Dr Greg Bahnsen - Ancient & Medieval Philosophy: Plato's Philosophy (Part 9)

All right, let's look at the philosophy of Plato itself, now that we've set it up. If Plato was going to accomplish his goals, showing that human reason is an adequate tool for understanding objective reality, and that there is an objectivity to moral laws, and that the state could have a stable foundation, then he knew he had to defend the existence of moral absolutes against the sophist and their arguments. And he also had to defend the possibility of epistemological certainty. Moral absolutes and epistemological certainty were the two things, as I read Plato, that were most important to him if he was going to accomplish his goals. Moreover, Plato felt that there could be no real reform of politics. He couldn't offer a stable foundation for the state without a corresponding reform in metaphysics. If we didn't change our metaphysical outlook, according to Plato, we cannot change our political outcome, circumstances. And so Plato is the first of a long line of philosophers in Western history that ties political changes to metaphysical doctrine. So he wants moral absolutes, epistemological certainty. He wants to change our metaphysical outlook so that we can correspondingly have reform in the political realm. This is what he's shooting for. Plato learned from Parmenides that knowledge requires a permanent, unchanging, stable object, that if you know something, the object that you know cannot be in constant flow, flux, or alteration. It must be an unchanging object of knowledge. But now that poses a problem, doesn't it? Because in our natural experience, everything that we know is changing. Heraclitus stressed that. The atomist stressed that most of us realize that we stop and think about our own experience. Things change in this world, the world of what we'll call time and space, as part of our natural experience. The world of our natural experience is always undergoing fluctuation. So let's put these two things together and see what kind of conclusion you would draw. Knowledge must be of an object that is unchanging. But every object in the natural world is changing. So where is the object of knowledge? What is it that we know? If it's unchanging, but this world is always changing, well, it must be in another world. Harken back to the epistemological dualism that I pointed out in Democritus. Our senses tell us of one kind of thing, but reason tells us about objective reality. Now, of course, the objective reality that Democritus was thinking about is part of this natural world. He was thinking of the objective atoms that lie behind our sense experience that are always falling through space. But still you can see that Strain of thought. In Plato, too, our senses tell us about one realm, our reason tells us about another. The object of knowledge is not going to be the changing world that we learn about in sensation. The object of knowledge is going to be something that reason apprehends, and what it apprehends must be outside of the perceptible world of time and space. So Plato is a metaphysical and epistemological dualist. He believes in two realms. The natural realm of human experience, which is known by our senses and is always changing. But then there's a realm that is apart from the physical world. Now I say apart from the physical world rather than outside the physical world. Although later I'll probably fall into saying outside the physical world. The word outside is a little misleading. That suggests that there's really two physical worlds. One is outside the other. You know, your cars are parked outside of our building. And so if I say that the objects of knowledge are outside the physical world, we tend to think of that other realm as just another kind of physical world. One's outside the other. And again, I may fall into talking that way, but please remember that Plato was not so naive as to think you just had two physical worlds, one being on top of the other. We may diagram it that way on the board. But he believed there was a different kind of world. And so in that sense, apart from or different from the world of matter, the world of time and space is the world where the objects of knowledge exist. And Plato called the objects of knowledge forms or ideas. Forms or ideas. You know, it would be good, I think, for us to stop and discuss the nature of forms or ideas for a few minutes. When I first learned philosophy, I learned that these objects were called forms. And that gave a certain slant on Plato. And I'm not so sure that has been the most helpful. As I went on to advanced training, it seems to me that the notion of it being an idea or an ideal comes closer to expressing what Plato means by these objects of knowledge. When we think of a form, I guess the advantage of that is if we take an example from the physical world, like ducks or horses, There are three ducks out on the pond. Huey, Dewey, and Louie. What do they have in common? Why are they all three called duck? Well, the object knowledge, as you know, is not the three things out of the pond. That's just what my physical senses perceive. That's changing and fluctuating. That's unreliable. What I actually know is duckness. That's what my mind or reason is thinking, duckness. And Then I see those as three instances