On Plato

Part A:

What about someone who believes in beautiful things, but doesn't believe in the beautiful itself and isn't able to follow anyone who could lead him to the knowledge of it?  Don't you think he is living in a dream rather than a wakened state?  Isn't the dreaming: whether asleep or awake, to think that a likeness is not a likeness but rather the thing itself that it is like?  (Republic V, 470 6c)

Plato’s Republic delivers one of the most renowned discussions of epistemology in the whole scope of literature.  In fact, this Socratic dialogue pioneered the concept of ‘truth’ within the academic traditions of all Western cultures.  In the republic, Plato draws a distinction between those persons who are concerned with surface appearances of things, ‘likenesses’, and those who study actual things themselves, ‘the thing itself that it is like?’.  One of the examples Plato provides to illustrate his point concerns the search for beauty, and the differing methods these two parties have for ascertaining it.  Someone who concerns themselves with the ‘likenesses’ of things would in Plato’s view, be a ‘nominalist’; someone who believes that their knowledge comes only from their sense-perceptions.  Thus a nominalist, believing that things indeed are as they appear to themselves, would believe that true beauty exists merely as something that appears beautiful to their subjective consciousness.  This person would not believe that there exists an objective truth to beauty outside of their subjective perceptions; they would not, ‘believe in the beautiful itself’.  Plato also refers to this party in other passages as a ‘lover of sights and sounds’.

            The other type of person believes in the beautiful itself because they believe in actual ‘knowledge’, the objective truth of things outside one’s own perceptions of them.  Plato elsewhere in the republic makes the case that this objective true nature of things are abstract, non-spatiotemporal forms.  Plato refers to this party as the real philosophers, or those who love the sight of truth, as opposed to simply sights and sounds.  In the above passage, Plato argues that in comparison to the philosophers, the nominalists are living within a waking dream state; “Don’t you think that he is living in a dream rather than a wakened state?” (Republic V, 470 6c) After all, Plato asks, what is dreaming other than confusing one’s perceptions, the way things appear to one’s own mind, to be reality. He writes, “Isn't the dreaming: whether asleep or awake, to think that a likeness is not a likeness but rather the thing itself that it is like?”  (Republic V, 470 6c)

            The analogy of nominalism and dreaming is an important argument for Plato, and one that constitutes the most critical of components in his famous ‘Allegory of the Cave’.  Indeed, it seems that one of Plato’s biggest motivations in writing was to spread the idea that sense-perception is so obviously wavering and fallible that to believe in its truth limits one to living truly outside of reality, in their own dream.  Thus, this became his motivation for promoting his theory of the forms, the study of which Plato believed would lead humanity to true knowledge.  The principle from this true knowledge would allow Philosopher-Kings to guide the rest of society towards a more perfect state.

As Rather, the safest course by far is to propose that we speak about these things in the following way: what we invariably observed becoming different at different times – fire for example – to characterize that, i.e., fire, not as "this," but always as “what is such," and to speak of water not as "this," but always as “what is such." (Timeaus, 49d)

In this section of the Timeaus Plato is addressing tendencies of persons to mistakenly refer to some things that are not material objects as if they were.  Plato saw that at the time, this was a mistake that was carried to the very foundational levels of physics when the Classical Greeks spoke of the four elements; Earth, Air, Wind, and Fire.  However, this tendency is still a common type of mistake used in language today.

