Euthyphro, piety, logic, and Socrates

A philosophic game.

Have fun with this game.
I am told that Don Baker has put the Euthrypro Dialog1 on line a:
http://donbarker.com/dialog1/


Chapter Seventeen
When I taught political theory in the 1990s I came across DIALOG1, which describes itself as “a uniquely crafted computer program that brings to life the Platonic dialogue Euthyphro.” In this dialogue Plato shows that we have no need of the gods. The gods love the good because it is good. That the gods love something does not make it good, rather they love it because it is (without reference to them) of itself good. The point is major but the argument along the way is minor. This dialogue is always included in student editions of Plato’s Socratic dialogues, usually titled The Last Days of Socrates, because Plat’s dialogues start with Socrates on the way to his trial where he meets a bumptious young man Euthyphro who is prosecuting his own father for impiety. That a son takes to the law against his own father is one of Plato’s silent comments on the perversions of Athenian life. The Apology is the trial, in which by the way, Plato offers to pay Socrates’s fine, an offer Socrates refuses. The Crito, while in prison waiting to be executed, Socrates refuses an offer of a blind eye to let him escape and in so doing outlines a social contact theory of civil disobedience two thousand years before Thomas Hobbes came along. In the
Phadeo Socrates muses on immortally after he swallows the poison and waits for death. euthyphro_1.jpg
(If this is impressive, find out about how the Scots philosopher David Hume faced death.)
But back to the Euthyphro, I paid $US 10 for it to Don Barker at Gonzaga University in Spokane Washington, who by the way was in the School of Business Administration there, and in return was granted the right to copy, use, distribute, and otherwise propagate the dialogue, so here I am still trying to get my money’s worth out of it. By tthe way Mr Barker moved on to other things. See his home page http://www.donbarker.com/
Here is the link to the logic game of the Euthyphro. Download file
It is DOS program and I expect some readers will find that hard to cope with so, here are some instructions.
Double-click the DIALOG1.ZIP file to extract the files to a new directory – call it DIALOG1 if you wish.
Double-click the INSTALL.EXE file to install the program. It will automatically open a Command Prompt Window (otherwise known as native DOS).
Your mouse will not work in this environment. You must use the keyboard commands. It will ask you whether you have a colour monitor (yes, it is that old.) You will probably answer yes to this question, so type the letter Y. Next it will ask you where to install to, and will give you the default of C:\. You may accept this, or you may specify a new directory along the lines of C:\DIALOG1. It will create the new directory and install all the files it needs there. The Command Prompt window will close.
Navigate to the directory where you installed the program, using Windows Explorer. Locate the file called DIALOG1.COM and double-click it. This will open the program in the Command Prompt Window, and you are ready to go.
Press Function key 10 to exit from the program.
See I told you, it is unfamiliar. My thanks to Katie, my wife, for writing these instructions on a Sunday afternoon.
For more on the Euthyphro try http://www.uri.edu/personal/szunjic/philos/euth.htm
Or the Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro