Plato's Metaphysics

hi i want to talk to you today about plato's metaphysics plato is perhaps the greatest metaphysician of the western tradition alfred north whitehead once said that all western philosophy is really a series of footnotes to plato and it's this part of his doctrine that he really had primarily in mind plato gives us a distinctive view so distinctive that actually this general kind of you even today tends to be known as platonism it's often also called realism but realism can mean different things it's a specific kind of realism but platonism is still recognized as one of the most common one of the most powerful and even today one of the most popular approaches to philosophy so what is platonism and how do we understand it i have a separate video in which i talk about the distinction between universals and particulars but it's crucial to getting us going so i want to remind you of the general shape of that distinction a universal is something that can have multiple instances but a particular cannot so particulars are things that there's only one of you can't have multiple instances of them i'm a good example dan bonavac or any other person for that matter is a particular i'm a particular person as you can probably tell from this slide i was talking in another course when i first made it up about the beginnings of the first world war so the other person i had in mind was gavrilo principe he's the guy who started the war by assassinating the archduke the empire state building or the perry costa indiana library a particular beach ball a particular watch this grain of sand a particular city like austin or the state of texas or sarajevo a particular date or time an event like the assassination of the archduke all of those are examples of particulars you can't have a bunch of them even if you somehow cloned me and produced a bunch of people who looked like me they would all be copies of dan bonavac and you might joke and say oh now there are many damn bottom acts but actually that would turn that term into a kind term there would still be just one of me there would then be a bunch of copies of me so particulars there's only one of them they can't have multiple instances but a universal has multiple instances you can find it all over the place so here are some examples their properties like red or triangular or large relations like being between being on something or loving someone being friends with someone kinds like tiger or building pencil shortstop some of these are natural kinds like tiger you find them there in nature others are human artifacts or socially defined like pencil or shortstop there can be books books like the bible or the novel edwin mulhouse their musical works lukenbach texas or box takata and fugue and d minor you can find many copies of those musical works you might find sheet music you might find them in a sort of digital form they might be on a record album they might be on a cd i might start humming the tune and i i could sit down at the piano maybe and start playing the katakana and fugue and d minor actually it's an organ piece i would get into trouble because i wouldn't have pedals but in any case those are things that there can be many many different instances of well there's nobody much doubts that particulars are real you and i exist in the world if anything does but are universal's real well there are different attitudes about that the realist says yes not only do they exist but they're mind independent they're really in some sense out there they're not just concepts the conceptualist says i agree with you they really exist but i think they are just concepts i think they are really in the end dependent on the mind the nominalist says i don't think they exist at all there are no such things everything that exists is a particular object there is no such thing as humanity they're simply particular people there's no such thing as the color red they're just a bunch of red things and so the realist and as we'll see plato is the paradigmatic realist says yes they really are constituents of the world and they're really out there they're not in here they are real mind independent constituents of the world well as i've said he is the paradigmatic realist he is the first one who says yes universals are crucial to understanding anything and he calls them forms these forms are these mind-independent universals so in the republic but also in a variety of other works he lays out what is known as plato's theory of forms trying to explain what they're like what access we have to them how they make possible all sorts of things about our relationship to the world now why on earth would you think these forms exist what's the point of them well here is his idea and it's at first glance an odd idea he says look there is a sense in which the mind is turned in two different directions whenever i have a thought i see something that is a triangle like that object that i've depicted here on the slide and i think this is a triangle so take that little stop sign looking thing as a mind and that little squiggle as a thought within that mind the content is there in the little bubble this is a triangle when i do that i am recognizing that object i'm perceiving as a triangle and so i am partly directed toward that object and perceiving it but partly i am directed toward triangularity i'm recognizing it as an instance of triangularity as a triangle well that means whenever i have a thought like that about an object about a particular yes my mind is directed toward the particular but it's also directed toward that universal i am directed both toward that particular triangle and also i'm thinking about triangularity in fact i am able to recognize that object that particular as a triangle because my mind has some contact with or awareness of triangularity the form so abstractions like the forms universals make it possible for me to have thoughts about particular objects i couldn't do it i couldn't think about that as a triangle unless i already had some awareness of triangularity that is one crucial reason we think the forms exist why however more broadly should we think they exist in addition to my ability to recognize things as triangles as read as human beings and so on there are different explanations he is and i think they fall broadly speaking under five categories the forms enable me to think general thoughts they enable me to recognize regularities about the world to recognize and