Substance

1. Substance

2. Particulars Particulars: can’t have multiple instances • Dan Bonevac, Dennis Rodman • Empire State Building, Perry-Castañeda Library • Austin, Texas • November 1, 2002 • The assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand

3. Universals • Universals: can have multiple instances • Properties: red, triangular, large • Relations: between, on, love, friendship • Kinds: tiger, building, pencil, shortstop • Books: the Bible; Worldly Wisdom • Musical works: Luckenbach, Texas; Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor

4. Are Universals Real? • Realism: yes, and mind-independent • Conceptualism: yes, but mind-dependent • Nominalism: no— everything is particular • Mind-dependent Mind-independent • Real Conceptualism Realism • Unreal Nominalism

5. Plato’s Divided Line • “You have to imagine, then, that there are two ruling powers, and that one of them is set over the intellectual world, the other over the visible. . . . Now take a line which has been cut into two unequal parts, and divide each of them again in the same proportion, and suppose the two main divisions to answer, one to the visible and the other to the intelligible, and then compare the subdivisions in respect of their clearness and want of clearness, and you will find that the first section in the sphere of the visible consists of images. And by images I mean, in the first place, shadows, and in the second place, reflections in water and in solid, smooth and polished bodies and the like. . . .”

6. Plato’s Divided Line • “Imagine, now, the other section, of which this is only the resemblance, to include the animals which we see, and everything that grows or is made.”

7. The Divided Line10 • Visible World Intellectual World • Shadows, Objects Mathematical Abstract • reflections of perception forms forms • Perceptions of Opinion Understanding Reason • shadows, etc. • Visible world is like a reflection of the intellectual world | | |

8. The Cave Allegory • “And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: -- Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.”

9. The Cave Allegory • “And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent. • You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners. • Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave? • True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads? • And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows? • Yes, he said.”

10. The Cave Allegory • “And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them? • Very true. • And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow? • No question, he replied. • To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.”

11. The Cave Allegory • Philosophy tries to turn people away from shadows. It tries to make people see the true nature of the world-- to get beyond appearances to realities • The prisoner released from the cave will be able to see reflections, then objects, then the moon and stars, and finally, the sun • The progression: the divided line— from reflections to objects to mathematical forms that reflect the most abstract forms; finally to abstract forms themselves

12. Meaning of the Allegory15 • “This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed- whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But, whether true or false, 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 private life must have his eye fixed.”

13. Why think forms exist at all? • Necessary for knowledge • Without forms, we could • Perceive • Generalize • But we couldn’t • Understand why things happen • Know any universal or necessary generalizations, as in science, mathematics, or philosophy • There must be something all Fs have in common, by virtue of which they are Fs

14. Plato’s Beard • How can we, • Limited to the realm of the senses, • Have access to a realm beyond the senses? • Dilemma: • Reject possibility of knowing abstract truths, or • Postulate some special faculty of knowledge

15. Plato’s Beard • Our theory of meaning (semantics) makes us postulate objects (metaphysics) that we can’t know anything about (epistemology). • How do we bring these together?

16. Shaving Plato’s Beard20 • Semantics: The sentences don’t really commit us to the troublesome objects • Metaphysics: The objects are mind-dependent • Epistemology: We have a faculty of knowing the objects

17. The Semantic Strategy • Nominalism: There are no universals • Abstract terms stand for nothing • Socrates has courage —> Socrates is courageous • Courage is a virtue —> Courageous people are virtuous (ceteris paribus) • We have something in common —> ? • Green is closer to blue than to red —> ?

