Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and welcome to a special CUBE conversation. I'm coming to remote from our Boston area studio in Marlboro, Massachusetts, and really happy to welcome to the program, actually from down the road from where I'm sitting, but testing our coast to coast, live to air remote capabilities. Of course, everybody is working from home or things like that. Rob Streche, CUBE alumni and friend of the program. Rob, it's great to see you. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Really glad to help you guys out and get on here and talk about what's going on, because this remote thing is definitely gonna be the wave for the next month or two, at least. Yeah, so Rob, you spend a lot of your time talking to companies about strategic planning and first thing for you is in the industry, sometimes we talk about these Black Swan events, the things that we had our plans in place, a lot of companies either had their 2020 sales kickoffs or we're getting ready for them, and all of a sudden, basically, everything that you were planning for, let's stop and reevaluate, because coronavirus stuff is hitting, economic conditions globally are being impacted. What's the first thing that you tell people when you're advising, when something completely unexpected and far reaching that we might not have full information on? Yeah, I think it's a great way to target and say, okay, where can I trim the fat? But at the same time, where do I not wanna over rotate or panic? And I think that's a big piece of it, is that you don't want to go and panic too much and say, hey, we have to throw everything out. I think there's an opportunity and there's definitely opportunities, but if you're looking at the different verticals that are being hit by this, if you look at things like healthcare, we have hymns that's supposed to be going on this week that was canceled, and all of the medical professionals and IT professionals at those hospitals are pretty much on lockdown. So if you're selling into that vertical, maybe then it is time to panic a little bit or find another vertical or understand how you go cross vertical in a way. So you have to evaluate what's going on, but don't panic, don't may overreact to these types of events. Yeah, so Rob, you've worked with a lot of companies that provide disaster recovery in the IT space. It's, how do I deal with a failure? One of the things that I know a lot of companies look at is when things go wrong, when there is some natural disaster or like what we're having today is, do I jump in and say, hey, we can offer things? You see a lot of the companies that are providing remote services, take your Google, Microsoft, Zooms are, hey, here's a free tier that you're able to use, but how much do you jump on this as a marketer or how much do you just say, hey, we're here for you if there's anything we can do to help there, but you don't want to be seen as ambulance chasing or trying to profit off of some widespread disasters. Yeah, I think that's exactly it. The ambulance chasing part, you have to use a little common sense when you're going into these. And I think that goes a long way. You don't want to be seen as ambulance chasing. And for instance, some of the small to medium sized companies I've been watching in the tech and talking to some of their teams, they're putting out information saying, hey, we're still up. If they're shipping hardware, hey, we're still within our lead times, we built out enough capacity prior to this and we'll be able to ship within 14 days of an order. So reassuring their customers that they can get the kit out to them. At the same time, they're saying, hey, here's what we're seeing from our customers that you're having trouble even once we do ship it, you don't have somebody on site to take it in so we can offer services to help you with that. So helping them do staff augmentation or do things in a different manner. I see that as not the ambulance chasing aspect of it. I think if you're marketing into it, it's a little tough when you say, hey, well, I'm the best remote desktop thing going and everybody can work from home. But, and trying to say, and by the way, you have to buy into this particular tier to get your entire company going. I think, again, you can look at how do you share maybe the pain or share a loss leader going in and look to build that. If you have confidence in your product, you'll get them on board and they'll continue to do this and they'll continue to move forward with it. Because like you said, I don't think anybody was necessarily prepared for quarantine of an entire country like Italy or something of that nature. Yeah, the remote work is definitely a very hot topic that doesn't necessarily mean that the day is the day to start the 5,000 person virtual desktop project. Because we know how long these things have a lead time. Rob, I want to ask you actually, when you talk to customers, you spend a lot of time in your career talking to customers. One of the buzzwords we've had in the industry is digital transformation. One of the big outcomes of digital transformation is to be able to react and move fast and be more agile. So just want to get your take on what you're hearing from customers, where of course it's a spectrum, but what they're doing and is this something that they should put on hold? Is it something that is going to help them prepare for things that they weren't necessarily thinking about? I think it's the latter, right? I think you're really, I would push in on digital transformation at this point in time because you're not going to know what's going to break until you get into these situations. And I would say that, we've seen a couple in the financial industry as we've gone through the volatility in the markets where they pushed in on digital transformation or there's some startups that have really pushed in on doing things in a new way from the traditional financial services companies. And they found out, hey, stuff is breaking. And they're going to pay some fines to SEC and some of the traditional ones that have their digital transformation projects, they bumped into the same exact thing where they were having outages. So it's not just the new startups, it's some of the older, more established players that are finding out that, hey, you don't know until you get into that war, you don't know until you engage that enemy per se as that black swan event, what's going to break? So push in, I would almost double down on it and say, listen, this is going to be the way that helps us smooth these out. As we can distribute things out, we don't have necessarily one data center where everybody has to go to. And now that entire county is locked down where there's the National Guard surrounding it and you can't get to it. Yeah, Rob, I'm wondering if you have any commentary on just the general dispersion of the workforce. You've worked for a variety of sizes of company, you've been a remote worker, you've worked for companies that are, you were far separated from the headquarters. Any kind of tips or recommendations from your background that you'd have for people in today? Yeah, I think, again, for the people who haven't done it before, it is an adjustment. You actually find that you work more hours being at home than you would in a natural office. I think also, how do you keep your sanity when you're really distant from people and how do you keep that connection and that culture? I definitely think that these solutions like Teams and Slack and what have you and Zoom and WebEx have come a long way to help connect people. And I think it's really leveraging those tools around you to have that connection. And I think that we've seen some of the announcements of people about putting out guidelines of, hey, here's how we have a remote force. And I've seen actually more. And it's been the trend out on the West Coast for a little while where