Ancient Philosophical Influences

Critically compare Plato’s Form of the Good with Aristotle’s Prime Mover. [40]

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While Plato and Aristotle had contrasting approaches to philosophy in many ways, there are some similarities between their worldviews. One of these is that both Plato and Aristotle argued that a metaphysical entity provides the ultimate explanation for our physical reality. In Plato’s case this is the Form of the Good (FOG), which is the form of the forms – which themselves give definition and identity to the things we experience – and perhaps the only true form. For Aristotle this is the Prime Mover, which is the origin of movement and efficient causation as well as the necessary being which sustains our universe of contingencies. Through the centuries theists have seen in both the FOG and PM possible rational support for the existence of God, but in the end the Prime Mover is a more persuasive concept than the Form of the Good and is more useful to theists in this relation.

Aristotle’s arguments for the Prime Mover are rooted in observations, so accessible to anybody.  In the Metaphysics Book IV Aristotle defines metaphysics as “a science which investigates being as being and the attributes which belong to this in virtue of its own nature.” For any of the “special sciences” – Physics, Chemistry etc. – to proceed in discovering the causes of specific classes of existing things, we must first identify the causes of existence itself by engaging in metaphysics. As with the special sciences, metaphysics starts with observations and from these uses reason to identify the causes of what is observed. In the case of any thing that is observed, Aristotle reasons that its existence is caused by four types of cause:

  • material causes (i.e. physical ingredients such as the bronze of a statue)
  • formal causes (i.e. the concept according to which the material causes are arranged, such as the idea of the statue in the mind of the sculptor)
  • efficient causes (i.e. the agents which bring the material causes together according to the formal cause)
  • a final cause (i.e. the end or telos for which the thing exists, ultimately flourishing).

Nevertheless, as Aristotle states towards the end of Book IV of the Metaphysics, identifying the causes of existing things raises the question of what caused the causes. For examples, what is the formal cause of formal causes, which explains their existence? What is the uncaused efficient cause which started the series of agents that leads to what we observe? Aristotle hypothesises the existence of a “Prime Mover” which exists necessarily, outside time and space, and which sustains contingent existence, being the unmoved mover and uncaused causer of all things. Clearly, this reasoning has been adopted and adapted by many other philosophers since Aristotle’s time and has become the many versions of the Cosmological Argument for God’s existence. William Lane Craig is just one example of a contemporary philosopher who would support Aristotle in reasoning that this contingent universe must have a cause outside itself. Craig would also agree with Aristotle in limiting speculation about the nature of this cause, because its existence is necessarily beyond our conceptual framework. While the classical cosmological argument for God’s existence, such as was presented by Aquinas, has been roundly rejected by David Hume, Immanuel Kant and later Bertrand Russell, Craig points out that modern science and Big Bang Theory demolishes some of those criticisms, while others of them can be overcome by stopping short of claiming that the necessary being sustaining the universe is “what everybody calls God”… which Aristotle recognized 2400 years ago. As we now know, the universe is not what Russell called “a brute fact” which makes Aristotle’s concept of the Prime Mover persuasive.

In addition, Aristotle’s Prime Mover is more persuasive than Plato’s Form of the Good because Plato’s “argument” for the forms – and thus for the Form of the Good – is unclear and inconsistent. Plato is unclear about precisely which forms exist metaphysically.  As Julia Annas observes, “Plato never offers an argument for Forms that would establish them as entities suitable for a theory”[1] In Book X of the Republic, Plato implies that there are separate forms for tables, beds etc.  Socrates says to Glaucon: “Whenever a number of individuals have a common name we assume them to also have a corresponding idea or form.  Do you understand me? [I do]  Let us take any common instance; there are beds and tables in the world – plenty of them – are there not? [Yes] But there are only two ideas or forms of them – one of the idea of the bed, the other of a table.”[2] Yet, in Book VI of the Republic, through his Allegory of the Sun, Plato implies that only one form ultimately exists – the Form of the Good – and that our impression that a diversity of things exist is a belief rather than actual knowledge, a result of our ideas being clouded by sense-experiences and so not being clear or distinct.  Here, as Julia Annas explains, “Plato contrasted Forms, which are objects of knowledge, with particular instances of Forms (things that ‘partake in’ Forms), which are objects of belief…” [3] The lack of any explicit argument for the forms and the inconsistency of Plato’s position make Plato’s theory of the forms unconvincing. In addition, where Aristotle’s Prime Mover is supported by observable evidence and persuasive argument, it is not possible to support Plato’s theory of the forms, however it is presented, through either evidence or persuasive argument.  Nothing we can observe supports the existence of “forms” whether separately of beds and tables or indeed of the good.  Plato’s position – and that of modern Platonists who accept his theory of the forms – depends on reason alone.  Plato – through the character of Socrates – argues that the existence of the forms is known a priori, before and even without experience, because their necessary existence is contained within our understanding of all other things.  Yet what is the difference between this sort of rational argument for ultimate reality in the world of the forms… and speculation?  Even if the need to verify the forms is discounted, what could possibly falsify or count against Plato’s argument for the forms, especially if all experience is discounted?  It follows that Plato’s concept of the Form of the Good is less persuasive than the concept of Aristotle’s Prime Mover.

