Platos Theory of Forms

Whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, we are all more or less Platonists. Even if we reject Platos conclusions, our views are shaped by the way in which he stated his problems.

~ W. T. Jones, History of Philosophy: The Classical Mind, 108.

the copies of the eternal things [are] impressions taken from them in a manner that is hard to express .

II. Definitions:

A.

Forms are called Ideas (eidos). They are not mental but extramental entities, that is, they are not mind-dependent. Rather, they are independently existing entities whose existence and nature are graspable only by the mind, even though they do not depend on being so grasped in order to exist. They are eternal and unchanging entities, which are encountered not in perception but in thought.

B.

II. Definitions:

C.

Forms are eternal patterns of which the objects that we see are only copies (e.g., a beautiful person is a copy of Beauty). We can say about a person that she is beautiful because we know the Idea of Beauty and recognize that a person shares more or less in this Idea. Knowledge seeks what truly is: its concern is with Being. What really is, what has Being, is the essential nature of things: these essences, such as Beauty and Goodness, which make it possible for us to judge things as good or beautiful, these are eternal Forms or ideas. Science: is a body of universal and necessary truths. Every science has its objects, and must have for its objects, forms: nothing other than eternal, unchanging forms can qualify to be the objects of scientific knowledge.

D. E.

F.

II. Definitions:
What Plato means by the Forms is that they are the essential archetypes of things, having an eternal existence, apprehended by the mind, not the senses, for it is the mind that beholds real existence, colorless, formless, and intangible, visible only to the intelligence.

III. Two Different Worlds:

A. Though the Forms are never systematically argued for, we primarily gain our understanding of them from Phaedo and Republic.

B. The correct answer to the question, What is X? is one that gives an accurate description of an independent entity, a Form. C. Forms are extramental, independent entities; their existence and nature is independent of our beliefs and judgments about them.

III. Two Different Worlds:

D. The Phaedo contains an extended description of the characteristics and functions of the Forms:

1. Unchangeable (78c10-d9) 2. Eternal (79d2) 3. Intelligible, not perceptible (97a1-5) 4. Divine (80a3, b1) 5. Incorporeal (passim) 6. Causes of being (The one over the many) (100c) 7. Are unqualifiedly what their instances are only with qualification (75b) 8. Non-temporal (Tim. 37e-38a) 9. Non-spatial (Phaedr. 247c) 10. They do not become, they simply are (Tim. 27d3-28a3) 11. Phaedo 80b provides a good summary, listing all the attributes of Forms that souls also have divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, always the same as itself.

THE HIGHER WORLD:

1. Is composed of immaterial & eternal essence that we apprehend through our minds. 2. A Form is an eternal, unchangeable, & universal essence (they have an objective or extramental existence). 3. What we encounter in physical world are imperfect examples of such unchanging absolutes as Goodness, Justice, Truth, & Beauty that exist in an ideal, nonspatial world. 4. The higher world is more real for Plato than physical world, inasmuch as the particular things that exist in the world of bodies are copies of the Forms. 5. Only when we focus on the Forms does genuine knowledge become possible.

Platos Theory of Forms:

Plato believed that we participate in two different worlds: Upper world and lower world. One is the physical world that we experience through our bodily senses. Thus, the our contact with the lower world [ this phrase does not appear in Platos writings but is helpful in terms of clarification] comes through our bodily senses, as seen in seeing and touching particular physical objects like rocks, trees, dogs, and people. The physical things that exist in the lower world exist in space and time.

Platos Theory of Forms:

1.Platos cosmological concerns include the Pythagoran view of the world as number
2.The Heraclitean view of the world as flux and as logos, 3.Parmenidean vision of eternal, unchanging, unknowable reality.

Platos Theory of Forms:

The upshot is a two-world cosmology:
An everyday world of change and impermance and an ideal world populated by ideal Forms or (Eidoi; singular is eidos). The World of Becoming is in flux, as Heraclitus argued, but the World of Being, is eternal and unchanging, as Parmenides demanded.