their engineering teams, the dev teams are very diverse and very disparate because you can't find everybody in the Valley anymore. So how maybe some of the people are in Washington, maybe they're in Oregon, California, you have some on the East Coast or even over in the Ukraine, for instance, trying to create events to bring everybody together, doing more outreach as an executive to the entire company becomes critical because sharing of that information is what people want to understand. They want to feel connected back into what's going on and what they perceive as corporate. Yeah, so some great commentary there, Rob. Yeah, absolutely. We've seen plenty of the software companies out there that have not only tooling, but best practice on how to do this as well as through social media, I've seen a lot of blog posts, things on Twitter and the like. Yeah, and some things that you don't think about as much. I'm not a regular remote worker, but right, make sure you take time to eat. Make sure you've blocked out the hours if you're gonna have meals with family. And something I always noticed is, oh my gosh, I might spend an entire day like this on conference calls are sitting and working.  Yeah, definitely need those mental breaks. Yeah, all right, Rob, I want to give you the final word. What's, let's kind of put beyond some of the things in our, that are right in front of us right now, give you kind of an open, a technology, a space. What's interesting you out in the market here in the early parts of 2020? Yeah, I think there's a lot of very interesting things going on with AI. And I think people have finally starting to get past the hype of AI this, AI that and trying to look at what the use cases are behind AI and how that's really gonna help reinvent some of the technology that we have used. I kind of always say that everything old is new again. But I think there's gonna be some great new tech coming out that will help enable these types of digital transformations. And I see a lot of new companies approaching AI and not just saying, hey, I'm an AI company, but here's the use case that I'm really fulfilling. And I think that's showing some of the maturity. I think that's gonna help as this artificial intelligence or machine learning really starts to push in and help people become more operationally efficient. So maybe then we can start to realize some more of cloud and more of this, hey, I had this data center, now I am moving everything to the cloud versus, well, I'm gonna move it, but I'm gonna lift and shift and I still have the operational legacy. Yeah, absolutely. If I can do a little compare contrast, back in the big data world, everybody used to always complain that we had the best minds in our business working on how we could optimize people, clicking on an ad. And when I look at AI, there's a lot of tech for good out there. There's amazing outcomes. There's things that it can really be transformational. All right, Rob, I know you've been doing a little bit more writing. You're posting on LinkedIn, some of your strategy. If people wanna learn more and keep an eye on what you're doing, what would you recommend? Yeah, I would say go onto my Twitter feed, real stretch and or go to my LinkedIn. Feel free to connect with me there. It's Rob's Stretch A. You can find me there pretty easily. There's not many stretch A's in the world. So feel free to connect with me and view my articles there. And really, this has been a lot of fun. All right, well, always good to get two boys from Parcipiny, New Jersey to get together, talk about technology and share it with their community. Rob, great to catch up with you. Thanks, Stu, take care. All right, I'm Stu Miniman, everybody. And thank you so much for watching theCUBE.


Welcome viewers, so today we will see the contributions of Sophists in Greek philosophy. In the previous lecture, we have highlighted the contributions of the early Greek thinkers who are called the pre-Sochatic thinkers and that constituted the first phase of Greek philosophy. And in this lecture, we will focus on the second phase, which is rather very important as far as the history of western philosophy is concerned. So, we will see the contributions of Sophist in the history of human thinking, particularly in the history of western philosophy. So, these are the topics which we are going to cover in this lecture, the impact of philosophical thinking in the Greek world, which is ultimately led to the emergence of Sophism. Then we will see the Sophist, what constitute or rather most important characteristic feature of Sophist. Then the emergence of Sophism, the reasons behind the emergence of Sophism, particularly political and cultural factors that propelled the emergence. Then we will see some of the major contributions or some of the major views of the Sophist, which can be summarized with an explanation of what skepticism was and what relativism was for the Sophist. And then we will have started, we will focus on the contributions, the individual contributions of two of the important Sophists, Gorgias and Protagoras. And then we will summing up, we will see the impact of Sophism in European thought, particularly on morality and on the nature of philosophical reflections and then the contributions of Sophist. So, these are the topics which we are going to discuss, also we will have a note on the drawbacks of Sophism, some of the major drawbacks of Sophism as a movement. So, let us begin our examination of the contributions of philosophical thinking of Sophist. So, we will have to begin with an analysis of the impact of philosophical thinking, which is emerged in the Greek world with Thales, we have already examined this in the previous lecture. So, this is the philosophical approach to reality, questions the accepted customs and conventions, naturally because philosophy is a critical inquiry. So, it never except things as it comes as it is set, so it questions, it inquires, what is the reason behind things, so this is both a philosophical inquiry as well as a scientific inquiry. Very critical, not to accept anything as it is given, but to examine whether it is true or not, whether it is valid or not, so one has to be critical about customs, about views, about perspectives and about standpoints and to think logically. This is another thing which distinguished, we have already seen that distinguished philosophical inquiry from other inquiries, that philosophical inquiry is logical, it follows reason and old conceptions of the world and life were transformed profoundly by this philosophers, the pre-socrotic thinkers, they have questioned, they have introduced new problems for the human intellect to ponder upon. So, the old conceptions were transformed profoundly, which is predominantly the old conceptions were predominantly mythological religious in nature. So, these are all transformed and placed in new perspective of reason and science and mysticism give way to science and philosophy, so we have mapped this emergence of science and philosophy in the previous lecture. Now, the spirit of free inquiry permitted other fields as well, so this is one important thing, because the emergence of philosophy has actually given birth to an emergence of a new culture in the Greek world, so every field of human activity were affected, for example, poetry, history, the understanding of history, because normally you know this pre-modern civilizations, they their understanding of history is based on oral traditions, whatever is handed down from generation to generation, so based on certain beliefs and conventions and customs. But with this emergence of scientific philosophical spirit, there is a different approach altogether to all intellectual disciplines human kind is concerned with, so the more important thing is we have to see the emergence of medicine as a science in the Greek world, rather than the healing practices of ancient