Seneca - Moral Letters - 45: On Sophistical Argumentation

This is my own recording of a public domain text. It is not copied and I retain the copyright.
The Moral Letter to Lucilius are a collection of 124 letters which were written by Seneca the Younger at the end of his life, during his retirement, and written after he had worked for the Emperor Nero for fifteen years. (These Moral Letters are the same letters which Tim Ferriss promotes in the Tao of Seneca)
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Translated by Richard Mott Gummere: en.wikisource....
Notes:
“…whatever the quality of my works may be, read them as if I were still seeking, and were not aware of, the truth…I have sold myself to no man; I bear the name of no master. I give much credit to the judgment of great men; but I claim something also for my own.”
“…quibbling about words and in sophistical argumentation; all that sort of thing exercises the wit to no purpose”
“…survey men in general; there is none whose life does not look forward to the morrow…such persons do not live, but are preparing to live. They postpone everything.”
#stoicism #seneca #LettersFromaStoic #moralletterstolucilius

[@VoxStoica]

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[@kurtlangberg6143]

Clever in arguing can a person be, and still be factually incorrect about a subject. We still live in a society where people think that proof of truth lies in clever argument.

[@timeaesnyx]

I have to disagree with Seneca, provided you are not reading/listening to people who are arguing in bad faith, a diversity of sources is good.

[@MrYurtex]

This is especially true if sources are unreliable.

[@pooper2831]

Yurtex seneca didn't know about CNN

[@kurtlangberg6143]

A diversity of sources, I would argue, is not the problem. The problem is whether we are able to filter bad information out with critical thinking, whether we approach all information with closed minded bias, or whether we are so naively open minded as to treat all sources of information we look at as being true.
The last approach will leave a person confused, and is what Seneca was concerned Lucilius would do. However, he mistakenly believed that the answer lay in limiting your information to a few true sources. This approach is the one of bias. Start with what you believe is true, or what your mentor says is true, and automatically consider false all that doesn’t fit within or contradicts this starting point. This is also not how you arrive at real truth but close yourself off to it.
Only by considering the options, but filtering out that which cannot stand up to critical inquiry, do you eliminate what is false and arrive at what is true. Much like what Sherlock Holmes said in “The Sign of the Four”; when you eliminate the impossible, that which remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Similarly, when you eliminate that information which is false whatever remains is most likely, though not guaranteed to be, true.

[@jesuscisneros557]

Fantastic great voice