) - set out the logic for reason as the primary cause of the universe, and reason's central function in the soul's moderation of need and desire. But have the three gone too far in prescribing the death penalt...

Plato's Laws - Book X, Part 1: Universal Patterns

February 02, 2024 03:22 - 2 hours - 113 MB

On January 21, 2024, Plato's Pod began its extended series on Plato's longest and perhaps most enigmatic and impenetrable dialogue, The Laws, which is said to have been his final work. Members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups began by discussing Book X, near the end of the dialogue, which features Plato's cosmology. The immaterial soul, says the unnamed Athenian speaking with a Cretan and Spartan, is the oldest thing in the universe, older than material physica...

Plato's Critias Revisited: The Tale of Atlantis and the Harmonics of Memory

December 18, 2023 21:03 - 1 hour - 104 MB

Plato brought the legend of Atlantis to the world in the Timaeus, and in the Critias provided many details of the fabulously wealthy and technologically advanced society that fell into disharmony and disappeared in a great earthquake 9,000 years earlier. As the character Critias relates the story, over time the Atlanteans gradually forgot their divine origin from the god Poseidon and began to pursue material wealth, losing their harmony and bringing upon themselves the punishment of Zeus. On...

Plato's Timaeus Revisited: Part IV - The Soul's Perceptions in the Universal Middle

December 03, 2023 02:40 - 1 hour - 103 MB

Plato’s Pod concluded its revisiting of Plato’s Timaeus, covering from 53(a) to 72(d) with a focus on sensory perception in relation to triangles and what have come to be known as the five Platonic solids because of this dialogue. It was 2,400 years ago, when Plato wrote Timaeus, that he revealed to the world knowledge of the only five regular solids in the universe. Why did Plato, who was a geometer as well as a philosopher, go to great lengths to make the character Timaeus discuss triangl...

Plato’s Timaeus Revisited, Part III: Perceiving Imitations of Being as they Become

November 17, 2023 22:28 - 1 hour - 110 MB

How does perception of shape relate to our understanding of time, when everything we see, touch, taste, smell, and hear is in a constant state of motion and change? The question occupied members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups on November 5, 2023 in reading the assertions of the astronomer Timaeus on the interplay of proportions and probabilities in a spherical universe with a soul circling around its middle. Beginning at 48(a) in the dialogue, Timaeus introduce...

Timaeus Revisited: Part II - A Universe Centered on the Soul

November 03, 2023 21:45 - 1 hour - 101 MB

Plato’s Pod continues its coverage of Plato’s Timaeus, from 30(d)-47(e) where the astronomer Timaeus explains the construction of the universe centered on the soul. On October 22, 2023, members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups discussed the soul’s vantage in the timeless realm of Being relative to motions in the universe’s physical realm of Becoming, and our capacity for reason to differentiate and integrate information received from the physical senses. Timaeus c...

Plato's Timaeus Revisited: Part II - A Universe Centered on the Soul

November 03, 2023 21:45 - 1 hour - 101 MB

Plato’s Pod continues its coverage of Plato’s Timaeus, from 30(d)-47(e) where the astronomer Timaeus explains the construction of the universe centered on the soul. On October 22, 2023, members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups discussed the soul’s vantage in the timeless realm of Being relative to motions in the universe’s physical realm of Becoming, and our capacity for reason to differentiate and integrate information received from the physical senses. Timaeus ...

Plato's Timaeus Revisited: Part I – Cities in Motion for both Observer and Observed

October 15, 2023 18:04 - 1 hour - 105 MB

Why does Plato’s Timaeus, on the creation of the universe, begin with Socrates disavowing the imagined city of The Republic? As Socrates and the astronomer Timaeus review their discussion of the previous day, which was the basis of Plato's epic on justice and political organization, Socrates declares that he can’t picture the idealized city in motion. It’s a question discussed by members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups on October 8, 2023, when Plato’s Pod revisi...

Timaeus Revisited: Part I – Cities in Motion for both Observer and Observed

October 15, 2023 18:04 - 1 hour - 105 MB

Why does Plato’s Timaeus, on the creation of the universe, begin with Socrates disavowing the imagined city of The Republic? As Socrates and the astronomer Timaeus review their discussion of the previous day, which was the basis of Plato's epic on justice and political organization, Socrates declares that he can’t picture the idealized city in motion. It’s a question discussed by members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups on October 8, 2023, when Plato’s Pod revisit...

