Plato's Republic

Latest Posts in Plato's Republic

Plato’s Dilemma: It Haunts Us Still

Peter Corning

September 05, 2019

A dysfunctional government can be a matter of life-and-death, and these days they are all too common. We should follow Plato’s sage advice. Plato’s diagnosis of the many dysfunctional kinds of government, and their root causes, still rings true, and so does his ultimate prescription.

Ayn Rand Versus Plato

Peter Corning

January 30, 2018

Plato’s great dialogue, the Republic, written more than 2000 years ago, remains one of the most influential works about social justice ever written. The twentieth century novelist and social philosopher Ayn Rand, perhaps the most influential conservative/ libertarian voice of the present day, had a radically different vision. So, it might be useful to do a brief comparison between Plato and Ayn Rand.

“Feedback”: It’s the Only Way to “Control the Controllers”

Peter Corning

January 19, 2018

“Feedback” is a hugely important phenomenon. It plays a key role in all goal-oriented, dynamic systems, from living organisms to self-driving cars. Feedback is information that tells a system how it is doing in relation to its goals and guides its behavior over time. (Feedback systems are often referred to as being “cybernetic”, after the Greek word for “helmsman” – kybernetes.) Positive feedback tells the system to continue doing what it is doing, or even to do more of it. And negative feedback tells the system to change its behavior.