The theory of forms is an application of a mistaken theory of reference. That theory holds that names refer to things, and that therefore, if there is a name, then there must be a thing to which it refers; So there must be a thing to which universals and such refer - the forms.

I think a case can be made that the forms are nearer to what we would call principles. Have a read of the chapter on Plato in this .pdf book, it will set you straight

Would the irrational number, π, also constitute some understanding of The Forms? — Shawn

According to legend, the Pythagoreans—followers of the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras—believed that all things could be explained through whole numbers and their ratios. This harmonious view of the cosmos was shattered when it was discovered that some quantities, like the square root of 2, could not be expressed as a ratio of whole numbers. These “irrational numbers” deeply troubled the Pythagoreans, as they threatened the foundation of their mathematical and philosophical beliefs. The story goes that the man who revealed this unsettling truth—often said to be Hippasus—was drowned at sea, possibly by his fellow Pythagoreans, as punishment for exposing a truth they considered too dangerous or sacrilegious to be known.

There were similar controversies over the discovery of zero, which was likewise opposed on dogmatic grounds, holding back progress in arithmetic for centuries, until at last it was imported from Indian mathematicians, via Islamic scholars, who had no such qualms.

“….That metaphysics leads to divinity is not an accident of history but is intrinsic to the very enterprise of metaphysics…”
(Link, intro., lower pg 3)

It has been intrinsic historically, but would you agree it isn’t so much anymore? Seems to me the logical ens realissimum doesn’t necessarily indicate a divine being, but merely an irreducible one, re: an ideal.

Might just be me, but when I see “divine” I feel like I gotta say some kinda prayer to it or something. Offer up burning incense.

Be that as it may….good reference material, as usual.

It has been intrinsic historically, but would you agree it isn’t so much anymore? — Mww

Well, sure, nowadays physics has metaphysics which has not much to do with divinity, although that is rather an old-fashioned word. And yes, that is an excepctionally good book.

This is not my area but I was kind of interested in Third Man argument as it appears in Parmenides. (Section 132a-133b ).

If we say that all large things are large because they share in the "Form of Largeness," and that the Form of Largeness itself is also large, then there's a problem. The Form must be large for it to be the Form of Largeness, but that creates a need for another Form to explain why both the large things and the Form are large.

This creates a never-ending chain of Forms. We would need a third Form to explain the second, a fourth to explain the third, and so on, endlessly. This is called the "Third Man Argument," where you keep needing more and more Forms to explain the relationship between the first two, leading to an infinite regress.

My understanding is that Plato may consider the theory flawed and incomplete (perhaps the way some physicists feel about Quantum). Any thoughts?

In your own view, what are The Forms, which Plato alluded to? — Shawn

Like animist / mystical "true names", it seems to me that Platonic Forms – essences, universals – are merely reified abstractions (and therefore a mistaken theory of reference).

merely reified abstractions — 180 Proof

All of reality is merely reified abstractions.

All of reality is merely reified abstractions. — T Clark

???

If that were so, the notion of 'reification" would be rendered senseless. If nothing is concrete, then there could be no making something abstract more concrete.

This is a tree. "Trees" is somewhat more abstract. Botany, a step further still.

↪If that were so, the notion of 'reification" would be rendered senseless. I — Banno

Correct. Redundent.

I agree. Nothing to see here.

well, seeing as Shawn was asking for insight, they're the one doing the digging, nothing being bestowed. You coming here all "nothing to see here folk, I didn't create this thread," is probably the dumbest bit of reification here...

When someone is asking about X Y and Z the proper response isn't "nothing to see here" in an attempt to police the forums from someone asking a question. :lol: The Philosophy Forum's own Cartman. If there's nothing here, why do you need to say anything at all about nothing being here?

Ah because you took his abstract question and attempt to turn into a concrete waste of time. But If Shawn finds even 180's notion on it useful then there obviously is something to see here, as it's their question that they're asking. Somehow you forgot that you're not Shawn.