physicians, which are not based on any codified rational knowledge. Human as a science, as a universal science based on certain principles and also based on observation of physicians, individual physicians emerge during this period, so let us see the some very briefly the contribution see, here we can see the free inquiry, which is being prompted, which is being supported and encouraged by philosophical thinking and in the world of poetry, we will see great poets like Sophocles, Euripides, Sophocles the great writer of Edipus, the great the mathematician and such a kind of changes the Greek civilization is under gone in creative domains and when in history, we have people like Herodotus and Thucydides and medicine, this is what I said more importantly in the field of medicine, we have Hippocrates, Hippocrates is considered as a father of medical sciences, even now some of his views and observations are relevant and considered as important in by modern scientist, so this is the context in which Sophocles emerged in Greek history. Now, when you talk about the Sophocles, who are they? Sophocles are professional educators, so till then there were no such conception of professional education in the sense that there are a group of people who are equipped with certain skills and certain professional knowledge, based on which they can advice people in the society and train people, impart skills to the people who require them, so and also in turn they accept money, so that is their livelihood. So, it is all done for money based on a fee, so Sophocles were largely professional educators, they were walking teachers, they never settled down in a particular place, they will go around who taught young people the art of rhetoric. So, rhetoric becomes important at this phase of Greek history and rhetoric is a science particularly rhetoric as a science has been practiced by these people Sophocles, they perfected it and trained young people in the fine mechanisms of rhetoric, Sophocles tree means practical wisdom, so when you examine the etymology of the term Sophocles, it means practical wisdom, they do not claim that they have a special knowledge about the metaphysical realities of this universe, like the pre-socatic thinkers we have seen in the previous lecture, we are talking about that what is that fundamental substance out of which everything is come out, such metaphysical questions were not entertained by the Sophocles, they rather focused on practical wisdom, practical wisdom which is needed for living in this society or negotiating with people in the society and for winning for actually gaining a success in this social life, how to succeed in life, so that is a very practical question which Sophocles were concerned about in a society where you find yourself how to succeed, how to have a good career that is the question, how to win any argument, now they come to the point, how to win any argument regardless of the side they took, this is because no truth is universally valid, so here you can see their so called quote and quote metaphysical position as well which says that no truth is universally valid which is relativism, so the practical, most practical question is how to win any arguments regardless of the side they took and what they said is that do not constitute a movement of tradition of thought, see this is something which we have to understand from the very outset, Sophocles is not a school of thought like rationalism or empiricism or schools of thought, they do not constitute a movement even like a group of people come together and pursue certain common objectives and do certain things on the base of certain common understanding, nothing like that for Sophocles it was not like that, it was not a tradition of thought then there is no common metaphysical doctrine though there are several common features, so you in a school of thought you will find some very strong basis whether it is metaphysical or epistemological position which you would not find in the case of Sophocles, again when we talk about some there are several Sophocles, their names are mentioned in literature, in philosophy, in philosophical literature particularly in the works of Aristotle, Plato and many others, but we would be considering only two of them, but when you the first one is Gorgias and the second one is Protagoras and there is also one important Sophist who name is being mentioned very frequently it is isocatrice, but of course we will not be dealing with his philosophy in this lecture. So, when we talk about these two Sophist whom I mentioned Gorgias what is associated famously associated with this thinker is this thesis of nihilism nothing exist it is called nihilistic skepticism and when it comes to Protagoras the most important and the most famous and the most popular saying which is become the hallmark of Sophism is associated with Protagoras which says that man is a measure of all things. So, again now when we talk about the emergence of Sophism let us have a very brief understanding about this aspect as well what let what are the conditions which ultimately led to the emergence of Sophism. So, we will basically concentrate on two aspects one is the political one the second one is the cultural one and when we deal with the political one we can see that it is emerged as the aftermath of Athens and other city states in Greek adopting democracy. So, politically democracy is is what made Sophist relevant and effective public speaking as a result of as a consequence of democracy effective public speaking can fetch a good career in democratic politics. So, public speaking becomes very important in democracy because what is important in democracy is to convince others through arguments that you have a point this is what is happening in even in today's democratic world that politicians are they they they come with the help of media and various other platforms they come to the people and there is a public debate about issues and to what extent politicians are capable of convincing people that they are good it is based on that their success depends. So, in democracy we can imagine what would have been the case in the ancient Greece with the in the city states which are very small states and the population is not very large where people even know each other in such a case they have given a lot of importance to this skills the speaking skills and Sophist were teachers who taught rhetoric and other forms of art that help excel political life. So, they were teaching excellence in one sense we can say that certain skills that enable people to come to the public platform and convince their views to the public and engage in an argument with others with their opponents with their counterparts and the and again you know in the political side the Philippine War also has prompted or propelled the growth of Sophism and contact with other cultures gave them the exposure to doubt the legitimacy of their own beliefs and convictions that is another thing because one particular idea of the Sophist were relativism they do not believe in one single theory one single idea one single position. So, they were relativist that is because of their exposure with other civilizations other cultures when you are exposed to other people you are exposed to different ways of seeing the world different practices and different customs this rather prompt you to accept that or rather to accept your contingency that what whatever you believe your customs and conventions are not the truth there could be other ways of seeing reality and understanding the world and again democratic institutions encouraged independent thought and action that is one hallmark of democracy independent action thought. So, where people there is a desire to power and power is always associated with wealth fame efficiency and success. So, all these things are required see the important thing to be noted here is that success