of the form of duck. Now, if you talk about it that way, you can understand why form is a good word. It's kind of like in your mind, you have the cookie cutter form of a duck, the outline of a duck. Maybe. That too is a little misleading. Though I don't think Plato altogether meant physical shape when he used the word form. The word form might come closer to. Or what he meant by the word form might come closer to what we today would say when we speak of a formula. Okay, the formula for benzene is the following. And then we might diagram a certain chain of carbon and hydrogen molecules to explain what benzene is that we call the formula. Now, does benzene actually look like what we've diagrammed on the board? No, it has nothing to do with the physical sensation of benzene, what it might smell like or taste or how it would seem if we looked at it or touched it. But we would still call it the formula that expresses the essence, essence of benzene. This is what's common to everything that in our physical experience is the substance benzene. Likewise, when you think of a duck or think of a human being, there's a formula that expresses a form, that expresses what is essential to that concept, or what will later be called that universal, the universal duckness, the universal hoarseness, or the universal human nature. So form, in the sense of formula, or the objects of knowledge, are called ideas. That's even better. We have the idea of duck. We have the idea of triangularity. We have the idea of humanity. And maybe I can improve on that. It's not just that we have an idea, but what we are thinking of when we know duckness or triangularity is the ideal, the ideal triangle. This is the perfect triangle. We don't have any perfect triangles in our experience. Now, in our day and age, we come a lot closer because we have computer and other mechanical devices that help draw pretty, exact triangles. But even they, whatever printer you use, if you take a strong enough microscope up to it, it's going to have a little waver on the edge of the line, whatever it may be. There are no perfect triangles in our experience. Every time you draw one in the sand or on the chalkboard, as Plato knew it would be somewhat imperfect, but it nevertheless is called a triangle. Because we know the ideal triangle. Our minds are in touch with not only the idea in general, but the paradigm idea, the ideal of the triangle. We also know the ideal of humanity and the ideal of duck. Okay, now that's what he meant. Then by the objects of knowledge, they exist apart from outside of the physical world. And so I'm putting two domains here on the board. The upper one will be the formulas and ideals, the forms and ideas. In the lower realm is the realm of time and space, the realm of nature. Now, what can we say about these two realms? What sets them in contrast to each other? Well, in the first place, the upper realm of forms and ideas is unchanging, whereas the lower realm of time and space, the realm of nature, is always undergoing change. So let me be a little overly simplistic and say the upper realm is parmenidean in character. The lower realm is heraclesian in character. So here he's trying to do justice to both these philosophers in a way. Moreover, the upper realm is known by reason, by the mind, whereas the lower realm is known through the senses. We use our eyes and ears and hands to know about nature, but to know about the forms and ideas, we have to use our minds. We have to use reason. I think there's another contrast that is important, and this gets back to the one and the many problem. In a way, according to Plato, there's only one form or idea of any particular thing. This is made up of ones. I'm going to put the S in parentheses to indicate that it's like singularities. We have one hoarseness, one duckness, one triangular. But down in the realm of time and space, we have many ducks, many horses, many triangles. And so this is the realm of minis, the ones. The one idea of duck is out there. The mini ducks are here in our own experience. Now, the contrast of the I've mentioned up to this point tell us something of the nature of the two realms. One is unchanging. It's full of singularities known by reason. We might call this the realm of universes, Meaning whatever ducks there are, are part of the universal concept, concept of duck, the universal idea or ideal of duck. Corresponding to the universals, then the forms. You have particulars. In the realm of nature, you have particular ducks and horses and triangles. And now as to our evaluation of these two forms, our two realms, this becomes significant in terms of conclusions drawn from Plato's philosophy. The realm of ideals is the realm of being and goodness. In fact, in Plato's philosophy, being is good. Anything that has ultimate, true existence is good. This is not a physical realm, is it? This is the ideal. So open in parentheses, non physical. Now, if the non physical domain is the realm of ultimate being, which is to be identified with that which is good in Fact, the highest form. Let me step in. Plato says that you have forms for everything. Well, almost everything. You don't have forms for filth, for dung. You don't have forms for hair or mud. Things which are undignified don't have forms. Now why is that? Because the realm of the forms