characterize universal and necessary laws that govern the world they allow me to explain how it's possible for human beings to communicate and how it's possible for them to mean anything at all with their thoughts and with their words and finally it explains well what philosophers like to call veriticality something like accuracy a question of our thoughts or our statements matching the world so it's a question of truth of objectivity of accuracy of faithful representation of the world the forms he thinks explain all of that and if we don't have the forms then he says we're not going to be able to think general thoughts we won't be able to recognize laws or regularities we won't be able to communicate and we'll have no basis for thinking there's such a thing as truth we'll have to become skeptics or even worse than that we'll simply have to say there's no such thing as truth there's no such thing as communication really in the end everybody has their own ideas we're all confined in our own little worlds incapable of interacting meaningfully with anyone else let's turn to that first point the forms make it possible for us to think general thoughts here we can say the general thought the general principle behind this general thought argument is this there must be something all f's have in common by virtue of which they are f's whatever f happens to be so i see a herd of horses well there's something that those animals have in common what is it there must be something they have in common i call them all horses what enables me to do that now the nominalist is going to say i don't need any universals around i can just look at those particular objects and i see they're similar and so hey i introduced a term for them horse and i use it for things that are similar to things like that but plato says wait a minute um why are they similar you're recognizing that they have something in common right but take that seriously they have something in common by virtue of which they are similar here's what they have in common they're horses okay they exemplify the general kind horse and so what you're doing and recognizing that they're similar and that you can apply the same term to them is that you're recognizing the universal that is present in all those particular animals so that's an example of that universal and our contact with the universal making us make it possible for us to think that general thought the same would be true of cats i see a variety of cats and i think hey they have something in common they're similar i'll call them cats what are they similar in what respect they're all cats they have something in common this is explicit even in the early dialogues in the lockies which we talked about separately for example about courage socrates says to lockhees i was asking about courage and cowardice in general i'll begin with courage and once more ask what is that common quality which is the same in all these cases and which is called courage notice he's saying i'm looking for the thing they have in common they're courageous people they're courageous actions what do they have in common there must be some common quality some form of courage that is present in all these courageous people in all these courageous actions they are considered similar and we call them all courageous for a reason it's because they exemplify courage okay there is some quality they all have in common so even in the early dialogue socrates is already ready saying there has to be a universal present here tell me about that universal don't tell me about particular cases or instances of courage like standing and fighting and not running away tell me about the universal tell me about that common quality universals we can find in all sorts of different places and sometimes they are abstract things like triangularity or redness or kindness or courage other times they may be tied in some way to a particular and that's quite possible let's return to the theme of thinking general thoughts i see a variety of trees for example and i think they are similar in some way they have something in common now it is not trivial what they have in common by any means it's a hard biological question what they have in common and there may be vague boundaries i may say well is this a bush or a tree i don't know in fact things have started growing in my backyard and i think i don't know what this is is this a weed is this a bush is this a tree i let it go and in several cases it's now a 40 or 50 foot tall tree uh it wasn't really planned it was just this thing started growing and well see what it is but in any case that's something that is a hard question what exactly the nature of this thing is but to notice they have something in common is in a way to say yeah what is that thing it is being a tree it is something like the universal of being a tree and we can apply the same principle to other cases so i see a bunch of triangles i think ah look at all those gee they seem to have something in common and then i think yes there is something they have in common they are all triangles i recognize triangularity there and that is what enables me to think of them as triangles here is how plato puts it don't you know that though they make use they hear people doing mathematics and specifically geometry they make use of the visible forms and reason about them but they're thinking not of these instead of the ideals they resemble not of the figures they draw but of the absolute square and absolute diameter and so on the forms they draw or make and which have shadows and reflections and water of their own are converted by them into images but they're really seeking to behold the things themselves which can only be seen with the eye of the mind perhaps you've taken a geometry course and you've done things like this somebody has written something in the blackboard let's say they've said consider this triangle and they've given you some information about it and then they say prove that the triangle abc let's say is a right triangle in other words that this is a right angle well here's one way you might think of it doing it in fact my daughter at one point when she was first learning geometry was a show that this is a right triangle she took out a protractor and said see it's the right triangle 90 degrees well that's not what geometry is about it's not a question of this particular drawing i just made in fact this is just a representation or an image of what we're really