Further, Aristotle’s Prime Mover is more useful in supporting the existence of God than the Form of the Good. The concept of the Form of the Good might seem to have more in common with the Christian concept of God than the concept of the Prime Mover. While both the concept of the Form of the Good and the concept of the Prime Mover are of beings which exist metaphysically, eternally and immutably, only the concept of the Form of the Good is conceivably “the creator” or identified with truth and moral goodness. The goodness of the Form of the Good is the same as the goodness we experience in things and more conceivably the moral goodness Christians associate with God, while the goodness of the Prime Mover only relates to the Prime Mover necessarily fulfilling its nature and sustaining good things in existence. Yet, identifying God with the Form of the Good encourages univocal predication – assuming that attributes affirmed of God mean the same as when they are affirmed of other things – which leads to problems. If God’s power, knowledge and goodness are the same as our power, knowledge and goodness then God is limited by the laws of logic and possibility and therefore not supreme. Further, univocal predication quickly leads to confusion and the anthropomorphisation of God, pulling God away from what the rational demonstrations of God’s existence support so that faith becomes fideism and divorced from the Philosophy of Religion.Yet, as Aquinas showed in the Summa Theologica (1264), the concept of the Prime Mover is consistent with the Christian concept of God. Isaiah 55 confirms “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Because of this, Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy is successful in showing that all of the classical attributes affirmed of God [when identified with the concept of the Prime Mover] convey some (if very limited) positive meaning. It follows that Aristotle’s Prime Mover is more useful in supporting the existence of God than the Form of the Good, because identifying God with the Prime Mover forces believers to confront the otherness of God and thus to avoid limiting or anthropomorphising God in a way that is as dangerous as it is enticing.

Clearly neo-platonists such as GE Moore, Iris Murdoch etc. would disagree with this argument, suggesting that the existence of a universal concept of goodness known through rational intuition is a persuasive argument for the existence of the Form of the Good.  They might draw on Kant’s so-called “moral argument” which suggests that the existence of the Moral Law, which presents itself synthetic a priori, makes it a duty to postulate the existence of a “God”… although “within the boundaries of reason alone”, as Plato would surely have agreed! CS Lewis’ moral argument also supports this view, suggesting that it is the rational concept of fairness, which so often causes atheists to reject God, which provides the best evidence for His existence. The concept of fairness cannot have its origins in experience after all, and yet even 2 year old children appeal to it. Nevertheless, intuitionism is not widely accepted today. Firstly, despite the big claims of Kant, Moore, Murdoch and Lewis, not everybody shares the same concept of goodness. While it is probably fair to say that the occasional sociopath does not disprove the existence of near-universal moral laws, these are better explained through psychology (Freud) and/or evolution (Trivers, Dawkins) than through a metaphysical Form of the Good today. This is partly because the Form of the Good relies on the wider Platonic world-view, where ultimate reality is metaphysical and reason a better guide to it than the evidence of the senses, when this is not widely shared in the modern – let alone the postmodern – world. It follows that Plato’s Form of the Good is not a persuasive or useful concept today.

In conclusion, the Prime Mover is a more persuasive and useful concept than the Form of the Good.  The Prime Mover is supported by more persuasive arguments than Plato’s Form of the Good, arguments which are consistent with modern science. The Prime Mover also presupposes a worldview which was widely accepted through the 19th and early 20th Centuries, while the Form of the Good depends on a worldview which has been out of favor since the Renaissance. The concept of the Prime Mover is also consistent with the Christian concept of God and, as Aquinas showed, identifying God with the Prime Mover helps Christians avoid some of the problems inherent in the univocal predication which identifying God with the Form of the Good encourages.  

There is no such thing as a soul. Discuss [40]

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Materialists would agree that there is no such thing as a soul, arguing that we are our bodies, and the sensation of consciousness can be explained solely by the operation of our physical brains.  Dualists would disagree, arguing that “I” am separate from my body and exist primarily as a soul or mind, which might even be separable from my body, surviving death.  Overall, given developments within neuroscience, materialism is the more persuasive position, so it is fair to say that there is no such thing as a soul.

Firstly, Aristotle argued that the soul is the formal cause of the body.  It makes us human and gives us our individual personality, but it can’t be separated from the body.  He used the example of a wax-seal to make his point.  Just as the shape of the seal can’t exist without the wax, so the soul cannot exist separately from the body.  Nevertheless, Aristotle did believe that the soul is a separate substance, sufficiently as to have three parts.  He even speculated that part of the rational soul, the intellect, might survive death.  In this way, Aristotle was not a straightforward materialist.  Yet Aristotle worked millennia before science gave us an understanding of the brain.  By the 1940s Gilbert Ryle was able to refine Aristotle’s model of the soul, suggesting that the “official doctrine” of dualism was based on a category mistake and that there is no separate “soul” substance.  For Ryle, just as the foreigner watching cricket makes a mistake to ask to see the “team spirit” as if it was another player or piece of equipment, so the philosopher who identifies the soul as something with separate, let alone separable, existence is making an error rooted in our misuse of language.  Today, Susan Blackmore would agree.  While she still sees the hard problem of consciousness as unsolved, she rejects dualism as unscientific.  Daniel Dennett agrees, saying that dualism is “giving up” on the future ability of neuroscience to explain why we feel conscious and separate from our bodies but are in fact only our bodies.  In these ways, it is fair to say that there is no such thing as a soul. 

Secondly, classic arguments for dualism are flawed, so that there is no evidence for a soul beyond that most people feel they have one and, as Brian Davies pointed out, “just because I feel sober doesn’t mean that I am!” 