is the realm of that which is good. There's a hierarchy of form forms. And Plato believes that the form of the good is the highest of all forms. Up to this point I've been talking about forms or ideas for ducks and triangles and humans, physical objects, if you will. But there are other kinds of things that have ideal existence. And in particular, ethical notions have ideal existence. Every instance of goodness that we experience in this world is going to be somewhat imperfect. We see good acts, good intentions, but they all fall short of perfection. Perfection, just like every triangle that we draw in this world falls short of ideal triangularity. The perfect paradigm of goodness. The essence of goodness that every particular action that we see and call good shares. That essence of goodness is found outside of time and space, in the realm of ideals. And in particular, goodness is the highest form. So you have the form of the good, and all the other forms in some sense participate in the form of the good. Being is good, and being is identified with universal forms and that which is known by reason. Now, the lower domain is the realm of becoming. It is the realm of change, an alteration. The realm of nature is constantly in flux, as we've said. And is the lower realm bad? We have to be careful here. That which is the opposite of good, which is the non physical ideal or idea, that which is completely the opposite of that, would not be the realm of becoming in which we live, but the realm of pure matter. Matter that has no form has no order, no rationality to it. Just pure matter would be evil. So matter is evil. Forms known by reason are good. The world in which we live in is a combination of the two, isn't it? We don't live in a realm of pure matter. We live in a realm of formed matter. Or to put it even better, from a Platonic standpoint, informed matter. And that pun is a very valuable one. Write it in your notes, maybe even reflect on it later. But I'll explain it briefly here for Plato. Obviously. Let's take an example of an apple. An apple is material, but it's not just pure matter. It's material that's in a certain form. The form of an apple. It's spherical, it's red or green. Green. It's tart. It's sweet, crunchy, whatever. It has these attributes all brought together in this particular form here. So it's formed matter, but it's more than formed matter. It's informed matter. The form has been put into the matter in the material world. And in the form of appleness, or all of its attributes coming together are informed to the matter. Think of it as the cookie cutter going onto the dough. You have the duck formed by the idea or formula of duck impressed upon matter. Now, the pun is that it's informed. That which is informed is reasonable, rational, noble by the mind. You can have information. That's why the pun of informed matter is so helpful. The only reason we can know the duck is because it's informed. That doesn't mean the duck knows things. That means the duck itself has a form knowable by the mind. Let's go back to this idea that you have the non physical ideal realm, which is good, ultimate reality, that is ethically good. And the lower realm, pure matter would be evil. And that which is in between pure matter and form would be. What then is it pure evil? This the realm of pure trees and grass and triangles and human beings? Purely evil? No, but it's not as good as ultimate reality. And what is it that is an ethical drag on us in this realm of becoming the material part of it. Consequently, the good life for Plato is going to ultimately have to be a life of philosophical contemplation. The really good man is the man who uses his mind and does not indulge his flesh. Because matter is not as good. Well, matter is evil and informed matter is not as good as the pure form that is found outside of time and space. Space. Let me erase this diagram that shows the difference between the two realms. We start asking the interesting question, how do these realms relate to each other? First of all, what is man? Plato believes that man as a soul and a body, however, the body which is made up of matter is not as good as the soul is. Follows from what we've learned already. And in particular Plato held that the body was the tomb or the prison house of the soul. The soul is eternal and existed previously. Our souls existed prior to the life that we now know in the body. The soul is sent into a human body. And because the body has the drag of matter on it, the body becomes then the prison house or the tomb of the soul. The eternal pre existent soul is now entombed in a body, imprisoned in a body. And so the Greeks had a clever little ditty. They would say soma sema because the words for body and tomb or prison house were. They sounded so much alike. Soma body, sema is the grave or is the tomb. How can man know anything? This soul in this body. How can man know anything about a realm that is beyond nature or apart from nature? How does man know the ideas? How does man know the forms? Plato told a story about men living in a cave. He said men who live in a cave and who cannot go outside the cave and can only see images cast on the wall of the cave from the light coming from behind them, they see shadows. But somebody who leaves the cave goes out into the bright sunlight