will never come as a matter of hereditary it is not given to you it is something which is achieved by your skills and for sharpening your skills your abilities you need to be trained in a particular way and Sophist were precisely offering that training to the public. Thought of individualism as a result of the critical attitude and free thinking. So, this is another impact of this critical thinking that individualism grows people start differentiating or rather distancing themselves from commonly held beliefs and customs. So, there is a common pull of beliefs people each individual who is capable of independent thought starts questioning it and distancing himself or herself from those accepted views. Now, when we see the cultural aspect the growth of philosophical and scientific thinking prompted them to think of human progress in rational terms human progress is not something which is dictated by the gods not something which is dictated by the divine powers, but something which man can achieve in this world. So, philosophical thinking the growth of philosophical thinking rational thinking has helped them to conceive human progress from that perspective from a very optimistic humanistic perspective man can fashion his destiny that is some strongest confident philosophical view point standpoint which these thinkers were adopting. Education and training play important roles as I already mentioned it is not something which is given to you as a matter of being born in a particular family, but something which you have to achieve through education and training and as a result two important characteristic features can be identified of Sophism. The first one is skepticism never accept anything in its phase value question everything doubt everything there are no fundamental positions possible. So, everything can be doubted and the second one is relativism that is again a kind of approach to life and reality where you see that there is no ultimate fundamental perspective from where reality can be grasped in an absolute sense everything is relative to perspectives doubting the possibility of true knowledge that is one of the consequences of the skepticism because true knowledge depends on something which is which is fixed something which is a sense we can call, but here these people oppose all possibilities of such an essentialistic foundationalistic philosophy. So, doubting the possibility of true knowledge again questions the authority of moral low that is another one moral low moral low is again there is a conception of moral low which is which underlies the great world that moral low is something like the natural low which cannot be violated which is so naturally there it is natural quote unquote which cannot be violated should not be violated, but here these people with their skepticism with their relativism questions the very sanctity of such a moral low which is universal and objective refutation of objectivity and all fields particularly in the field of knowledge and in the field of morals. So, attacked religious and other customary values so their conceptions are very peculiar in that way and again moral values have not emanated from God they are human creations. So, this is another very important starting point I would call it starting point because you know these people have already set aside everything that has been accepted by tradition and they want a new beginning. So, moral values one of the important conceptions about moral values is that they are given by Gods they are divine crevations you are not supposed to violate it because God has already instituted at it, but these people say that it is not the creation of God they are created by man human beings have created it. Now, let us examine two important philosophers of the sophist and I will first go to Gorgias and here I will just take an example of one of the arguments he has initiated which is depicted by Plato, but before that the major theory which is proponent by Gorgias is nothing exist. So, as I have already mentioned earlier he is philosophical position can be termed as nihilistic skepticism nothing exist if and this is argument this is actually given by Plato. If something does exist we cannot know it even if we can know it we can not communicate it about the Gods I am not able to know whether they exist or do not exist nor what they are like in form for the factors preventing knowledge are many. So, this is a view which is attributed to protocol as well some scholars, but largely you know when you follow the logic which is developed by Gorgias in his nihilistic skepticism he begins with the thesis that nothing exist if anything exist it must be either being or not being or both being and not being that is another step. So, we are advancing the argument is being advanced if anything exist it must be either being or not being or both being and not being it cannot be not being for not being does not exist, but if that is a case if it did it would be at the same time being and not being which is impossible which is a contradiction. So, one possibility is ruled out it cannot be being for being does not exist if being exist it must be either everlasting or created or both. So, now another argument if at all being exist it must be either everlasting or created if it is created it is not everlasting because it has a beginning now it cannot be everlasting because if it were it would have no beginning and therefore would be boundless. Now, if it is boundless then it is no position would be nowhere for if it had position it would be contained in something. So, this is another one if it is boundless then it has no position because boundless cannot be contained anywhere for if it has a position it would be contained in something and. So, it would no longer be boundless if it is contained in something a less then you cannot call that object boundless because there is something in which it is contained which is greater than this for that which contains is greater than that which is contained and nothing is greater than boundless. So, you come across a contradiction here this is a way these people develop their arguments they use language a lot and show that you contradict and this contradiction will result in a kind of truth the clash of contradicting ideas will result in the emergence of truth this is what these people believed it cannot be contained by itself for then the thing containing and the thing contained would be the same and being would become two things both position and body which is absurd again that possibility is also ruled out if not contained then it would not have any position at all then it does not exist. So, all the possibilities are ruled out hence if being is everlasting it is boundless if boundless it has no position which means that it is nowhere if without position it does not exist. So, here what it does is this is what I have already mentioned use two arguments which may oppose each other. So, you give two possibilities and two arguments which may apparently contradict each other allow them to clash now you make them clash and this may result in the emergence of truth. So, this is a method and these people adopt and in the light of this when we examine Gorgias philosophical position we can see that is a master rhetoric is a master of rhetoric and a master rhetoric refutation of the theory of being proposed by Parmenides. So, this is what we can understand because one of the greatest pre-socceric thinkers Parmenides which we have already examined in the previous lecture had shown that he has here a conception of reality which is immovable which is a boundless being he calls it being boundless being which is immovable which is imperishable which is eternal such a conception is being refuted by the sophist by Gorgias with this nihilistic skepticism. So, it is a refutation of the theory of being proposed by Parmenides and is a major preponder of the