What Would Socrates Say About ChatGPT?

September 25, 2023 15:30 - 41 minutes - 37.7 MB

Plato’s Pod introduces its 4th season by demonstrating the relevance of ancient philosophy to modern technology with the question, “What Would Socrates Say About ChatGPT?” We take Socrates to the offices of OpenAI to meet the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, and imagine the questions that Socrates would have after the technology is explained to him. In the course of the imagined meeting, we bring a number of Plato’s dialogues previously featured in the podcast into consideration, including the Cra...

Plato's Crito: The Constitution of Souls

July 18, 2023 01:15 - 2 hours - 110 MB

What is our relationship with the laws of the society of which we are a part, and what should we do when the laws are misapplied by a misguided majority? For Socrates, in Plato’s Crito, the answer was clear: to endure the consequences, since he benefited from Athenian society and its constitution for seventy years. Wrongly convicted, and faced with his execution in two days, Socrates tells his friend Crito that it is not right for an individual to take the laws into his own hands, even if the...

Plato’s Ion: The Stories That Souls Trade

July 04, 2023 01:47 - 1 hour - 102 MB

“We are all Ions,” one participant observed, and maybe that’s truly the case if each one of us is a link in a storytelling chain. In Plato’s dialogue the Ion, Socrates reminds the title character, who is a proponent of the poet Homer, that since Homer represented an idea, Ion is representing Homer’s representation. With each successive representation, some of the original idea is altered to suit the memory and external influences acting on the storyteller. Is each one of us acting as a repre...

Platio's Symposium, Part 3: Knowledge Versus Mastery, and Love's Light in The Cave

June 15, 2023 03:09 - 1 hour - 99 MB

In the opening of the last third of Plato’s Symposium, the very drunken Alcibiades erupts in a comic and dramatic demonstration of his love for Socrates. When members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups met on May 28, 2023, we noted that whereas the previous six speeches were about love in the abstract, Plato chose to end the dialogue with the practical. In our discussion, Alcibiades was compared to the prisoner in the cave of Plato’s Republic, caught in between, an...

Plato's Symposium, Part 2: Love and the Immortal Good

May 31, 2023 01:11 - 1 hour - 103 MB

Speeches on love, first by Aristophanes, then Agathon, followed by Socrates who relates the wisdom of Diotima, lead us to wonder whether love is, as Diotima says, the mortal human's search for the immortality of the universe. On May 14, 2023, members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups gathered to piece together the grains of truth from the first six speakers in the symposium, or drinking party, attended by hungover Athenians. In our discussion, we agreed that love ...

Plato's Symposium, Part 1: Love's Poetry, Bearing Individual and Universal Truths

May 12, 2023 01:51 - 1 hour - 97.4 MB

In our first of three sessions on Plato's Symposium, the dialogue on love that occurs among a group of hungover Athenians, participants from the Toronto, Calgary, and Philosophy Meetup groups pointed to grains of truth in the poetry of love presented by three speakers at the symposium. On April 30, 2023 we met to read parts of the three speeches, each of which examines love from a different perspective, to look for a common thread. Is love a god that rules over us, or is love ours to fashio...

Plato’s Hippias Minor: Truth, Lies, and Feedback Loops

May 05, 2023 00:50 - 1 hour - 84.4 MB

What is the truth? In our previous discussion, we heard the conclusion of Socrates that measurement is the greatest skill that we can exercise. The title character of Plato’s Lesser Hippias, or Hippias Minor, is unable to separate cause and effect in the motions of time, and the dialogue challenges not only Hippias but the reader to measure the difference that separates truth and lie – not just in objective physical outcomes but also in subjective value judgments. It’s a matter of special ...

Plato's Protagoras, Part 3: In Virtue of What Does Good Outweigh Bad?