and sees the true body that forms the shadows that men in the cave see on the far wall. So man, in his experience, experience of the world, see shadows of reality. The senses perceive shadows. What do shadows have in common with their object? Form? Right. I think that's one of the reasons he chose that analogy that we see the shadow, we don't really see the object. But to know it is to know its form. What happens is that when man with his senses sees the shadow of reality, he recollects from a previous life the idea of which that is the shadow. Remember, there was a time when the soul existed outside the body. The mind of man dwelt in the realm of the forms. Now there's a problem with Plato saying that he's now treating the realm of the forms like another physical domain, isn't he? But the idea is that when the soul leaves the realm of ideas, it brings its knowledge of the forms with it. It's now imprisoned in a body. And when the body senses the shadow domain down here, it doesn't know the ultimate reality. But that does stimulate recollection so that we might know things for what they truly are. Now, what corresponds to seeing shadows down here? Remember, that was a myth or a metaphor, an analogy. What stands for the shadows in our actual experience are the physical objects that we see. I'm going to take an example here. We all see this physical object, this umbrella. But this umbrella is changing. In fact, it changed twice this morning. It broken once and it's now fixed. And it's different places, it takes different forms, depending on whether you pull the handle out and so forth. But we all know it's an umbrella. Plato says, what you see here, though, is not the ultimate reality. You only see the shadow of ultimate reality. Your senses perceive the realm of becoming, the realm of shadows, of informed objects. But to know this umbrella is to have your mind or your reason recollect the essence or ideal. The formula for umbrella. Now, we would probably give that something of a functional formula if we were to do it. It's not a matter of physical shape. There are different umbrellas, different colors, shapes and sizes. But we all know what an umbrella is used for. Okay, so we have the formula of umbrella ness, the essence or the concept of umbrella. Particular umbrella, you see not the general or universal concept. You don't see the form or idea. You only see an instance or an instantiation of that. Down in this world of bodies and matter, there's an instantiation of the general idea of umbrella. And the reason why you recognize this as an umbrella is because in a previous life, your mind or your soul was familiar with all the ideas, with all of them. Sure. But in our physical experience in this world, we don't have things that trigger or stimulate a recollection of everything that we knew previously. So what does the learning process amount to for Plato? You want to get this in your notes. The learning process amounts to recollection. It's a reminding process. The senses remind us of the ideas with which we were familiar in a previous life. If you want to understand Plato's view of man's soul and his view of knowledge to dialogue that are particularly important are the phaedo and the meno. Both Greek names, Phaedo and meno. And then Plato ties in his view of the two realities, the two realms of reality and how we know them, to a political treatise. In his best known work, Republic, We could be much more detailed. There's a lot to study in Plato, but in an introductory course. I don't want to weigh you down. You should, however, be able to tell me that the phaedo and the meno deal with his view of the soul and knowledge. And the Republic incorporates those views into his best known political treatise. What does philosophy do? Philosophy studies ideas. It studies the forms. The philosopher therefore, knows ultimate reality better than people who rely on their senses, who know only the shadows of reality. The philosopher is somebody whose life is given over to intellect and contemplation to the higher good, the life of the soul or mind, rather than the life of the body, such as merchants or soldiers or slaves. It stands to reason, then, given this view of reality and what the philosopher does is the philosopher is in the best position to rule over other men. Philosophy is a preparation for death. Plato once said, enigmatically, why is it that philosophy is a preparation for death? When man dies, the soul, which has been imprisoned in the body, is set free to leave the realm of time. And space and return to the realm of ideas. That's what happens at death. Philosophers, however, before their bodies die, philosophers study the realm of ideas. They try to get beyond the shadows that our sensations give us and understand forms and ideals. And so philosophy, by studying ideas, is preparing us for where our soul will go when we die. Philosophy is a preparation for death. Now, I don't bring this up just to illustrate his two. His two realms and to give you one of his more clever aphorisms. I bring this up because I think that has religious significance. Philosophy was not only the best way to rule the state, we're going to talk about that in our next lecture at some length. But philosophy was also the way to prepare to die. Philosophy was the savior. I mean, it isn't