idea of paradoxical thought and paradoxical expression. So, you can see they bring about or rather they put forward certain paradoxes that is what I said they allow contradictions to clash oppositions to clash and paradoxical expressions also. So, we can see that in this sense Gorgias is not primarily a philosopher of excellence a teacher of excellence or excellence or virtue like many other sophist as I already mentioned many of these sophist were walking teachers they trained people in excellence how to be excellent how to how to succeed in life. So, they were teachers of excellence and virtue, but Gorgias in that pure sense of the term is not a teacher of excellence or virtue he believed that there is no absolute notion of excellence or virtue that is another important thing because there is no such absolutism present in Gorgias philosophical position he is a thorough going relativist or nihilist they are relative to the situation and context. So, excellence in one context need not be an excellence in other context. So, that makes the space for relativism and again he refutes a representationalist conception of language that is another very important contribution of the sophist by a large of the sophist and particularly Gorgias from the perspective of contemporary philosophy why I mentioned contemporary philosophy because now we talk a lot about postmodernism and we can see that postmodernism as a woman or as a philosophical position refutes some of the fundamental assumptions of modernity and the most important one is the belief in a kind of transcendental reason which people like Emmanuel Kant propagate the kind of a rationality the rational principle transcendental universal objective reason. So, the postmodernists refute that without really subscribing to a relativistic position because what most of the postmodernists were trying to do is to overcome the dichotomy between rational and irrational. So, there is no question of relativism and this is generally the trend generally the spirit of contemporary philosophy I am not saying that all contemporary philosophers are relativist or all contemporary philosophers are postmodernist no that is not the case there are many others like people like Habermas who are not who are who oppose the postmodernism, but all of them except that language plays a very important role in constituting reality it is not that language is just a representation of reality that is there outside world. So, the words which you use are not just names of objects in the world this is what representationalism is representationalists believe that words are mere science or symbols of objects in the world. So, these people we can find a refutation of such a conception of language present in in Gorgia's philosophical position as well where language can do more than merely representing reality actually language can create a reality this is what they see. And language has seductive powers this is something which or many of the sophists were interested to explore language has certain powers they can seduce people words may have incandatory and narcotic effects on an audience. So, this is very beautifully depicted by Shakespeare in his Julius Caesar where after the death of Caesar, Mark Kennedy comes and mesmerizes people his audience and with a rhetoric speech he delivers. So, we can see language has seductive powers the idea comes from the sophist a skilled rhetorician can prove any proposition. So, this is interesting you can prove any argument you can you can put forward prove for any argument we may say something and mean something else this is all possible in language language has a force to lead I mean if at all there is something called truth it is language which takes us to that truth language which takes us to reality. And when we talk about the Gorgian impact from this perspective the youth were attracted to his position naturally somebody who comes and denies somebody who propagates nihilistic skepticism at the position will be definitely attractive to the youngsters particularly because it is at that age you you sort of develop opposition to tradition conventions and customs. There is no truth out there we can make it this is another important sophistic position there is no truth out there we make it and we can get training for this. So, you can actually sharpen your skills your abilities with the help of certain trainings and imparting certain skills and success is not something that comes as an hereditary right it is achieved through skills. So, this is a very optimistic belief which youngsters would have and naturally Gorgias and other sophists attracted them, but now there are certain concerns which need to be raised in this context the first one is does this amount to corrupting the youth because you know you deny the validity of any position. So, does it amount to a kind of corrupting the youth does this nihilism invalidates all position all truth ultimately leading to complete nihilism complete chaos. So, these are some of the concerns no position is more correct for these people and these are some of the important aspects about Gorgias philosophy. Now, we come to the second one second philosopher whom I have mentioned protagoras with whom the most important expression associated with the sophistic movement is associated what is it man is the measure of all things. So, there are two aspects to this proposition first one is it asserts relativism the second one is it propagates humanism because it talks about man.  So, these two aspects need to be understood before we proceed further Gorgias was not a teacher of virtue as I already mentioned, but protagoras was and he advocated the idea of it is a greek word soil logai or different words there are two contradictory sides of every issue. So, highlighting the two sides of every issue. So, you begin with both the sides and train students to see both the sides and argue accordingly. So, what basically protagoras says is that there is no one issue which is correct than the other one you can for on any issue or any problem on any given situation you can find two opposing contradicting viewpoints and you cannot say that one of these viewpoints is more correct than the other and protagoras was training his students to argue for each of this positions each of this viewpoints one can through the employment of such techniques make the weaker course appear stronger. So, you can even prove that at 12 o clock in the noon in a market place a philosopher goes and announces that it is midnight now there is no light it is darkness and it is midnight now it is obviously against what you perceive, but then through argumentation through such large rhetoric you can ultimately prove that it is midnight. So, this is the way these people have taken their philosophy to understand things from a light of mean, but of course there are serious implications to this such a conception. Now, when you say man is a measure of all things you are focusing on man as I already mentioned the focus is not on human communities or humanity as such, but on the individual man and it is not on reason which is which is the universal element that is presented all men. So, when we talk about reason we are talking about something which is universally present in all human beings across cultures and civilizations, but here with a focus on individuality the rational element is bracketed it is kept aside and you isolate the individual the individual the concrete individual with this concrete historical environment becomes at the center of philosophical enquiry. Focus on the individual knowledge depends on particular knower, so that is what knowledge is associated not with reason which is universal or with humanity, but with the particular knower there is no objective truth what is true to me is true to me and what is true to you is true to you. So, there is no such universal objective platform based on