talking about a triangle with certain characteristics and if i look at it carefully i realize it's actually pretty sloppily drawn for example these two lines don't even meet and this one of course sort of curves there near the end and here they kind of crisscross so you might say well actually that's not even a triangle it's kind of close to being a triangle but that shouldn't worry us right if the geometry teacher writes this down and you say i'm sorry those two lines don't exactly meet so it's not a triangle that's not an answer we're not talking about this particular drawing we're talking about the abstract form and so plato says if you doubt any of the rest of it think about what people are doing in mathematics in geometry in other areas where they're talking about numbers let's say or sets or functions or any kind of mathematical object they are talking about things that are abstract they're not talking about something that is particular you know if i'm talking about the number two and i hold up my fingers like this i'm not talking about these two fingers in particular i'm talking about the number two and the same thing with this triangle i'm talking about something abstract something that isn't just written down but instead is that form that can only be seen with the eye of the mind now i think that's an intriguing phrase the eye of the mind we're not talking here about what we see the individual people or trees or diagrams we're talking about what we can only see with the eye of the mind the general kind or the general property of being a tree or being red or being a triangle of a certain kind that's what's really at issue we're thinking about universals in other words not just particular drawings or particular plants or particular colors or instances of colored objects or other things like that we're not discussing particulars we're talking about something that lies behind them his second argument is based on regularities we notice all sorts of regularities in the world and we do it on the basis of particulars but we then abstract from those particulars to universals it might be that the world just looks like one thing after another to us and it's all a jumbled mess but eventually we start making sense of it maybe we're children who experiencing a severe thunderstorm for the first time lots of lightning lots of thunder and to us it's just chaos lightning thunder going on and it's just scary but eventually we start noticing a pattern and we start thinking wait i i i think i can predict the next bout of thunder i watch for the lightning and so i start realizing wait those those flashes that's lightning those booms that's thunder and hey the thunder tends to follow the lightning and so i recognize irregularity that the lightning tends to produce the thunder and so suddenly the storm starts having a pattern and recognizing that pattern recognizing those regularities is possible because i can categorize those flashes as a kind as being reflections of a certain more universal type of thing lightning and those booms as thunder and then seeing a general connection between those universals so any regularity any pattern is made possible by those abstract forms those universals the same thing is true of laws when i formulate a scientific law of any kind i'm not talking about this particular electrical circuit for example i'm talking about any circuit of that kind i'm talking about the universal pattern if i'm thinking about newton's laws and focusing on f equals m a for example or looking at a mathematical law like the quadratic formula or thinking about something involving the reflection of light or any other scientific law i'm thinking about the general universals here i'm thinking about the relation between mass and acceleration and force for example and it's not a question of that particular force and that particular mass it's not a question of ah yes this chalk and the force i apply to it and it's rolling and accelerating away no i'm talking about the general kinds here i'm talking about something universal and that's what gives it its universality and necessity if it weren't for that it would just be life being one thing after another and the scientists would just say yeah a lot of stuff happens i don't know we wouldn't be able to formulate regularities or laws communication is the same way okay what makes it possible for me to mean anything with my words for my thoughts to have meaning for me to be able to communicate them to anyone else well at first glance this is hard right i have some idea and i'm trying to communicate it to you but why should i think that's even possible why should i think the words i'm using mean anything at all and will mean anything like the same thing to you well plato says look without anything universal i have no reason to expect that they're just particular thoughts in my head particular sounds i make particular thoughts that are in your head who knows they they don't really have anything in common so there's no way to talk about communication or meaning or that kind of transfer of knowledge or information being possible however it is possible for two people to mean the same thing to think the same thought here's a silly example he said meet us here at recess at the monkey bar um yeah well anyway it is possible for people to misunderstand we don't want to rule that out sometimes we latch on to the wrong universal and grasp the wrong meaning and it can happen even with me myself okay me earlier in the day me later in the day i might think oh i had a thought about that this morning what was it and i might have trouble remembering or maybe i misremember so those problems of meaning and communication can happen within me at different times or in different situations maybe in one situation i you know say something does it mean the same thing and do i remember it does it have the same significance can i communicate when i'm in a different situation well intuitively we want to say yeah there can be problems here but overall yes i can mean the same thing that i meant this morning i can remember and think the same thought i thought this morning i would think the same thought and give you the same lecture on plato even if it were a different day of the week and so i might say look it should be independent of all that or at least it's possible for it to be independent of all that but if so then meaning isn't tied to particular objects neither is the possibility of communication