Parmenides - Angie Hobbs

[Music] today we're going to be looking at another very influential Greek philosopher called Parmenides who was born about 515 BC and died sometime after 450 BC he came from Elia a Greek foundation in southern Italy and he gathered a group of other philosophers around him the most well-known being Zeno familiar to many of us that arguing that motion is impossible and Achilles can't overtake the tortoise now Parmenides is famous work is called on truth and it's divided into three sections a prologue and then the way of truth and then the way of seeming and of course one of the questions were going to be looking at is if you've written the way of truth why write the way of seeming he's a very difficult philosopher so before we look at what exactly he says I want to find a way into the topics he discusses by asking you to think about two sentences the first is nothing exists and the second nothing does not exist so I want you to think about these sentences for a moment and see what they mean to you and now I want you to an AB inverted commas around the word nothing in each sentence nothing exists nothing does not exist and I want you to think about whether those inverted commas change the meaning of the sentences in each case Parmenides is chief interest is in this question of what really exists and the answer he comes up with is the Greek term st now we'll be looking later it exactly how we translate that but for now let's just translate it as business or being so he thinks there is just one thing being all the things that we normally think test you me that tree this table they don't really exist they just appear to exist all that really exists is being so now let's look at his poem on truth in an to more detail and of course the first question is why does he choose to write in poetic form at all now an easy answer might be well at this time there is no particular tradition of writing philosophy in prose to be honest there's no particular tradition of writing philosophy it's a very new discipline so that's true I think there are some more interesting positive reasons the media he chooses is the back Tillich hexameter which is the meter that Homer uses in his great epics the Iliad and the Odyssey so of course one other reason that Parmenides might use this me too is to invest his own poem with epic Authority he may also want to create a distance between himself as the author and the literary persona of himself that he creates within the poem now there's also a third reason I want us to consider as we continue our discussion that I'll just suggest it for now and that is that maybe Parmenides wants to imply that both the way of truth and the way of seeming are in some sense metaphorical and need to be depicted in poetic form if we turn now to the prologue we'll find quite a strange scene because in it Parmenides shows us a young version of himself a youthful Parmenides being led on a horse-drawn chariot guided by maidens towards a rather mysterious goddess and this goddess says that she's going to tell the young Parmenides everything she says you must learn all things both the unwavering heart of persuasive truth and the opinions of mortals in which there is no true and of course immediately we think to ourselves well why is the goddess telling Parmenides this deceitful untrustworthy way of seeming as well as the credible way of truth and this in turn gives rise to the key question what exactly is the relationship between the way of truth and the way of seeming so let's now embark on the extraordinary and challenging way of truth now I think that a good way of approaching this is to view it as an attempt by Parmenides to ask how much he can find out from first principles without begging any questions at all and in that sense it seems similar to me to Descartes cogito I think therefore I am so the argument for SD in the way of truth so far we've translated this word st as business or being but it's time to say a bit more about it because literally in Greek it can either mean it is or they are now that might seem puzzling but there's a one bit of Greek grammar that you need to know and I promise you it's going to be the only bit of Greek grammar you'll need to know in ancient Greek neuter plural nouns take a singular verb so if you CSD on the page you do not know whether the subject is singular or plural so though Parmenides is going to argue for a singular subject being he's not cheating he's not assuming singular subject by using a necessarily singular verb so having got that bit of grammar under our belts now let's go through the argument the first premise that Parmenides makes is being or not being business or isn't this in the Greek it's SD or Oak St and he says this is the choice you have to make being or not being there is no middle way you can't have something which both a bit exists and a bit doesn't exist the second premise he makes and it's a really interesting premise and it's one we'll be returning to it's you think you think and of course we saw this premise in the prologue because the goddess was assuming that she was talking to a thinking young Parmenides so here are two premises being or not being st or luke st and you think what do you think it's as well okay we have the choice put the two together you've only got it you've got the choice between being or not being so you must think either being or not being st or okay ste that's your choice you put the two premises together there is no third way however you cannot think not being you can't think nothing to think nothing is not to be thinking at all you can't close your eyes and think nothing try it now you can't do it can you you're