which you can arrive at a transcendental conception of truth individual is a law unto himself on matters of knowledge. So, everything is dictated decided by the individual there are no universal standards now based on this let us have an analysis of the impact of sophism in human intellectual history individualism and relativism as I have already mentioned and no objective truth and objective knowledge only subjective opinions each individual is a measure of his truth. So, there is no possibility for truth and knowledge in the traditional sense of the term there are only opinions of individuals again no compulsion to conform to the universe that gives you immense freedom because there is no compulsion at all that your views should conform to something which is there something which is universal everything is tentative everything is personal all positions are equally true. So, this is what it looks very attractive that every position is true every man is correct every viewpoint is equally true and it refuted the rational and foundationalistic tradition of Greek thought you can see that the pre-socatic thinkers whom we have examined in the previous lecture they were all sort of subscribe to a conception of rational knowledge a kind of foundationalistic perspective that it is possible that or rather there is a reality which is absolute and it is possible for man to understand this reality with the employment of reason. So, these are some of the ideas which are present in the Greek civilization and these were defeated refuted by the sophist. Now, when we see this foundationalism of the Greek thinkers what are they the world as rationally ordered by laws that could be discovered by reason and observation there is a word which is rationally ordered which can be understood by human mind with the employment of observation and reason scientific philosophical rational approach to understand the world the possibility that possibility is refuted the laws of that cosmos can be discovered by the application of individual reason. So, human mind which possesses reason as the ability to understand truth see the optimism the tradition of argumentation a cost to discover truth. So, these people believed in a tradition of argumentation. So, something which I mentioned in the previous lecture the they call it a tradition of critical discourse that is being undermined by the sophist because argumentation is meant for what arriving at truth, but if there is no objective truth then what is a point in argumentation. So, argumentation the very idea of engaging in arguments the very idea of logical argumentation becomes a futile exercise. It is countered all these assumptions and advocated ethnocentricism and subjective views ethnocentric means that there is no universally valid morals or conceptions of knowledge or values, but everything is dependent on certain concrete historical social factors or individual factors. So, subjective views cultural relativism and individualism. Now, as I already mentioned the entire sophistic movement had its major impact on morality and which is the most serious impact which one has to understand and we can see that this is actually the we can see the emergence of all kinds of relativism from the sophist position cultural relativism, moral realism, moral individualism and subjectivism all kinds of even nihilism from the sophist possible. The most affected domain and the most important impact. So, that is why the impact on morality is the most affected domain of human concern is morality and they questioned the objective and foundational moral theories again morality is nothing more than conventions for them. So, there is no ground universal ground which anyone can accept it has just become what a matter of convention and questioned all accepted assumptions about what is right and what is wrong what is good and what is bad. So, everything that the society the culture the civilization has considered as valuable has been questioned by these walking teachers of ancient Greece. Now, moral low nature and function moral lows are like blows of nature I have already mentioned this the conception the original conception of a moral low is to compare it with a law of nature where they are universally true for all human beings. So, there is a kind of universalism and objectivism and this universal low can be understood by reason. So, man can understand it. So, since man can understand it is possible for man to be good or bad right or wrong and sophist refuted all these. So, this is what sophist have taken us and when we talk about moral foundationalism moral lows are like as just to sum up laws of nature universally true for all humans. Universal low can be understood by reason and moral skepticism says that it is created by man based on circumstances no independent objective existence and vary from time to time and place to place and even from individual to individual. So, moral foundationalism versus moral skepticism and again as I already mentioned sophist would see morality as a matter of convention according to some of them morals or morality represents the will of those who have the power to enforce their demands on others that is one view. So, moral use are contrary to they would say that they are contrary to nature they cannot be compared with natural laws they are contrary to nature and laws are made by the weak that is another view. So, I am just presenting that there are different views possible and difference sophist held different views about morality according to some it is it is those who have the power enforce them and that has become right that has become just and according to some others lows are made by the weak the majority in order to restrain the strong from overpowering them. You can see that this is a sentence of such a view in the philosophy of niche late 19th century natural right is a right of the strong according to this view they would say that natural what is natural is the interest of the strong and now we will address a very concrete question the notion of justice I am taking up this question because this is going to occupy a major space in the discussion the philosophical discussion of the philosophical position of two great philosophers play to and Aristotle in the subsequent lectures. So, the question of like justice is initiated here and here there is an interesting view put forward might is right accident makes right might there is no universal factor which decides and determines what is right it is just accident that makes might and might is right this is held by character another sophist called the Asimarkas would say that might makes right. So, there is an argument here the nature and origin of justice which is which is narrated by Plato in his republic book 2 what it says is that they say that to do injustice is by nature good to suffer injustice evil, but that the evil is greater than the good and so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither hence there arise laws and mutual convenience and that which is ordained by law is termed by the lawful and just. So, it says that the primary assumption is this that to do injustice is by nature good and to suffer injustice is evil. So, if I take advantage over another person by stealing his computer or pen or something I am doing injustice to him, but that is good for me, but for that person suffering injustice is evil. So, but it is not possible for human beings in normal circumstances to always experience good experience pleasure. So, what they have done is they have come to an agreement to do away with both both justice and injustice. So, this they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice it is a mean of compromise justice is nothing but a mean a compromise between the best of all which is to do injustice and not to be punished to do injustice and get away with that not to be punished, but that is not possible that is not