they depend on something universal how does that go well i must latch onto universal if i say this is a triangle then what i'm doing is linking not just to this particular diagram i've drawn for example but to triangularity itself when you understand what i mean and say oh yes that is a triangle you are recognizing this as a triangle because you have grasp of the same universal triangularity and so if you want to think of it this way here you are thinking about this here i am we've got two different thoughts going on here and both of us are thinking hey triangle but what enables our thoughts to have that significance and how do we know that we're thinking anything in common answer is our thoughts must be connected to something like this universal of triangularity that ties into the contents of our thought and without that he says look just something happens in my mind something happens in your mind we have no reason to expect them to have anything in common or to tie to anything about this particular diagram but if there is a universal then it's possible for it to not only be present in this individual diagram but it's possible for our thoughts to latch onto it so if it's possible for us to mean anything at all to communicate even with ourselves at a different time or different situation not to mention other people it must be the case that we can latch onto these universals to something outside my mind or your mind that enables us to think the same thought to communicate the same thing to mean the same thing by our words if that's not possible it looks like meaning and communication aren't possible either finally this explains how we can have accurate thoughts how things we say can be true how they can be objective truths about the world it really relates to the diagram that i was just drawing the triangularity is not only something that is in some sense present in my thoughts and in your thoughts when we communicate about it and both think of this as a triangle it's there in the diagram itself that diagram is plato puts it participates in triangularity so when i say something true i'm saying something that links to a universal that really is there in the world that particular really is exemplifying that universal the diagram here is a diagram of a triangle and you and i recognize it as a triangle and in getting that right and having vertical thoughts that is to say and in having true statements this is a triangle then what's going on here is well we are tied into the very form that is in some sense present in that drawing this is the relationship sometimes described as participation or exemplification that diagram is a triangle it exhibits triangularity it participates in triangularity and it's that participation that link between the particular and the universal that makes it possible for me to have knowledge makes it possible for you and i to think the same thought makes it possible for us to get things right about the world otherwise i have no reason to think my thoughts have anything to do with the world and that anything like accuracy truth objectivity are possible but if those same universals can be present in my thoughts and in a different sense in the world then i can explain this so plato's philosophy of mind gives us this picture of the mind as directed in two ways toward the object a particular through perception for example and also toward the form the content of my thought is linked to the form my perception and that representation in my mind is linked to the form but the object is linked to it too and when they link to the same form that's when i've got accuracy that's when i say something true it's when my thoughts are vertical or correct representations of the world but of course there is a problem here we don't perceive the forms i we don't directly see triangularity for example or humanity we see particular people in particular triangles if that's true how do we know anything about them aristotle's answer is we abstract the universals and our knowledge of universals from the particulars but plato says that won't do it all i recognize that as a triangle because i already understand triangularity i can't in some way see a bunch of triangles and then abstract the idea of triangularity i've got to first recognize they have something in common namely being triangles so he gives us two answers in different dialogues one answer is i recall it and he tells us a sort of beautiful mythical story about the soul being in contact with the realm of forms before we were even born we forget about that at birth but we can be reminded by contact with particulars the other story is about the form of the good he ends up saying that i am impelled toward the good by well what exactly i'm not sure but in some way the form of the good illumines the entire realm of forms for me and so once that happens the good somehow shines a light on my mind and makes it possible for me to recognize these forms through recogni recollection or in some other way with what he calls the eye of the mind now is that a plausible account well maybe there is a problem here we seem to be limited in our causal contact to the realm of the senses so how is it possible for us to have knowledge of something that lies beyond the senses of this realm of universals of forms that are not directly present to the senses it looks as if i can't make sense of the world and my own thinking about the world and my own communicating about it unless i assume there are such universals but how do i know anything about them how does that solve the problem exactly surely then i must have some special faculty of knowledge so it looks as if plato has to postulate some special faculty of knowledge saying i really do have not only my physical eyes that can perceive things through the senses i have something like an eye of the mind that can think about triangularity or humanity or being a tree or something else that is strictly universal and not directly tied to particular objects in fact i can then make up new universals that i've never seen exemplified in a particular once i've mastered a certain number of these universals but how is that possible that becomes a difficult philosophical question and occupies platonus for centuries to come you

Channel: Daniel Bonevac

Views: 3,136

Rating: 4.978261 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 8w-J3VeXkVc

Length: 27min 51sec (1671 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 28 2021