thinking space your some images of empty space or something has come into your head you can't think nothing it would be failing to think therefore you think the only other option which is being something st okay so going from that argument being or not being and you think as the premises therefore you think either being or not being but you can't think not being it can't be done therefore you think being st so to help us understand the difficulties that can arise when you even investigate the term not being or laughing i want to read out a passage from Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead it's a scene near the end of the play when the servants Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and taking their master Hamlet are on a boat to England and Rosencrantz is musing on their journey on this boat so Rosencrantz says do you think death could possibly be a boat Guildenstern no no no that is not that isn't you take my meaning this is the ultimate negative not being you can't not be on a boat I frequently not be on boats no no what you be is not on boats he then continues with a very puzzling sentence it says the same thing exists for thinking and for being now what does this mean does it mean that whatever exists you think and whatever you think exists if so is Parmenides actually identifying being with the object of thought if he is then this is an idea that's had an enormous influence on later Western philosophy and is still hugely influential particularly amongst European philosophers so preventative now goes on to tell us something about what this being is like this s/t first of all it doesn't come into being this is because if being comes into being it could only have come into being from nothing but nothing comes from nothing says Parmenides very famous quote even the people haven't heard of Parmenides they'll probably have heard of a quote nothing comes from nothing he's the originator of that and just as it doesn't come into being so being SD does not go out of being it doesn't parish either so it exists in this continuous present its unchanging and it's homogeneous it's all the same everywhere it's not a bit more hearing a bit less there it's entirely homogeneous there is just being now it follows from all this that there can be no time no space and hence no motion all of those are simply part of the world of seeming the way of seeming that we're going to look at next time it also follows from this that all the different objects that we think we see in the world around us are also illusions because there is just being it's unchanging it's undifferentiated so all the differences we think we see in shapes colors the pet things that give rise the different objects all these are illusions that's just part of the way of seeing and the way of truth if we're going to follow strict logic Parmenides says according to the premises of his argument following the argument through we are going to get to be so now let's look at some of the possible problems that arise from this way of truth some commentators so well okay you can't think nothing but you can think about nothing and they may bring in at this point what is called the sense reference distinction and say well the word nothing makes sense even if there is no reference to which the word nothing refers but I personally think that's a red herring I think Parmenides is perfectly happy to say of course you can think about nothing I think he's also happy to say that we can think about things that have no corporeal existence such as mythological centaurs what he's saying is I never mind all that my point is you can't think nothing so if you are thinking and we are assuming a thinking subject here if you are thinking you've got to be thinking something and the only thing you can be thinking is being and secondly what do we think of Parmenides is claim that the same thing exists for thinking and for being because this might strike a number of us as very problematic because after all electricity existed in Parmenides this time even though nobody was thinking about it because it hasn't been discovered yet a third very difficult problem is why does Parmenides think that being can't be differentiated into different objects with different characteristics now his thought seems to be that you can't say for example X is red because to say X is red implies X is not greed and Parmenides seems to think that any sentence with a knot in it is unthinkable illegitimate but this simply isn't true Parmenides seems to her moved we might say illegitimately from what is termed an existential sense of the verb to be - a predicative sense of the verb to be now the existential sense is Socrates's in the sense that Socrates exists the predicative sense of the verb to be attaches a predicate to that is and says Socrates is short for example Socrates is snub-nosed so those are two different sentences of the verb to be there are more but we'll stick to two for now now Parmenides began his argument by saying being or not being you think you think either being or not being that you can't think not being there for you think being and so that argument to work must or he arguably must be using the verb to be in an existential sense you can't just close your eyes and think not being an existential not being but you can close your eyes and think Socrates is not green or Socrates is not tall it's perfectly possible to think not being in a predicative sense so some scholars have argued that Parmenides has slid from using the verb to be in an existential sense in the first part of his argument and arguing correctly that you can't think nothing - then believing that he can say all