18. The Metaphysical Strategy • Conceptualism: Universals are mind-dependent • Plato’s Forms —> concepts in the mind • There are universals, but we construct them

19. The Epistemological Strategy • We have the ability to know universals • Platonism (Plato, Philo, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes): We know certain universals a priori • Aristotle: We know universals by abstracting them from particulars

20. Plato’s Philosophy of Mind This is a triangle Form Object

21. Platonism’s problem30 • We don’t perceive the forms • How do we know anything about them? • Aristotle’s answer: abstraction • Plato’s answers: • Recollection • The Form of the Good

22. Plato’s Philosophy of Mind Participation This is a triangle Form ? Perception Object

23. Plato’s Philosophy of Mind The Good Participation This is a triangle Form Recollection Perception Object

24. Philo of Alexandria • Realm of Forms: the Intelligible World • Forms are ideas in the mind of God • They are God’s blueprint for creation • God created Intelligible World, then matter, then world

25. The Intelligible World • “For God, being God, assumed that a beautiful copy would never be produced apart from a beautiful pattern, and that no object of perception would be faultless which was not made in the likeness of an original discerned only by the intellect. So when He willed to create this visible world He first fully formed the intelligible world, in order that He might have the use of a pattern wholly God-like and incorporeal in producing the material world, as a later creation, the very image of an earlier, to embrace in itself objects of perception of as many kinds as the other contained objects of intelligence.”

26. The Word of God35 • The Word of God contains the intelligible world • Psalm 33: “By the Word of God were the heavens made.” • “. . . the world discerned only by the intellect is nothing else than the Word of God when He was already engaged in the act of creation.” • The Word is the pattern of creation, the “idea of ideas,” the “Man of God,” the “Second God”

27. How do we know the Forms? • Forms are ideas in the mind of God • We are created in God’s image (Gen 1:27) • Our minds are images of the mind of God • “Our great Moses likened the fashion of the reasonable soul to no created thing, but averred it to be a genuine coinage of that dread Spirit, the Divine and Invisible One, signed and impressed by the seal of God, the stamp of which is the Eternal Word. . . .”

28. Knowledge of the World • Our minds and the world are both stamped with the Word of God

29. God to Moses • “The powers which thou seekest to know . . . . present to your sight a sort of impress and copy of their active working. You men have for your use seals which when brought into contact with wax or similar material stamp on them any number of impressions while they themselves are not docked in any part thereby but remain as they were. Such you must conceive My powers to be, supplying quality and shape to things which lack either and yet changing or lessening nothing of their eternal nature.”

30. God to Moses40 • “Some among you call them not inaptly 'forms' or 'ideas', since they bring form into everything that is, giving order to the disordered, limit to the unlimited, bounds to the unbounded, shape to the shapeless, and in general changing the worse to something better. Do not, then, hope to be ever able to apprehend Me or any of My powers on Our essence. But I readily and with right goodwill will admit you to a share of what is attainable. That means that I bid you come and contemplate the universe and its contents, a spectacle apprehended not by the eye of the body but by the unsleeping eyes of the mind.”

31. Two Dilemmas • Universals: we must either • Reject the possibility of knowledge we seem to have, or • Postulate a faculty of knowledge to relate us to universals • Universality and Necessity: we must • Reject our knowledge of universal and necessary truths, or • Postulate a priori knowledge

32. Origen (185-253) • I John 1:5: “God is light.” • Forms as ideas in the mind of God (Philo) • Good —> God • God illumines the intelligible world for us • Augustine (354-430): God illumines our minds with “inner light of truth”

33. God is light • “. . . God is light; as John writes in his Epistle, "God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all." Truly He is that light which illuminates the whole understanding of those who are capable of receiving truth, as is said in the Psalms 36, "In Thy light we shall see light." For what other light of God can be named, "in which any one sees light," save an influence of God, by which a man, being enlightened, either thoroughly sees the truth of all things, or comes to know God Himself, who is called the truth?”

34. Jesus as the Word of God • “Such is the meaning of the expression, "In Thy light we shall see light;" i.e., in Thy word and wisdom which is Thy Son, in Himself we shall see Thee the Father. Because He is called light, shall He be supposed to have any resemblance to the light of the sun? Or how should there be the slightest ground for imagining, that from that corporeal light any one could derive the cause of knowledge, and come to the understanding of the truth?”

35. Origen’s and Augustine’s Philosophy of Mind Participation God This is a triangle Form Illumination Perception Object