Platonism and Forms of Intelligence 9783050061115, 9783050045078

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John Dillon / Marie-Élise Zovko (eds.) Platonism and Forms of Intelligence

Platonism and Forms of Intelligence Edited by John Dillon and Marie-Élise Zovko

Akademie Verlag

Gedruckt mit Unterstützung von: Trinity College Dublin Association and Trust Ministarstvo znanosti, obrazovanja i sporta Republike Hrvatske Abbildung auf d e m Einband: Piaton, Marmorbüste, römische Kopie eines griechischen Originals aus dem letzten Viertel des 4. Jhs. v.u.Z., M u s e o Pio-Clementino, Vatikanstaat

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.b-nb.de abrufbar.

ISBN 978-3-05-004507-8 © Akademie Verlag GmbH, Berlin 2008 Das eingesetzte Papier ist alterungsbeständig nach DIN / ISO 9706. Alle Rechte, insbesondere die der Übersetzung in andere Sprachen, vorbehalten. Kein Teil dieses Buches darf ohne schriftliche Genehmigung des Verlages in irgendeiner Form - durch Photokopie, Mikroverfilmung oder irgendein anderes Verfahren - reproduziert oder in eine von Maschinen, insbesondere von Datenverarbeitungsmaschinen, verwendbare Sprache übertragen oder übersetzt werden. Einbandgestaltung: Günter Schorcht, Schildow Satz: Frank Hermenau, Kassel Druck: MB Medienhaus Berlin Bindung: Druckhaus „Thomas Müntzer", Bad Langensalza Printed in the Federal Republic of Germany

Contents

Preface Introduction

9 11

1. Platonism and the Physical and Sensible Conditions of Intelligence Jonathan Doner The Origin and Nature of Intelligence

25

Amber Carpenter Embodying Intelligence: Animals and Us in Plato's Timaeus

39

Byron Kaldis The Question of Platonic Division and Modern Epistemology

59

Franco Ferrari Intelligenza e Intelligibilità nel Timeo di Platone

81

2. Platonism and the Ethical Nature of Intelligence Jure Zovko Irony and the Care of the Soul in Plato's Early Dialogues

107

Daniel Kolak Stepping into the Same Rivers: Consciousness, Personal Identity and the Metaphysical Foundations for Global Ethics

117

3. Platonism on the Intelligent Conditions of Intelligence and Intelligibility F. A. J. de Haas Thinking about Thought. An Inquiry into the Life of Platonism

141

6

CONTENTS

Thomas Leinkauf Zum Begriff des,Geistes' in der Frühen Neuzeit Überlegungen am Beispiel Francesco Patrizi da Chersos

159

Luc Brisson Reminiscence in Plato

179

Francesco Fronterotta Platonismo e scienze della mente: cosa è l'intuizione?

191

4. Platonism on Intellect, Infinity, and the Intelligibility of Concepts of God Dionysis Mentzeniotis, Giannis Stamatellos The Notion of Infinity in Plotinus and Cantor

213

Werner Beierwaltes Nous: Unity in Difference

231

John Dillon The One of the Soul and the ,Flower of the Intellect' Models of Hyper-intellection in Later Neoplatonism

247

Patrick Quinn The Influence of Platonism on St. Thomas Aquinas's Concept of Mind

259

Jean-Marc Narbonne Liberté divine chez Plotin et Jamblique (Traité 39 [VI 8] 7, 11-15 et De mysteriis III, 17-20)

275

5. Platonism and Forms of Intelligence in Art and Education Aaron Hughes Intelligible Beauty and Artistic Creation: The Renaissance Platonism of Judah Abravanel

293

Vladimir Stoupel La liberté est dans la mémoire: Zur Notwendigkeit des auswendigen Spiels am Beispiel der Werke von Alexander Skijabin

309

7 Marie-Élise Zovko The Way Up and the Way Back is the Same: The Ascent of Cognition in Plato's Analogies of the Sun, the Line and the Cave and the Path Intelligence Takes

313

Index of Names Notes on Contributors

343 348

Preface

The editors would like first of all to thank the contributors to this volume, as well as the participants and the organizing committee1 of the International Symposium Platonism and Forms of Intelligence, with which the idea for the book originated. We would also like to thank the patrons and sponsors of the original symposium: the President of the Republic of Croatia, Stipe Mesic; the Croatian Committee for UNESCO, the City of Hvar, The Royal Netherlands Embassy/Zagreb, Istituto italiano di cultura/Zagreb, the Ministry of Science, Education and Sport of the Republic of Croatia, the Institute of Philosophy/Zagreb, Croatian Studies/University of Zagreb. We thank furthermore the Ministry of Science, Education and Sport of the Republic of Croatia and Trinity College Dublin Association and Trust for their contribution toward the publication of this volume. Our special thanks go to Akademie Verlag and to Dr. Mischke Dammaschke for their support of the volume, as well as to Dr. Frank Hermenau for his care, patience and professional support with the technical aspects of the book's production. John Dillon Marie-Élise Zovko Dublin and Zagreb, in July, 2008

1

The members of the organizing committee were: Laura Blaletic (Zagreb), Renate Kroschel (Freiburg i. Br.), Andrea Mador Bozinovic (Zagreb), Josip Talanga (Zagreb), Marie-Elise Zovko (Zagreb).

