Home | Philosophy | General

Are there really Platonic forms?
By: Mitchell

Plato’s Theory of the Forms comes, in the main, from The Republic as well as, in part, from the dialogues Phaedo, Meno and Euthyphro. Plato never described or set forth a single a universal argument for the Theory of the Forms and so it is something that has to be patched together from various sources. However, from looking at a number of Platonic texts we can construct what appears to be his argument for the Theory of the Forms.

When we consider any object it has certain properties. It is the culmination of these properties that produces, to us, a specific object. A tennis ball is small in size, furry, yellow, bouncy and so forth. It is these properties that come together to make a tennis ball. If however we take a single property on it’s own, for example, bounciness, this property can be separated from our conception of the tennis ball. It is a property that comes to be in all bouncy objects and a property that is definable separate from any object. This is a form. Equally, when presented with a hundred small furry round objects it is a simple matter for most people to sort through them and remove the balled up socks, nesting rabbits and so forth to select only the tennis balls. There is some property, some conception that marks out each tennis ball as a tennis ball. There is a unifying quality, a quality of ‘being a tennis ball’ that is present in each specific example. It is this unifying essence that is a form, the form of the tennis ball, in this particular example.

The Theory of Forms allows us to account for knowledge and recognition. When out in the world I am able to point at an object hurtling through the air and shout “Tennis Ball!” despite it being slightly larger, more green and less furry than any tennis ball I have, heretofore, encountered. This is because the particular tennis ball on it’s way through the air is partaking of the form of the tennis ball. It itself is not a perfect tennis ball but it is under the umbrella of the form of the perfect tennis ball and it is through the tennis ball’s interaction with the perfect form that I am able to see in it the true qualities of a tennis ball and thus identify it.

Another example would be that of a more general concept, that of a leaf. A leaf may be oak, maple, birch, beech, elm or any one of hundred of species of lead. Equally any individual leaf may be one of hundred of Elm leaves. To recognise something, as a leaf is to recognise an object that is partaking in the larger form of ‘leaf’ it may also be partaking of the form of ‘elm leaf’ and so identifiable through that form as well. It has properties that come from the universal form but is itself not a perfect leaf, merely one of many. By knowledge of the perfect form of leaf, we can then identify specific leaves as being of that form. The knowledge of the forms, Plato believes, is something present in the soul but lost through the birth process. To show this, Plato presents us with a scene in his dialogue Meno where, simply by leading a slave by through a set of thoughts and processes, he manages to illicit from the boy some mathematical proof relating to the relative size of squares. The boy, it is shown, has had no arithmetic teaching and so, we are suggested, he must be gaining or ‘relearning’ knowledge of the forms.

For Plato forms are not just ideas but actual present beings existing in the Realm of the Forms. Forms are transcendental things that all in turn exist in the form of the good. Through the inclusion of abstract nouns such as truth and beauty as having forms, Plato also suggests a form of ethics that one can come to know through the forms and study of what is good in our worldly plane. Through intellectual struggle and advancement one can not only know the form of the Good but also the truth of being and have, in an eastern sense, enlightenment. In The Republic Socrates says the following after a discussion of the allegory of the cave;

“...my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally either in public or in private life must have his eye fixed.” [Solomon, 2001]

From this we can see the huge importance placed upon the shoulders of the Theory of Forms. It is not simply a method by which we can come to know a table we have never encountered before and make it distinct from its surroundings but it is also a way to know beauty, truth and ultimately the Form of the Good.

However, in assessing the Theory of the Forms there are some clear problems. Firstly, if all things are partaking of a form then there must equally be forms of hair, mud, evil, genocide, overdue library books and many other either obscure and banausic or simply evil and unpleasant things. For Plato, whose theory of the forms is to connect all things to the Theory of the Good, this seems like an illogical and even contrary conclusion to draw.

Another flaw is that if the hat I am wearing is partaking of the form of the hats and yet is also a specific hat, a trilby, it must also partake of the form of the trilby. Equally it is a black trilby and so partakes of the form of the Black Trilby. It is also a corduroy black trilby... and so it goes on. Eventually leading to the existence of the form of this hat of which there is, of course, only one member, this hat. Again, this seems like an absurd conclusion to Plato’s theory.

There is also what is known as the “Third Man” argument set forth in the Parmenides 123a-b.

If a, b, c, d are large things

They are large because of one form,
the large itself (L). [one over many]

But L must be distinct from a, b, c, d [Non Identity]

What makes L large must also be what makes a, b, c, d large
and so be a form itself [One over Many]

But this form must be distinct from a, b, c, d and L.
Call it L` [Non Identity]

But L` is large too [Self-Predication]

This argument can clearly be repeated ad infinitum. This leads to infinite series of forms, which is contrary to Plato’s theory. In Plato’s theory the forms must be graspable by then human mind otherwise they become an irrelevant and moot point. If they do recede in this endless series then it is not graspable by the mind.

This is similar in effect to Russell’s set theory paradox known as the Barber’s Paradox. Bertrand Russell, along with Alfred North Whitehead wanted to give an account of mathematics in terms of sets. For example Zero was the Null set. One was the set of the Singular and so forth. This lead to a difficult paradox presented in analogy form.

In a town the barber cuts the hair of everyone who does not cut his or her own and no one else. But the problem arises when we ask if he cuts his own hair. If he does he is braking the rule that he cuts the hair of everyone who doesn’t cut their own because he is cutting his own. But if he doesn’t he is breaking the rule that he cuts the hair of everyone who doesn’t cut their own because he wouldn’t be having his hair cut. In essence this shows how the categorisation of things into forms or sets is inherently impossible. The self-containment of sets/forms is another problem. Some sets are not members of themselves, for example, the set of all juggling balls, and some sets are, for example, the set of all non-juggling balls. The problem arises with the set of all sets, which are not members of themselves? Is it a member of itself or not? If it is, then it isn't, and if it isn't, then it is.