In this passage, Plato first brings up the concept of ‘becoming different at different times’.  One simple way of reading this is that something is always changing, or in a state of flux.  The example Plato gives of this here is ‘fire’.  At the time ‘fire’ was considered to be one of the four basic elements that made up all of matter.  Thus, people spoke of ‘fire’ as something that was ‘this’, a material object of some sort.  One might have incorrectly said, “Pour water on ‘this’ fire,” as if ‘this’ fire were one thing.  However, there is no such thing as ‘fire’ if one tries to conceive of it as such a singular material object.  Fire is something that is always becoming such that it is ‘fiery’.  In this manner, Plato asks that one not speak of fire as ‘this’, but speak of it like an adjective, as ‘what is such’ that it is becoming fiery.  If one thinks of water as something that is always flowing, in flux, then it would be appropriate to level the same restriction on the use of ‘water’ versus ‘watery’.             In the Timeaus, Plato proposes a model of physics drawn from these ideas of becoming versus being.  His model is built a perceivable world in constant flux, the receptacle within which matter is arranged into perceivable things, and finally the non-dimensional or material forms upon which the shape of matter within the receptacle is based.  Essentially, Plato posits that what humans have access to through their perceptions is always in a state of flux because of the insights Heraclitus proffers.  These objects of matter are always in a state of ‘becoming’ what they are, and thus ‘what they are’ cannot be something material as they are continuously changing in that regard.  ‘What they are’, their form, must then be something that does not exist within space-time.   This is the realm of ‘being’, or what actually is, and it is the world of the perfect forms whatever infinite number of them there may be.  These realms of ‘becoming’ are ‘being’ are connected by a medium Plato refers to as a ‘receptacle’.  The forms are essentially concepts that when arranged in the fundamental medium of the receptacle to become our objects of perception.  The objects of perception may be arrangements of multiple forms at multiple times and thus are always in a state of flux, which is why according to Plato, the realm of ‘becoming’ cannot be the realm of true knowledge.

Part B:

But since not even this abides, that what flows flows white, but rather it is in a process of change, so that there is flux in this very thing also, the whiteness and it is passing over into another color, lest it be convicted of standing still in this respect—since this is so, is it possible to give any name to a color which will properly apply to it? (Theatetus 182d)

In this passage of the Theatetus, Plato is creating what Burnyead refers too as the extended flux doctrine that nominalists such as Protagorus and Heraclitus must theoretically also accept. According to Burnyead, Plato synthesizes these premises in an extravagant reductio ad absurdum; he demonstrates that the first two premises are co-dependent and the third necessarily follows.  At this point, the nominalist position is constructed in its most cohesive and seemingly flawless structure, and Plato garners his opponents’ approval of his synthesis. By combining his opponents’ arguments, he can simultaneously make them more mutually dependent, and thus when he attacks one of them the damage spreads to the other.  For example, Plato argues against perception and knowledge by claiming it results in the impossibility of recalled knowledge outside the present sense experience.  “Then we have this result, that a man who has come to know something and still remembers it doesn’t know it because he doesn’t see it?” (164 b)  This, according to Socrates, is an impossible result.  Plato also provides the problem of future knowledge, or predictions, as an argument that limits knowledge as perception merely to the present experience.  Socrates summarizes his point, “But so long as we keep within the limits of that immediate present experience of the individual which gives rise to perceptions and to perceptual judgments, it is more difficult to convict these latter of being untrue.” (179 c)   Convicting them of being untrue, however, will be Socrates’ goal.

Plato then outlines the consequences of the third premise, Heracliteanism, which Protagoras must also accept; that an expanded concept of flux would devoid all language of any meaning whatsoever.  This is the basis of the Burnyead’s extended flux doctrine that Plato uses to show that perception cannot be what constitutes true knowledge because if one accepted the extended flux doctrine language would not be possible because becoming white would also be the same as becoming not white.  ‘Seeing’ would be no different than ‘hearing’.  However, language is not impossible so the position would seem absurd, so because of the reductio ad absurdum, Protagorus and Thaeatetus would also have to be incorrect.

There is also a conservative interpretation of this passage from the Theatetus.  This interpretation does not rely on an extended doctrine of flux, but instead rests on the concept that all of Plato’s opponents must accept Heraclitean flux, because if any stability could exist, then so could unity outside of perception. Thus Plato’s trap lies in that those who accept Heraclitean flux end up not being able to accept any stability in their model whatsoever, and which in turn means they must also accept that there is nothing they know about their sense perception because that must also be completely unstable.  Any stability would produce a unity that could conceivably be knowable as an objective truth.  This unified concept would be objectively true outside of sense perception, and thus would refute knowledge as perception.  This interpretation definitely turns on the above passage.  Plato uses the notion of color and attempts to define and communicate it linguistically.  ‘White’ according to Plato is not something that  ‘is’ white.  Instead, it is something that is in a state of becoming something one perceives and refers to as white.  It, if it is even an it, ‘flows’ white.  However, if it is always in a state of becoming white, it is always changing at the material level, the level of perception.  If perceptions all one can know, such as a nominalist does, then one could never really know anything at all.  This is because a perception could not exist as a singular unitary concept that one could distinguish, much less actually ‘know’.  The perception that one has of white could just as easily be referred to by the name of any other color because that perception was always changing to another color anyways.  This surely cannot be the platform on which to base knowledge.  There must be a form of white, which the perception may become at one moment but may always become something else.  This form is what should be considered true knowledge and studied.