hard to see that. I hope, for Plato, the way to save ancient Greek society, to get a foundation for moral absolutes, to give a basis for rational knowledge of reality, and to prepare to die and to live a good life, everything was tied to philosophy. Does the soul, when it returns to the realm of ideas, does it in any way recollect or remember the time it was imprisoned? Well, you see, if you look at the nature of the two realms, you know that the answer has to be no. The only thing that the soul knows in this realm, the realm of the body, is the ideas that it recollects from a previous life. The objects of knowledge are these disembodied ideas out here. And so since that's what the soul knows in this life, when it goes back to the realm of ideas, there's nothing for it to take back except the recollection of what it's now experiencing again. The realm of becoming and matter has nothing to offer the soul. Then it's just a sad experience that we've been imprisoned in these bodies. But someday we're going to be set free. We're going to be liberated. We're going to be back to what is good and ultimately real, the disembodied state. Do you think that the Christian church in history has been influenced by that kind of thinking? Sadly, we have to admit that we have been contaminated by a Platonic view of reality that says disembodied reality. Spiritual reality is better than physical reality. Although body and spirit are both created by God, we have the idea. Well, God doesn't have a body, of course, that's a generalization that is false. When you remember, the whole genius of the Christian story is that God took on a body. The incarnation is the proof that the physical world is not evil. It is not subordinate in value to human intellect or contemplation or spirituality. And yet often Christians have the idea that to enjoy the body or the things of this world is somehow ethically inferior to being otherworldly. Getting our desires and our activities away from the things of this life, it leads naturally to asceticism, denial of the body, because the body is somehow a drag on spirituality or it's not really good. So this is one of those ideas that seems to grip cultures. It's an enduring one. Without even knowing the name of Plato, many Christians have picked up a Platonic approach to reality, the idea that the good is up here, outside the world, and the closer you get to matter, the more ugly and evil things are, or less spiritual. Anyway, for Plato, were there different levels of the upper realm? Yes, and I haven't bothered in my lecture to get into that refinement, but I think I can take just a moment to diagram it for you. To answer your question, there were really two different levels in both of the realms. Plato has the divided line in the Republic, in which he explains that. We have a line and we divide that disproportionately 2/3 and a third. So I'll divide it there. And then we divide both sides of that division into the same proportion. So we have two thirds and a third. We have two thirds and a third. This is the way the line is divided. I'm not sure if it's a third and two thirds. That detail escapes me. But this is the general idea. Now, this original line, our division of the line, separates the realm of ideas or forms from the realm of matter, time, and space. Now, if we look at the realm of time and space or the physical world, This larger area, the 2/3 of the line as I've made it, would contain images and reflections of things, pictures of things. Let's imagine that you had never. You've never seen a horse apart from pictures in a book. Now, can it be said that you know horses? If you just know them from the book, from the pictures and the images that you've seen? Well, you kind of know them, but obviously that is not as good a knowledge as having a direct experience of horses. Right? So instead of images and reflections, you have a higher knowledge, a better knowledge up in this upper third of the line, the objects themselves. Okay, so here you have a horse or horses that you can know, or you can know their images and reflections. This is the division of the lower part of the line. Now, if we go into the realm of ideas, above the line, which is the upper third of the divided line. That upper third is itself divided into a third and two thirds. And according to Plato, most of the forms or ideas are in this lower area here. So these would be the, say, the forms of horse or pig, humanity, etc. But in the same way that in the lower story, pictures and reflections of objects are not as good for knowing what they are as the objects themselves. So the forms of horse, pig, humanity, triangularity are themselves but a reflection of the highest form, which is the good. So there is a hierarchy, both in the physical realm and in the ideal realm. Does that help answer your question, Pete? The hierarchy indicates that all ultimate ideas are but expressions of the final form of goodness. And that is singular. The good is singular. Ultimately, Plato has a monistic ultimate reality, the good, which expresses itself in the forms of triangularity, humanity, hoarseness, and so forth. Then we have shadows of those ideas and the objects themselves, the particulars. Huey, Dewey, and Louie, the ducks out on the pond. But you have shadows of the shadows. When you have people