these things about what being is like and he can argue that it is under French eiated and unchanging and so on but that he actually can't make that second move because that second move depends on him thinking that you can't think not being in a predicative sense but in fact you can Parmenides I would say is quite correct to argue you can't think saying you think being but that he's not necessarily correct to say that we can't distinguish this being in any way and we can't divide being up into different objects in the world and give those objects different characteristics and indeed changing characteristics so if there is an illegitimate slide from an existential sense of the verb to be - a predicative sense of the verb to be the question then arises is Parmenides aware of this illegitimate slide and if so why is he making it how would that influence our interpretation of the way of truth and its relation to the way of seeming some scholars think that he is aware of it some scholars think that he's actually the first philosopher who has realized there's a distinction between an existential sense of the verb to be an I in the Greek and a predicative sense of that verbal is making this illegitimate slide try and persuade us to come to that distinction ourselves other scholars say no he has not yet made that distinction he's unaware of this move it's a genuine mistake and those scholars say that the first philosopher who gets close to making the distinction between existential and predicative that useless of the verb to be is a Plato who's writing nearly in a hundred years after Parmenides but whatever one thinks of where Parmenides stands on whether he's aware of this possibly illegitimate slide from existential to predicative senses of the verb to be what does seem clear is that the way of truth is self refuting because the way of truth is based on those two premises that we looked at being or not being and you think the way of truth assumes differentiated earth it assumes the rules of logic it assumes the thinking subject you think and yet the way of truth concludes with this word being as just being there are no kind of differentiation within this beaming and if that's the case and I admit that this is only one interpretation and the way of truth but if that's the case then the way of truth seems to refute itself and again we need to ask if Parmenides aware of this is he doing it deliberately because if he is aware of it if he is doing it deliberately that is greatly going to alter how we interpret what is going on in the way of truth what Parmenides is up to and how its supposed to relate to the way of seeming and these are exactly the questions that are going to form the heart of our discussion next time when we look at the way of seeming in more detail at the end we're going to come back to this key question if the way of truth is true why does Parmenides also give us the way of seeming what is the relationship between the two and I'm going to give you an interpretation which is pretty radical but whether you agree with it or not I hope that you'll enjoy it so today we're going to continue our exploration of Parmenides we've already looked at the way of truth and considered some of the problems that arise from it so it's now time to look at the way of seeming and of course the pain question is why does Parmenides right the way of seeming given that he's already written the way of truth why isn't truth enough now I'm going to give you four possible interpretations of what Parmenides is up to it's going to be possible that more than one of these interpretations might be in play but first I want to tell you how Palmer did himself introduces the way of seeming if you remember Parmenides has imagined that he's hearing about the way of truth in the way of seeming from a mysterious goddess and so here is the goddess telling the young Parmenides about why she's going to explain the way of seeming to him she says it is proper that you should learn all things both the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth and the opinions of mortals in which there is no truth trust and later on when she's finished the way of truth she says here I end my trustworthy discourse and thought concerning truth henceforth learn the beliefs of mortal man listening to the deceitful ordering of my words extraordinary the goddess is telling us that the ordering of her words is going to be deceitful in the way of seeming why is she doing this at all well she says the whole ordering of these I tell you as it seems fitting so no thought of mortal men shall ever outstrip him that's all that she gives us by way of a clue so we have to try to decipher what is going on so in the way of seeming the goddess gives Parmenides what appears to be the most up-to-date scientific account of the cosmos then available in the 5th century BC and it's an account that isn't based apparently on binary oppositions light and dark male and female and cell and quite a few commentators have thought that it's an account that owes a lot to Pythagorean philosophy so why does the goddess help amenities about this account if she doesn't think is true well as we've seen the reason she has self give is that she doesn't want any other mortal mind to outstrip Parmenides so perhaps is the the obvious easy explanation is she simply wants him to be able to hold his own amongst other natural philosophers and not look foolish or uninformed in a debate even if they're discussing simply the world of appearances and it's not the true world it's not the way of truth so that would be the simplest explanation however I'm not sure that this really does justice to the goddess telling us