0763 Now, to the text itself.

Modern philosophers love to start with Descartes or Machiavelli.

Old school philosophers love to start with Socrates.

0764 Plato’s stories about Socrates portray one of the cleverest, and oddly Christ-like, pre-Christian Greek philosophers.  At the time, philosophy is in the air.  Sophists, who are trained in rhetoric (so don’t try to debate them), make a lot of money arguing for particular positions in open forums.  In effect, sophists situate the average citizen.  They are like today’s experts.

The sophists are put into perspective by a thought-style that appreciates refined reason.  Yeah, it’s like sugar.  Take a certain plant and cook the living daylights out of it, then remove the solids and place the liquid in a container where the water evaporates, and there it is: refined sugar.  The same process happens with argumentation in ancient Greek forums.  People publicly debate long enough that specialists start to figure out which styles of argument work and which styles don’t.  Then, they retail their discoveries under the label, “education”.

Rhetoric is sweet business.

0765 Pieper claims that Plato reviles the sophists.  But, Plato is not bitter.  Plato figures out that the sophists are mercenaries, rhetoricians for hire, and are notoriously both good looking and eloquent in their argumentation.

Today, many academics regard the sophists as the earliest humanists, educators, teachers and advocates of… well… whatever concern that someone is willing to pay for.

0766 Okay, what about an interscope?

The Greek citizen concerned with what is going on matches the scrappy player level of the post-truth interscope.  The Greek citizen does not see who pays the sophist who argues before him.  Rather, the Greek citizen hears an argument and says what he thinks.

The sophist is concerned about winning the argument.  If the sophist wins, then the assembly will vote to implement a policy that will benefit the person who is paying him.

So, there are the two actors on the content level.

0767 Now, all the classical transcendentals (truth, beauty, goodness, nobility, prudence, temperance, and yes, I am throwing a few virtues into the mix) apply to the average citizen, because the citizen is at the forum to speak his mind.  So, I do not associate the average citizen’s nested form to a post-truth condition.

Not so for the sophist.  The transcendentals apply only insofar as they increase the potential of winning the argument.  So, the sophist’s transcendentals are conditional.  Truth becomes a property of logic.  Beauty describes the cleverness of an argument.  Nobility concerns how handsome the speaker looks.  Prudence describes the way that, once an argument is won, the sophist does not recklessly celebrate victory.  And, temperance connects to sophistication as a quality of all sophists, even the maniacs.

0768 So, even though sophists participate on the content level, where transcendentals are relevant to what people thinkand what people say, they simultaneously situate the content level with the normal context of rhetorical discourse_3b bringing the actuality of sophisticated values_2b (consisting of conditional transcendentals) into relation with the potential of framing propositions in such a way that victory is achieved_1b.

0769 As far as the sophists (and the rich citizens who employ them) are concerned, the following is a sensible construction.

The sophist level virtually situates the content level.

0770 Well, this two-level interscope is sensible enough. The corruption resides off stage, so to speak.  Off stage?  Hmmm.  Am I referring to a perspective level?

Really, what about the rich citizens who make their huge fortunes from… how to say it?… public initiatives that are approved after debate in the forum?  Where do they fit into the so-called sensible construction?  After all, they are the movers and the shakers of the entire scam, aren’t they?

We can only guess.

0771 Pursuit of the gritty details of what would be a perspective level of corruption (which was once the dangerous mission of journalists) may be thwarted… oh, a better word is “diverted”… by the construction of a perspective level that journalists can get paid advertising.

The normal context of refined reason_3c brings the actuality of a public decision_2c into relation with the potential_1c of the sophist’s values_2b, based on conditional transcendentals.  Another word for that potential_1c is “opportunity_1c“.

Here is the resulting three-level interscope, characteristic of social construction.

0772 Where do the terms “sensible” and “social” construction come from?

Consider the series A Course on How To Define the Word “Religion”, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.  The series contains two small works.  A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction.  These works introduce the terminology that I use in this examination.

0773 What does the above interscope suggest?

The modern post-truth and the ancient Greek interscopes are so similar as to suggest that the one of scientism_2c is actually a style of refined reason_3c, rather than a person.

Yet, a person can represent refined reason_3c and serve as the sophist_3b that (according to latest opinion) puts sophistry into perspective_1c.  In Plato’s stories, one of these acclaimed philosophers is Prodicus.  Another is Gorgeous… er, I meant to say… Gorgias.