Plato's Physics and Ethics

(Originally written September 10, 2006 in Book 10)

The Classical Mind
WT Jones

Chapter 5  - Plato: The Special Sciences

Philosophy began as a study of the natural world. But the collapse of Greek culture and morality led Plato to focus on that and leave the subject of the physics nearly untouched. Only one dialogue focused on it: Timaeus 

The thesis of Timaeus is that if physics is about the physical world it is not knowledge. If it is about knowledge then it is not about the physical world.

The physical world is always changing, knowledge requires stability. Thus, knowledge of the physical world is only does through knowledge of forms.

Plato held that the best we can do is give an account of the physical world that is at best a 'likely story'.

Physics gives accounts of the conditions of the world, but it does not give us any account of the causes of the physical world. Plato denounces physics because of this.

Plato makes a distinction between the teleological explanation (the reason why) and a mechanistic description (the how).

This is foreign to us because we do not think about why the planets revolve around the sun (or whatever). We don't think this way because we do not think of mind as being the cause of events in the physical world.

We think of the universe in a mechanistic way, a way indifferent to purpose. We think of a non-teleological universe.

Plato disagreed and thought of the universe in teleological terms. He held physics lower to theology.

Linehan - Modern man seems to scoff at any form of teleology. They disregard it as superstition. I am very teleological in thinking. Am I simple-minded? Or is it I simply have a different stance than modern physicists? Science has proven it self unreliable. Religion has proven itself unreliable. Science and religion however have the same ever-reliable subject: God and His work. This is a forgotten fact.

Nature of the Physical World

When we perceive colors like 'brown' we believe that the color brown is out there somewhere. Plato held that this is false because colors are not 'self-existent'.

He held that the color was a motion passing between my eye and the object.

He held that Protagoras was correct in his assumption that man is the measure of all things when it pertains to sense perception. "My shoes are white" is wrong. "My shoes appear white to me now" is correct.

Plato denied the Atomist notion of matter because their concept of matter is unintelligible.

Unlike the Milesians, Plato did not set out to find the ultimate stuff; he set out to analyze it/them.

We state that a square is two triangles put together.

The generation of a square is two triangles, but not in the sense that first there were triangles and then they combined into a square. We mean by stating that "the generation of a square is two triangles" is that we can analyze a square by stating it is a combination of two triangles.

So how does Plato believe things appear to us? In space.

Space is the "receptacle of becoming". It provides a situation for all things to come into being.

Plato admits that this is obscure, but maintains that it must be so. (nothing of the high truths is easily understood for Plato.)

A thing can be known by knowing its form. We can know the form "horse". Then seeing horse "a" we can realize a horse is flesh and blood. We can gain better knowledge then by analyzing the forms "horse", "flesh" and "blood". We can further reduce it and further and further until we reach a complete understanding.

This series of reductions can be done to processes as well, but when it comes to the medium or stage in which physical objects exist Plato suffers a problem. Space remains a problem point irreducible, esoteric, mysterious and obscure.

Space was this ultimate, irreducible medium. Space was a brute fact for Plato. You can say "it is" and "must be" but nothing more.

"This was Plato's way of admitting into his beautiful, rational universe that space-time realm of facts and events that empiricists, pragmatists and positivists take to be the whole of reality" (Jones, 154).

Mystics deny this factualistic reality, but Plato and his ilk admit its existence begrudgingly.

Plato held that the basic stuffs of this world are the sensible images: fire, earth, water and air. Each of them is a representation of a form in space.

Linehan - So I'm watching this show on Discovery about aquatic life and just watching the movements of schools of fish and the sheer magnitude of fish in this sea basin or something is awe inspiring. I have chills in my cheeks!

Plato held that earth (the element) was a cube because it was the most immovable. Fire was a pyramid, water is the icosahedron and air is the octahedron.

Plato held that the world as we see it relied on precise mathematical precision in processes of the four elements in relation to one another.

Plato also hinted that the elements could be further reduced, maybe even to numbers. Thus, the Pythagorean side of Plato shines out in his physical theory.

But, physics remains a 'likely story' to Plato because we cannot truly reduce everything to numbers.

Space remains a brute fact; something the mind must admit exists, but is incapable of understanding.

Motion itself is similar to space. While certain motions are comprehendible, the motion abstract is obscure and barely intelligible. It is too irregular.

Ethics

For Plato, physics was only a side issue; ethics and politics were his chief interests.

Plato blamed the Sophists' attack on traditional values like moderation as the reason for the fall of Athens. This is why he focused on knowledge of values.

To defeat the Sophists' skepticism, Plato had to prove that values are objective and that we could have knowledge of them.

Plato ought to have proved the existence of ethical forms, but he assumed that the proof of mathematical forms sufficed. It is logically possible though that mathematical forms exist, but ethical ones do not.

Mathematical forms can be argued not to exist on the grounds that mathematical knowledge is impossible on any other grounds. But ethics are different because, unlike mathematics, people are not in almost complete agreement in the fact that objective knowledge of them is possible,

Ethics is more subjective.

Plato disagreed and may have argued it this way:

1. If there is no objective knowledge of ethics we cannot say that Jesus was a better man than Hitler. In fact, we can never act ethically wrong.
2. This position is so paradoxical no one would accept it unless they were driven to do so by an absolutely conclusive argument.
3. It is not conducive to society and should be rejected unless absolutely certain.
4. Mathematical knowledge proves that there are at least some forms. Why not ethical ones?
5. The existence of mathematical forms proves that ethical ones are not impossible.
6. This provides a prima facie case for claiming that there are ethical forms.

"A proper analysis of actual ethical judgments, Plato reasoned, to reveal explicitly the character of the various forms these judgments participate in" (Jones, 155).