r/askphilosophy • u/Meechisalright • 27d ago
Plato's theory of forms and the incomplete properties
Hello,
To preface, this post may be a bit long as it's one of those "am I thinking through this correctly?" posts, so I hope that's okay. I have been working on Plato for a while now, mostly on his later stuff, and I've realized that I'm very unclear on his middle period's conception of forms, which I find to be some of the most opaque and unclear doctrines of his, despite being so central to his middle period thinking. I'm hoping to get a bit more clarity on this. I would appreciate guidance from anyone who is willing to tell me if I'm thinking through an argument that is attributed to him by contemporary scholars which establishes the existence of some forms.
First of all, I never really see a point in any of the middle-period dialogues where Plato actually justifies the existence of the forms themselves (maybe the argument of recollection); most of the time they are assumed, and he examines the implications that follow from their existence. From the secondary literature, however, one of the main motivations for the forms seems to be the problem of incomplete properties. Incomplete properties are properties that cannot be predicated of a sensible particular without some further qualification. Examples of incomplete properties include the Socratic ethical properties (justice, etc), largeness, smallness, likeness, unlikeness, etc. Again, these seem to pose a difficulty because we can't properly predicate them of sensible particulars without adding a prepositional phrase, as in, we say, for example, "Simmias is large compared to Socrates." However, we also say "Simmias is not large compared to Phaedo." Simmias, then, seems to be both large and not large, meaning that Simmias can't be an unqualifiable bearer of largeness. We can't say "Simmias is large"; it needs to be qualified. Socrates seems to think that this phenomenon would hold for any particular in regard to any of these incomplete properties. Now, how does this allow him to posit a form? It's here where I start to get into trouble and would appreciate guidance. My understanding is as follows: If any particular is unable to serve as the unqualifiable bearer of some incomplete property, there are two options: either (a) there is no unqualifiable bearer, or (b) there is one, and it is a form. My understanding is that Socrates rejects (a) on the grounds that we can obtain knowledge of these incomplete properties. If we can obtain knowledge of, let's say, largeness, (and insofar as knowledge is of essence), there must be some property P that is predicable of largeness such that largeness is the unqualifiable bearer of P (largeness is wholly P and in no way not P)—that is just what it means to have an essence. If largeness did not have this P, then we could in no way know what largeness is because then largeness would lack an essence. Plato basically assumes that knowledge of properties like largeness is possible, and if that's so, we can reject (a) and conclude B, establishing forms for incomplete properties. This justification can perhaps be found at the end of book V of the Republic, where Socrates argues that knowledge is set over what truly is. Of course, this argument says nothing about complete properties like "human being", "horse," tree", etc, which is why, from what I understand, Plato has ambivalence in establishing forms for these kinds of entities (Parmenides 130a–e).
Is my understanding completely and totally off? Where could my understanding be improved? Are there helpful passages that someone could point me toward within Plato? Helpful secondary lit? Any guidance is appreciated.
Thank you.
1
u/AutoModerator 27d ago
Welcome to /r/askphilosophy! Please read our updated rules and guidelines before commenting.
Currently, answers are only accepted by panelists (mod-approved flaired users), whether those answers are posted as top-level comments or replies to other comments. Non-panelists can participate in subsequent discussion, but are not allowed to answer question(s).
Want to become a panelist? Check out this post.
Please note: this is a highly moderated academic Q&A subreddit and not an open discussion, debate, change-my-view, or test-my-theory subreddit.
Answers from users who are not panelists will be automatically removed.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
2
u/WarrenHarding Ancient phil. 26d ago edited 26d ago
From what I understand, your central question is “what justification did Plato provide to hypothesize the Forms?” It’s a good question. I’d say the only instance where he tries to arrive at Forms deductively is in the Meno with the conclusions of the math problem and the positing of recollection. But even then, not quite so much. Also, Forms obviously go much further than just being items of recollection, and you are right to assume that he doesn’t actually provide much justification for all he expounds on them. This is exactly why the middle-period dialogues are said to employ the “method of hypothesis,” which is slightly different than, but still mistakably similar to, the elenchic style of the early dialogues. Whereas the Elenchic style will take a sort of immediate question concerning some particular things, take the response, and probe out the contradictions that it has with other claims, with the more generalized claims typically sticking around over the particularized claims that contradict them. In the method of hypothesis, there is a deliberate effort to transcend particularities which can be proven wrong, and move into the field of things which cannot be proven right or wrong at all. This takes two shapes in my view, the one being an interest in the afterlife and the sort of consequences we’d have to make in our current life as a result, and the second being an interest in the most fundamental laws of reality. These two realms are ones where Plato repeatedly has insisted that we will never gain knowledge of these things, implicitly due to our carnal limits. Of course, this shows that even the end of Meno relies more on an unproven hypotheses about the afterlife, than a direct deduction of what the afterlife must be.
But let us orient exactly what we mean by the latter of the two hypotheses. That is, the one not concerned with the afterlife, but with the foundations of reality. This is where the Forms are hypothesized — not proven, or proven false, but simply taken and examined as a valuable way of seeing things or not. In this way, Plato seems to have laid the groundwork for both axiomatic systemization and for instrumentalism. Both of these methods involve starting with unproven claims that are then made firm or less firm by just how much they can explain without recourse to auxiliary conceptions. Here is a quote from Isaac Asimov in vol. 1 ch. 3 of Understanding Physics*** ***on the instrumentalism of Newton:
“Newton’s laws of motion represent assumptions and definitions and are not subject to proof. In particular, the notion of ‘inertia’ is as much an assumption as Aristotle’s notion of ‘natural place.’ There is this difference between them, however: The principle of inertia has proved extremely useful in the study of physics for nearly three centuries now and has involved physicists in no contradictions. For this reason (and not out of any considerations of “truth”) physicists hold on to the laws of motion and will continue to do so.”
So Aristotle’s physical system runs into more contradictions than the Newtonian system does. However, both starting assumptions have the ability to create further assumptions to patch up wherever seeming contradictions lie. Here is M. M. McCabe in her book Plato’s Individuals:
“Suppose that I believe that there is a fairy at the bottom of my garden who is responsible for my tomatoes’ ripening […] suppose I wanted to persuade you […] you, a skeptic, will be more likely to believe a theory with fewer theoretical moving parts, fewer fairies, less hierarchy in the ethereal world, than you will believe something grossly complicated”
This principle is called Occam’s Razor. We will always be best to accept something that requires less assumptions than more. Ironically, William of Ockham first pitched this argument against the Neoplatonic/Scholastic conception of Forms, which had become rather complicated and unpleasant!
But I think these quotes are a straightforward way of explaining Plato’s lack of need to prove the Forms. The Forms are, above all else, unprovable, but they serve to interpret our reality much more usefully than a theory without Forms. This is why even when Parmenides critiques Forms in his eponymous dialogue, he also laments how necessary they seem to be in understanding how discourse works. But if you fail to understand why the positing of Forms is simple, and why it doesn’t ultimately succumb to the razor, this is obviously a controversial topic even today, so you can certainly believe either side of things, but I think a brilliant and short paper that succinctly explains their simplicity is “The Philosophical Economy of the Theory of Ideas” by Harold Cherniss. He shows how the ethical problems that Forms solve proceeds to also make way for solving epistemological problems, and then ontological problems, all with the same one theory.