In this paper, I argue that, contrary to what is claimed by Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fisher, the account of the badness of death that they offered fails to establish that death can be bad for somebody, while prenatal non existence cannot be so without appealing to the controversial metaphysical assumption of the impossibility of prenatal existence, and therefore it fails to offer an adequate solution to the Lucretian symmetry argument. Furthermore, I argue that, assuming that we could have come to be before our birth, prenatal nonexistence can indeed be bad for us.

I then focus on the weaker thesis that death is necessarily worse than prenatal non existence. I argue that, assuming that it is possible for us to be born before our birth, this claim as well can be proven to be false through a counterexample, even in the circumstances in which both death and prenatal nonexistence are bad for us.

The present project brings together two areas of Platonic scholarship. One area is Plato’s Parmenides, the dialogue that appears to cripple the theory of Forms. Although the theory meets with several seemingly devastating criticisms, Parmenides himself tells the young Socrates that it is in fact possible to save the Forms. Scholars are divided over just how, if at all, this rescue happens.

The other area concerns “self-predication,” a particular sort of predication displayed in statements of the form “the F is F,” where the subject term names some Form. Scholars are divided here too, and in two ways. First, there is disagreement about just how we should understand the very notion of self-predication. What does a statement of the form “the F is F” even mean? Second, there is debate over whether Plato himself endorses (or should endorse) some particular understanding of self-predication.

My focus here is an interpretation of self-predication on which statements of the form “the F is F” say that the Form is characterized by the very quality it constitutes, or “self-instantiates” as I will often put it. The majority position in the literature is that Plato no longer subscribes to (or should no longer subscribe to) this particular understanding of self-predication after the Parmenides. The reason is simple: self-predication understood in this way is largely responsible for the theory of Forms’ being sunk in the Parmenides. Saving the theory of the Forms requires, it is often claimed, jettisoning from the theory this special sort of predication.

I find myself part of a small group of scholars that reject the majority positon. My own reading is that self-instantiation, far from sinking the theory of Forms in the Parmenides, is essential for saving the theory from Parmenides’s criticisms; the theory survives into the late dialogues largely because of this special sort of predication. In addition, I maintain that Plato himself was aware of how to disarm the objections presented in the dialogue, that self-instantiation plays this important role, and that the arguments are marshalled in part to compel us, his readers, to appreciate this for ourselves.

The chapters that follow are principally concerned with the former part of my position, establishing the importance of self-instantiation for the theory of Forms post-Parmenides. I shall at times say some things about the latter, but it does not receive a full defense here. Still, I believe that it is nonetheless important to state this part of my view too.

Chapters I and II focus on a pair of regress arguments from the Parmenides. It is widely thought that these arguments are successful precisely because of self-instantiation, and that the only way to disarm them is by dispensing with this tenet of the theory of Forms. I argue that this is wrong for both arguments, and offer alternative interpretations of them. Collectively, Chapters I and II show us that we must take seriously questions concerning how some Forms are characterized by the very qualities they constitute, and why this special sort of predication is part of the theory of Forms.

Chapter III engages with the Parmenides’s bewildering dialectical display, which is said to be the method of training that will allow a young Socrates to save the theory of Forms. I consider and reject a prominent interpretation of the exercise, and then develop my own that sheds light on the importance of self-instantiation, reinforces earlier conclusions, and paves the way for consideration of Plato’s Sophist. It is in this dialogue, I maintain, that we find answers to the how and why questions.

Chapter IV answers these questions. I argue that some Form is an instance of itself just in case that Form participates in itself. In addition, I show that self-participation, and so self-instantiation, is limited to certain Forms. These conclusions naturally invite consideration of the why question. Here my position is that some Form participates in itself just in case that Form plays a “structuring role” in the intelligible and sensible realms. Chapter V considers a question raised by this answer, namely, Does the Form of Change play a structuring role in the intelligible realm? If so, then the Forms, after the Parmenides, lose their immutability. This, interestingly, is another majority position in the literature. I side with the minority once more, arguing that the Form of Change does not play a structuring role in the intelligible realm. The result is that whatever changes the theory of Forms undergoes following its critique in the Parmenides, self-instantiation remains part of the theory and the Forms are still stable, unchanging entities.

ABSTRACT

From the Phaedo to the Timaeus: The Continuity of Plato's Metaphysics of Causation

by

Michael H. Hannen

I argue for the basic continuity of Plato's account of causation, from the Forms-as-aitiai hypothesis of his middle period to the teleology of his late period. Against the prevailing view, according to which the Timaean teleology amounts to a retraction of the Phaedo's account of aitiai, I contend that in the Timaeus the metaphysical status of physical properties and processes remains essentially the same as it had been in Plato's middle period, when he first takes up the question of the relations among what Aristotle would go on to call "formal", "material", "efficient", and "final" causes. Against authors such as Gill, Annas, Fine, Mueller, Sedley, and Johansen, I argue that Plato has not elevated the explanatory status of efficient causes in the Timaeus, though he does, for the first time, take up the subject of natural philosophy and its epistemological status in a thorough way, which does mark a contrast with his middle period.

The discontinuity thesis, though it has always been influential in Plato scholarship, often rests, I find, on a certain interpretation of the Phaedo's Forms-as-aitiai hypothesis, an interpretation that is open to some significant objections. Against the interpretation of the Forms-as-aitiai hypothesis according to which Plato intends, in the Phaedo, to put forward Forms as efficient causes, Gregory Vlastos argued for a "deflationary" interpretation which,

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arguably, better coheres with Plato's broad metaphysical premises. In Chapter Three I defend and extend Vlastos's argument, replying on Vlastos's behalf to later work on the topic. My aim is, as well, to place the debate over the Forms-as-aitiai hypothesis in the broader context of the long-standing debate over the place of natural philosophy in Plato's thought. To this end, in Chapter Two I explore some respects in which I believe it can be shown that the discussion of anamnesis at Phaedo 59a-95e sets the stage for the Forms-as-aitiai hypothesis. That discussion provides an account of how we can be justified in the belief that concomitance of properties in the natural world points the mind to an underlying, purposive order. Evidence acquired through the senses alone could not justify such an inference; the Phaedo's discussion of anamnesis emphasizes, however, concomitance of properties among certain kinds of geometrical objects, objects of pure thought. In the apprehension of these regularities, perception does not play a justificatory role, it only prompts the recollection. The Phaedo's discussion of the Forms-as-aitiai hypothesis then mixes a priori and a posteriori examples, in order to bring out the justification for teleological inferences to a rational order underlying the flux of phenomena. We know of regular connections among properties from a priori cases. In Chapter Four I explain how the understanding of the Forms-as-aitiai hypothesis fits into the teleological natural philosophy of the Timaeus, contrasting my own interpretation with those put forward recently by Sedley and Johansen, inter alia. In Chapter Five I take up the reconstructionist interpretation of Timaeus 49c7-50b5, as developed by Cherniss, Lee, and Silverman, and I argue that this reading, and it's import for the metaphysical status of particulars, helps us to understand the relation between metaphysics of causation and natural philosophy in Plato's late period.

I lay out the charge of the “Socratic fallacy” as originally presented in Peter Geach’s 1966 paper, and discuss more recent presentations of the challenge in the form of the "Priority of Definition" principle. I advance the thesis that Plato’s Socrates is primarily committed to a methodological principle (not an epistemological one), the Principle of Controversy. Further, I identify two attendant assumptions (M and E) that are background commitments for Plato’s Socrates. Together these explain some of the inconsistencies or tensions some commentators have suggested in early platonic epistemology, and encapsulate the method and interests of the Socrates we see in the definitional dialogues.