↪Shawn I think a case can be made that the forms are nearer to what we would call principles. Have a read of the chapter on Plato in this .pdf book, it will set you straight

That's an excellent source.

I will add another I like:

By calling what we experience with our senses less real than the Forms, Plato is not saying that what we experience with our senses is simply illusion. The “reality” that the Forms have more of is not simply their not being illusions. If that’s not what their extra reality is, what is it? The easiest place to see how one could suppose that something that isn’t an illusion, is nevertheless less real than something else, is in our experience of ourselves.

In Republic book iv, Plato’s examination of the different "parts of the soul” leads him to the conclusion that only the rational part can integrate the soul into one, and thus make it truly “just.” Here is his description of the effect of a person’s being governed by his rational part, and therefore “just”:

Justice . . . is concerned with what is truly himself and his own. . . . [The person who is just] binds together [his] parts . . . and from having been many things he becomes entirely one, moderate, and harmonious. Only then does he act. (Republic 443d-e)

Our interest here (I’ll discuss the “justice” issue later) is that by “binding together his parts” and “becoming entirely one,” this person is “truly himself.” That is, as I put it in earlier chapters, a person who is governed by his rational part is real not merely as a collection of various ingredients or “parts,” but as himself. A person who acts purely out of appetite, without any examination of whether that appetite is for something that will actually be “good,” is enacting his appetite, rather than anything that can appropriately be called “himself.” Likewise for a person who acts purely out of anger, without examining whether the anger is justified by what’s genuinely good. Whereas a person who thinks about these issues before acting “becomes entirely one” and acts, therefore, in a way that expresses something that can appropriately be called “himself.”

In this way, rational self-governance brings into being an additional kind of reality, which we might describe as more fully real than what was there before, because it integrates those parts in a way that the parts themselves are not integrated. A person who acts “as one,” is more real as himself than a person who merely enacts some part or parts of himself. He is present and functioning as himself, rather than just as a collection of ingredients or inputs.

We all from time to time experience periods of distraction, absence of mind, or depression, in which we aren’t fully present as ourselves. Considering these periods from a vantage point at which we are fully present and functioning as ourselves, we can see what Plato means by saying that some non-illusory things are more real than other non-illusory things. There are times when we ourselves are more real as ourselves than we are at other times.

Indeed, we can see nature as a whole as illustrating this issue of how fully integrated and “real as itself ” a being can be. Plants are more integrated than rocks, in that they’re able to process nutrients and reproduce themselves, and thus they’re less at the mercy of their environment. So we could say that plants are more effectively focused on being themselves than rocks are, and in that sense they’re more real as themselves. Rocks may be less vulnerable than plants are, but what’s the use of invulnerability if what’s invulnerable isn’t you?

Animals, in turn, are more integrated than plants are, in that animals’ senses allow them to learn about their environment and navigate through it in ways that plants can’t. So animals are still more effectively focused on being themselves than plants are, and thus more real as themselves.

Humans, in turn, can be more effectively focused on being themselves than many animals are, insofar as humans can determine for themselves what’s good, rather than having this be determined for them by their genetic heritage and their environment. Nutrition and reproduction, motility and sensation, and a thinking pursuit of the Good each bring into being a more intensive reality as oneself than is present without them.

Now, what all of this has to do with the Forms and their supposedly greater reality than our sense experience is that it’s by virtue of its pursuit of knowledge of what’s really good, that the rational part of the soul distinguishes itself from the soul’s appetites and anger and so forth. The Form of the Good is the embodiment of what’s really good. So pursuing knowledge of the Form of the Good is what enables the rational part of the soul to govern us, and thus makes us fully present, fully real, as ourselves. In this way, the Form of the Good is a precondition of our being fully real, as ourselves.

But presumably something that’s a precondition of our being fully real must be at least as real as we are when we are fully real. It’s at least as real as we are, because we can’t deny its reality without denying our own functioning as creatures who are guided by it or are trying to be guided by it.13 And since it’s at least as real as we are, it’s more (fully) real than the material things that aren’t guided by it and thus aren’t real as themselves.