  • Plato’s arguments for substance dualism are archaic and unconvincing.  In the Phaedo Socrates appeals to the prevalence of opposites or dualisms in nature, to our affinity with the world of forms, to recollection and to the simplicity of the soul to support Plato’s claim that we are primarily an immortal soul.  Yet what modern Philosopher will be convinced to believe that something exists because lots of things seem to have a pair… light has darkness, day has night… so of course the body must have a soul.  What modern Philosopher would accept that our soul must be indestructible because it is simple and simple because it seems not to change as our body changes.  Not very persuasive!  Also, what modern Philosopher would accept that we must be primarily an immaterial soul because we have an intuitive grasp of mathematics or logic or an “affinity” with immaterial ideas in a speculative “world of forms”?  There is no evidence for past lives, no evidence for a world of forms and no evidence for an immaterial soul.  Plato’s argument is nothing more than assertion… I think therefore “I” must be made of thought. 
  • The same goes for Descartes, the other leading substance dualist.  His argument for the soul begins with his “foundational belief” that “I think therefore I am” from which he extrapolates that “I” am primarily what thinks… being a mind and not a brain.  Norman Malcolm identified the weakness of Descartes position when he wrote “If it were valid to argue ‘I can doubt that my body exists but not that I exist, ergo I am not my body’, it would be equally valid to argue ‘I can doubt that there exists a being whose essential nature is to think, but I cannot doubt that I exist, ergo I am not a being whose essential nature is to think’. Descartes is hoist with his own petard.” Further, even Descartes suggested that the brain must contain a seat of the soul, where the mind joins the body.  His suggestion that this was the Pineal Gland, just because it is shaped like a third inner eye, betrays the unscientific nature of his argument.  Although Popper and Eccles presented a modern version of Descartes substance dualism in Critical Dualism, suggesting that the seat of the soul is in the frontal lobes of the brain and not the pineal gland, their position still fails to attract scientific support.  As Dennett said, dualism smacks of mysticism and magic and amounts to “giving up” on science. 

In these ways also, it is fair to say that there is no such thing as a soul. 

On the other hand, Popper also suggested that World Three amounts to empirical evidence for the existence of World Two – the human mind.  The fact that great works of art, literature, architecture exist is material proof of the existence of the minds that gave them shape.  It may be that the mind is not separate or separable from the brain or body, but that does not mean that it does not exist when its products are evident all around us, including on this page.  Further, HH Price and Peter Vardy argue that the existence of the soul could make sense of the full human experience, which includes dreams and paranormal experiences.  Surely it is unscientific to dismiss all those aspects of the human experience which can’t be adequately explained without a separate soul, just because they point to the existence of a soul which can’t otherwise be evidenced?  Nevertheless, neither of these arguments for a soul are credible.  Popper’s World Three could just as well serve as evidence that human brains have amazing computational power.  When a computer generates complex, unique products like Bitcoins, nobody speculates that the products are evidence that there is something in the computer that might survive if it was unplugged and disassembled!  As Ryle would have said, this is like the myth of the “ghost in the machine” – better evidence for lazy thinking and superstition than it is for the soul.  Further, dreams and paranormal experiences have been investigated by Blackmore and can be explained in terms of (ab)normal brain activity, mistakenly interpreted, or as fakes.  The fact that even when there are credible scientific explanations of such phenomena people still want to believe in the existence of a soul, and that belief in a soul remains so “sticky”, supports Dawkins suggestion that it is a meme or virus of the mind.  We find it easier to believe in a soul than to accept that we are “blind robot vehicles for those selfish molecules known as genes.”  Yet wishful thinking is no basis to believe that something exists, so there is no such thing as the soul. 

In conclusion, there is no such thing as a soul.  Ryle, Blackmore and Dawkins were correct when they identified the origins of belief in the soul as a “category mistake”, a metaphor and a meme.  What we feel when we think, the sense that “I” am not my body and the “me” that seems to stay the same as I age… these sensations are the products of the material operations of the brain, just as works of art and architecture are.

[40 minutes, A Level notes]

Assess Aristotle’s four causes.  [40] 

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Aristotle saw philosophy as “a science which investigates being as being” (Metaphysics Book IV, Part I), meaning that it is concerned with understanding what it means for things to exist rather than how particular things exist, which is the role of the “special sciences”.  So, if philosophical “knowledge is the object of our inquiry” (Physics Book II, Part III) then we “must proceed to consider causes, their character and number.” Aristotle set out four types of causes which all things have, namely material causes “that out of which a thing comes to be and persists… e.g. the bronze of a statue”, the formal cause “the form or the archetype, the statement of the essence”, the efficient causes or “the primary source of the change or of coming to rest” and the final cause, “that for the sake of which a thing is done”, sometimes called the telos of the thing.  Aristotle’s theory of causation has been enormously influential, giving rise to natural law and virtue ethics on one hand and to the cosmological and teleological arguments for God’s existence and the Catholic concept of God on the other. Nevertheless, and despite this, Aristotle’s four causes fail to explain “being as being”.   

Firstly, Aristotle’s focus on material and efficient causation as important aspects of what makes something what it is has led to a naïve scientific materialism becoming the dominant world-view today.  Although the material causes of an object are often incidental and secondary, meaning that an object can be made out of many different materials while still being that object, Aristotle’s focus on the senses as the primary source of knowledge led those influenced by Aristotle to focus on sense-experience and downplay the role that reason has in processing it.  Although Aristotle himself acknowledged the important role that reason plays in enabling us to access knowledge and even warned that “if only the sensible exists there would be nothing if animate things were not, for there would be no faculty of sense…” (Metaphysics, Book V, Part V) this did little to stop the slide towards materialism and beyond into reductionism, the scientific tendency to reduce complex things and explain them only in terms of their physical parts.  In this way, logical positivists Moritz Schlick and AJ Ayer argued that the only possible knowledge is based on sense-data and that any claim that is unverifiable (or not a tautology and logically necessary) is “meaningless” – claiming that claims about beauty, morality and religion are just expressions of personal feeling and emotion and without content beyond that.  Further, Richard Dawkins in “The Selfish Gene” described human beings as “survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.” This sort of naïve materialism and reductionism, myopically focused on the five empirical senses, has been criticised by Thomas Nagel and John Polkinghorne for being an artificially narrow view of human experience and leading scientists to ignore other possible sources of knowledge and understanding about our universe.  In this way, Aristotle’s four causes and particularly his focus on material and efficient causation, fails to explain “being as being”.   