MARIE-ÉLISE ZOVKO

Platonism and Forms of Intelligence Proceedings of the International Symposium, Hvar, 2006

What forms does intelligence take? How does it enable us to know, to feel and to act? The Platonic doctrine of ideas or forms has its roots in a comprehensive understanding of human intelligence, of its ability to access and utilize the contents of experience in order to establish a coherent view of reality, direct our decisions, form our habits of behaviour and inspire our creative productivity. From its inception in the Presocratic paradigmata of Platonic thought to its modern representatives in rationalist and idealist philosophy, Platonists and thinkers closely associated with Platonism - among them Aristotle, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, ps. Dionysius Areopagita, Nicolas Cusanus and Renaissance Platonists like, Marsilius Ficinus, Pico della Mirandola and Francesco Patrizi; Spinoza, Schelling, Hegel and Franz von Baader - have differentiated levels and types of intelligence: receptive and (re-)productive or spontaneous, intentional and conceptual, argumentative or discursive and intuitive or analogical, individual and transpersonal or universal - recognizing the distinct importance of each and the proportionality expressed by their interrelationships and cooperation. For Plato and the Platonists, epistemology is not separate from ontology, knowledge from reality, because cognition itself is recognized as the most essential aspect of reality. At the same time, intelligence represents for Platonism the unique means by which we approach and attain to reality, both the reality which intelligence itself is and that to which it refers. In distinguishing various levels of intelligence and their specific modes of (co-)operation, Platonist philosophy thus recognizes and differentiates an inherent diversity in the quality and content of experience, i. e. specific aspects of reality corresponding to each aspect of intelligence and specific ways in which we approach and utilize the different aspects of reality which each individually and all in their entirety convey. Platonist views on intelligence can be shown to have had a marked influence on Kant and a number of other ostensible counterexamples to Platonic philosophy, providing a unique opportunity to more fully comprehend the genuine import of those systems of thought. The Platonic theory of intelligence also played a determining role in the development of scientific method (defining the role of hypothesis and experiment in the investigation of phenomena; differentiating between observation and explanation, deduction and argument, reasons and causes). Not only in a methodological or historical sense, however, do Platonic views on intelligence prove relevant. In their reflections on the process of cognition and the relationship of intelligence to its objects, Platonist

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philosophers fiirthermore anticipate many significant advances in cognitive science and psychology, and many of their original insights are confirmed and articulated by recent discoveries in neurology and neurophysiology. Fundamental research in the physical and life sciences, for its part, tends to confirm the Platonic „analogy of intelligence", i. e. the heuristic and paradigmatic role of „something like" human intelligence for an understanding of the genesis and structure of the universe, and the emergence and organisation of the individual beings which comprise it. Inquiry into the role different kinds of intelligence play in artistic production and art appreciation, on the other hand, provides its own form of experimental evidence for the validity of Platonist ideas on stages and complementary types of intellection. The theme of the present book is thus of both universal scope and immediate relevancy for research in a wide range of fields. The volume Platonism and Forms of Intelligence contains a collection of papers presented at the International Symposium: Platonism and Forms of Intelligence, which took place in the ancient city of Hvar on the island of Hvar, Croatia, from October 9-13, 2006. Platonism and Forms of Intelligence, nonetheless, comprises more than just an anthology of conference papers. Uniting under a single theme a diverse international group of experts, not only from the area of Platonic studies, but also from other academic and non-academic professions, it transcends the boundaries of univocally academic research in the humanities to initiate an exchange of ideas between specialists on Platonism and representatives from other areas of scholarship, as well as from the arts and education. In recent years there has been an upsurge of interest in the study of Plato, Platonism and Neoplatonism. Until now, however, the kind of interdisciplinary forum initiated by the International Symposium Platonism and Forms of Intelligence has been lacking. Taking the position that it is of vital importance for the resolution of certain pressing issues of common interest to humankind to establish an ongoing dialogue among scientists, artists, academics, theologians and philosophers, Platonism and Forms of Intelligence endeavours to bridge the gap between contemporary research in Platonist philosophy and other fields where insights gained from the study of Plato and Platonist philosophy can be of consequence and benefit. That a need and an interest for such a forum exists was evidenced by the lively response to the original call for papers, greeted with enthusiasm by experts from a variety of fields not directly tied to academic research in philosophy, among them physicist Fritjof Capra (author of: The Tau of Physics, Web of Life, The Science of Leonardo), internationally renowned neurophysiologist Sandra Witelson („The Exceptional Brain of Albert Einstein"), and distinguished artist and educator Betty Edwards {Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain). Bearing out expectations that it would become what Prof. F. A. J. de Haas of Leiden University called a „landmark event in the humanities," the International Symposium Platonism and Forms of Intelligence attracted such leading experts in the philosophy of Platonism as Werner Beierwaltes, Luc Brisson, John Dillon, Franco Ferrari, Francesco Fronterotta, F. A. J. de Haas, Thomas Leinkauf, Jean-Marc Narbonne, and Patrick Quinn, as well as younger Platonist scholars, including Giannis Stamatellos, Aaron Hughes, and Amber Carpenter, and a number of experts from other fields as well, including mathematician and author of original literary and philosophical