Platos Theory of Forms:

What made Platos new vision appealing was twofold:

1. The two worlds were interrelated, not unrelated as Parminedes suggested. The World of Becoming, our world was defined by (participated in) the World of Being, the world of ideal Forms. Thus, the idea of an unchanging logos underlying the everyday world could be understood as the ideality of the Forms, defining the world despite the fact of continual change.

Platos Theory of Forms:

Not only was Platos new vision appealing because it interrelated the two-worlds, but 2. We can have a glimpse of this ideal world, at least, through reason. Thus, the ideal world of Forms was not, as in Parmenides, unknowable.

Platos Theory of Forms:

Examples of such glimpses into the ideal world are available in the fields of mathematics and geometry. For example, lets consider the geometrical proof of a theorem having to do with triangles.

Platos Theory of Forms:

Lets draw a triangle on this sheet of paper. It is not perfect. In fact, given the way the lines are smudged, crooked, and corners not quite coming together, it really isnt a triangle at all. And yet, by using this poor drawing of a triangle, something essential about triangles can nevertheless be proven.

Platos Theory of Forms:

Pythagoras had already led the way in his theory that the essence of the world could be found in number, in proportion, or ratio. What was most real, Pythagoras, claimed, was not the matter of things but their form. The study of mathematics and geometry, accordingly, was the study of the essential structure of reality, whatever the passing fait of particular being s and relationships. And so, we might say, the study of mathematics and geometry allows us to see through the everyday flux of the world and understand something essential, unchanging. So, too, we see through our badly drawn triangle to the idea or form of a triangle-as-such. What we prove is not so much a theorem about our badly driven drawn triangle as it is a theorem about all triangles, insofar as they exemplify the triangle-assuch. Of course, our badly drawn triangle conforms to the theorem, too, insofar as it is indeed a representation of a triangle. But that is just to say it is a triangle by virtue of the fact that it is a representation of something else, triangle-as-such, which is not in this world. And yet, we can evidently know triangle-as-such, that is, the ideal Form of a triangle. We come to understand it through our reasoning.

Platos Theory of Forms:

Likewise, all things in this world are representations, for better or worse, of ideal Forms.
Perhaps the most memorable image of the Forms is the vision that Plato provides for us in Book VII of the Republic.

Platos Theory of Forms:

The Myth of the Cave is an allegory concerning the relationship between the World of Being and the World of Becoming-the Forms and the things of this world-and a warning of the dangers facing the philosopher.

Platos Theory of Forms:

1. Begins with image of a number of prisoners shackled in a cave with faces to the wall.
What they see and consider to be reality are the shadows cast on the wall. What we all take to be reality consists ultimately of shadows; it is not that these are unreal. They are real shadows, but they are shadows of things that are even more real. So the distinction here is not, as in Parmenides, between reality and illusion. It is the distinction between more and real less, a superior and an inferior world.

2.

Platos Theory of Forms:

3. Lets suppose a prisoner breaks free and turns around, casting his eyes, for the first time, on the genuine objects that cast the shadows and the bright sun that does the casting. Would not he be dazzled? Would he not immediately see how imperfect are the shadows of the everyday reality compared with the reality he now observed?

Platos Cave:

Platos Theory of Forms:

4. So, too, the philosopher is dazzled when he sees the perfect Forms of virtue, justice, and courage, compared to the imperfect and usually confused ideas and actions of ordinary men and women. How much higher than his aspirations will be. 5. And if such a philosopher were then to turn back to the cave and try to tell his fellows how impoverished their world was, how inadequate their ideals, would they not turn on him and kill him? [an illusion to Socrates?].

Platos Theory of Forms:

6. Upshot is that most of humanity dwell in the darkness of the cave. They have centered their thoughts around blurred world of shadows. It is the function of education to lead people out of cave into world of light.
Just as the prisoner had to turn his whole body around in order that his eyes could see the light instead of the darkness, so also it is necessary for the entire soul to turn away from the deceptive world of change and appetite that causes a blindness of the soul. Education, then, is a matter of conversion, a complete turning around from the world of appearance to the world of reality.

7.

