The view of nomos is absolutely wrong.  It is wrong because of the many logical fallacies that are stated by Protagoras and other philosophers who subscribe to the view of nomos while trying to give an account of how to live.  I will demonstrate the fallacies of nomos, especially the views of Protagoras, and how those fallacies make physis the only answer to the question of how to live.
	According to nomos, knowledge does not exist and instead of knowledge we only have beliefs.  Nomos also states that perception is altogether relative, which means what you perceive is not necessarily what I perceive.  Along with knowledge not existing, the beliefs that we do have are not common among other people, so that if I believe that a god controls all things, you don’t have to believe in that same god.  Protagoras and the other Sophists emphasized speaking to win arguments and persuade people, this practice is known as rhetoric.  Although Protagoras had a few good ideas, his thoughts are logically inconsistent and contain nothing of merit.  Physis, on the other hand is the view that truth does exist.  
	Physis claims that there are such things as justified true beliefs.  Physis claims that knowledge exists and has existed before man ever even came along.  Physis is the way things are and is not dependent on any human decision.  We can’t change physis as we could change nomos because physis is a pattern; if we can change things then those things subsist by nomos.  Physis consists of Plato’s divided line, which corresponds to the realm of Being and the realm of Becoming.  
	Protagoras taught three main things.  The first being that man is the measure of all things.  Man cannot be the measure of all things because if man can’t know anything and doesn’t have any common beliefs we can’t judge the beliefs of other things.  If man was the measure of all things, we would have to know of all things, and according to Protagoras we can’t know anything because knowledge does not exist.  If man were indeed the measure of all things he would have too much hubris or pride.  Moderation is the key to a balanced soul, which is the way to live according to physis.
	The second thing that Protagoras taught was that you could only perceive your perception.  This is not true because when we remember something we do not perceive it; yet if “knowledge” were perception, as Protagoras claims, we could not say that we knew what we were actually remembering.  So we could never know what our perception was yesterday because we can’t see it while we remember it.  To explain this point in greater detail, I must also explain Plato’s Forms, Plato’s Doctrine of Recollection, Democritus’ eidola, and Heraclitus’ Ship of Thesus.  
	Plato states that knowledge is in a different realm.  For Plato there are two realms, the realm of Being, and the realm of Becoming.  Our world is the world of becoming.  We don't know everything but we can obtain that knowledge from the realm of Being.  The realm of Being never changes and it holds all the information that we could ever need.  For example, Socrates once asked a little slave boy to double the area of a square. After trying unsuccessfully a few times, the slave boy finally understood.  At the exact second that the boy understood the math, he was seeing with the mind's eye part of the realm of Being.  Plato declares that at one time we knew everything in the world of being, but now that we have come to the world of becoming, we have forgotten everything we knew.  He also states that we can remember what we have forgotten and that the slave boy did just that, remembered what he forgot.  He didn't learn anything but he remembered it.  This is Plato’s Doctrine of Recollection.  Plato also claimed that Forms are in this realm of Being.  He says that ideas are in this world of being as are mathematics and the cure for cancer.  Plato also says that in our world, the world of becoming, only more or less perfect examples of the Forms exist and not the Forms themselves. Both Huey and Gertrude are elephants and are both large but they are only less than perfect examples of largeness itself.  Now that I have explained Plato’s Forms and realms I am ready to prove that the beliefs of Protagoras are false.
	According to Democritus, the objects that we see are little pictures of the real thing that we are seeing called eidola. These eidola are implanted on our eyes and this is what we “see” or perceive.  Protagoras says that we can only perceive our perception.  However, what about remembering our perception?  When I remember, I see something in my head not in front of my eyes.  If I see a library and it gives off it’s little eidola and it is implanted on my eye, I can still go home later and remember that I saw the library. The library is in my head.  I see it with my mind’s eye exactly how I see mathematical concepts.  Let’s say that I go to the library and when I come home my roommate asks me where I was. I would tell her that I was at the library and then she would know immediately what I was talking about.  The eidola didn’t come and stamp on her eyes because she is not in the presence of the library but she’s near the essence of the library so she is remembering what a library is.  An essence is a Form.  My roommate could even be thinking of a different library than the one that I was at, but it does not matter because all libraries share the same characteristics.  All libraries have books, librarians, tables, chairs, newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias and so on.  The point is that all libraries share commonalities that are all examples of libraryness which is a Form and that is why my roommate knows what a library is, not because of a little picture that was stamped into the fleshy part of her eye.  Not only does Plato’s theory of the Forms refute Protagoras’ idea that “knowledge” is perception, but so does another theory from an earlier philosopher, Heraclitus.
