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On the most peculiar Platonic dialogue, from ca. 350 BCE.
Are properties real things in the world, or just in the mind? Plato famously thought that for a property like “large,” there’s a Form that causes all the large things to be large, and which enables us to recognize those things as large. These Forms are not material things, and hence aren’t the objects of ordinary sensation. In other dialogues like “The Republic,” we get a picture of Forms as being in a true, heavenly realm, known explicitly only to the enlightened and perhaps to all of us before we were born.
In this dialogue, Plato provides critiques of his own theory, as an aged Parmenides confronts a youthful Socrates. What exactly is the relationship between Forms and the particulars that have the properties? If the Form is broken up so that a bit of Large is in every large thing, then wouldn’t those pieces of Large be (relatively) small? If on the other hand every large thing has the whole of the Form of Large in it, then how can the Form be in multiple places at once? Even if the Form is sort of draped over all the things, it would only be one part of the Form that touches any given thing.
Then there’s the famous “third man” argument: We’re supposed to recognize that large things are large because they all resemble the Form of Large. But then how do we recognize that the particular large thing and the Form Large are both Large? There must be a second Form that we consult to make this comparison, and a third Form that we use to compare the second Form with the first one, ad infinitum.
The most worrying objection, according to the character Parmenides, is that if Forms are so perfect and otherworldly, how could we with our human minds know anything about them? How could they even be in causal connection with material things?
These are all objections that Plato has Parmenides put forward, and Socrates, being young and inexperienced, admits he has no good defense. So is Plato abandoning his own theory? Or maybe just presenting some challenges that one has to overcome to refine it?
In the second half of the dialogue (which we don’t discuss much here, though Mark and Seth get into it in a follow-up episode to be posted for Citizens this week), Parmenides gives a long analysis of what results if we assume either that The One does exist or if it doesn’t. Either way, absurdities result. So perhaps Plato is trying to argue that while the theory of Forms has problems, Parmenides’s monist solution (described in our last episode) is even worse. Or maybe saying that you have to change the theory of Forms in some way.
This is the electronic version (translated by Jowett) that we had on hand as we spoke. Dylan was reading from the Whitaker translation
To get a better grasp on the voluminous scholarship that’s gone into this dialogue, check out Wikipedia and the Stanford Encyclopedia entry. This is the lecture (by Michael Sugrue) we refer to a couple of times that connects the Forms to his politics. Here’s a short blog post on “Self-predication in Plato’s theory of forms.”
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Image by Charles Valsechi.
“When you talk about truth and falsity you’re talking about epistemology.” “No, I’m talking about metaphysics.”
Maybe truth applies to both. Knowledge can only be knowledge of what is true. And metaphysical entities appear to be what truth is usually taken to be about.
I am interested to know: what is truth. I say that it is a certain kind of relation; namely, a relation of correspondence between what is and what is said of what is wherein what is said corresponds to what is.
What do you say truth is? Do you agree with me or disagree?
Plato: What is bothering you Socrates?
Socrates: I was just now trying to figure out what to say truth is, only to find the task more challenging than I had anticipated.
Plato: You do not know what truth is?
Socrates: No, I know what truth is, it’s only that I’m having difficulty saying what it is.
Plato: I can help you there Socrates, for truth is what is.
Socrates: Hmmm, I see.
Plato: What, you are not convinced?
Socrates: It’s just that you surely do not mean that the truth just is what is.
Plato: That is what I mean.
Socrates: Do you then mean that when it is raining the truth is “raining,” is the truth just “rain?”
Plato: No, that is not what I mean. I suppose I meant the statement “it is raining,” That is the truth.
Socrates: And yet the same problem as before arises, for the statement “it is raining” cannot be the truth.
Plato: And why not?
Socrates: Because the statement “it is raining” is not the truth when it is not raining, and so the statement itself cannot be the truth itself.
Plato: Let me try to be more precise. The truth is a relation obtaining between what is and a statement.
Socrates: Interesting, tell me more.
Plato: And we say that this relation is so when the statement matches what is. It’s the correspondence theory of truth.
Socrates: Let’s come back to that. For now, tell me, do you say that truth changes?
Plato: I cannot say.
Socrates: Well tell me this— if a thing changes does it not move from what it is to what it is not?
Plato: That is so.
Socrates: And what the truth is not is falsity.
Plato: Yes.
Socrates: So if the truth were to change it would have to become falsity. And in that case, it would no longer be truth.
Plato: You have the right of it.