Platos Theory of Forms:

8. When those who have been liberated from the cave achieve the highest knowledge, they must not be allowed to remain in the higher world of contemplation, but must be made to come back down into the cave and take part in the life and labors of the prisoners.

Basic Argument of Platos Theory of Forms:

1. Whenever several things are F, there is a single form of F-ness in which they all participate. (That is to say, all these things are F in virtue of sharing in the characteristics of the form of F-ness.) 2. The form of F-ness is perfectly F. 3. The form of F-ness does not participate in itself. (Because whatever participates in something is inferior to that thing, and nothing is inferior to itself). 4. The form of F-ness has all and only those characteristics which all the things that participate in it (the particulars of the form) have in common, in virtue of being F.

Where do the Forms Exist?

1.
2. 3. 4.

Have an independent existence;

They have no spatial dimension; Human soul was acquainted with Forms before it was united with the body. In the process of creation, the Demiurge or God used the Forms in fashioning particular things, suggesting that the Forms had an existence prior to their embodiment in things. Forms seem to have originally existed in the Mind of God or in the supreme principle of rationality, the One. Whether the Forms truly exist in the mind of God is a question, but the Forms are the agency through which the principle of reason operates in the universe seems to be just what Plato means.

5. 6.

What is the relation of Forms to Things?

A Form can be related to a thing in three ways, which may be three ways of saying the same thing:
Form is the cause of the essence of a thing; A thing may be said to participate in a Form; A thing imitates or copy a Form. In each case, Plato implies that although aF rom is separate from the thing, that the Idea of Man is different from Socrates, still, every concrete or actual thing in some way owes its existence to a Form, in some degree participates in the perfect model of the class of which it is a member, and is in some measure an imitation or copy of the Form.

What is the relation of Forms to Things?

In contrast, Aristotle argues that form and matter are inseparable and that the only good or beautiful was found in actual things. But Plato, only allows participation and imitation as the explanation of the relation between things and their Forms. In fact, it was the Forms through which order was brought into chaos, indicating separate reality of form and matter.
Aristotles criticism is critical to note: there is no coherent way of accounting for the existence of the Forms apart from actual things. But Plato might respond by asking him how it is possible to form a judgment about the imperfection of something if the mind does not have access to anything more than the imperfect thing.

What is the Relation of Form to Each Other?

Plato contends, We can have discourse only through the weaving together of Forms.
- Our language reveals our practice of connecting Forms with Forms. There is the Form animal and the subclasses of Forms as Man and Horse. Forms, are, therefore, related to each other as genus and species. In this way Forms tend to interlock even while retaining their unity. Ever significant statement involves the use of some Forms and that knowledge consists in understanding the relations of the appopriate Forms to each other.

What is the Relation of Form to Each Other?

Example: The closer one comes to discussing a black dog, the less universal is ones knowledge. Conversly, the higher one goes, the more abstract the Form, as when one speaks of Dog in general, the broader ones knowledge.
Example: The animal vet proceeds in knowledge from this black dog to Schnauzer to Dog. As one proceeds upward one moves towards abstraction or independence from particularss of which Plato was thinking.

How Do We know the Forms:

Three different ways in which the mind discovers the Forms: 1. Recollection: Before it was united with the body, the soul was acquainted with the Forms. People now recollect what their souls knew in their prior state of existence. Visible things remind them of the essences previously known. Education is actually a process of reminiscence.

2.

People arrive that knowledge of Forms through the activity of dialectic: the power of abstracting the essence of things and discovering the relations of all divisions of knowledge to each other.

How Do We know the Forms:

Three different ways in which the mind discovers the Forms: 3. The power of desire, love (eros) which leads people step by step, as Plato described in the Symposium, from the beautiful object to the beautiful thought, and then to the very essence of beauty itself.

IV. What Do the Forms Do:

They are postulated to solve certain philosophical problems:
1. Epistemological: Responding to his conception of Heraclitus theory: Objects in flux cant be known.
2. Metaphysical: Two-world theory (Republic VII): The intelligible world is Parmenidean, the visible world is Heraclitean. Forms in the intelligible realm are postulated to be the objects of knowledge. The metaphysical theory is designed to fit epistemological requirements.