who take pictures of Huey, Dewey and Louie and say, this is what a duck is like. What would drive a man to seek after obtaining the knowledge of the good? Would it be the goal of being able to actually know the good once you have died? There would be different ethical and religious constructs that would be put on this. I think the simplest answer, true to Plato, is that when your soul leaves the body, you want it to be reunited with the good. So that would be man's ethical. That would be his ultimate or eschatological goal. Yes, that he'd be reunited with the good. He's left the realm of the good where he knew about hoarseness, pigness, and humanity, and he's now living in this prison house of the body and wants to escape it. So is somehow the soul a little piece of the good, in which case you've divided up the oneness of the good? Well, it's okay, we'll jump ahead to the criticism of this theory, because what Jay has given us here is one of the things that Plato simply could not explain. Where does the soul fit into all this? We're supposed to have ideas and physical objects, right? Well, the spirit, the soul is not a physical object. It inhabits a physical object. The soul inhabits the physical body. But is the soul an idea? No. The soul knows the ideas, apprehends the idea, so it's itself not an idea. So then what is the soul? It's not a physical object, and it's not an idea. It's rather strange, isn't it? Do we know the soul? If we know the soul, it has to have a form. There has to be an idea for the soul in order for Plato to speak rationally about the soul. Isn't that right? Well, that means that when the soul is in the realm of the forms, there's not only a soul, but an idea of the soul. And this is one of the easiest ways to that. Plato never really did resolve the metaphysical and epistemological question. He just reintroduced it at a higher level. How does the soul know the form of the soul? What is self knowledge for the soul? Where does the soul come from? And let's ask this question too. How do the forms get impressed into the physical world of matter? Why is this world informed? You know what Plato had to do for that? He said, this is a tough one. I don't know how to answer it, so I'm going to resort to a myth. He called it a myth. He knew that it was not the answer, but he said, think of it this way. It's like, give me the opportunity to tell you a fairy tale. I don't really know literally what the answer is, but it's kind of like this. You have an eternal realm of matter. There's Democritus, remember the eternality of the atoms. You have an eternal realm of matter. And of course you have the eternality of the forms or ideas. You have two separate realms. How are they ever brought together into this realm of becoming where we have now physical pigs, not just the idea of a pig. Well, Plato said the demiurge put them together. The demiurge is some kind of supernatural force out there. Not really to be likened to the Christian view of the Creator, but because the demiurge is limited, the demiurge is not ultimately eternal and the source of all things. The demiurge just takes pre existing matter and the eternal ideas and compresses or forces them together so that we get giraffes and horses and good acts and human beings. Does that sound like a philosophically adequate answer to how, how this world came about? Not at all. When you have a philosopher ultimately appealing to myth. I mean, Plato may be more sophisticated than the ancient poets who had Zeus and Apollo and others interfering in human affairs. But when the chips were down, Plato had to play the same game, didn't he? He didn't have an answer for these things. And since I'm on a roll criticizing him, I'll just remind you that when Plato proposed this theory he could also be the best critic of this theory. Let me give you what is a standard criticism of the theory of the forms. It's found in the dialogue Parmenides. Let's assume. Assume that we have in our physical experience of the natural world, an experience of two objects that we call duck. I'm not good at drawing ducks, so I'm just going to put two circles here. They stand for ducks. Now, why do we call both of them ducks? Well, presumably because. Because they resemble each other. They have something in common. And Plato said what they have in common is the form of duckness. So I'll put a dotted circle up here for the form of duckness. Now, we could have other ducks down here, but I'm going to limit it to 2. For my illustration, how do we organize the many into a one, where we say they resemble each other and thus participate in duckness? What's the relationship of the upper story to the lower story? The relationship of ideas to the realm of nature? The particulars in the natural world participate in that which is common to them. Duckness. And for a few moments, that might look like an answer that reduces the many to a one. In fact, it doesn't, because Plato now will have to explain to us what participation is. What is it to participate? When Plato tried to explain it, about the best he could come up with is actors participate in a role. You know that Shakespeare wrote the story of Hamlet, right? There have been many actors who have played Hamlet. Each one is supposed to bring his own unique interpretation and application of Hamlet. When