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Writer's picturewiller

Protagoras:Man is the measure of all things


His exposure to many different societies, with lots of different customs, laws and religions, no doubt impressed upon him the vast latitude of ideas that the human mind could accept as true, Himself a teacher of Pericles, he showed the great leader the extent to which religious and moral codes were based not upon nature or some god-given truth but on socially constructed conventions. Rhetoric, tha art of persuasive speech, could and should therefore, according to him, be used to influence people's opinions and change them in ways that great leaders like Pericles could see would be best, at least relative to the interests of the society.


他暴露于许多不同的社会,许多不同的风俗、法律和宗教,无疑会给他留下广阔的思想,让人类的心灵能够接受这些想法。他本人就是伯里克利的一位教师,他向这位伟大的领袖表明,宗教和道德准则并非建立在自然或某些上帝赋予的真理的基础上,而是建立在社会建构的习俗的基础上。修辞学是一门具有说服力的演讲艺术,因此,在他看来,修辞学可以而且应该被用来影响人们的思想,并以像伯里克利这样的伟大领袖所认为的最好的方式来改变人们的观点,至少是与社会利益有关的方式来改变人们。

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willer
willer
Dec 20, 2018

Write an essay within 500 words stating the advantages and disadvantages of doing things according to one's perceptions.


写一篇500字以内的文章,说明按照自己的看法做事的优点和缺点。


按自己的感知做事的利弊分析

https://lanfeizi.wixsite.com/english-learning/blog/analysis-of-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-doing-things-according-to-your-own-perception

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willer
willer
Dec 20, 2018

He openly revealed what accounted for the fdifferences. His point wasn't that he was "manipulating" what each person felt, but rather than the words hot, cold, and lukewarm refer to sensations that the mind conjures up among its perceptions in response to some stimulus. That stimulus is neither hot nor cold nor lukewarm.


And insofar as our perceptions consist of mental phenomena, they are not a direct apprehension of objective reality but constructions by the mind relative to the observer. It is to Protagoras's credit that he could make such a sophisticated type of argument using something as simple as three buckets of water.


他公开透露了造成这种差异的原因。他的观点不是他在“操纵”每个人的感受,而是“热”、“冷”和“温”这些词指的是大脑在对某种刺激作出反应时,在其感知中唤起的感觉。这种刺激既不热也不冷也不温。


由于我们的知觉是由心理现象构成的,它们不是对客观现实的直接理解,而是心灵相对于观察者的建构。普罗泰戈拉斯的功劳在于,他能用三桶水这样简单的东西做出如此复杂的论证。

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willer
willer
Dec 20, 2018

He is saying that appearance is reality, at least subjectively for the one who is experiencing those appearances.Knowledge is possible, but its domain is the personal experience of each individual. Knowledge is thus relative to each person. For instance, I could be mistaken about the objects of my own perceptions; it may take some soul-searching for me to correct my false opinions (false relative to my own perceptions) and make them true (again, relative to my own perceptions) . I could believe that I was very happy and content in life without knowing that in reality I was very unhappy and discontented, as some soul-searching or guidance by a wise man might reveal to me.


他说的是表象就是现实,至少对于体验这些表象的人来说是主观的。知识是可能的,但它的领域是每个人的个人经验。因此,知识是与每个人相关的。例如,我可能对自己感知的对象产生误解;我可能需要一些自我反省来纠正我的错误观点(相对于我自己的感知而言是错误的),并使它们成为正确的(同样,相对于我自己的感知而言)。我可以相信我在生活中是非常快乐和满足的,而不知道在现实中我是非常不快乐和不满足的,就像智者的一些自我反省或指导可能会告诉我的那样。


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willer
willer
Dec 20, 2018

In Plato's dialogue Cratylus, Socrates ponders Protagoras's cryptic meaning. The dialogue is named after another of Socrates' enigmatic sophist teachers, Cratylus, who was such a nihilist that not only did he, like Socrates, refuse to write anything down, he refused even to speak. He merely wagged his finger occasionally to acknowledge that it seemed to him that sensations were occurring.


The way things appear to me is the way they are for me; the way things appear to you is the way they are for you. Each of us exists in our own world of appearances.If there are thirty of us in a room, the room each of us sees may to some degree be similar to the room seen…


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willer
willer
Dec 20, 2018

As the oldest and generally regarded as the wisest of the sophists who came to Athens, Protagoras wielded a huge influence like his most famous student Socrates, Protagoras raised doubts in the minds of the youth about the gods, which they had come by tradition to accept, saying,

"About gods...for the factors preventing knowledge are many: the obscurity of the subject, and the shortness of human life."

From Thales to Zeno, one point that had been driven home, time and again, was that the mind did not have direct access to the world but only to its own images of the world. Keenly aware of this, and not yet able to try to find a way of transcending such limitations,…


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