If Plato’s theory of the forms is so problematic then there must be another way in which we come to have knowledge of objects such that we can be presented with a new example and still readily identify it. Here, I propose two possibilities.

The first is Kant’s categories. In this Theory Kant asserted that by looking at how we perceive the world we could, by means of transcendental deduction, conclude certain things about how the mind/brain works. We see objects as distinct from each other, as having number, shape, movement and so forth. As such it must be that the mind is inherently structured in such a way as to comprehend these properties present in the world. These are the categories. Using this theory we account for how we can perform many of the mental operations that were problematic for Plato, leading to the Theory of the Forms.

But how do we recognise objects as being certain things? Here I put forward experience and empirical evidence coupled with Wittgenstein’s private language argument.

To recognise a table we must acknowledge certain properties of an object that may or may not be a table. It would not, for example, be gaseous, nor would it be liquid, nor would it be enormously large and so forth. There are unifying properties that mark a table from other things. These properties, I propose, are acquired through simple experience. I have seen, since my birth and first grapplings with the English language, many examples of a table. I can, at command, draw what I hope people would recognise as a table. I can describe one. I could, with the right tools and abilities, fashion one. This is because I am familiar with tables. It is those objects with which I am most familiar that I am able to identify most readily. Tables, of which I have seen a vast number, are very easily identifiable to me. By comparing the properties of the object in front of me with the properties accumulated in my memory of all the tables I have seen before and, as neuroscientists and philosophers of the mind may argue, amalgamated in to one paradigm table, and so come to conclusions as to the table-ness, or otherwise, of the object in question. However, I have, to my knowledge never seen the Bird known as Hume’s Warbler. As such, with no knowledge and no paradigm or archetypal Hume’s Warbler to call upon I could not identify one from an array of Birds. Even more so, I have never in my life seen a ____ in fact, I have never even heard of one as the blank space indicates. From this evidence I would have no knowledge to assess whether object X was one or not, in contrast to my general zoological knowledge that would allow me to pin point the Hume’s Warbler as a bird and so separate it out from a Brick, a Show and a bag of Buttons.

Wittgenstein would say, as he proposed in the Philosophical Investigations, that this is a matter of language. The Table is identifiable by many people as they are part of the same language game. They all adhere to a concept of table that is publicly subscribed to by the usage of the word ‘table’ in reference to an object who collectively we agree possess certain characteristic. In simple terms, a table is what we call ‘a table’ because it’s a table. However, I am not part of the twitcher language game and so cannot identify a Red Crested swallow from a Hume’s Warbler. I am not part of a collective that has agreed to call X one and Y the other and so cannot participate in that game as the terms have no meaning for me. I am even less a part of the ___ language game, as I have no knowledge at all as to what it may be.

For Wittgenstein, then, the forms are the adhered to words for certain things. They can change from group to group and culture-to-culture for example there is a tribe in New Guinea who have only words for Black and White and speak of colours in terms of variance in brightness. However, we have many colour words, in the region of thirty and so what we call Blue, Lilac, Tope etc. are simply the phenomena in the world that we have labelled such and its meaning then comes from public use. We all use blue to describe a certain phenomena and so that phenomena is blue. However, in reality it is no more blue than it is azzuro or celeste or blu for an Italian. It is simply usage.

This also lays aside another problem with Plato. If a man was to live entirely on his own he should, by Plato’s thinking be able to (if not easily then just hypothetically) acquire knowledge of the forms. But what is the meaning of Blue or Truth, or Beauty to someone who has never had human contact? Wittgenstein would say that he could have no private language as meaning only comes from what can, as a social construct, be agreed upon as referred to by a certain term. For Wittgenstein there is no problem here, he simply cannot have a private language, but for Plato we come to the difficult conclusion that he should be able to acquire knowledge of the forms, yet how he does this, is a mystery.

As such I do not feel that there truly are forms. Like Kant and Wittgenstein I think it is a mixture of social construct, inherent abilities of the mind and simple experience. Whilst the term beauty may have equivalents across all cultures this needn’t mean there is the existence of an absolute form of the beautiful. Simply that all cultures, by their nature (social/biological/psychological) acknowledge something as aesthetically more pleasing than others. It is a complicated issue, and Plato’s theorising brought philosophy out of an unfortunate stalemate, but it appears that modern philosophy has a far better conception of human experience and can solve the issue Plato was wrestling with in a more efficient and convincing way.

Bibliography

Allen, R.E. - The Dialogues of Plato: The Parmenides (Yale University Press 1998)

Banach, David - St Anselm College Department of Philosophy http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/platform.htm

Fletcher, Alan - The art of Looking Sideways (Phaidon, 2003)

Garett, Jan Dr. - Western Kentucky University http://www.wku.edu/~jan.garrett/platfrms.htm

Plato, - Five Dialogues, Trans. G.M.A Grube (Hackett Publishing Company, 2002)

Russell, Bertand - History of Western Philosophy (Routledge, 200)

Solomon, Robert C. - Introducing Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2001)

Warburton, Nigel - Philosophy, The Classics (Routledge 2nd Edition, 2001)

Article Source: http://journal.ilovephilosophy.com

Please Rate this Article

 

# of Ratings = 5 | Rating = 3/5

Click the XML Icon Above to Receive General Articles Via RSS!
Additional Articles From - Home | Philosophy | General
Sign Up as an Author.
Submit Articles
Member Login
Top Authors
Most Popular Articles
Submission Guidelines
Ezine Notifications
Article RSS Feeds
New Stuff
Forum
Link to Us
Contact Us

Powered by Article Dashboard