From Robert M. Wallace - Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present

The key thing here is "self-determination." But this can be taken to be "self-determination" in a more abstract, metaphysical sense as well, as it is in other readings of Plato, Aristotle and Hegel (who is in some sense very Aristotelian). For example:

[Hegel] thinks he has demonstrated, in the chapter on “Quality,” that the ordinary conceptions of quality, reality, or finitude are not systematically defensible, by themselves, but can only
be properly employed within a context of negativity or true infinity...

Note: For instance, one cannot understand “red” atomically, but rather it depends on other notions such as “color” and the things (substances) that can be red, etc. to be intelligible. This notion is similar to how the Patristics (e.g., St. Maximus) developed Aristotle in light of the apparent truth that even "proper beings" (e.g., a horse) are not fully intelligible in terms of themselves. For instance, try explaining what a horse *is* without any reference to any other plant, animal, or thing. This has ramifications for freedom as the ability to transcend “what one already is,”—the “given”—which relies on our relation to a transcendent absolute Good—a Good not unrelated to how unity generates (relatively) discrete/self-determining beings/things.

[Hegel] has now shown, through his analysis of “diversity” and opposition, that within such a context of negativity or true infinity, the reality that is described by apparently merely “contrary” concepts will turn out to be better described, at a fundamental level, by contradictory concepts. The fundamental reality will be contradictory, rather than merely contrary. It’s not that nothing will be neither black nor white, but rather that qualities such as black, white, and colorless are less real (less able to be what they are by virtue of [only] themselves) than self-transcending finitude (true infinity) is…

From Robert M. Wallace - Hegel's Philosophy of Reality, Freedom, and God

I suppose it's possible to try to psychoanalyze Plato and come up with a theory where the real impetus for the Forms lies in reference, but it would be very hard to claim that this is primarily what he is exploring or what he calls the Forms in to do. The Problem of the One and the Many is rather the framing from which the Forms emerge, and it's also the framing Plato uses to introduce and develop it (as well as the historical context in which the theory emerges; he is responding to Heraclitus and Parmenides as his chief dialectical partners).

Certainly, Plato's theory is open to a number of criticisms. Aristotle mounts a convincing offensive almost immediately, and the theory is significantly different in what becomes "Platonism" (which absorbed a lot of Aristotle's suggestion). But Plato's text itself is also largely consistent with this "later" Platonism (scare-quotes because we don't really have sources to know if this wasn't simply the original interpretation).

Like animist / mystical "true names", it seems to me that Platonic Forms – essences, universals – are merely reified abstractions (and therefore a mistaken theory of reference). — 180 Proof

Naive referentialism is the belief that every word has a referent, rendering statements about unicorns meaningless. Plato would require that true knowlege of something is knowledge of the form, and with unicorns, there would be no such form, so one's knowledge would be limited. A unicorn would be a mental creation formed of other forms (like horses, horns, etc.), but statements about unicorns are not meaningless according to Plato.

That's my take on this. The suggestion though that Russell arrived thousands of years later and defeated Plato's theory of forms by just saying "'the present king of France' is meaningful but false" doesn't really give Plato his due.

That the forms rest on a mistaken theory of reference is not a theory about Plato's motivation. It's nto that Plato invented the Forms because he misunderstood language; but that the plausibility of the theory—its intelligibility and appeal—rests on a semantic model that doesn’t hold up. That’s a diagnosis of the theory’s presuppositions, not its origin story.

Plato would require that true knowlege of something is knowledge of the form... — Hanover

And was he right? I doubt many would now agree.

Plato would require that true knowlege of something is knowledge of the form...
— Hanover
And was he right? I doubt many would now agree. — Banno

The truest triangle is the form. Real triangles always fail to match the concept due to bumpity parts that have to be overlooked.

The truest triangle... — frank

One can see and respect the merit of Plato's ideas - and ideals - without accepting them. His is a brilliant account. There is a difference between understanding Plato and thinking that he is correct.

We can ask, does this work for us, now? Do we treat seeking knowledge as seeking to understand a realm of perfect, unchanging, and eternal things which are the true reality, distinct from our physical world? Should we do so?