April 09, 2023 00:15 - 1 hour - 102 MB

In concluding our 3-part series on Plato’s Protagoras, a consensus may have emerged that virtue is not a universal form – but if it has no consistent definition, what is virtue, and can it be taught? Members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups convened on March 26, 2023 to consider the teachability of virtue, which is the subject of Plato’s dialogue. If virtue is really a form of knowledge, as Socrates concludes, then it can be taught, but that would contradict Soc...

Plato's Protagoras, Part 2: Is Virtue One Thing or Many?

March 24, 2023 14:03 - 1 hour - 103 MB

Is there a first principle of virtue? If virtue is knowledge that can be taught, does the teacher need to know the limits of virtue as a single thing - or does virtue consist of a range of attributes, each with different limits that are somehow connected? These and more questions on the nature of virtue were the subject of discussion on March 12, 2023 among members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups. In considering the dialogue between Socrates and Protagoras, the ...

Plato's Protagoras, Part 1: Can Virtue Be Taught?

March 10, 2023 03:45 - 1 hour - 104 MB

Plato’s dialogue Protagoras revolves around the question of whether virtue can be taught. If it can, then how do we define virtue? Is there a universal form for virtue, one thing alone that defines virtue regardless of our cultural, religious, or family circumstances? If virtue is not taught, how would anyone acquire the essential attributes that are needed to govern societies such as ours? Whether the sophist Protagoras has a valid justification for his selling of knowledge or not, Socrates...

Plato's Philebus, Part 3: The Philosopher's Arithmetic

February 23, 2023 15:10 - 1 hour - 103 MB

In our exercise of reason to judge the harmonious mixture of pleasure and knowledge in the good life, Socrates ranks first the skill of measurement. In the conclusion of Plato’s Philebus, we learn that measuring the combination of limits in becoming and the unlimitedness of being requires a special type of ability. On February 12, 2023, members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups met to consider the distinction that Socrates makes between the “Philosopher’s arithm...

Plato’s Philebus, Part 2: Does the Universe Have a Soul and Reason?

February 08, 2023 15:36 - 1 hour - 91.2 MB

Where does the human soul come from, if not the universe of which we are part? The question that Socrates poses relates to his assertion that everything comes to be from a cause, as he and Protarchus search for the causes of the soul’s pleasure in things that in time neither are, nor ever were, nor ever will, be. In the second of three meetings on Plato’s Philebus, members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups met on January 29, 2023 to consider the unlimited nature...

Dialogue on the Philebus, Part 1: The Universe of Memory, Knowledge, and Limits

January 25, 2023 03:53 - 1 hour - 102 MB

What is the good? Why do we each measure the good differently, and what calculation do we apply to know the more from the less? Can we really know the good unless we fall in love with the good? These and other questions echoed many of Plato’s other dialogues throughout the first of three discussions on the Philebus, when members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups met on January 15, 2023. In Plato’s dialogue, Socrates and Protarchus quickly reach a conclusion that t...

Plato's Greater Hippias: The Measure of Intelligence

December 21, 2022 19:39 - 1 hour - 97.7 MB

Time, and our understanding of sequences of cause and effect in the order of time, emerged as themes in our discussion of Plato’s Greater Hippias. Members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups began their December 11, 2022 dialogue by considering the difference between intelligence – that the character Hippias claims to possess – and wisdom, which in Plato’s Cratylus Socrates defined as “knowledge of motion”. Are the limits of motion the general parameters for intel...

Dialogue on the Cratylus, Part 3: Things Good, True, and Beautiful

December 08, 2022 03:40 - 1 hour - 138 MB

We concluded our 3-part series on Plato's Cratylus with another deeply insightful discussion that emerged as we joined thoughts on the nature of things - things being objects of thoughts. We explored the frontiers of thoughts and the motion of their limits, with a fascinating discussion on whether man is the measure of things, the question of what number is, and some thoughts on a logic in the geometry of things, together with many other thought-provoking observations. It seems one conclus...

Dialogue on The Cratylus, Part 2: Being, Becoming, and Limits

November 22, 2022 14:00 - 1 hour - 142 MB

How do we perceive a thing – defined as an “object of thought” – both with limits and without limits? Socrates begins the second part of Plato’s Cratylus by examining our perception of being without limit in the names that we apply to the gods. Then he proceeds to consider differences when limits are applied to things in the continually changing state of becoming in the present. On November 13, 2022, members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups continued their dis...