Secondly, like Plato Aristotle argued that things exist by participating in a formal cause – although unlike Plato, Aristotle did not see the formal cause as “real” or having any independent existence.  The idea that there is a formal cause or archetype for everything, including for human beings, has had an overwhelmingly negative effect on women.  In his “Generation of Animals” Book IV, Aristotle argued that the formal cause of the human being is male, reasoning that females are defective males.  Despite the fact that science has since shown Aristotle’s observations to be mistaken and his reasoning faulty, it went on to influence scientists and wider society to the present day.  In 2020 the feminist writer Caroline Criado Perez published “Invisible women: exposing data bias in a world designed for men”, providing hundreds of horrifying ways in which women are still disadvantaged by Aristotle’s assumption that there is a single “formal cause” or archetype for humanity, which is male.  The fact that Aristotle relied on limited observations and went on to misinterpret his observations in line with the dominant misogynistic prejudices of his day points to two other weaknesses in Aristotle’s approach.  Firstly, seeking knowledge through sense-experience means that knowledge is based on necessarily limited and ever-changing data.  Secondly, that sense-experience is subjective and subject to confirmation-bias and to being interpreted within a paradigm.  By contrast, Plato’s focus on rational reflection as the primary source of knowledge means that the limitations of our senses and the tiny slice through time and space that is available for them to experience don’t matter.  Also, Plato’s focus on reason means that there is more incentive to examine our prejudices and paradigm than there is when we are using reason only to interpret observations.  In this way as well, Aristotle’s four causes and particularly his understanding of the formal cause fails to explain “being as being”.   

Thirdly, Aristotle argued that all things have a “final cause” or telos, which they tend to fulfil, flourishing.  This includes human beings and indeed the universe as a whole.  Aristotle’s teleological world-view and his concept of the final cause is flawed because it is a product of how we as human beings tend and want to see things, rather than how they really are.  The existentialist Philosopher Jean Paul Sartre argued that the whole idea that the universe is efficient and tends towards flourishing is wrong. In his novel “Nausea” he reflected on a chestnut tree root, writing “absurd, irreducible, nothing – not even a profound and secret delirium of nature – could explain it…” Reality is, for Sartre, fundamentally chaotic.  We gloss over reality with a fairy-story of order, purpose, efficiency and flourishing, in order to cope with the aimless, random and meaningless chaos of existence.  Sartre rejected Aristotelian ethics, arguing that “all human activities are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.”  While we may not agree with Sartre’s bleak vision of human existence, his argument shows that Aristotle’s teleological world-view is not entirely consistent with human experience and particularly with the prevalence of suffering in the natural world.  Further, Sartre raises a legitimate question over whether the final cause might not be a human projection rather than a property of existence.  If the final cause of a chair is to be sat on, it is fair to say that the designer of the chair – a human mind – allocates the final cause.  Why could not the same be true of the final cause of an animal, or of human beings?  If this is indeed the case, there is little basis for Aristotelian Ethics (Natural Law and Virtue Ethics) or for Aristotelian arguments for God’s existence, such as the cosmological and teleological arguments.  In this way also, Aristotle’s four causes and particularly his understanding of the final cause fails to explain “being as being”.   

Of course, Aristotle’s four causes remain influential and reflecting on them remains an important part of investigating “being as being”.  Certainly, Aristotle’s widening of philosophy to investigate the material and efficient causes of things as well as their formal cause, had positive effects on philosophy as well as negative effects.  His focus on observations inspired generations of scientists to document the natural world and to investigate the laws by which it operates.  Of course, Aristotle never intended his work to inspire the descent into naïve scientific materialism and reductionism and didn’t appreciate the unfounded and potentially damaging nature of his work in his “Generation of Animals”.  Nevertheless, this question doesn’t ask for an assessment of Aristotle’s contribution to Philosophy as a whole, but only for an assessment of his four causes and, as this essay has shown, a focus on the four causes that Aristotle identified, as he understood them, has led to an artificially narrow, misogynistic and unrealistically optimistic world-view, while also leaving unanswered questions.  How can material causes contribute to being while being interchangeable?  How can everything have efficient causes while the universe does not – either because it is infinite or because there is no time and space or possible causation before it?  Might not the formal and final causes be a product of how we see things rather than how they really are?   In this way as well, Aristotle’s four causes fail to explain being as being”.

In conclusion, Aristotle’s four causes fail to explain “being as being”.  This is because they are not fully supported by experience and/or might more be a function of how we understand being than a function of being itself.  In consequence, philosophers must continue to “investigate being as being” by examining the causes of things anew rather than relying on Aristotle’s 2500 year old categorization of causes.   