INTRODUCTION

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works, Dionysis Mentzeniotis; elementary and teacher education expert, Renate Kroschel (Stohrenschule, Germany), specialist in Platonist philosophy and education theory; world-class pianist Vladimir Stoupel (Berlin), renowned, among other achievements, for his interpretations of Alexander Scriabin; mathematical psychologist and consultant Jonathan Doner; and one of Hvar's own family of distinguished scholars, internationally renowned archaeologist Marin Zaninovic. In keeping with this diverse gathering of minds and talents, the present volume effects a rapprochement between Platonic and Platonist insights on the problem of intelligence and insights gained from research and practice in the other fields named above. The book itself is structured according to the unified and organically developed theme of the original symposium Platonism and Forms of Intelligence: beginning with a consideration of the physical (natural) and bodily conditions of intelligence, it proceeds to reflection on the accessibility in sense phenomena of the intelligible basis for the process of definition and division of natural kinds, as well as for the entire array of conscious and unconscious manifestations of intelligence throughout the cosmos. From here, Platonism and Forms of Intelligence turns to the native ethical character of intelligence, i. e. its inherent, natural need to take responsibility for its own cultivation and development, which, unlike unconscious natural processes, does not unfold automatically or instinctively, and which, as opposed to these, necessarily entails the selfconscious (intentional) acceptance of its own involvement in the advancement of and care for the ,others', who, ab initio, are always included in the constitution of its own self. Building upon the articulation of the physical conditions of intelligence and intelligibility and intelligence's naturally ethical disposition, there follows a consideration of the transindividual, conceptual and intelligent conditions of intelligence, including the role and „location" of the forms or ideas with respect to the universal activity of intelligence, as well as their subordination to a highest principle. These considerations evolve naturally into reflection concerning the highest principle itself and its accessibility to human intelligence, as well as, in the book's final chapter, to contemplation of the analogy between human creativity and its products and the creative activity postulated of a universal intelligence and its ultimate principle. A reflection on the original aim and proportionality of the forms and stages of intelligence described by the ,path' of cognition and paideia in Plato's analogies of the Sun, the Line and the Cave forms the conclusion of the volume. The original conference papers, appearing here in their rewritten and reworked form, are distributed thus according to the natural divisions of the topic itself. In chapter one, concerning the physical and sensible conditions of intelligence, mathematical psychologist Jonathan Doner first presents „a generalized, functional perspective on the origin and nature of intelligent processes," according to which the phenomena of life, brain, mind, and consciousness represent „diverse manifestations of nature's inherent capacity for intelligence," all of which ,,[d]espite differences in type, material, and complexity ... can be understood to ... be governed by the same dynamic principles." In „Embodying Intelligence: Animals and Us in Plato's Timaeus," Amber Carpenter takes up the more specific investigation of the immanence of rationality and Plato's portrayal of the bodily conditions of intelligence in animals and human beings. Two further papers investigate