Dialogue on The Cratylus, Part 1: Distinguishing One Thing From Another

November 07, 2022 15:53 - 1 hour - 129 MB

The focus of Plato's dialogue the Cratylus is the origin and use of names applied to things, and our understanding of their meaning in complex ideas exchanged by language. On October 30, 2022 members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups began by examining the meaning of the word "thing" as an "object of thought", to establish the very broad and crucial scope of Plato's work in the context of our perception. We debated whether words originate in nature or by human c...

Plato's Cratylus and the Forms: Our Perception in Time

October 22, 2022 12:25 - 35 minutes - 49.4 MB

In this introduction to Plato's Cratylus and season 3 of the podcast, James Myers reviews the highlights of the first two seasons and the relevance of Plato's Theory of Forms. What are the Forms? The question plays a central role in the origin and meaning of the words that we apply to things, which is the subject of the Cratylus and a matter of particular importance to today's technological world. As "objects of thought", things are the basis of human perception. With recent powerful adv...

Modern Technology and Ancient Philosophy: Building the Bridge With Science

July 29, 2022 16:00 - 1 hour - 134 MB

James Myers and Lantern Jack, host of the Ancient Greece Declassified podcast, discuss the relevance of ancient philosophy to modern technology. We explore technological mindsets, communication and the meaning crisis, the linearity or circularity of time, and the importance of memory. As humanity's technological power increases, is there a fundamental role for ancient philosophy in answering the "why" questions as we become more knowledgeable about the "how"? Is there a common language that ...

Dialogue on The Parmenides, Session 2: If the One is Not, then Nothing Is

June 26, 2022 00:07 - 1 hour - 134 MB

Season two of group discussions on Plato’s Pod concluded on June 19, 2022, when members of the Toronto Philosophy, Calgary Philosophy, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups met to discuss the second half of Plato’s Parmenides and its conclusion that “if the one is not, nothing is.” In our minds, how do we distinguish one thing from another thing, and is it an absolute, universal truth that no thing in the universe would exist to us if the one is not? For that matter, what, exactly, is “the ...

Dialogue on The Parmenides, Session 1: The One and the Many

June 11, 2022 12:00 - 1 hour - 153 MB

In the first of two sessions on the Parmenides, members of the Toronto Philosophy, Calgary Philosophy, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups met on June 5, 2022 to discuss the first part of Plato’s most enigmatic dialogue. What, exactly, is “the One” as the revered philosopher Parmenides describes universal being, and is it different from “not many” which are the words that Xeno attributes to all of existence. Does it matter, if there is a difference or not? Numerous points of logic emerge a...

Dialogue on The Statesman, Session 3: Harmony in Time

May 28, 2022 12:00 - 1 hour - 142 MB

In the conclusion of Plato’s Statesman, the Visitor from Elea describes the role of time and the ruler who understands the consequences of time’s causes and effects (as both one and many) to maintain the harmony of the social fabric. But should such an ideal leader, whose role is to orchestrate but not participate in the administration of the state, be constrained by laws established in an earlier time? And how should such a ruler, whose mission is to harmonize both courage and temperance ...

Dialogue on The Statesman, Session 2: The Mean and The Extremes

May 14, 2022 12:00 - 1 hour - 257 MB

We often use the term “social fabric” by way of analogy to the complex economic and governing relationships woven into communities of people. In Plato’s Statesman, the Visitor from Elea equates the art of fabric-weaving with ruling, and asserts that the ruler must measure the fabric not to its extremes but to its mean in order to promote harmony in its connections. What skills and knowledge does the leader require to locate the mean, which is like an average or common ground between extremes...

Dialogue on The Statesman, Session 1: Ripple of Hope

April 30, 2022 04:10 - 2 hours - 283 MB

Is the leader born with the skills of statesmanship, or else what is the source of the expertise and theoretical knowledge that the statesman puts into practice in ruling over people? In the opening part of The Statesman, Plato takes us back in time to the beginning of the universe to search for the leader class and asks if there is in fact any natural separation between the ruler and ruled. Members of the Toronto Philosophy and Calgary Philosophy Meetup groups considered the question on Apr...