Plato’s theory of the forms is unconvincing. Discuss (40)

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Plato’s theory of the forms is developed in several different places.  Most famously, Plato describes the world of the forms and how it relates to the world of human experience through his Allegory of the Cave, found in Book VII of The Republic.  Here, Plato describes how human beings are like prisoners, trapped by the cave of sense-experience and how it is possible to escape – through reason – coming to the realization that Ultimate Reality is metaphysical in the world of the “forms.”  Elsewhere, Plato used the analogies of the Sun and the Divided Line to explain his theory differently, but nowhere did Plato provide any systematic account of or argument for the theory.  It seems that for Plato, a form is the essence of something, what makes it what it is.  It is what enables us to recognize what something we encounter is and what makes it possible to judge whether it is a good (or bad) example of its type.  The word “form” is also used to refer to the model which a mason used to ensure all his carvings were the same; it is the blueprint, the type, the design.  Unlike things that we encounter through our senses, the form is unchanging, perfect, complete and it is this which makes it more “real” than physical things in the ever-changing partial and imperfect world of the senses.  “The Platonic idealist,” said George Santayana, “is the man by nature so wedded to perfection that he sees in everything not the reality but the faultless ideal which the reality misses and suggests.”  However, Plato is not clear how many forms exist – is there a form of everything or only a few or even one ultimate form?  Further, Plato fails to argue for his position, preferring to describe a worldview using allegories and analogies.  Julia Annas observed that

“Plato not only has no word for “theory”; he nowhere in his dialogues has an extended discussion of Forms in which he pulls together the different lines of thought about them and tries to assess the needs they meet and whether they succeed in meeting them” An Introduction to Plato’s Republic, p217 

While it has been enormously influential and while it does have intuitive appeal, Plato’s theory of the forms is unconvincing because of this lack of coherent argument. 

Further, nothing much seems to separate Plato’s theory of the forms from speculation.  As Aristotle pointed out in Metaphysics Book 1,

“… If, then, a man has the theory without the experience, and recognizes the universal but does not know the individual included in this, he will often fail” 

Plato’s focus on reason as the only source of wisdom – and his belief that sense-experience could actually mislead people – means that his theory is not supported by any observable evidence.  There is no way to see, hear, smell, taste or touch the forms and, while Plato would suggest that this is just the point, what then distinguishes Plato’s theory from baseless speculation?  Take flat-earth theory or young earth creationism.  It is, as Bertrand Russell pointed out, impossible to disprove the idea that the universe was created with all the appearance of age 5 minutes ago… or indeed something over 6000 years ago in a period of 6 days.  While this would raise serious questions over His goodness, a mischievous creator could well have planted “fossils” in rock strata and rigged the moon-landings to deceive credulous scientists and identify those few with unshakable blind faith in what goes against the evidence to elevate to their eternal reward.   In the same way – in the absence of the sort of freak-chance-escape Plato describes in his allegory – it is impossible to disprove Plato’s proposal that we exist in a shadowy prison of the senses and that ultimate reality exists beyond in some forever-unattainable world of the forms.  Plato even acknowledges how the revelation of such news would be received by those still in the cave. In the absence of supporting evidence – and when Plato’s theory seems to call for an active suspension of disbelief – how is it more credible than flat-earth theory or young earth creationism?  In this way as well, Plato’s theory of the forms is unconvincing. 

Aristotle also criticized Plato for being inconsistent in his speculations; must there me a form of the yellow pencil with blunt lead and the form of my half-drunk cup of tea?  Why shouldn’t there be a form of evil, sin etc?  Also, what prevents there being an infinite regress of forms?  Plato himself acknowledged this as a problem for his theory in the dialogue Parmenides – in what Bertrand Russell in his “History of Western Philosophy” described as “one of the most remarkable cases in history of self-criticism”.  Here,Plato seems to suggest that where things display a particular quality, such as greatness, there must be a form through which we perceive it to have this quality, a form of greatness through which to appreciate its greatness. The Form of greatness must be unchangeably perfect, supremely great as an example of greatness, but if the form of greatness is itself great, and thereby an example of greatness, there must be a separate form through which we perceive the greatness of the form of greatness… and another form through which we perceive the greatness of the form of the form of greatness and so on to infinity.  A similar problem was highlighted by Pelletier and Zalta in their 2003 article “How to Say Goodbye to the Third Man.”  They use the example of ‘Loveliness’: If all things lovely become such and acquire their loveliness by virtue of partaking in the respective Form of Loveliness, then they must themselves be ‘like’ that Form. Following from the “symmetry of likeness” it can be said that the Form must, then, be ‘like’ the objects which partake in it. If this is true, the Form of Loveliness and the lovely objects must resemble one another by virtue of a further Form, of which they both partake. This, again, continues ad infinitum, creating Forms interminably to explain the likeness of the Form to its instantiations.  Plato had no satisfactory answer to these problems, as Aristotle made clear in the Metaphysics, using the example of the third man.  In this way Plato’s theory of the forms is philosophically unconvincing. 

Nevertheless, George P Simmonds argues that Plato’s theory of the forms could survive Aristotle’s criticisms.  He points out that

“the Third Man Argument relies too heavily on assumptions generated by a swift and unsophisticated interpretation of Plato’s thinking.”

And goes on to point out that far from being a sign that Plato was abandoning his theory of the forms, Plato’s inclusion of this line of criticism in Parmenides points to Plato’s confidence in his theory and in his students’ ability to see the weakness of this line of criticism. In particular, Simmonds takes issue with Aristotle’s assumption that Plato’s argument with respect of particular things also applies to the forms. Just because the greatness of things in the world necessitates the existence of a form of greatness through which we perceive that greatness, does not mean that the same applies in the world of the forms. Having said that, Simmonds’ defence of Plato fails to justify Plato in being inconsistent in his treatment of the forms or for failing to provide a systematic defence of his own work, so it goes only so far in making Plato’s theory more convincing.  