V. Arguments for the Forms:

We can summarize our discussion by stating that by forms Plato means eternal and unchanging entities, which are encountered not in perception but in thought. They constitute the public world that the Sophists had denied and that function at once as the objects of the sciences-physical, moral, and social-and the objective criteria against which our judgments in these inquiries are evaluated. As the objects of thought, the forms justify thought in looking for objects. Without the forms there would be nothing, in Platos view, to look for, and every individual would remain forever isolated in the cave of his own subjective states. But are there forms? Do forms such as Plato described actually exist? W.T. Jones, History of Philosophy, 143.

V. Arguments for the Forms:

In general, proofs for forms involved a challenge to find in the changing world of sense perception anything adequate to be an object of knowledge. Thus, we might argue for forms this way:

V. Arguments for the Forms:

Questioner: Do you allow there is a knowledge of triangles? Doubter: Yes. Questioner: Well, what is the triangle about which you admit there is knowledge? Not this or that particular drawn triangle, for none of these sense objects has exactly the qualities in question. They are not really triangles. Hence, if you admit that there really is such an object as a triangle and that we knowledge of it, you have to admit that there are non-empirical, non-sensible things. These objects are the forms.
We see this same approach in the Phaedo in connection with the notion of equality.

V. Arguments for the Forms:

In the Phaedo discussion Socrates and Simmias move from a proof of the existence of forms to a proof of the transmigration of the soul, by arguing that our knowledge of forms can be accounted for only on the assumption that we existed before we were born into this world.

Consider W.T. Jones comments on this argument:

V. Arguments for the Forms:

This argument is certainly not without force. It would be hard to deny that we know what equality is-how otherwise could we know that any two sticks are unequal? To observe that, we must apply the criterion of equality and find them wanting. And since it is agreed that sticks are never absolutely equal, our knowledge of this criterion cannot have been derived from sensory experience. Thus the empirical fact, which no one would deny, that we judge the sticks to be unequal proves both that we have a knowledge of equality and that this equality cannot be physical (pg. 145).

V. Arguments for the Forms:

Argument by generalized this way:
1. Either we know something (i.e., at least one thing) or we know nothing. Suppose you opt for the second alternative. Either you claim to know that the second alternative is true or you do not make this claim. a If you dont claim to know that the second alternative is true, we throw out your reply as worthless. b. If you do claim to know that the second alternative is true, you have contradicted yourself. For by your own account there is not at least one thing you claim to know, namely, that you know nothing.

2.

V. Arguments for the Forms:

3. Hence, the first alternative is true: there is at least one thing that is known. 4. Therefore, knowledge is possible. 5. It follows that forms exist, for only forms have the characteristics-immutability, eternity-requisite for knowledge. We see this line of argument in the Timaeus in which Plato merely points out that if there is knowledge (as distinct from opinion) there must be forms (as distinct from sense objects) (Ibid., 145).

V.

Arguments for Existence of Forms:

C. Imperfection Argument: Forms are the real entities to which the objects of our sensory experience (approximately) correspond. We make judgments about such properties as equal, circular, square, etc. even though we have never actually experienced any of them in perception. Forms are the entities that perfectly embody these characteristics we have in mind even though we have never experienced them perceptually.

V.

Arguments for Existence of Forms:

D. Argument From Knowledge (from the sciences): What is our knowledge about? When we know something, what is our knowledge of? Plato supposes that there is a class of stable, permanent, and unchanging objects that warrant our knowledge claims.

V.

Arguments for Existence of Forms:

E. One Over Many argument: A famous passage in the Republic (596a) suggests a semantic role for the Forms (there is one Form for each set of many things to which we give the same name). That is, when you use the word just and I use the word just, what makes it one and the same things that were talking about? Platos answer is: the Form of Justice, the one over the many.