an actor plays a role, he participates in it. And so it is that there are many objects in. Out there participating in the role of pigness. Little Hamlets, as we might say. You don't have to laugh at my jokes. That's okay. Hamlets. So this is the best Plato could do to explain what participation is all about. It's like when an actor does with a part. Now, is participation a relationship? Well, yes, it is. Relationship between the form and the informed, between the idea and the physical object in the natural world. Why do we say then that this duck participates in this particular form here? Well, there must be some kind of resemblance between them. But if there's a resemblance between the physical duck and the idea of duckness, that must mean the idea and the duck participate in something. I'm going to symbolize this as a dotted circle. Top two. The reason why we say that the physical duck participates in the idea of duckness is because there's a resemblance between them. But if there's A resemblance. How did this start out? There's a resemblance between physical ducks. Then there must be something that unites the two into one. So if there's a resemblance between what unites the duck and the form of duckness, then these two must participate in a further resemblance, Duckness two. Now can we just sit down and go on with the lecture? Leave it at that? Well, of course not. Now we got another problem. What's the relationship between Duckmas 1 and Darkness 2 that accounts for this participation between the form and the object? Well, there must be something that brings them together. They must participate in a higher form. Right? So that means we've got to have deafness three. What right do we have to bring together form two and form three? They've got to have a participation relationship, a resemblance between each other. But if they resemble each other, then there must be another participation in a Form 4. Well, how long can this go on? To infinity. When Plato tries to explain participation, what he ends up with is an infinite chain of participations. And Plato knew that he had this problem. He mentioned it in the Parmenides. It's just devastating. Why does Plato come up with the theory of the forms? So that he can explain how we know a particular object in the world. So in order to know the object in the world, Donald Duck, we've got to have duckness. My mind is in contact with recollects duckness when I see Donald Duck in the world. So that's what Plato is doing. To understand Donald Duck, I need to understand the form of duckness. But it turns out to understand the theory of the forms and participants participation, I have to have an infinite series of forms. I want you to follow along, because the devastating bottom line is then to understand any particular thing, you have to know everything. You have to know an infinite series of things in order for one particular thing to make sense. That pretty much does in the theory of forms as a way of accounting for intellectual certainty. So what problems do we have with Plato's theory? Well, we have one, the arbitrariness that ugly things like filth and dung and dirt and hair don't have forms. That seems arbitrary. We have the problem that mediation between the realm of the forms and the physical objects of this world is done by the soul. But where does the soul come from? Is the soul a form? Is the soul a body? No, it's neither one. So how does it fit in? We have another problem. How do the forms and matter get together? Well, we have to have the myth of the demiurge. To rescue us there, we have a further problem. What do we mean by participation? It turns out to know any particular object is participating in an idea. You'd have to know an infinite number of ideas to justify saying, you know, the physical object. Okay, and then one final devastating criticism. This appears to give us some hope for certainty. We have a stable, eternal object of knowledge that the human mind, reason, can know. Stimulated by the senses and all that. It seems to get us on the way toward a metaphysic and epistemology that work well together. But you know what is left out? I don't know. In all this lecture and this reading, did you notice Plato has not explained the possibility of motion at all? He doesn't explain to us how things change. But that's what got us into all these philosophical problems in the first place, right? Thales says, all is water. And Actsimandra says, well, how does water become rock? Anaximenes tries to explain it, doesn't do so well. We have Parmenides who says, no, there is no change. Well, Plato's not going to say that. He says there is change in the physical world. The atomist didn't successfully explain change. And what does Plato do? Well, I'm being a little crude and simplistic, but Plato basically says it's not a problem I have to solve. He just kind of shelves it. And that's why he lost the support of his best student, Aristotle. Aristotle said, what good is this realm of the forms if they can't explain the natural world, if they can't explain my experience of change? And so I would say that's the last major criticism of Plato in terms of his two realm theory that we need to consider. We're going to take a brief break and when we come back, we'll look at Plato's ethic, his view of man and his view of society.