that the ordering of her words is going to be deceitful I think something a bit more complicated might be going on and what the goddess says is going on so here's another possibility maybe the goddess things that the way of seeming is actually going to reinforce the way of truth because it's going to be apparent to any intelligent hearer or reader that the way of seeming is based on a number of force premises and false assumptions most particularly but it's based on the possibility of these binary opposition's like light and dark maybe the goddess thinks that these binary opposition's have already been ruled out in the way of truth maybe she thinks that these binary opposition's of light and dark male and female illegitimately contain both being and not-being both isness and isn't this and as we've seen she's said very clearly that the decision rests in this either st or boug st either being or not being now as we've seen if that's what the goddess things if that's the flow of her argument I'm not sure it's correct because as we have seen I think there could be an illegitimate move from an existential sense of the verb to be it is or it isn't in the sense of it exists or it doesn't exist and move from that sense of the verb to be - a predicative sense of the verb to be it is light it is a dark etc and it seems to me that if the existential not being has been wronged Holt in the way of truth I don't think it follows that a predicative not being has been routed out I think it's perfectly possible to say there is just being but one can have different objects within that being there can be predicted differences within that being so they could just be being but possibly some bits could be light and some bits of it could be dark and some bits could be male and some bits could be female personally I think that's okay however the goddess hominid is the author might not think that's okay Parmenides the author might think that's a real problem he might think the way of seeming with all these binary opposition's that it contains really has already been proved to be false by the way of truth in which case is giving us the way of seeming to reinforce that point to make it absolutely clear that this is really illogical it's really not you know it's a non-starter so that would be a second interpretation we've given the way of seeming to make it crystal clear that the way ordinary scientists think the way most people think about the world of appearances and different objects and different predicates and change and birth and decay and so on it is all simply impossible the way of truth has absolutely ruled it out so that would be interpretation number two so far we've looked at two interpretations of the way of seeming which take it for granted that it is simply false the first interpretation by the goddess says I'm telling you this Parmenides so that no mortal mind may outstrip you so that you can be up to date and any scientific discussion that you find himself taking part in the second interpretation that she's giving us the way of seeming to reinforce the way of truth to show that the way of seeming is based on absolutely false premises it's based on both being and not-being when in fact of course the way of truth has said we've got to choose now I'm going to take a more radical line which actually suggests that maybe there is something in this way of seeming that maybe in some sense were meant to be taking this seriously and it's adding something so here's the third interpretation maybe the way of truth is actually somehow compatible with the way of seeming maybe somehow the appearances of things all these binary opposition's allow it in the dark the male and the female and so on maybe they can somehow be incorporated into being now I think for that to work and quite a few modern commentators like this interpretation I think for it to work we have to assume that Parmenides the philosopher has worked out the difference between the existential sense of the verb to be and the predicative sense of the verb to be and that he's worked out that the initial myth of the way of truth which says that you can't think nothing you've got to think something that is fine but that it doesn't follow from that that there can be no differentiation within this something within this being within fact you can divide it up into different with different predicates and that these different objects can change they can appear to come out of being and come into being so long as overall there is just being and that goes on being being and that never changes as being but within being there is room for the appearances so that's one possibility but it does require us to make this very big assumption that Parmenides the philosopher the writer has worked out these different senses of the verb to be and is actually inviting us the readers the hearers to work out this distinction for ourselves and to realize that the appearances can exist as appearances providing we understand that underneath as it were there is just being even if it looks different on the surface so that's a pretty radical interpretation but I've got an even more radical one for you to consider if Parmenides the author is aware that the way of truth is self refuting in the way that we considered in the last session if he's aware of that and if he makes the goddess his character of the goddess aware of that then it might be possible that the way of truth actually needs the way of seeming because the way of truth is not going to get us very far so here's a thought supposing Parmenides the writer realizes that at the end of the way of truth if we take it at face value we have this monist universe this