Dialogue On The Sophist, Session 3: The Forms In A Harmony Of Difference

April 09, 2022 04:10 - 2 hours - 281 MB

Our dialogue on the Sophist concluded on April 3, 2022 when participants from the Toronto Philosophy and Calgary Philosophy Meetup groups considered the changing use of language in the communication of a shared reality, both in relation to Plato’s theory of forms and the assertion of Parmenides that “that which is not”, on its own, is both unthinkable and unspeakable. In the conclusion of The Sophist, the Visitor from Elea asserts that “is not” simply means something “different” from “that w...

Dialogue On The Sophist, Session 2: The Forms Whole And One

March 26, 2022 04:10 - 2 hours - 283 MB

Is there relevance today, 2,400 years after Plato raised it in The Sophist, to the question of what “that which is” is? Participants from the Toronto Philosophy and Calgary Philosophy Meetup groups began with this question when they met on March 20, 2022 to discuss the second part of The Sophist, from 235(e) to 254(b), and pointed to the confusion that can now arise when for example technology is used to create “deep fake” images of events that never occurred. In Plato’s dialogue, the Visito...

Dialogue On The Sophist, Session 1: Continuous Division

March 12, 2022 03:10 - 2 hours - 276 MB

While the word “sophist” is no longer in general use, there are many examples today of sophistry which is the selling of expertise. How does the buyer know the expertise claimed is real, or whether the seller is an expert in name only? On March 6, 2022 members of the Toronto Philosophy and Calgary Philosophy Meetup groups began discussion of the first part of The Sophist (to 235(d)) with some modern examples of sophistry. This led to consideration of Plato’s method of continuous division of ...

Dialogue On Phaedo, Session 3: Form And Cause

February 26, 2022 05:10 - 2 hours - 276 MB

Is the mind the cause of change and of differences in physical outcomes, as Socrates states in the conclusion of the Phaedo, or is it like software responding to the physical hardware of the body? The mind’s role was featured as members of the Toronto Philosophy and Calgary Philosophy Meetup groups met on February 20, 2022 to finish reading Plato’s dialogue that ends with the execution of Socrates. What does the evolving science of quantum mechanics have to say about the role of the mind as ...

Dialogue On Phaedo, Session 2: Infinite Potential

February 12, 2022 05:10 - 1 hour - 261 MB

The nature of wisdom was a focus at the outset of our second session on Plato’s Phaedo, when members of the Toronto Philosophy and Calgary Philosophy Meetup groups met on February 6, 2022, to cover passages 77(d)-98(b). Socrates states the soul experiences wisdom when it is free from the continual change and motion of the body and the physical world to which the body belongs, and in such freedom, the soul is able to investigate the unchanging, ever-existing nature of a thing. When the soul...

Dialogue On Phaedo, Session 1: Logic Of The Equal

January 29, 2022 05:10 - 2 hours - 276 MB

In our first of three episodes on Plato’s Phaedo, on January 23, 2022 members of the Toronto Philosophy and Calgary Philosophy Meetup groups considered the properties of the soul that Socrates presents to his friends hours before his execution. Socrates says the body, in its constant state of change in the present, confuses the soul and so the soul’s path to pure knowledge is to separate itself as much as possible from the body in life. Does the soul interpret the varying inputs of the body’...

Dialogue On Philebus: The One And The Many

January 15, 2022 05:10 - 2 hours - 285 MB

Can an algorithm care about its outcomes, and a computer observe itself? These were among the fascinating questions raised in our dialogue on the first part of The Philebus, when members of the Toronto Philosophy and Calgary Philosophy Meetup groups met on January 9, 2022. We began with the importance of distinguishing the one from the many, or the same and different, which is a key theme at the outset of Plato’s dialogue and the significant problem of categorization in today’s machine learn...

Dialogue on The Republic, Session 6: The Immortal Soul

December 18, 2021 05:00 - 1 hour - 260 MB

What is justice? This is the question that began The Republic, when Socrates and friends set out to find justice in the city in order to locate it in the citizens. In our final session on The Republic, on December 12, 2021, members of the Toronto Philosophy and Calgary Philosophy Meetup groups met to reach some conclusions. How does the soul reconcile its combination of rational limits and unlimited irrationality, to apply reason in the changing state of the present? It seems, to Socrates, t...