Is our aim to understand true triangles, or is it to understand real triangles? After all, it's the ones with the bumps and imperfections with which we find ourselves working. So why not both?

If the forms (ideas, eidos) are understood as principles rather than as ghostly templates in a mysterious realm then they continue to make sense.

Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true… . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.

….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too. — Lloyd Gerson, Platonism vs Naturalism

Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. Triangularity as your intellect grasps it is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed. Of course, your mental image of a triangle might not be exact, but rather indeterminate and fuzzy. But to grasp something with the intellect is not the same as to form a mental image of it. For any mental image of a triangle is necessarily going to be of an isosceles triangle specifically, or of a scalene one, or an equilateral one; but the concept of triangularity that your intellect grasps applies to all triangles alike. Any mental image of a triangle is going to have certain features, such as a particular color, that are no part of the concept of triangularity in general. A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once. — Edward Feser

Is our aim to understand true triangles, or is it to understand real triangles? After all, it's the ones with the bumps and imperfections with which we find ourselves working. So why not both? — Banno

It's both. The math class is the realm of true triangles. The real world works by a margin of error. This is pretty much what Plato said.

He said a bit more than just that. As Hanover pointed out, he held that true knowledge is knowledge of the forms, and developed a proto-scientific methodology based on that notion. He looked at various triangular things and decided that they must have something in common that makes them triangular; then he went the step further. Since names refer to things, if there is a name such as "triangle", then there must be a thing to which it refers, the form "triangularity". He then posited that this "triangularity" is what is important, not the individual instance, which are no more than a shadow cast on a cave wall.


Alternatively, we might understand "triangularity" as a way of grouping some objects, as something we do, and without supposing the existence of a mystic form.

Alternatively, we might understand "triangularity" as a way of grouping some objects, as something we do, and without supposing the existence of a mystic form. — Banno

Why is the concept of a plane bounded by three sides 'mystic'? I say the problem is in trying to come to grips with the sense in which such concepts exist.

Consider such a proposition as 'Edinburgh is north of London'. Here we have a relation between two places, and it seems plain that the relation subsists independently of our knowledge of it. When we come to know that Edinburgh is north of London, we come to know something which has to do only with Edinburgh and London: we do not cause the truth of the proposition by coming to know it, on the contrary we merely apprehend a fact which was there before we knew it. The part of the earth's surface where Edinburgh stands would be north of the part where London stands, even if there were no human being to know about north and south, and even if there were no minds at all in the universe. ...We may therefore now assume it to be true that nothing mental is presupposed in the fact that Edinburgh is north of London. But this fact involves the relation 'north of', which is a universal; and it would be impossible for the whole fact to involve nothing mental if the relation 'north of', which is a constituent part of the fact, did involve anything mental. Hence we must admit that the relation, like the terms it relates, is not dependent upon thought, but belongs to the independent world which thought apprehends but does not create.

This conclusion, however, is met by the difficulty that the relation 'north of' does not seem to exist in the same sense in which Edinburgh and London exist. If we ask 'Where and when does this relation exist?' the answer must be 'Nowhere and nowhen'. There is no place or time where we can find the relation 'north of'. It does not exist in Edinburgh any more than in London, for it relates the two and is neutral as between them. Nor can we say that it exists at any particular time. Now everything that can be apprehended by the senses or by introspection exists at some particular time. Hence the relation 'north of' is radically different from such things. It is neither in space nor in time, neither material nor mental; yet it is something.