	Heraclitus thought about a ship.  This ship is the Ship of Thesus.  Thesus is a great naval commander and always needed his ship to be ship-shape.  One day he noticed some boards that appeared a little rotted.  Thesus asked a ship repairer to repair these boards, but the repairer didn’t think the boards needed to be replaced.  However he replaced them anyway and used the boards to make his own ship.  Soon all of Thesus’ ship had all the boards replaced and the repairer had a new ship of his own.  Heraclitus pondered who’s ship really is the Ship of Thesus.  He came up with the answer that neither ship is the Ship of Thesus because the Ship of Thesus is a meaning and not an actual object.  This is the same idea as with the library.  The library is a meaning.  If the library burned down everyone would still know what it was because a meaning can never die.  Almost if Spring Creek ever dried up the people would continue to know what it was.  
	The third thing that Protagoras believed was in agnosticism, or not believing nor disbelieving in gods.  Agnosticism is also called skepticism.  This claim is ridiculous because one could never be a complete skeptic because one would have to be completely skeptical of one’s skepticism.  Protagoras couldn’t be a true skeptic because such a thing doesn’t exist.  
	Protagoras also thought that you couldn’t know anything.  Socrates also said this, but unlike Protagoras, Socrates postulated that there was truth but he didn’t know any of it.  Protagoras insisted that you couldn’t know anything because there was no knowledge that you could know.  We can’t really say that we know nothing, because that would be something that we know.  For someone to know that they know nothing is a contradiction like a square circle.  Try to picture a square circle; you can’t do it, just like how you can’t think of nothing.  Therefore Protagoras is wrong by thinking that he can’t know anything.  Along with thinking that he could not know anything, Protagoras was also wrong about rhetoric.
	Rhetoric is the art of speaking.  The Sophists taught this to their students as being the most important subject of all.  Every argument has two sides and rhetoric deals with making the weaker argument stronger.  The purpose of rhetoric is to impress people and win arguments.  The Sophists were aiming at teaching their students how to shape the minds of the people making the laws so that the laws reflected their own personal desires.  Dialectic is the Socratic and Platonic method of getting at the truth, the method of physis.  Dialectic is the superior process of learning and discovering.  Dialectic is a long and arduous journey to the truth.  Rhetoric is wrong because it is a tool to attain victory, as where dialectic is the key to uncovering the truth.  Protagoras was not an original thinker. Learning the art of speaking doesn’t teach you how to think, especially about relativism.
	  Relativism is the theory that what you believe is not exactly what I believe.  For example, if I was watching “The Monkees” with my roommate and she claimed that they were really playing their instruments when I claimed that they were not playing their instruments, one of us would be right no matter what.  Physis claims that some things are simply true whether or not you believe them.  In this case, the Monkees didn’t play their own instruments.  The Sophists believe that everyone has their own beliefs and not one of those beliefs is any better than another.  If this is true, how could laws exist?  For example, I could kill anyone I pleased because I thought that it was good. This would be justified because I believed that I needed to kill people.  This is nonsense, to do something that is obviously wrong just because I think that it’s right.  Socrates says that if all you have are beliefs that aren’t better than other beliefs then you will not have knowledge.  I am convinced that there is knowledge so nomos must be wrong.  Rules must exist to keep order and people together.  If there weren’t any rules no one could live together, and a modern philosopher said, “Only an animal or a god can live alone, people have to live together.”  Rules must exist, otherwise there would be nothing substantial and the human race would never progress.
	Protagoras’ ideas about skepticism, relativism, rhetoric, and perception have all been refuted with examples of physis.  Especially Protagoras’ view that “knowledge” is perception.  Plato and Socrates and the view of physis best answer the question of how to live.  Someone once said that Philosophy is common sense in a dress suit. If this is the case, Protagoras is in rags.  

Bibliography
The Great Conversation, Norman Melchert. Mayfield Publishing Company, 1999.  Pages 46-54.

Plato, Great Books of the Western World, Robert Maynard Hutchins. University of Chicago, 1952.  Pages 38-64.

Lecture notes also used in the production of this paper.