In conclusion, Plato’s theory of the forms is unconvincing because Plato fails to give a clear, consistent account of his theory.  While this conclusion it may be a little unfair to Plato, given that he lived nearly 2500 years ago and given the fragmentary nature of our records of his work, his theory is frequently presented as a philosophical argument today, and in this context it must be evaluated as such. Further, just because Plato’s theory of the forms is unconvincing does not mean it is not worthy of serious study and development into what may be far more convincing theories.  Indeed, Plato’s belief that ultimate reality is metaphysical is gaining popularity today through theories like the holographic universe and the simulated universe. 

Bibliography

“Plato’s theory of the forms is unconvincing!” Discuss. (40)

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For Plato, ultimate reality is metaphysical and exists in the “world of the forms” and that things in this world are merely shadows of the forms.  Most famously, Plato discussed his theory of forms through his Allegory of the Cave in Book VII of the Republic.  Here Plato suggests that the forms are accessible through reason and through the work of those who have managed to escape the “cave” of sense-experience to appreciate the ultimate reality beyond.  While Plato’s central point about ultimate reality being metaphysical is convincing, his lack of any real argument for the forms and the apparent inconsistency of his position on them make Plato’s so-called “theory” of the forms unconvincing. 

Plato is unclear about precisely which forms exist metaphysically.  As Julia Annas observes, “Plato never offers an argument for Forms that would establish them as entities suitable for a theory”[1] Further, Plato discusses the forms is presented in several different dialogues, dating from different times in his long philosophical career.  In Book X of the Republic, Plato implies that there are separate forms for tables, beds etc.  Socrates says to Glaucon: “Whenever a number of individuals have a common name we assume them to also have a corresponding idea or form.  Do you understand me? [I do]  Let us take any common instance; there are beds and tables in the world – plenty of them – are there not? [Yes] But there are only two ideas or forms of them – one of the idea of the bed, the other of a table.”[2] Meanwhile, in Book VI of the Republic, through his Allegory of the Sun, Plato implies that only one form ultimately exists – the Form of the Good – and that our impression that a diversity of things exist is a belief rather than actual knowledge, a result of our ideas being clouded by sense-experiences and so not being clear or distinct.  Here, as Julia Annas explains, “Plato contrasted Forms, which are objects of knowledge, with particular instances of Forms (things that ‘partake in’ Forms), which are objects of belief…” [3] The lack of any explicit argument for the forms and the inconsistency of Plato’s position make Plato’s theory of the forms unconvincing. 

In addition, it is not possible to support Plato’s theory of the forms, however it is presented, through either evidence or argument.  Nothing we can observe supports the existence of “forms” whether separately of beds and tables or indeed of the good.  Plato’s position – and that of modern Platonists who accept his theory of the forms – depends on reason alone.  Plato – through the character of Socrates – argues that the existence of the forms is known a priori, before and even without experience, because their necessary existence is contained within our understanding of all other things.  When we experience a chair, we understand what it is and how to use it because we have an idea of a chair which does not depend on having experienced that or any chair.  This explains why we can see a chair that is different from every other chair we have seen and still understand that it is a chair and how to use it.  We can even make judgments of whether it is a good chair or not and know how to design and make a different sort of chair.  “The maker… makes a bed or makes a table for our use, in accordance with the idea…”[4] Yet what is the difference between this sort of rational argument for ultimate reality in the world of the forms and speculation?  What could count against Plato’s argument for the forms if all experience is discounted?  Today, there is evidence to support Plato’s claim that ultimate reality is metaphysical.  Cosmology shows that neither time nor space are absolutes and Quantum Physics that matter consists only in potentialities.  The claim that “man is the measure of all things” and that the way our five human senses perceive reality is the way it really is, is incredible.  Further, there are alternative evidence-based, scientific explanations for our ability to understand, judge and create variations on what we perceive through the senses which do not rely on postulating a supernatural world of the forms.  For example, Noam Chomsky argues that the human brain is “hard wired” for language and that the forms exist in the structures of the brain and the parameters of human language rather than in some metaphysical world.  When there is no evidence to support the metaphysical existence of the forms and when such convincing scientific explanations are available, the claim that we know the forms a priori cannot be maintained.  Plato’s theory of the forms is not convincing, because it is asserted and assumed rather than systematically and consistently argued for. 

On the other hand, as Julia Annas observes, “Books on Plato often refer to Plato’s “Theory of Forms”, but this has to be handled with caution.  Plato not only has no word for “theory”[5] Perhaps Plato never intended to present the forms as a “theory” and it is consequently unfair to evaluate his work as such.  Further, Plato’s theory of the forms has been enormously influential through history and continues to capture the public imagination through films as varied as The Matrix and Interstellar.  However, neither of these counterclaims serve to make Plato’s forms convincing.  Even if Plato never intended to present a coherent theory, his work has widely been interpreted as doing this and other scholars have more than made up for Plato’s lack of argument. For just one example, Descartes developed Plato’s claim that ultimate reality is metaphysical, supporting this with his famous cogito argument in his “Meditations on First Philosophy”.  Descartes pointed out that the five senses are limited and often present flawed data; the only think that I can know with certainty is that I exist as a thinking being and from this I can establish the certain metaphysical existence of “clear and distinct ideas” very much like Plato’s forms.  However, Descartes’ argument has been widely criticised.  While he establishes that he exists as a thinking being, his arguments for the existence of other clear and distinct ideas such as God is widely deemed to have failed.  Kant said that Descartes so-called Ontological Argument for God was “so much labour and effort lost”[6]  Because of this, Descartes fails to offer Plato’s world-view much support.  In addition, that Plato’s theory has been influential and remains popular suggests nothing about whether it is convincing or not on a philosophical level.  A lot of unconvincing theories are popular and influence society… think carrots helping you see in the dark, spinach making you strong and magic charms getting rid of warts.  None of these “old wives tales” have any scientific basis, and yet many people still believe them and behave accordingly.  That Plato’s theory is influential is a poor reason to find it convincing, on a philosophical level.  