Strengths:
1. To say a thing is better or worse implies some standard, which obviously is not there as such in the thing being evaluated.
2. Doctrine of the Forms makes possible scientific knowledge, for the scientist has to let go of actual visible particulars and deal with essences or universals, that is, with laws. The scientists formulates laws, and these laws tell us something about all things, not only the immediate and particular things. 3. Though Platos metaphysics rests upon the view that ultimately reality is nonmaterial, it goes a long way toward explaining the more simple fact of how it is possible for us to have ordinary conversation. For any discourse between people, illustrates our independence from particular things.

Evidences: Platos evidence is largely Intuitive:

1. The argument from human perception:
We call both the sky and blue jeans by the same color: Blue. However, clearly a pair of jeans and the sky are not the same color; moreover, the wavelengths of light reflected by the sky at every location and all the millions of blue jeans in every state of fading constantly change, and yet we somehow have an idea of the basic form Blueness as it applies to them.

Evidences: Platos evidence is largely Intuitive:

But if the very nature of knowledge changes, at the time when the change occurs there will be no knowledge, and, according to this view, there will be no one to know and nothing to be known: but if that which knows and that which is known exist ever, and the beautiful and the good and every other thing also exist, then I do not think that they can resemble a process of flux, as we were just now supposing.

Evidences: Platos evidence is largely Intuitive:

The argument from perfection:
No one has ever seen a perfect triangle, nor a perfectly straight line, yet everyone knows what a triangle and a straight line are. ... when a man has discovered the instrument which is naturally adapted to each work, he must express this natural form, and not others which he fancies, in the material .... Perceived circles or lines are not exactly circular or straight, but if the perfect ones were not real, how could they direct the manufacturer?

Problems:
1. Generality Problem:
If this is supposed to be a theory applying to all possible substitutions of F, then we would have to accept the existence of the Forms of perfect mud, perfect Stink, etc. Plato offered this criticism himself in the Parmenides. But Platonism can survive with a very limited number of forms. It is not necessary to assume a separate form for each physical object, nor for man-made objects, like beds or chairsthough Plato certainly seems on occasion to have done so.

Problems:
2. The Third Man Several individuals are men. Therefore, there is a form of Man in which they all participate. The form of Man is a man (indeed, the Perfect Man). So all individual men plus the form of Man taken together are all men. So there is a single form in which they all participate. This new form cannot be the form of Man, for then it would have to participate in itself which is impossible, so this has to be a Third Man (besides the singular men and their form). But we can repeat the same reasoning for this Third Man as well, so there would have to be a Fourth, a Fifth, Sixth, etc. to infinity. So for a set of individuals there would have to be an infinity of Forms. But the Theory also states that there is only a single Form for any set of individuals. So the theory is inconsistent, whence it cannot be true.

Problems:
3. Inconsistency of Characteristics The perfect Form of F-ness has to have all and only those characteristics, which are common to all its particulars. But all these particulars are necessarily either G or not G. (Say, any triangle must be either isosceles or scalene.) So the Form also has to be G or not G. (Say the Form of triangle must be either isosceles or scalene.) But since not all particulars are G, the Form cannot be G. (Since not all triangles are isosceles, the Form of triangle cannot be isosceles.) And since not all particulars are not G, the Form cannot be not G either. (Since not all triangles are scalene, the Form of triangle cannot be scalene either.) So the Form has to be either G or not G and yet it cannot be G and it cannot be not G. (The Form of triangle has to be either isosceles or scalene, but it cannot isosceles and it cannot be scalene either.) But this is impossible, so the theory cannot be true as stated.

Problems:
4. Forms and sense objects are too separate; ideal and actual are separated by an unbridgeable criticism. Transcendence creates a grave problem: If the forms are not apart, they are not (Plato thought) true objects, and if there are no form-objects, there is nothing to have knowledge of. On the other hand, if they are apart, they are unknowable.
Plato bridges the chasm between intelligible world and sensible world by means of appealing to the soul. The soul is immortal and supremely valuable.