Socrates: Truth cannot be falsity, for then it would be truth and falsity and that is impossible, and so truth cannot change.
Plato: Right.
Socrates: And have you considered the coherence theory of truth?
Plato: I have and I do not think it is accurate.
Socrates: Why is that?
Plato: Because it may be that a false belief coheres with a wide web of true beliefs, and yet the false belief will be taken as true if it so coheres. Of course this cannot be for what is true cannot be what is false nor what is false true.
Socrates: That sounds right to my ear Plato. And what of the deflationary theory of truth?
Plato: I’m not sure what that is.
Socrates: I’m not sure that I know what it is either. Let us say though, that it is a theory of truth that says truth is redundant because an assertion “it is raining” already means that it is true that it is raining, so that it would be redundant to say “it is true that it is raining.” Or it is a theory that says that all there is, is what is and an assertion, and that the truth is not only superfluous, it altogether does not exist.
Plato: Let us take the first of these deflationary theories and examine it.
Socrates: Very well. The truth is taken to be redundant in that case. And if it is redundant then it is because truth is already the assertion or the “what is,” or because truth is contained in the assertion or in “what is.”
Plato: A thorough assessment.
Socrates: Now we have already said truth is not what is and nor is it a statement or assertion. So the question remains as to whether it is contained in either of these.
Plato: By process of elimination, yes.
Socrates: Truth cannot be contained in the assertion for the same reason that it cannot be the assertion. That is, if truth were contained therein, as though a part, then the assertion could not be false, at least, not entirely false. However, assertions can be entirely false. Therefore, it must be mistaken that truth is part of an assertion.
Plato: It must.
Socrates: And if truth is contained in what is, what then would follow. Would it not be that truth persists when the object is, and ceases to be when the object perishes?
Plato: That sounds right.
Socrates: Yet, truth does not perish when the object perishes. In regards to that very object, truth is still existing and truths can be said of that thing. For instance, when a tree perishes and is no more what it was, we may still say of the tree, “it was a very tall tree” and that statement can be true even when the tree is no more what it was.
Plato: Ok, yes.
Socrates: Then we may move on to the second account, the one that says the truth does not exist and that there are only the two terms: what is, and the assertion.
Plato: We shall examine this too then, Socrates.
Socrates: Do we say that these two terms are both the same in their existence? I mean to ask, do we say that the assertion exists just as much as what is exists?
Plato: Perhaps the assertion by itself exists just as “what is” exists, insofar as it is so asserted. Although, I must hold the position that that which is asserted does not exist on the same terms as what-is. Rather, that which is asserted depends on what-is.
Socrates: And for what does it depend on what-is? It cannot be that it depends on what-is for its being, for what the assertion asserts does not become; that is, if I assert “it is raining” the fact that it is raining does not turn the assertion itself, nor what the assertion asserts, into rain. Can that which is asserted depend on what-is for anything other than truth?
Plato: I see no other alternative.
Socrates: Then truth must not not exist. In addition to an assertion and what-is there must be a third term, truth.
Plato: It would seem so.
Socrates: Let us return now to your original proposition of what truth is. You said that it was a relation and that specifically a relation of correspondence between what-is and a statement. Do you say that truth may be anything other than that?
Plato: I do not.
Socrates: I admit that I quite like this definition. I’m not sure that it completely defines truth though. I should like to state what truth itself is, rather than what the truth is in a particular instance. Don’t you think, Plato, that while truth depends on what-is, it depends also on the statement itself?
Plato: How so Socrates?
Socrates: Consider that what-is can be involved in a relation of truth in one instance and the same what-is can be involved in a relation of untruth in another instance when another statement is used. So the rain is in a relation of truth with the statement “rain is clear” and yet it is in a relation of untruth with the statement “rain is white.” Then a relation of truth does not depend only on what-is; it must also depend on the other factor in the relation, namely, the statement. So when a statement is one way a relation of truth will obtain and when a statement is the opposite way, a relation of untruth will obtain.
Plato: Sounds right to my ears.
Socrates: And where a relation of untruth obtains, a relation of truth will not obtain.
Plato: That’s correct.
Socrates: Yet, even if a relation of truth does not obtain and only a relation of untruth obtains, there is still a truth to the matter is there not?
Plato: There is.
Socrates: And even when only a relation of untruth obtains and a relation of truth does not, and the statement for the relation of truth has been neither spoken nor thought, there is still a truth to the matter?
Plato: That is so.
Socrates: Then there you have it; there is still truth even when there is not a relation of truth present. So, truth must exist independently of a relation of truth and must be different from it.