universe where there's just one thing and if he thinks that they can't be differentiated objects within that one okay so if we rule out the third interpretation that we've just been considering and if we say both just this one universe and there can't be different people within it in different objects then you've got a cosmos in which I can't be a goddess talking to the young Parmenides they can't be words they can't be language or the premises of the way of truth you think either it is or it isn't etc etc those premises just couldn't exist so in the very strictest sense we might have an argument in the way of truth which quite literally refutes itself ie the conclusion of the argument this monist universe where there's just one thing being undifferentiated simply cancels out the premises that the whole argument is based on because the premises included more than one thing they included Parmenides and the goddess they included the use of language the use of logic and so on so in the very strictest sense maybe it is self refuting then the question is if community's aware of that and then the third question is if Parmenides the author is aware of that is he allowing the goddess to be aware of that and if the answer is yes to all those three questions we might have an argument which is known by poem in ADIZ to be self refuting which is deliberately self refuting well why why on earth would he do that why would earth would he say truth refutes itself let's consider where we started at the very beginning I suggested that it was helpful to look at Parmenides as project in terms of seeing let's see how far we can get from first principle using reason alone a kind of project in a wave similar 2d cars later project I think therefore I am let's see where we can get from first principles and just using our human reason how far can we get communities now might be saying well actually we can't get very far reason on its own can't tell us very much about the world it really can't so if that's the case what can we rely on or what can we turn to to help us understand the world around us well if reason ends up refuting itself then we'll have to turn to our sense organs we're going to have to turn to sense data and see where that gets us where would that get us the way of seeming so on this very radical interpretation the way of truth is known to be self refuting we then say okay reason is not very adequate it's not very helpful or certainly not on its own we need our sense data we need to see what our senses can tell us and so then we turn to the way of ceiling which is exactly how the world appears to us full of light and shade and night and day and different objects and objects which change and have different properties and come into being and go out of being this is how the world appears to us perhaps as Parmenides there may be a problem there as well because yes this is what our senses tell us but this way of seeming appears to go against the laws of logic as I've set them out in the way of truth it appears to flout the law of non-contradiction it appears to rest on being and not-being when I've told you you've got to choose between being or not being if this is the case and it only can be the case if Parmenides thinks that the way of seeming really is illogical and really can't be incorporated into the way of truth so this interpretation is going to rule out the third interpretation it's it's it can't make the way of seeming compatible with the way of truth in that way if this is the case and the way of seeming is deemed to be illogical flouting the laws of reason then we've got a real problem on our hands we've got a real dialectical dilemma because we've got two ways of trying to find out about the world we've got a reason but that's the problem because it looks like it comes up with a view of being which is ultimately self refuting or we can turn to our sense organs and see what sense data tell us but then that is a problem because since data appear to flout the laws of reason so what do we do we've got this circular argument now on this very radical interpretation this might be why Parmenides says it matters not to me where I begin because I shall return there again this might even be why he says that truth is a sphere truth is spherical we've got this circular argument going on that he's saying I'm going to cause you a real problem here you want to find out about the world you're going to have to rely on either your reason or your sense organs or both but there's problems with both your reason and your sense organs what are your going to do if we are attracted to this interpretation then we've got Parmenides not so much as a meta position but promenade eads is a dialect now we know that pramana DS taught the v-neck the later Greek philosopher Aristotle tells us that Xena was the first dialectician but on this very radical fourth interpretation that I'm suggesting to you just to think about maybe actually xenos teacher he made master Parmenides was the first dialectician now I don't know which of these four possible interpretations is correct and there may be more interpretations you may be able to think up some of your own interpretation one and two could go together it is possible that the goddess is saying I don't want anymore combined to outstrip you and when you really get into the way of seeming you'll see how it rests on false premises you'll see how in fact the way of seeming reinforces the truth of the way of truth because the way of seeming reveals itself to be false so interpretation one could go together with interpretation to interpretation three and interpretation for the really radical ones that I've been