Problems:
W.T. Jones comments that it is a challenge to account for the possibility of knowledge in any way other than on the assumption of fomrs. But no proof of this type ever establishes conclusively the proposition it is intended to maint; it always rests on the inability of the critic to find an alternative explanation. This is weak, since (1) even if the critic himself cant find an alternative, there may be one, and (2) he may find it (Ibid., 146). Many people account for the certainty of mathematics differently. Mathematics is certain, they say, not because it is about nonphysical, as distinct from a physical, object but because it is not about objects at all. Mathematical certainty results from the fact that propositions of mathematics are all tautologies (redundant language).

Soul Mediates Transcendence:

1. The soul (psyche) is like the forms; it is eternal and immortal; it has a kind of unchanging identity. 2. One part of the psyche must be like the sense world. The emotions and passions have their seat in the lower parts of the psyche whereas the mind has the highest part of the pyshe (higher and more real world). For these reasons, soul is well suited to serve as a link between sensible and intelligible worlds, to redeem from utter unreality and to mediate the splendid but awful purity and isolation of the latter.

In the process of discovering true knowledge the mind moves through 4 stages of development. At each stage, there is a parallel between the kind of object presented to the mind & the kind of thought this object makes possible. The vertical line from x to y is a continuous, suggesting that there is some degree of knowledge at every point. But as the line passes through the lowest forms of reality to the highest, there is a parallel progress from the lowest degressof truth to the highest. The line is divided into two unequal parts.
y

Greater reality & truth found in intelligible world. [The Good] Intelligible World

OBJECTS The Good [Forms]

MODES OF THOUGHT Knowledge

Mathematical Objects

Knowledge Thinking

[The Sun] Visible World Lower degree of reality & truth in visible world. Things Images Belief Imagining Opinion

x Dark shadowy world at X and moving up to bright light at Y; going from x to y represents a continuous process of minds enlightenment.

What did Plato Oppose?

In Platos writings we observe that he opposed seven prevalent beliefs:
Hedonism Empiricism Relativism Materialism Mechanism Atheism Naturalism

Contrasts between Plato & Aristotle:

1. More interested in mathematics 2. Plato separated the world of thought from the world of flux and things, ascribing true reality to the Ideas and Forms, which he believed, and an existence separate from the things in nature. For Plato, the primary stuff of space was molded by the eternally existing Forms into individual shapes. 1. More interested in empirical data. 2. Fixed upon concrete processes of nature whereby he considered abstract notions to have their real habitat in this living nature. Everything that exists is some concrete individual thing, and every thing is a unity of matter & form. Substance is a composite of form & matter. Aristotle rejected Platos explanation of the universal Forms, rejecting specifically the notion that the Forms existed separately from individual things. 3. Aristotle oriented his thought to dynamic realm of becoming.

Points of Differences:
Plato: 1. There is a priori knowledge (Meno) 2. Intellectual concepts of perfect objects needed for a priori knowledge cannot be gained from experience (main argument from Phaedo). 3. A priori knowledge = prenatal knowledge (theory of recollection in Phaedo) 4. The objects of our intellectual concepts (i.e. the things we directly conceive by means of our intellectual concepts) are the perfect Forms.

Points of Differences:
Aristotle (384-322 BC, Platos student: amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas I like Plato but I like the truth even more) 1. Intellectual concepts needed for a priori knowledge can be gained from experience, by abstraction (On the Soul). 2. A priori knowledge is not prenatal, but can be gained by induction based on abstraction (Posterior Analytics). 3. The objects of our intellectual concepts are the natures (essences, quiddities) of material things (On the Soul); these objects cannot be the perfect Forms of Plato, for such perfect Forms cannot exist

Points of Differences:
3. Is Aristotle a materialist (as a harmony theorist would be) or is he an idealist (as is Plato) concerning the nature of the soul? (That is to say: does he believe that the soul is just the organic structure of the body, or does he believe that it is an immaterial, spiritual entity inhabiting the body?)

Reply: he is a materialist concerning non-human souls, but he also contends that the human soul, which has an immaterial activity, namely, thinking, is not dependent for this specific activity, and so neither for its being, on its union with the body; therefore, the human soul (at least its intellective part), is immortal.