This is why the conservative interpretation seems to be a more accurate interpretation.  It only makes sense that Plato would be arguing for his position in the firmest and most consistent approach possible, and thus would choose the interpretation that made the least radical assumptions.  The conservative interpretation does not make Plato make any radical claims, but simply allows Plato to use his opponents’ simple and basic premises to show that their ideas would necessitate the absurdity of knowledge.  This is a safer approach then attempting to force his opponents into accepting a radical doctrine of extended flux that makes seeing equal hearing and results in the impossibility of language because that seems unfair.  This interpretation would imply that Plato believed in a lesser degree of flux, so if Theatetus or Protagorus were here they would most likely also be able to only accept that lesser flux and hence avoid refutation based on extended flux.  Instead, it is easier and more consistent for Plato to simply use basic flux to show that knowledge could never be knowledge if it is always fluctuating.  Thus, no one can ever claim that one derives their knowledge from perpetually changing perceptions nor that man is the incorrigibly accurate measurer of the world.

“You see, the man who has been thus far guided in matters of love, who has beheld beautiful things in the right order and correctly, is coming now to the goal of loving; all of a sudden he will catch sight of something wonderfully beautiful in its nature; that, Socrates is the reason for his earlier labors.  (Symposium, 210e)

The Symposium is considered to be one of Plato’s finest literary achievements and one of the most complete discussions by Plato of his complete ontology.  Within the Symposium Plato made one of the most famous and certainly most elegant discussions of love and beauty in the history of literature.  This discussion of love and beauty was one of the key matters around which the debate of Plato’s theory of forms revolved.  The above passage from the Symposium is critical in illustrating how Plato’s theory of forms relates  to his ontology, or how Plato believed the world to really exist as; what was reality for Plato.  There are two very important but different interpretations of Plato’s ontology that can be easily applied to this passage in an effort to summon understanding from perplexity.  These interpretations are those of Plato scholars Gregory Vlastos and Terry Penner.                                                                                    Gregory Vlastos pioneered a dominant contempory view of Plato and his theory of forms called the ‘Degree’s of Reality’ Thesis.  This theory interpreted Plato to mean that there were higher or lower levels, degrees, of reality.  Thus, some levels of reality would be more ‘real’ than others.  Ultimately, this view holds that Plato believed that the forms occupied the highest degree of reality.  In this way, it is not that Plato believes that objects of opinion do or do not exist, but instead that are a less correct version of reality.  Thus, the object of opinion X would be both X and not X at the same time.  Socrate’s discusses in the Republic, “Or can you find a more appropriate place to put them than intermediate between being and not being?  Surely, they can’t be more than what is or not be more than what is not.” (Republic, 479, c).  However, by studying the forms, one is discovering more accurately what an object truly is because a form literally is the perfect version of a ‘thing’ through universal literal self-predication; the form of X is literally X. Vlastos’s argument is supported in part by text from the Symposium where Diotima describes the ‘upward path’ persons embark on when discovering beauty.  First, they love beautiful objects, then, they love beautiful laws.  Finally, they love the form of beauty itself and have found reality.  As Diotima explains, “You see, the man who has been thus far guided in matters of Love, who has beheld beautiful things in the right order and correctly, is coming now to the goal of Loving: all of a sudden he will catch sight of something wonderfully beautiful in its nature.” (Symposisum, 210, e).  However, many others realize that what Diotima is explaining here is the ‘order of discovery’ and not different degrees of reality for beauty.                                                                                                              There is another interpretation of Plato proffered by the scholar Terry Penner that removes many of the problems from Vlasto’s thesis.  This interpretation relies on the distinction – that Plato makes throughout his works – of being and becoming.  The essential idea of being is that ‘to be’ a thing that thing must become one unified whole.  Something that is becoming something else is always becoming more than one thing.  This is based on a world of flux where everything is always in motion and becoming something else.  Objects of opinion and perceptions are always in this flux and thus are never becoming one thing.  On the other hand, the forms are the form the receptacle – Plato’s basic material substratum imagined in the Timeaus – takes when the receptacle has become one thing.  Plato states that the receptacle is, “a receptacle of all becoming – its wetnurse, as it were.” (Timeaus, 49, a) Thus, because everything else is changing, being while not being, while the forms are one, they are ‘being’, there are not degrees of reality but ‘degrees of oneness’.  In the Timeaus, Plato writes, “Since these things are so, we must agree that that which keeps it own form unchangingly, which has not been brought into being and is not destroyed…, is one thing.” (Timeaus, 52, a)  Plato simply identifies philosophy and knowledge with being rather than becoming.  This is a far stronger interpretation in comparison to Vlastos’s theories.  Vlastos makes the mistakes of assume literal self-predication and assuming the theory of forms, rather than constructing an argument for them.  By not assuming what Plato is promoting but instead interpreting it, Penner stays far more faithful to the text.

