Being Together and Insight

By now have a solid image of sunousia in Socratic pedagogy. Remember that this conversation has been going on for hours, and has replaced both the dinner and the spectacle with which Polemarchos and Adeimantos lured Glaucon and Socrates to Cephalos' house. No one has eaten but Socrates, who pronounced his feast of words unsatisfying because undisciplined at the end of Book I. Yet even Thrasymachos remains in the circle, and everyone is paying close attention.

The claim Sayre makes for sunousia is that it embodies the "something more" about learning that is not exhausted by the memorization of information, or even by the process itself of giving and weighing arguments, the practice of which can really only prepare us for insight into the most important things. I believe it was Nate who suggested that this seemed like a mystical or supernatural claim, but perhaps it is something more mundane than that.

Suppose I were to present a simple argument. I could list the premises and conclusion, but (if it's a good argument) the conclusion does not just follow sequentially; it follows as an inference. The inference is a relationship between premises and conclusion such that you see that the latter follows. There is really no way I can discursively show you the inference if you don't literally experience it for yourself, with a kind of insight that transcends the list (though of course the list supports it). (For a hilarious example of refusing to accept an inference despite assenting to the premises, see Lewis Carroll's "What the Tortise Said to Achilles"). http://www.ditext.com/carroll/tortoise.html