discussing I think stand alone I I think if you're going to say actually the way of truth could be compatible with the way of seeming that we can actually incorporate the appearances into being then that's a standalone interpretation and this extremely radical final viewpoint which suggests that Parmenides is actually saying I'm going to give you a dilemma I'm going to say to find out about the world you need to use either your reason all your sense organs or both but actually there's a problem with both your reason and with your sense organs and what they tell you I'm just going to set up this dialectical dilemma for you I think that interpretation stands alone so lots for you to think about ancient philosophy may have happened a long time ago but it is still alive it's still being debated it's people can't quite work out what the pre-socratics were up to but of course that's part of the fun and we're going to look now at what the legacy of Parmenides is so in terms of Parmenides as legacy it really is impossible to overstate how important he's been to Western philosophy and still is first of all it's true that he shows us that we cannot think nothing I think nothing is simply not to be thinking however he certainly makes us think about nothing he certainly makes us think about negative predications and these are really troubling difficult ideas there's a really crucial distinction between the sense of the word and the reference of a word and Parmenides that is saying to us this word nothing it has sense if I say nothing you know what I mean but there's no reference for it you can't point to nothing the word table has sense and you can point to a table the word nothing has sense but you can't point to it it's really really weird it functions as a noun in a sentence but there is no object to which you can point and that's why to return to where we started at the very beginning of our first session on Parmenides that's why the sentence is quote nothing exists unquote and quote nothing does not exist unquote that's why these sentences are so strange so bizarre but and as we've seen there's a sense in which Parmenides is absolutely right look at the language how can you say that isn't this is it makes no sense and just as he gets us to think about the the puzzles around nothing and negative predications so he also gets us to think about the puzzles surrounding the concept of being and to be a nigh in the Greek because in its very broadest sense the concept of being must somehow embrace cover or its different senses the existential sense that we looked at Socrates is Socrates exists the predicative sense Socrates is short Socrates is knob nosed and there's also a veridical sense of the verb to be this sentence is true for instance whether something is true or not but all these different senses of the verb to be and yes of course it's important to distinguish them and we've seen in these two sessions on Parmenides how vital it is that it distinguish these different senses in order to understand the problems in his way of truth and his way of see me but once you've made the distinctions you've also got to think well what is it about the existential sense of the verb to be and the predicative sense and the veridical sense that makes them all being what is this overall concept of being that includes all these different senses so if you really start to study Parmenides and think deeply about him you'll realize that not only is he going to start me on a lifelong puzzle about nothing he's also going to start you on a lifelong journey into the problems surrounding being and as we've just seen he prompts us to think about both reason and Summits experience and the respective roles that they play in the acquisition of knowledge and also if we've got problems with both reason and sense experience as Parmalee suggests where do we go to is there any way we can find hassed about anything so he sets us a real puzzle there and finally and this is a new point Parmenides gets us to think about how to start an argument because as we've seen in the way of truth he tries to start from first scoffs and he thinks that one principle is you think and another is being or not being but supposing that's the problem supposing starting from first principles is the problem supposing that all we can do as mere mortals is the start from where we currently are and time and space and with our current beliefs and we have to work towards first principles start from where we are work towards first principles and then start again and see if starting from those first principles we only get back to where we first began or whether we get to somewhere quite different in other words there may be a profound methodological problem in the way of truth maybe the goddess shouldn't have started or tried to start from first principles now the question then is does Parmenides the author also think that that's the problem is he aware of this is he conscious that this is a methodological problem is he trying to get us to work this out for ourselves and say actually we need to start from where we are now we need to start my current beliefs and work towards first principles so that's a fifth possible legacy that I think Parmenides gives us and a really important one how do you start an argument

Channel: Philosophy Overdose

Views: 42,149

Rating: 4.917902 out of 5

Keywords: Philosophy, Parmenides, Ancient Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Pre-Socratic, Metaphysics, Ontology, Being, Eleatic, Zeno, Monism, Non-Being, Logos, Greek Philosophy, Nothingness, Idealism

Id: K7fkPDDOcoo

Length: 47min 28sec (2848 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2017