Dialogue on The Republic, Session 5: Knowledge of Philosophers

December 14, 2021 16:58 - 1 hour - 271 MB

To today’s reader it may seem unusual that the philosopher’s first order of knowledge is number and calculation, yet that is what Socrates prescribes. On November 28, 2021 participants from the Toronto Philosophy and Calgary Philosophy Meetup groups discussed the reasons why, in our fifth session on Plato’s Republic. We continued the dialogue on the nature of time that began in episode 4, and considered the differences, uncertainties, and probabilities that exist in the changing present – ...

Dialogue on The Republic, Session 4: Philosopher Rulers

November 20, 2021 05:00 - 1 hour - 264 MB

When Socrates declared that cities will have no rest from evils until philosophers rule, was he referring to a class of rulers different from the guardians? Examination of The Republic resumed with the question of a philosopher’s nature when members of the Toronto Philosophy and Calgary Philosophy Meetup groups met on November 14, 2021. Do all societies require a founding myth (or ‘noble lie’) as was provided to the guardians, and how would philosophers rule when they love the truth and ha...

Dialogue on The Republic, Session 3: The Guardians, The Virtues, and The Soul

November 06, 2021 04:10 - 1 hour - 267 MB

Our examination of The Republic continued on October 31, 2021 as members of the Toronto Philosophy and Calgary Philosophy Meetup groups discussed parts of Books III and IV. In the passages from 412(b)-445(e), Socrates, Adeimantus, and Glaucon consider the features of the guardians and auxiliaries who will protect the city from external enemies and internal divisions. Next, they proceed to look for the four virtues first in the city and then in the individual soul. We began with Socrates’ ...

Dialogue on The Republic, Session 2: Social Constitution

October 23, 2021 04:10 - 1 hour - 263 MB

Continuing our discussion on The Republic, on October 17, 2021 participants from the Toronto Philosophy and Calgary Philosophy Meetup groups examined part of Book II in which Glaucon challenges his friends to seek the definition of justice in itself, without reference to outcomes. When Socrates proposes they look for justice first in a city and then in the individual, to observe the ways in which the smaller is similar to the larger, they proceed to create a theoretical society to examine it...

Dialogue on The Republic, Session 1: Allegory of the Cave, Simile of the Sun, Nature of Good, and the Divided Line

October 07, 2021 15:41 - 1 hour - 268 MB

Members of the Toronto Philosophy and Calgary Philosophy Meetup groups convened on September 26, 2021 to launch season two of Plato’s Pod with a discussion on Plato’s Republic. Our focus was on the famous allegory of the cave, and the related simile of the sun, nature of the good, and divided line of reasoning (in passages 502(d)-521(b). Is the prisoner in the cave, unable to see the source of the images projected on the wall in front of him that he mistakes for reality, like us, as Socrate...

Welcome to Plato's Pod! - Season 2 Trailer

August 09, 2021 15:58 - 2 minutes - 6.19 MB

Welcome to Plato’s Pod – a podcast that brings you group discussions on the complete works of Plato, the great philosopher and geometer. I am your host, James Myers. I am an amateur philosopher with a passion for geometry, and it’s a privilege and honour to offer these free discussions for the increase in knowledge and sharing of new ideas and perspectives. Each episode features one of Plato’s dialogues with a few selected passages to begin the discussion, which can go anywhere the group wa...

Dialogue on The Theaetetus, Part 2: Transmission of Knowledge in Two Types of Motion

June 13, 2021 20:02 - 1 hour - 268 MB

Participants from the Toronto and Calgary Philosophy and Online Rebels Meetup groups met on June 13, 2021 to discuss themes in the second part of Theaetetus, Plato's dialogue on knowledge. We began by listening to part of a "Joy of x" podcast interview by mathematician Steven Strogatz of computer scientist Melanie Mitchell, addressing the challenges of generalizing the particulars of knowledge in computer algorithms when faced with an infinity of probabilities in everyday existence. We conne...