Models of Moral Concepts and Plato's Republic

Models of Moral Concepts and Plato's Republic H. S. THAYER THE OBJECTOF THIS PAPERis twofold. First, and briefly, I propose to study some of the features of the use of models in moral analysis and argument; I hope to show how central and valuable these features can be for our understanding of moral theories. Second, as part of the latter, I shall try to apply what has been gleaned to a major instance of moral reasoning with models, namely, the first part of Plato's Republic. This is, admittedly, to make use of a model in talking about them. The current interest in the analysis and uses of models in the sciences can illuminate and be illuminated by the role of models in ethical pldlosophy. It is tempting but perhaps erroneous to suppose that the use of models in scientific thought had dimmer origins in the moral and religious traditions of primitive man. Untrue, perhaps, because there is no evidence that "science" in the most general sense of reliable knowledge, is a later evolution in the lore of mankind than religion or art or mere mytholo~zing. Indeed, mere mythologizing probably embraced each of these later separable institutions. But primitive science at its most primitive, for example, that fire bums or that stones are heavy and hard, is surely the stuff of original human intelligence--of techn~--than which there is no other rival claiment to earlier status in human history. The survival of the race resulted from such primeval techn~, called "common sense." This was the agency through which man gained control over the environment, rendering it malleable to his interests, eliminating competitors, and maintaining for his kind a birth rate increasing more rapidly than the death rate. Such being the way mortal species survive. More judiciously then, let us concede that models are ubiquitous, playing important and original roles in varied forms of human thought. Predecessor of the model is the simile; its nearest kin are the metaphor and analogy--each and all of these being vitalto the acquisition and practice of the fundamental human techn& language. Thus the initialall-embracing character of mer~ mythologizing, for, as the etymology reminds us, mythology is speaking, tellingstories,sometimes figurative and sometimes false---butsometimes deliverances of truth. Since itis the use and some of the characteristicsOf models in moral theorizing that concerns us here, we shall firsttake a closer look at the idea of a model [247] 248 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY I: MODELS It will suffice for the purposes of the discussion that follows to keep to a relatively informal and unsophisticated notion of a model? We are not, then, thinking of models as the result of substituting statements for the predicate variables of some axiomatized structure or set of postulates, or of certain well-known techniques of constructing formal and mathematical systems that "satisfy" or are "reducible" to others. Thus if there is a way of interpreting the operations of arithmetic A, in some set theory T, so that all the truths of A are statable in T, then T is a model of A. But more, suppose some statements of A prove recalcitrant to expression in T, or, since our confidence in A is going to bc rather firm, let us suppose we have constructed a formalization of A, call it A', so that as far as we know, every statement in A is expressablc in A" but portions of A' either cannot be accommodated in T or, more dramatically, turn out inconsistent in T. We might have good reason to trust T over A" in consistency, in scope, and in clarity with which it stands as a model of A. We might thus learn by means of T that A" has some rather important deficiencies--if A" is important--which have hitherto escaped notice. Of course, the mere fact that A' fares badly in T, is not enough to reveal explicitly what is wrong in A'. But this is a first step in that discovery and finally perhaps in revision or ultimate rejection of A'. Now in the case imagined, T provides us with a valuable way of understanding and critically assessing A'. To much the same end...