Part C:

While some thinkers would certainly love to re-open debate, as is inevitable with philosopher types, it can easily be accepted for the sake of argument that Plato’s discussion in the Theatetus firmly forces the basic Protagorean concepts that ‘knowledge is perception’ and ‘man is the measure of all things’ into a great shadow of doubt.  Indeed, Plato’s victory at the time of his writing helped keep the writings of the Pre-Socratic’s mostly hidden Western intellectuals (what few there may have been) for millennia.  However, the question remains, does Plato’s refutation of Protagorus have any serious implications for any more modern theories of epistemology or philosophy of mind.  Does Plato successfully refute any major portions of these modern theories in the Theatetus.  The most obvious tradition to test given Plato’s original opponent is Nominalism’s cousin and Protagorus’s descendant.  This tradition is the collection of modern and post-modern empirical theory.  Not only is empiricism a naturally conflicting set of ideas for Plato, it has also been incredibly influential in creating the modern world and perspective over the last three centuries.  One of the greatest early pioneers of empiricism, and a thinker even non-empiricists still have to confront, is the early-modern English-Scottish philosopher and skeptic, David Hume.  Skepticism plaid a huge part in Hume’s empirical epistemology, and that it forced radical re-evaluations of thought and knowledge would be an understatement of immense proportions.  Whether or not Plato’s Theatetus will successfully rebuff much of empiricism’s worldview will depend in large part on how the observations of Hume can frame the discussion.  However, this should not be about trying to declare a winner, for Plato and Hume and other philosopher undoubtedly shared a myriad of exceptionally insightful observations that would otherwise have been unthinkable for the greater part of humanity.  Even without complete resolution this type of comparative philosophy will help grow the tradition that has always in turn helped humanity grow, the tradition that all great thinkers from Plato to Hume and beyond have been a part of.

Hume’s epistemology distinguishes between two types of ‘knowledge’; matters of fact and relations of ideas.  Matters of fact are derived from experience – or perception.  Questions of matters of fact are answered through observation of the external world.  An example of a matter of fact would be the number of cookies in a cookie jar.  Relations of ideas are concepts that are created from multiple distinct ideas.  Relations of ideas are true or false based on the accepted meaning of the ideas or words representing them.  An example of this is that a bachelor is an unmarried male or that one-dollar is equal in value to four quarters.  Statements such as these are implicitly and necessarily true based on the definitions of bachelor and unmarried male, of dollar and quarter.  However, the key distinction that Hume makes is that only relations of ideas can be necessarily true a priori.  This is because Hume, like Plato, realized that observations based on perception are inherently inaccurate to some degree, which is why one can never be absolutely positive about a matter of fact.  It can only be reduced to a matter of probability.  This is such a critical moment in Hume’s epistemology because it obliterates many of the basic assumptions about their external surroundings that humans take for granted to be true a priori.