humanly possible because if I do injustice another person suffering justice and there is a possibility that I might be caught then the consequences will be very bad. So, what I do is that since I do not want that to happen I have decided to arrive at a compromise with everyone in the society which is to do injustice and not to be punished and the worst of all which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation and justice being a middle point between the two is tolerated not as a good, but as a lesser evil and honored by reason of the inability of men to do injustice. For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist he would be mad if he did. So, this is the position about justice I repeat the last line for no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement this sort of a compromise if he were able to resist he would be mad if he did and the best way to leave this office conclude is in seeking pleasure or the good life is the pleasurable life and if the best life is the pleasurable life then injustice is more profitable than justice provided you do not get caught you get away with that most people would take advantage of their neighbors if they were certain they would get away with it. So, this is that conclusion. So, they do not believe in any any fundamental positions moral positions and this is something which office take us kind of moral relativism moral skepticism and moral nihilism which we would find in subsequent lectures how people found it objectionable and try to counter it particularly people like Plato and Aristotle and now to sum up we will see some of the important contributions of Sophist they brought philosophy as this is Cicero's opinion philosophy down from heaven to the dwelling of men from issues like what is the ultimate substance what is the fundamental substance whether change is real or permanence is real all such highly intellectual abstract issues philosophy was concerned with these Sophists brought them down to earth to the problems of man to individual man and focus on man the individual man turned attention from external nature to man himself. Now, man becomes the object of philosophical enquiry man becomes man occupies the center of philosophical condemnations here expose some long standing conventions and believes about the possibility of objective universal knowledge rather they question the very very concept of such a knowledge such knowledge and truth which are universal which are which are transcendental and questioned some of the long standing assumptions and conventions open way for a theory of knowledge if knowledge is so shaky if knowledge is nothing but based on certain conventions then you have to think about naturally this is this is led to a kind of chaos this is led to a lot of controversies and subsequent thinkers have invested a lot of time on examining the nature and function of knowledge. So, theory of knowledge as a discipline emerged out of this this kind of a crisis which which the Sophists have taken us added a different dimension to moral reflections unwillingness to accept conventional assumptions. So, moral reflections which were present which were based on certain certain assumptions about right and wrong good and bad where were questioned by these thinkers again criticism of morality led to a more profound reflection in the field of ethics and morality. So, now onwards you can see that philosophers take up this problem and we will find that for play to the most important issue is the concept of justice that is at the center of philosophical problems and even today ethics is a major concern for philosophers and this is begun from Sophist promoted free thinking and critical thinking forced more studies in the field of political philosophy theories of justice theories about state theories about the authority the concept of authority and laws of the state etcetera etcetera. So, these are the new avenues new study domains which the Sophist forced open for further enquiries and before we wind up will have a very brief look at the drawbacks which will actually take us to the next section which we will discuss in the next lecture. They failed to see the universal element in man they were emphasizing on the individual on the subjective and failed to see the universal. They exaggerated the differences in human judgments and ignored the agreements. They magnified the accidental the subjective and personal elements in human knowledge and totally neglected the universal aspects. The critic of traditional morality collapsed into subjectivism and individualism and further to pure selfishness and moral anarchy that is the situation which we will find when Socrates arrives into the scene promoted disrespect and disobedience to the law neglect of civil duty and selfish individualism. So, these are some of the very very sad consequences very objectionable consequences of the Sophistic movement and they threat to community life with stress on selfish interest of the individual over conceptions of general welfare of the city. Now, with this we will go to the next step in the next lecture. We can see that there is a mixed response to the Sophist. Sophist generally definitely have have raised some very important questions and the contributions are immense no doubt about it without Sophist probably some of these important issues which we discuss in philosophy today would have taken up at all. And concern for the law state authority and public welfare was something which prompted later philosophers to counter the positions of Sophist and there is a concern for reason because these people have totally done away undermined the role of reason in the pursuit of truth and knowledge. And here comes the very important role of one of the greatest thinkers in human thought Socrates, the Gatfly, the intellectual midwife which we will discuss in the next lecture to restore faith in human reason. In the next lecture we will see the contributions of Socrates and other important philosophers for now. Thank you.


Well, hi there. I'm Sandy Ola and I am going to introduce my friends pencil and airbrush And make a Christmas card using the Santa Paws stamp set from art impressions It has all kinds of cute dogs in it. It has this whole dog choir that is already one stamp so you do not actually have to Stamp and mask everything which is really great because I know a lot of you don't like to mask I love to mask, but I also love it when I don't have to do it all So I'm using Nina card stock some solar white and my my prism color pencils just putting my my colors down and Getting them somewhat blended and somewhat even but I'm going to use the gem salt on it So I'm not really stressed out about whether it's perfect or not Just going to add some shadows now the Scooby-Doo looking dog here is holding the lantern And that's going to be my light source in this And I'm going to do some fun airbrushing that you can also replicate probably if you are wicked and Talented at using your distressing so you can probably do the same kind of thing So don't think that just because it's airbrush that it's undoable if you don't do Copic airbrush But I am going to put a little bit of this this color this orangey type of color on The dog and on all of them I'm going to put a kind of goldish color in the direction of the light But you can see all his shadows are on his far left side because he's holding that Lantern off on the right-hand side and So I'm going to add this yellow color on pretty much every every dog on the surface It's facing closest to that lantern Because I want them all to be able to Be lit by it So whether it's a black dog or brown dog or whatever it is It's going to have some gold color on it And I'm using it that dirty gold looking color instead of a bright yellow Just because on a dog that's brown you wouldn't get necessarily a yellow glow that would be a true yellow It's more like