Beschreibung
divisibility in Physics VI. I had been assuming at that time that Aristotle's elimination of reference to the infinitely large in his account of the potential inf inite--like the elimination of the infinitely small from nineteenth century accounts of limits and continuity--gave us everything that was important in a theory of the infinite. Hilbert's paper showed me that this was not obviously so. Suddenly other certainties about Aristotle's (apparently) judicious toning down of (supposed) Platonic extremisms began to crumble. The upshot of work I had been doing earlier on Plato's 'Third Man Argument' began to look different from the way it had before. I was confronted with a possibility I had not till then so much as entertained. What if the more extreme posi tions of Plato on these issues were the more likely to be correct? The present work is the first instalment of the result ing reassessment of Plato's metaphysics, and especially of his theory of Forms. It has occupied much of my teaching and scholarly time over the past fifteen years and more. The central question wi th which I concern myself is, "How does Plato argue for the existence of his Forms (if he does )7" The idea of making this the central question is that if we know how he argues for the existence of Forms, we may get a better sense of what they are.
Autorenporträt
InhaltsangabeAnalytical Table of Contents.- 1. Some Views of the Forms; a Prolegomenon for Analytical Philosophers.- Aristotle's treatment of Plato's Theory of Forms as a bit of metaphysical extremism, and some similar modern criticisms: Logical Form and Diagnosis.- The Platonist Request for Clarification of these Criticisms, and modern Responses appealing to theories of Logical Types and theories of the Logical Form of the Proposition.- A further, apparently unanswerable, modern riposte: Plato is committed to Universal Literal Self-Predication.- An earlier view of Plato: the Forms and Laws of Nature.- 2. A General Strategy for the Present Volume.- The two main sorts of existence arguments in the middle dialogues.- Remarks on the structure of the rest of this volume.- 3. Nominalism What.- A strategy for defeating Nominalism: anti-deflationary arguments and ontological commitment.- Anachronistic character of interpretations that have Plato believing both in Immanent Characters and in Transcendent Forms.- 4. Incorrigible Conceptual States What.- Anachronistic character of the possible charge that Plato's anti-nominalist argument for the Forms begs the question against conceptualism p.- Incorrigible conceptual states and a priori truths.- Plato's middle period Forms as meanings or meaning-like entities.- 5. The Frege-Quine Objections.- Psychological contexts and inferences involving existence and identity.- Moore's argument against the 'Naturalistic Fallacy' not on the whole objected to as involving psychological contexts.- 6. Plato's other main Middle Period Argument for the Existence of Forms-the Argument from the Sciences.- 7. On giving Plato a Position he 'could have had in mind'.- Contrast of the present interpretation of passages like Phaedo 74 with Vlastos's claim that Plato thought that Largeness was literally a large object.- Owen's claim that Plato thought that Equality Itself was perfectly equal.- A further difficulty in attributing to Plato a position he 'could have had in mind': how can the Forms be 'Paradigms' if they are not Literally Self-Predicational?.- The Nominalist.- 1. The Recollection argument of the Phaeao, commonly thought to presuppose the existence of the Forms, actually provides an argument (against nominalist opponents) for their existence.- 2. The opponents in the Republic (the 'lovers of sights and sounds') and in the Parmenides (Zeno, at least if his arguments against plurality are to be conclusive) also represented as nominalists.- 3. Various difficulties for the existence argument of the Phaedo.- 4. The basic idea of the argument: that the equal we perceive we can confuse with the unequal we perceive; but the equal we conceive is, in clear cases, unconfusable with the unequal we conceive.- 5. Incorrigible conceptual states and Moore's argument against the 'Naturalistic Fallacy'.- 6. Forms of opposites as the opposites (themselves). How to understand the locution 'the F-itself'.- 7. The quasi-theological predicates of the Forms. The Forms and Universal Literal Self-Predication.- 8. Peculiarities of the contrast in Republic V between Knowledge and Opinion. The notion that the objects of opinion "lie between being and not-being".- 9. Confusing the questions 'What is F-ness?' and 'What things are F?' Deficiencies of sensible F's as (nominalist) answers to the question 'What is F-ness?' The notion that Forms are "separate".- 10. Doesn't the description of the Form of the Beautiful in the Upward Path in Symposium 210-212 compel the self-predicative notion that sensible particular F things are always less F than the F-itself?.- 11. Examination of Symposium 210-212 shows the latter suggestion to be a consequence of confusing the questions 'What is beauty?' and 'What things are beautiful?'.- 12. Plato's argument being an anti-nominalist argument from certain sorts of psychological states to objects of those states, we must turn to look at the (from a Fregean point of view) suspicious notion of objects of thought.- Ari
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