| 304 | Beautiful things must be different from beauty itself, but beauty itself must be present in each of them [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Are fine things different from or identical to fineness? They are different from fineness itself, but fineness itself is in a sense present in each of them. | |
| From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.385 BCE], 301a) | |
| A reaction: Forms sound particularly unconvincing in this formulation. If something appears to be fine [kalon] I assume that is because of its intrinsic qualities, not because it contains an extra universal feature. |
| 24282 | A form is wholly present in many different things (just as a day is present in many places) [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Do you think that the form as a whole is in each of the many? - What's to prevent it? - So it will be at the same time, as a whole, in things that are many, and would thus be separate from itself. - Not if it is like a day, in many places at one time. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.366 BCE], 131a) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Socrates is pressed hard by Parmenides on this issue, and has to rely on an implausible analogy (with a day; also a sail draped over several people) to wriggle out of it. The case against the Forms is strong in this dialogue. |
| 212 | The whole idea of each Form must be found in each thing which participates in it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The whole idea of each form (of beauty, justice etc) must be found in each thing which participates in it. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.366 BCE], 131a) | |
| A reaction: This is the problem of something which is seen as a perfectly unified whole, and yet is understood to be distributed in different locations. A good reason for abandoning Forms, I would say! |
| 213 | Each idea is in all its participants at once, just as daytime is a unity but in many separate places at once [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Just as day is in many places at once, but not separated from itself, so each idea might be in all its participants at once. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.366 BCE], 131b) | |
| A reaction: Quite a good response. At any moment we experience that day, but we don't experience a localised chunk of it. I experience the Tuesday that extends across Greece. |
| 24288 | Probably partaking in the Forms is like being modeled on a pattern [Plato] |
| Full Idea: What appears to me most likely is these forms are like patterns set in nature, and other things resemble them and are likenesses; and this partaking of the forms is simply being modeled on them. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.366 BCE], 132c) | |
| A reaction: This invites the question of whether the things depend for their existence on the Forms, or whether things could survive the loss of their patterns (if Zeus destroyed all the Forms). Plato generally implies dependence. |
| 215 | If things partake of ideas, this implies either that everything thinks, or that everything actually is thought [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If all things partake of ideas, must either everything be made of thoughts and everything thinks, or everything is thought, and so can't think? | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.366 BCE], 132c) | |
| A reaction: So we must choose between either panpsychism or idealism! A pretty grim dilemma. |
| 24283 | It is most likely that forms are patterns, and a thing partakes by being modelled on the form [Plato] |
| Full Idea: What appears to me most likely is that these forms are like patterns set in nature, and other things resemble them and are likenesses, and this partaking of the forms is, for the other things, simply being modelled on them. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.366 BCE], 132d) | |
| A reaction: This is, surely, much the best interpretation of the forms, as blueprints for types of thing, and for ideals. But it entails that forms are not self-predicating. You can't ride the blueprint for a horse. |
| 216 | If things are made alike by participating in something, that thing will be the absolute idea [Plato] |
| Full Idea: That by participation in which like things are made like, will be the absolute idea, will it not? | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.366 BCE], 132e) | |
| A reaction: This might work for two precisely identical shades of red, but how do we explain the likeness of light red to dark red? Do we imagine the ideal red, or infer it? |
| 218 | Participation is not by means of similarity, so we are looking for some other method of participation [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Participation is not by means of likeness, so we must seek some other method of participation. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.366 BCE], 133a) | |
| A reaction: The problem was that if two things are 'alike', they need another Form for the relation that connects them. Participation needs to be direct. We all participate directly in sunlight? |
| 1 | There is only one source for all beauty [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If anything is beautiful other than beauty itself, it is beautiful for no other reason but because it participates in that beautiful. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.374 BCE], 100c) | |
| A reaction: The Greek word will be 'kalon' (beautiful, fine, noble). Like Aristotle, I find it baffling that such diversity could have a single source. Beautiful things have diverse aims. |
| 24227 | One and one can only become two by sharing in Twoness [Plato] |
| Full Idea: You do not know how else [when one is added to one it becomes two] except by sharing in a particular reality, which does not have any other cause of becoming two except by sharing in Twoness, …as that which is one must share in Oneness. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.374 BCE], 101c) | |
| A reaction: Close readers of such passages have always been baffled by what sharing [partaking, metechein] could actually mean. How can two apples 'share' a pure eternal idea? The best approach is, I'm afraid, mental files. |
| 368 | Other things are named after the Forms because they participate in them [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The reason why other things are called after the forms is that they participate in the forms. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.374 BCE], 102a) | |
| A reaction: Hm. The Third Man problem beckons. How do you identify the Form, and how do you connect it to this particular? Did you learn the name of the Form before you named any of the particulars? |
| 4447 | If the good is one, is it unchanged when it is in particulars, and is it then separated from itself? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If man is one, and the good is one, how are they supposed to exist? Do they stay the same even though they are found in many things at the same time, and are they then entirely separated from themselves, which seems most impossible of all? | |
| From: Plato (Philebus [c.354 BCE], 15a) | |
| A reaction: Presumably Plato anguishes over this because he thinks Forms are self-predicating (the Good is good). Big mistake. The Good fathers good particulars which resemble itself, but are diluted? |