going to get this this kind of brownish Brownish yellow color. Not sure what you would actually call that. It's probably baby poop That's probably the best name for color like that Um, yeah, it's it's that's the kind of thing that I think about when I think about what colors are So even this little dog, I forgot to put his yellow highlights in there. He's going to be a little black dog I'm still going to put some yellow on him So that he ends up looking like he's lit by that same lantern Yeah, I'm doing all of my pencil work first before I jump to the gamsel later So I'm going to get it all done on complex images like this that are already masked together And they have lots of little parts the only part that I actually added Was this little dog down here at the bottom who is running And I figured I'd make him running inside or into the scene from outside because there's always That one friend who's not in the picture and decides to go do something crazy and that's that dog So everybody has that friend and for some of you you are that friend just like me We are that friend that photo bombs a great picture But anyway, when you are making complex images like this, sometimes it's hard to tell Where one leg ends and another leg begins and which part is that is that part of this dog or that part of that dog And I try to do the ones that I'm sure of first And then work my way towards some of the complex areas if like there's it was hard to try to figure out this dog's feet next to the scooby-doo dogs feet And which one which body starts and ends So just pick one arm to follow and then follow that arm And if you need to then color the other dogs around it And then eventually You'll end up with just a few pieces left On a scene like this if you make it dark enough because you can make it a nighttime scene Then you can hide a lot of those details if you can't still figure out which way It's supposed to go and which leg is belonging to which dog I must say sometimes I think that Bonnie over at art impressions knows me really well because she's putting out lots of dog sets I think she knows I love doing dog sets And there's one sentiment in this stamp set that says from the dog Which is really cute and I'm not sure if I'm going to do any that say from the dog I probably should And see if I can do some that look like my two dogs But do you guys send cards to people from your dog? Like do you do cards for your kids or for your husband or anybody from the dog? Because I think that would be actually a really fun idea I mean I would end up sending cards to myself from the dog Which would be weird because the dogs wouldn't really send cards to anybody else But maybe we'll have some dog friends that they'll have to send cards to but you know if it's not family Maybe they would have to sign it instead of to say from the dog I don't know. Maybe I'm overthinking it because dogs don't send Christmas cards That could be a problem. Maybe I'm just overthinking and that happens And I probably shouldn't overthink Especially because I'm getting close to finishing the coloring on this And I decided on my coloring that I was going to do all of their hats And their scarves in the same accent color in that same red Because if I were to add a whole bunch of different types of colors If I were going to do every hat different every scarf different different textures and different colors The image is already really complex And kind of keeping something the same throughout Is really going to be helpful in trying for other people to figure out which dog starts and stops where It's going to really make a difference in making that image really really clear for other people too when they look at the card And I like to make them things look pretty obvious to folks Don't like don't like it when they get all confused and it just looks like there's too much stuff on the card So adding a dark red so that I can have some shadows on all of my beautiful red colors on here And we are getting close to the gamma sol phase now Gamma sol is A liquid that has I don't know something in it Maybe it's gamma sol that it has in it. I should probably look at the bottle and find out what's in it And is it something it's going to kill me but look at how smooth and rich it makes the color Which is kind of cool that you can take colored pencil and do that with I normally when I'm just doing illustrations, I will do pencil without doing any gamma sol on it But I'm kind of thinking I might do some finished art pieces And use gamma sol because it's kind of fun I often spend more time trying to even my color out And this would save time of course and be faster But it's also sometimes first Excuse me for some folks. It can be an attempt to make pencil look like copic and try to make it all perfectly blended and That's not always a good thing because then you're telling yourself that your pencil work is not good enough I like the texture of pencil in a lot of cases Okay on to the next part Which is taking that giant roll of masking paper And I masked the image out and cut it all out and then I got my airbrush out Which is this little gun thing and it's hooked on to a air compressor that's below the desk And then I press the little button and color comes out And sometimes my hand's going to be off screen because I'm trying to be high up and above so I don't get a a big leap of color But I'm putting on a couple colors to create a halo around that that little lantern So I put the yellow down first and then I'm doing a blue green color And then I switched To having something else underneath of it because I didn't want to ruin that board that was under it and it's not cleanable like my craft assistant is this craft assistant is a 12 by 12 piece of black metal and It's really easy to clean with like all the stuff you might get on it. So if you do a lot of inking and stuff It's a good product in my mind I use it a lot for airbrushing as well because you can clean copic off it in a heartbeat So my big fat hand is going to be in front of the camera. Sorry about that I'm trying to get my angles right because when you're doing airbrush if you keep blowing from one direction And you have a mask on it the mask has a little bit of thickness to it.  I'm just using very light pressure Very very very light so I can get a few layers of snow down And Trying to to kind of even things out a little bit And it's hard to get even skies and stuff with airbrush But I've pulled off my mask and now I'm just going to take pencil Which matches that airbrush texture pretty well And I'm just filling in a few of those areas where my mask either wasn't trimmed well enough or it was just sticking up A little bit and look how fun that is I added some white snow coming down from the sky in a white pen a white gel pen And I added some polka dots onto everybody's scarves so they'd be all decorated up And that was that here comes santa pause From the dog I didn't put the front the dog on there But anyway, I hope you enjoyed this video if you did click that like button If you would like to and I would love to see you another time So watch some more videos and come on back. Make sure you have my videos sent to you by email So we can meet up again. Thanks. Bye


This study examined the use of cloud technologies to form student research competency in physics learning at the high school level. The goal was to conduct a pedagogical experiment and analyze the results. The subjects were high school students who participated in the experiment. The purpose of the experiment was to verify the effectiveness of cloud technologies in developing student research competence in physics learning. The main method used was a pedagogical experiment, while statistical analysis was also employed. The results showed that cloud technologies can be effective in developing student research competency in physics learning. This article was authored by O. V. Merzlikin.