In conclusion, Plato’s theory of the forms is unconvincing.  While his basic point about ultimate reality being metaphysical might well be true and remains influential and popular, he fails to argue for the existence of a “world of the forms” or even to present a coherent picture of the same.

[40 minutes]

Bibliography

  • Class Notes
  • Crash Course video on Descartes
  • Julia Annas “An Introduction to Plato’s Republic” Chapters 9 & 10
  • Plato “The Republic”

[1]  An Introduction to Plato’s Republic p.234

[2] The Republic, Book X

[3] An Introduction to Plato’s Republic p.210

[4] The Republic, Book X

[5] An Introduction to Plato’s Republic p217

[6] Critique of Pure Reason, 1781

Critically compare Plato’s philosophical approach with that of Aristotle. [40]

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Plato and Aristotle are usually understood to have completely contrasting philosophical approaches.  Although Plato was Aristotle’s teacher at the Academy in Athens, Aristotle rejected Plato’s focus on metaphysics and reason, choosing instead to explore the limits of Physics and observation.  Clearly, Aristotle’s philosophical approach has more influence today.  While modern science has moved way beyond some of the theories which Aristotle proposed on the basis of observation – such as that the universe is infinite, that birds turn into fish and that men implant a “homonucleid” in a woman’s womb – scientific method still accepts Aristotle’s claim that knowledge must begin with observation and that reason must not stray too far from what can be observed, into the realm of speculation.  Nevertheless, and despite the continued popularity of the naïve materialism that emerged out of Aristotle’s philosophical approach, relatively recent developments in philosophy and science have shown that it is Plato’s philosophical approach which is more compelling.

Aristotle’s philosophical approach was supported by Locke, Hume, Kant & Ayer.  All of these philosophers dismissed Plato’s claim that human beings are born with innate ideas which we “remember” through rational reflection.  Instead, like Aristotle, John Locke argued that human beings are born as tabula rasa – blank slates – and that all our knowledge comes from sense-experience, as processed and interpreted by reason.  Hume essentially agreed, as did Kant – who also limited possible knowledge-claims to the synthetic and the analytic – and later Hume’s biographer AJ Ayer in the 20th Century.  The very idea that human beings could source new knowledge in rational reflection without relying on sense-experience seemed to open the door for unsupported speculation, the opposite of knowledge and probably a barrier to attaining it.  Nevertheless, despite the common-sense appeal of empiricism, it has come under attack from several directions.  Firstly, the idea that the only meaningful knowledge-claims are those which can be verified through sense-experience (or are tautologies) was shown to be narrow and impractical.  Aristotle’s attempt to build out from sense-experience to demonstrate the necessary existence of a Prime Mover and a common human telos in which to ground a universal, absolute system of moral philosophy was widely criticised during the Enlightenment and then into the 20th Century.  Descartes and Berkeley pointed out the problems with relying on sense-experience at all.  The way I see things is not necessarily the way that they are; the senses are limited and frequently faulty. Further, there is no way to prove that the exterior world is real, not a dream-world and permanent; as Descartes pointed out, the only thing that I can know with certainty is cogito ergo sum. David Hume himself pointed out additional assumptions on which Aristotle’s reasoning rests, that our limited observations support universal claims about natural laws and that the impression of order and teleology is not just that, an impression.  Cartesian scepticism, Berkeley’s idealism and even Hume’s epistemology point to the shortcomings of Aristotle’s philosophical approach and Descartes and Berkeley’s arguments at least lend support to Platonic rationalism.

Secondly and despite the “liberalisation of empiricism” to include discussions of topics like history that are only weakly verifiable, the focus on sense-experience as the only source of new knowledge excludes important areas of human discussion – and experience – such as religion and morality.  Further, as erstwhile Logical Positivist Karl Popper pointed out, modern science cannot function under a verificationist approach to knowledge.  For example, quantum particles are changed by the act of observing them, demonstrating that the senses do not offer the transparent window on external reality that Aristotle or later empiricists and positivists claimed. Also, as GE Moore pointed out, there is no way to prove that “this is a hand”… at some point the attempt to describe and communicate about sense-experience relies on concepts and conventions, as Hume previously acknowledged when he pointed out that properties like colour are secondary, not primary qualities and this depend on the way we see things, not the way they really are.  It is true that Popper’s falsificationism does not stray too far from that which can at least in principle be experienced through the senses… and certainly does not seem to offer much support to Plato’s rationalism… but it allows for beliefs to be accepted as knowledge providing that criteria for their falsification are accepted.  In the scientific sense, falsification allows for scientists to speculate about the origins and fundamental nature of the universe and about multiverses – none of which can ever be directly observed – if they define the circumstances under which they would modify or abandon their theories.  In a broader sense, falsification enables people to propose moral laws meaningfully – laws which could never be seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted – providing that they would be willing to accept falsifying evidence.  Alternative theories of knowledge, such as Quine’s holism, recognise the need to include all of human experience rather than just to focus on sense-experience, seeing mathematics as close to the centre of the “web of human experience”, and as such show that Aristotle’s narrower approach has been superseded.  The general rejection of the Verification Principle and the move to find other approaches to knowledge and meaning in the mid-20th century points to the fact that relying on the empirical senses as the source of all new human knowledge – as Aristotle and the empiricists did – is limiting and leads to an impoverished world-view.