| 24228 | Believers in the beautiful see that it is separate from things that participate in it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Someone who believes in the beautiful itself, can see both it and the things that partipate in it, and doesn't believe that the participants are it or that it itself is the participants. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.371 BCE], 476c) | |
| A reaction: Note that you required to 'believe in' the beautiful. It is hard to see much connection between a beautiful football goal, a beautiful bird and a beautiful maths proof. Someone suggested that Greek 'kalon' just means 'wow!'. |
| 17 | A Form applies to a set of particular things with the same name [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We always postulate a single form for each set of particular things, to which we apply the same name. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.371 BCE], 596a) | |
| A reaction: This implies that the Forms have a great deal in common with the things, but also hints at the possibility of the Form being quite different from the particular things. |
| 24285 | Beauty itself is eternal, and beautiful objects partake of it, but never change it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: [Through love a person will come] to perceive beauty in itself and by itself, constant and eternal, and he'll see that every beautiful object somehow partakes of it, but in a way that their coming to be and ceasing to be don't change it at all. | |
| From: Plato (The Symposium [c.373 BCE], 211b) | |
| A reaction: I suppose the Beautiful is just inexhaustible, in the way sunlight seems to be. Or as a blueprint can lead to endless actual instances. Presumably, though, it has causal powers, despite its enduring character. |
| 317 | The universe is basically an intelligible and unchanging model, and a visible and changing copy of it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Our basic description of the universe contained an intelligible and unchanging model, and a visible and changing copy of it. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.362 BCE], 48e) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be claimed by analogy with building something like a ship, which would fail without a prior design. But even then, plans get modified during the work. Why does the copy change? |
| 556 | If there is one Form for both the Form and its participants, they must have something in common [Aristotle on Plato] |
| Full Idea: If there is the same Form for the Forms and for their participants, then they must have something in common. | |
| From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 991a | |
| A reaction: But then if your theory of things being 'the same' is that they have 'something in common', that could apply to two particulars, with no mention of a Form. |
| 16110 | If partaking explains unity, what causes participating, and what is participating? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: On account of the difficulty [about unity] some philosophers have espoused participation, though this plunges them into difficulties about what the cause of the participation is, or indeed what participating is anyway. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1045b07) | |
| A reaction: The target here is Plato, and I agree with the criticism. Exactly the same problems face those who talk of an object 'instantiating' a property. I have no idea what such a relationship could be. |
| 633 | If you accept Forms, you must accept the more powerful principle of 'participating' in them [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If you accept the theory of Forms, you must allow that there is also another more powerful principle. Only thus can you answer the question why something has come to participate, or is participating. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1075b18) | |
| A reaction: Another regress problem, that things need to 'participate' in their Forms, but that seems to need a further meta-form for the participation. |
| 643 | How can the Forms both be the substance of things and exist separately from them? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: How can the Forms, while being the substances of things, have being separately from them? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1080a01) | |
| A reaction: Forms don't constitute substances, because substances only 'partake' of Forms. That is a reasonable answer to this question. But now we must explain 'partake'! |
| 647 | There is a confusion because Forms are said to be universal, but also some Forms are separable and particular [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The root problem of the theory of Forms is that they posit Forms that are universal and at the same time Forms that are separable and therefore particular. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1086a28) |
| 2475 | Don't define something by a good instance of it; a good example is a special case of the ordinary example [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: It's a mistake to try to construe the notion of an instance in terms of the notion of a good instance (e.g. Platonic Forms); the latter is patently a special case of the former, so the right order of exposition is the other way round. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 4) |
| 17946 | Only Tallness really is tall, and other inferior tall things merely participate in the tallness [Nehamas] |
| Full Idea: Only Tallness and nothing else really is tall; everything else merely participates in the Forms and, being excluded from the realm of Being, belongs to the inferior world of Becoming. | |
| From: Alexander Nehamas (Introduction to 'Virtues of Authenticity' [1999], p.xxviii) | |
| A reaction: This is just as weird as the normal view (and puzzle of participation), but at least it makes more sense of 'metachein' (partaking). |
| 10722 | Instantiation is set-membership [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: One view of instantiation is that it is the set-membership predicate. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §10) | |
| A reaction: This cuts the Gordian knot rather nicely, but I don't like it, if the view of sets is extensional. We need to account for natural properties, and we need to exclude mere 'categorial' properties. |
| 6900 | A prior understanding of beauty is needed to assert that the Form of the Beautiful is beautiful [Westaway] |
| Full Idea: If it were asserted that the Form of the Beautiful was itself beautiful, such a statement would require a prior understanding of the concept of beauty, so would immediately lead to an infinite regress, so the Forms can't be self-predicating. | |
| From: Luke Westaway (talk [2005]), quoted by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice clear statement of the mess that Plato gets himself into if he wants the Forms to be self-predicating. Clearly the Form of the Beautiful can't be beautiful, but must be that which gives other things their beauty. |
| 7964 | How can universals connect instances, if they are nothing like them? [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The 'one over many' problem is to explain how universals can unify their instances if they are wholly other than them. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: If universals are self-predicating (beauty is beautiful) then they have a massive amount in common, despite one being general. You then have the regress problem of explaining the beauty of the beautiful. Baffling regress, or baffling participation. |