The fear is not of being laughed at, for that is childish, but, lest, missing the truth, I fall down and drag my friends with me in matters where it most imports not to stumble....For, indeed, I believe that involuntary homicide is a lesser fault than to mislead opinion about the honorable, the good, and the just. This is a risk that it is better to run with enemies than with friends, so that your encouragement is none.” And Glaucon, with a laugh, said, “Nay, Socrates, if any false note in the argument does us any harm, we release you as in a homicide case, and warrant you pure of hand and no deceiver of us. So speak on with confidence. “Well,” said I, “he who is released in that case is counted pure as the law bids, and, presumably, if there, here too.” ”---Plato Republic (book 5), 451a-b, translated by Paul Shorey.
In context, Socrates is about to explain his proposals for the co-ed education, rule, and military life of the guardians and his eugenic breeding program of them (etc.). But before he does so he raises the question of inductive risk, which, according to Hempel, is the chance that one will be wrong in accepting (or rejecting) a theory (quoting Douglas 2000: 561).* What's interesting about Socrates's remark is not that he realizes he may be wrong about the view he is about the propose, but that in virtue of being wrong he will harm others. When I use 'inductive risk,' I tend to be focused on such risk of harming others or oneself.
In fact, Socrates ranks this risk in light of the importance of the subject matter: the honorable, the good, and the just are the most important subjects. That they are the most important subjects to get right is not defended in context (although one can read the whole Republic as offering that defense). But it is a natural enough thought because getting these wrong in theory, and then acting on false theory, affects everybody (given that we're all part of a-would-be-society which is regulated by such institutions).**
Of course, this is not the only possible harm way consequent of inductive risk. And, in fact, Socrates also explicitly notes that if he gets things wrong his friends, in particular, are harmed, too. Now it's not entirely clear who here he means by 'friends' his direct companions/interlocutors/students or philosophers more broadly. If the former, he is worried about misleading those that look up to him as a kind of magisterial authority (despite his general concern to avoid the role as magisters). If the latter he is worried about reputational risk to his intellectual faction (in the contest with the sophists). In the quote, it is clear that Glaucon understands Socrates as saying that Socrates is worried about harming him (and his fellows).
The two options are not as disconnected as it may seem: Athens's charge against Socrates was (inter alia) that he corrupted his students. This is no surprise given that (if we ignore the special case of Alcibiades) some of his prominent students were among the thirty tyrants and many of the proposals of the Republic are often taken to be more Sparta friendly than Athens friendly. Even so, the Republic subtly reminds its audience that not all of Socrates's students betrayed democracy: one of the interlocutors, Polemarchus, was put to death by the thirty tyrants. Teaching one's students badly may harm them and consequently the polity.
Above, I noted that Socrates takes the harms consequent inductive risk very seriously. He does so explicitly by treating such harms as worse than accidentally killing somebody. That to be the victim of such bad moral luck is worse than to be mislead about a philosophical argument may seem perverse (especially from the vantage point of the victim). But it makes sense if we think of the philosophical argument as not being a mere game, but being about institutional design that people are expected to live by/under. A bad design can lead to civil war, which is certainly the worst outcome, or widespread suffering. (Of course, to help Socrates's case, I am ignoring here cases of bad institutional design of which the outcome is not so dramatic.)
Before I close with a reflection on Socrates's treatment on moral luck, I want to stress how very notable it is that here Socrates and Glaucon perform an ideal of responsible speech: those affected by the potential harms of inquiry have a say in whether such research should proceed. Glaucon is here a kind of representative of all those affected -- and one may well wonder on what authority he can speak on their behalf, and whether he takes his own words seriously enough -- and his approval is required before the theoretical exploration can continue.
That Glaucon is a kind of representative is the implied by the analogy of (involuntary) killing case. It's not the deceased themselves who can let the (accidental) killer off the hook. It's those that can speak on his/her behalf and that themselves have suffered loss (their friend/family member is dead). The latter is, in fact, (recall) how Adam Smith treats what he calls the piacular, which requires some kind of compensation to the victims and their kin, who thereby help purify the stain (for my version of the details, see here or my book).
My previous paragraph may be misleading if is taken as a description of what Socrates/Glaucon think of how to response to bad moral luck of accidental killing. For that is unclear here. The reason for this is because Glaucon had muddied the situation by tacitly switching from Socrates's example of bad moral luck (involuntary homicide) to a case of actual killing.+ In those cases the purification by the victims's is a means of retrospectively switching the interpretation of the act itself: (quoting from Plato's Laws) "in the case of the murder of a father shall hold equally good in all such cases—if any man voluntarily acquit any culprit of this charge, the purifications for the culprit shall be made as though the murder were involuntary, and one year of exile shall be imposed by law," [869DE; emphasis added]. That Glaucon was confused about the nature of the case, does not change the fact that Glaucon is treated as a kind of representative of those that would be harmed by the inquiry, because Socrates goes on to do so.++
*Hempel cared about scientific theories.
**Grube/Reeve use (echoing the sound advice of James Adam) institutions in their translation to make clear we're not merely dealing with concepts.
+I treat this as the kind of revealed evidence that should make us suspect that Glaucon lacks philosophical skill. It's notable that Socrates, in response, treats cases of deliberate manslaughter as clearly worse than the kind of harms he may engender through inquiry/teaching.
++I ignore here the very interesting question how Socrates would treat cases of bad moral luck.
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