Today, Plato’s is a more convincing as an approach to Philosophy than Aristotle’s, because he recognised that reason offers people a better means of understanding things as they really are… although he probably was too confident about how far this could go.  As Descartes pointed out in the 17th Century, reality goes much deeper than superficial appearances.  This begins with all the assumptions people made for millennia – that the earth is flat, the centre of the universe, orbited by the sun and stars in fixed orbits – and includes assumptions that even scientists still make every day – that matter is real, that the way we see things is the way they are, that this part of the universe is a fair sample of a homogenous whole.  To the sceptic, everything in the world of appearances is open to question and nothing is known for certain.  Nevertheless, starting with the foundational claim that I exist as a thinking being, we can have certain a priori knowledge of mathematics, which does more to explain the reality of the universe than ever can direct observations, as theoretical physicists will confirm.  This shows that Plato’s rationalism is more compelling, because it supports current thinking in Mathematics, Theoretical Physics, Particle Science and Cosmology.

In addition, seeing thought and reason as primary also makes more sense of the broader experience of being human.  Plato’s dualism, his suggestion that soul/mind and physical body are separate and even separable, remains far more popular than Aristotle’s suggestion that the soul and body are one and inseparable.  Despite Aquinas’ attempt to argue that an Aristotelian “soul” could be transferred to a new “heavenly” body in an afterlife, this raises more questions than it solves.  The belief in the afterlife, a belief which is extremely widespread, consistent and persistent and even, as Kant argued, required to explain the freedom we all experience as human beings, is much better supported by Platonic dualism than by Aristotlelian monism.  Most people experience a continuity of personal identity and sense of self from early childhood to death.  If the soul is the “formal cause of the body” and the body changes radically over time then we might expect the soul to change as well… but it is consistent.  Most people would agree that changes to the body – becoming a paraplegic for example – has little or no effect on the soul or sense of self, which we might expect to alter if the soul was just the formal cause of the body as Aristotle proposed.  Clearly, if Aristotle was here to defend himself he might point to the effects of traumatic brain injury or dementia, suggesting personal identity depends on the brain as a physical organ and is in no way separate or separable.  As Gilbert Ryle said, Plato’s talk of souls could rest on a category mistake; the soul could be no more than a “ghost in the machine”.  And yet, to dismiss all the evidence for out-of-body and near-death experiences just because it cannot be empirically verified would be hasty.  Recent medical studies by Dr Sam Parnia (AWARE and AWARE II) suggest that the evidence better supports the brain mediating rather than generating the mind.  To use Plato’s own allegory of the cave, might dismissing reports of a metaphysical reality and attacking those who make them be rather like the prisoners in the cave threatening the one who escaped and returned?  Are we satisfied to stay chained in the shadows, blocking out any evidence that could expand our world-view, or are we brave enough to contemplate the possibility of a bigger reality beyond? Plato’s dualism is more persuasive than Aristotelian materialism, because it accounts both for the experience of being human and research into Out of Body and Near Death Experiences.

Further, Plato’s world-view makes more sense of the human experience of morality than does Aristotle’s.  Both GE Moore in his “Principia Ethica” (1903) and later Iris Murdoch in her “Sovereignity of the Good” (1970) pointed out that we recognise goodness when it cannot be reduced to what is useful or makes people happy.  Not to be distracted by Plato’s language in relation to the forms, it is fair to say that there is an ideal of goodness which people experience as a rational intuition.  Kant described this in terms of the moral law, which appeals directly to reason as a synthetic a priori and shows all thinking people their duty to act transparently, on principle and with non-preferential humanitarian love.  Modern proponents of Natural Law like John Finnis explain what Aquinas called conscientia, the inbuilt desire to follow the direction of synderesis or what Aristotle called phronesis, in these terms.  It is difficult to explain why the way people do behave is the way they ought to behave without appealing to reason, to the sort of rational intuitions which Plato sought to explain.  The existence of a “form of the good”, howsoever this is described, explains the existence of the universal human virtues which CS Lewis and Alastair MacIntyre described and the absolute authority of agape-love which Joseph Fletcher appealed to.  Iris Murdoch developed her own version of Platonism in which she also proposed that human beings share rational intuitions of “forms” such as goodness and beauty.  This, she argued, explains why human beings seem to share the same ideas of what is good and beautiful, despite cultural and/or historical distance between them.  CS Lewis made a similar point in his “Mere Christianity” (1953), pointing out that ideas of justice exist in a similar way across time and the world.  This suggests that Plato’s philosophical approach makes more sense of human experience than scientific materialism, based on Aristotle’s philosophical approach, which tries to reduce morality and aesthetics to utilitarianism or evolutionary advantage.

Finally, the existence of innate ideas explains human language acquisition more convincingly than any other hypothesis.  As Noam Chomsky argues, human beings seem hard-wired for language, sharing a common conceptual and grammatical framework which needs only to be expressed through the conventions of a particular language.  Infants acquire language much more quickly than we might expect and non-human species (like chimps, dolphins and parrots) face an insuperable obstacle to using language rather than just naming things.  That no animal can talk is about much more than their lack of verbal dexterity, it is about their lack of the necessary neurological structures.  As Wittgenstein remarked in a different context, if a lion could talk we could not understand him.  Nativist theories of language acquisition like that of Chomsky would say that this is because the lion’s language would employ a whole other conceptual and grammatical framework as well as because the lion’s form of life is necessarily alien.  This shows that Plato’s philosophical approach, and particularly his belief in innate ideas, accounts for the evidence concerning human language acquisition better than Aristotelian materialism has.

In conclusion, despite the continued popularity of Aristotle’s philosophical approach, recent developments in both science and philosophy suggest that it is Plato’s approach which holds more interest going forward into the 21st century and beyond.