One example of this is the assumptions that all effects have a cause.  Hume argues that there is no warrant available to us that can be used to justify the claim that any effects have a cause.  Instead Hume claims that concepts like ‘cause and effect’ have been ground into humans as a matter of customary fact.  As people evolved in their natural surroundings, or a newborn baby experiencing the world, unconnected events seemed to happen all around without rhyme or reason.  However, after innumerable series of these events, the human brain programs itself through custom to imagine connections between events so that one can make sense of the world; hence one arrives at the notions of cause and effect.  However, these remain merely notions as there is no justification for them other than that like effects have like cause is observed countless times by all.  However, everyone encounters situations in their life-experience that while their maybe a high degree of probability that this is the case, there are still instances where one finds out that what seemed like an obvious inference was actually incredibly off-base.  With things in the ordinary world human brains may have adapted so that they can make inferences about the immediate physical world with some degree of accuracy, especially through controlled scientific observation.  However, when imaginations turn to the more lofty subjects of meta-physics, with little or no empirical observation to at least grant a notional level of confirmation, our thinking apparatuses are simply not adequately equipped to determine ‘truth’.

If one considers forms of empiricism based on Hume’s interpretation, then Plato’s refutation of nominalism in the Theatetus does not carry the same weight against modern empiricism as it did against Protagorus.  Plato’s argument in the Theatetus focuses on extending the doctrine of flux inherited from Heraclitus to its logical conclusion that all knowledge is impossible, hence knowledge could not be perception.  Another way of stating the conclusion is that man cannot be the measure of all things if it is impossible for him to measure anything.  This would be the result of everything everywhere being in flux all of the time.  There could be no constituency whatsoever, so attempting to apply a label ‘knowledge’ to any perception of the fluctuating world would be necessarily impossible, because whatever ‘thing’ it was would already have changed to something else.  Indeed, even the concept of time would not be workable in such an ontology because there would not be any objectivity on which to base it.  Time would be absolutely relative because any attempt to relate multiple events would be entirely subjective.  The absurdly limited potential that this limits Protagorus to, essentially absolutely nothing is knowable, is where the strength of Plato’s refutation lies.

I believe that Hume would accept all of Plato’s argument in his refutation of Protagorus and Heraclitus. However, Hume’s epistemology does not fall into quite the same trap because Hume and modern empiricism work within this doctrine of extended flux.  In fact, Hume uses this notion of a completely random and fluctuating external world to construct his own argument against customary metaphysical assumptions, such as like effects having like causes.  Empiricists no longer say perception is knowledge. Nor does Hume claim that man is the measure of all things.  The evolved form of Protagorus claim becomes with Hume that things may be for a man as they appear to him, but that does not mean that he knows anything.  Hume shows that while all one has access to is sense-experience that does not mean they have definitive knowledge about that sense-experience.  Knowledge, at least about things outside of one’s mind, becomes something probable and fallible, instead of something objectively true or false.  The only absolutely true things are concepts humans make up inside their heads in order to relate different ideas (concepts like a dollar equals four quarters).  Thus, Hume commits himself to extended flux and explains how humans can still be functioning beings without having access to any objective truth.  This is how Hume avoids Plato’s refutation, by acknowledging it.

This is why it should not be a major confrontation between empiricism and Plato.  They have entirely different epistemologies, but they both construct their ideas with respect to the same problem they have witnessed.  This problem is the problem of humans coming to know their external world and make valid deductions based on their observations.  Plato realizes the inherent ambiguity of perception, and thus desires that their exists objective truths which would necessarily exist only outside of space and time.  Plato desires this because he does not want complacent people to simply accept their very flawed perceptions as truth and force that untruth onto other people (such as happens in the Cave).  Hume however realizes the same ambiguity and thus believes people should be rationally skeptical about any concepts of ‘truth’ that they have no access to and no method of verification.  Essentially both thinkers do not want people to become deceived and confused by their sense perception, but their models for sorting through that confusion are achieved through opposite approaches.  One of these is a belief in permanent perplexity stimulating a search for deeper, more real, knowledge.  The other is a permanent and unrelenting skepticism.  It is ultimately up to each individual to accept a variation of one of these models because they are both rooted in the same obvious problem, however a permanent resolution between the two continues to elude the searching of even the greatest minds the humans species has yet to proffer.