It is largely the very peculiar kind of being that belongs to universals which has led many people to suppose that they are really mental. We can think of a universal, and our thinking then exists in a perfectly ordinary sense, like any other mental act. Suppose, for example, that we are thinking of whiteness. Then in one sense it may be said that whiteness is 'in our mind'. ...In the strict sense, it is not whiteness that is in our mind, but the act of thinking of whiteness. The connected ambiguity in the word 'idea', which we noted at the same time, also causes confusion here. In one sense of this word, namely the sense in which it denotes the object of an act of thought, whiteness is an 'idea'. Hence, if the ambiguity is not guarded against, we may come to think that whiteness is an 'idea' in the other sense, i.e. an act of thought; and thus we come to think that whiteness is mental. But in so thinking, we rob it of its essential quality of universality. One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's; one man's act of thought at one time is necessarily a different thing from the same man's act of thought at another time. Hence, if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them. Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts. — Bertrand Russell, The World of Universals

Why is the concept of a plane bounded by three sides 'mystic'? — Wayfarer

It isn't. But reifying it is.

You've had a read, I hope, of Austin's Are There A Priori Concepts?. I've mentioned it so many times over the years. I can quote stiff, too:

(ii) Finally, it must be pointed out that the first part of the
argument (a), is wrong. Indeed, it is so artless that it is difficult
to state it plausibly. clearly it depends on a suppressed premiss
which there is no reason whatever to accept, namely, that words
are essentially 'proper names', unum nomen unum nominatum.
But why, if 'one identical' word is used, must there be 'one
identical' object present which it denotes? Why should it not
be the whole function of a word to denote many things ?
Why should not words be by nature 'general' ? However, it is
in any case simply false that we use the same name for different
things: 'grey' and 'grey' are not the same, they are two similar
symbols (tokens), just as the things denoted by 'this' and by
'that' are similar things. In this matter, the 'words' are in a
position precisely analogous to that of the objects denoted by
them. — Austin, Philosophical Papers, pp 40-41, my bolding

I say the problem is in trying to come to grips with the sense in which such concepts exist. — Wayfarer

Very much so.

I say the problem is in trying to come to grips with the sense in which such concepts exist. — Wayfarer

I'd say the best way to work on such a coming to grips, is by developing an understanding of the sort of information processing that goes on in our brains.

There's a lot more information available to enable the development of such underanding than there was in Plato day (or Russell's). It seems a shame to not be take advantage of such educational information.

The abstract notion of a triangle is a recognition of a simple pattern. Our brains are to a substantial degree, pattern recognition engines that develop models of the world.

Forms sure sound to me like Plato's offering of a cognitive science hypothesis. Without a, doubt it's a very insightful hypothesis. There is something there to be explained, which Plato is pointing at with the notion of forms. I'd suggest the reification of forms mentioned by @Banno amounts to looking at the finger that is pointing, and missing out on learning about what Plato was pointing towards.

On the contrary, I think it clear to what Plato was pointing, but that he was mistaken.

And was he right? I doubt many would now agree. — Banno

I wasn't offering a general defense of Plato, but just one specific to your objection that he fails due to his belief that every word has a reference. He wouldn't hold that talk of unicorns is meaningless and he wouldn't argue they had a form, meaning an imaginary thing can exist under Plato without a referent.

The lack of ontological status of the unicorn impacts ithe strength of its epistemological status but it doesn't render it meaningless, which would be the result if he held to a naive theory of references.

I agree that Plato was mistaken in his hypothesis. I don't see that as contradictory to what I said. Still I have to give him credit for recognizing something important in our thinking, and taking a stab at making sense of it.

Of course fly bottles are an issue.

Alternatively, we might understand "triangularity" as a way of grouping some objects, as something we do, and without supposing the existence of a mystic form. — Banno

True. It's a matter of taste, though.

Thanks for clarifying. It's the general picture to which I would draw attention, much the same as the quote Wittgenstein used as his starting block in Philosophical Investigations.

These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the individual words in language name objects—sentences are combinations of such names.——In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands.

I don't know what Plato thought of Pegasus, I don't think there is much in the literature on the topic. Perhaps Pegasus is an example of a form that is not instantiate - possible-but-not-actual; or a "nonexistent object" that nevertheless exists within the realm of imagination and myth. I do think it useful, in understanding were the Theory of Forms goes astray, to consider it in line with assumptions of how language works that, if not evident in Plato's own writing, are nevertheless apparent in others, including Saint Augustine.

True. It's a matter of taste, though. — frank

More a matter of coherence.