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the relationship between intelligence and intelligibility in a wider context. In „The Question of Platonic Division and Modern Epistemology," Byron Kaldis compares Platonic diairesis, the division or classification of concepts according to their intelligible differentiae, with some aspects of modern essentialism and contemporary epistemological theory from Popper to Goodman. Taking the question of intelligibility a step further, Franco Ferrari explores, in his paper: „Intelligenza e Intelligibilità nel Timeo di Platone," the role of the Demiurge as a metaphor for the presence and activity of a cosmic and metacosmic intelligence in the production of sensible reality, and as a basis for consideration of conscious and unconscious (subjective and non-subjective) manifestations of intelligence in reality as a whole. In Chapter 2, which contemplates Socratic and Platonic insights on the inalienable ethical character of intelligence, Jure Zovko opens the discussion with a deft portrayal of the complex and subtle significance of irony for the Socratic/Platonic conception of the care of the soul („Irony and the Care of the Soul in Plato's Early Dialogues"). Daniel Kolak responds with a characterisation of his own original concept of „open individualism" in: „Stepping into the Same Rivers: Consciousness, Personal Identity and the Metaphysical Foundations for Global Ethics." According to this concept, consciousness, as the immediate awareness of our own existence, far from separating us absolutely, in fact joins us to one another - a view Kolak sees as directly descendent from the Socratic and Platonic form of consciousness (much like Heraclitus' idea of the commonality of phronesis, itself a refutation of purported ,private worlds' into which the ,many', ignorant of the universal, shared character of reflection, would turn aside). Chapter 3 turns to the intelligent conditions of intelligence and intelligibility, which enable both complementary aspects to exist within the activity of thought itself. In „Thinking about Thought. An Inquiry into the Life of Platonism," F. A. J. de Haas highlights, with his account of the famous confrontation between Porphyry, Plotinus and Amelius concerning the , location' of the intelligible Forms, the instrumental role played by Aristotelian terminology in clarifying the position of intellect with respect to the forms and the highest principle of the forms. Aristotle's differentiation, in De anima, of a passive intellect, which becomes everything, and another, active and independently existing (divine) intellect, which makes everything, is juxtaposed with the concept of »Thought thinking itself as a self-identical, immaterial object from the Metaphysics, to provide Haas and Porphyry with the solution, not only for the location of the forms, but for the Platonic difficulty of the identification of the highest principle with respect to the forms. In „Zum Begriff des ,Geistes' in der Frühen Neuzeit. Überlegungen am Beispiel Francesco Patrizi da Chersos," Thomas Leinkauf explores this Croatian philosopher's (Francesco Patrizi = Frane Pétrie) concept of Mind or Intellect, which formed a counterweight to concepts of natural philosophy developing in the 15th and 16th century under the influence of a mechanistic physics. Patrizi, like other early modern thinkers (Ficinus and Cusanus, Leibniz and Spinoza, whose closely related concepts of intellect were adopted and further developed by German Idealists Jacobi and Schelling) returns for his reflections on Intellect to ancient sources such as Plotinus, Proclus and Damascius, as well as to Neoplatonic commentaries on important Aristotelian texts such as

INTRODUCTION

15

De anima III and Metaphysics XII. Leinkauf emphasises the need to differentiate self or individuality as conceived in early modern philosophy, and the concept of mind in ancient philosophy from which it derives, where self, the I and rationality or intellection coincide in a general sense, from contemporary ideas of the contingent subject as bearer of sensitive, affective and rational-intellectual processes. The unity of Being, Life and Thought portrayed by ancient and Neoplatonic concepts of intellect, in close relation to early modern concepts of intellect, for which the ,Γ is not yet separated from its object and not yet raised to the status of absolute self-consciousness, do not allow for an ontology which thinks being in opposition to thought, as nonconceptual or ,mindless': Being is and exists, in the fundamental conviction of (neo-)Platonism, as ,beingthought'; Intellect is ultimately the self-transparency and self-relationality of Being present to itself, not something which possesses itself by the difference and separation from an external object. According to Leinkauf und Patrizi, the grounding of individual self-consciousness in a transindividual concept of mind is accessible in the intuitive experience of a breakingthrough of non-subjective intelligent activity into the intelligent activity of the individual in phantasy, imagination and thought. In „Reminiscence in Plato," Luc Brisson examines the Platonic hypothesis that „to learn is to make an effort to remember, on the occasion of a sensible experience, a knowledge acquired by the soul in an undetermined past, when, separated from all earthly bodies, it contemplated the genuine realities." (179) Contrary to G. Scott and G. Fine, Brisson argues that the hypothesis of Forms is a prerequisite for an understanding of the hypothesis of recollection. Reminiscence, namely, in a philosophical sense, despite the importance of metempsychosis for Plato's theory of retribution, is not of sensible events that took place in the course of a previous existence, but of „another domain of realities, the intelligible Forms, to which it must refer the objects that its senses perceive at the end of a process of recollection." (181) Intellect, thus, directed toward the intelligent and not the sensible, ensures the order necessary for living being; with respect to Form - a pure, unmixed, non-sensible entity, existing in itself and absolutely, neither composite nor subject to becoming, but relating to the particular realities that „participate" in it as a model to its image - it brings many sensations into unity. Even the knowledge we think we ,have' is not a constant possession; rather, we must continually make an effort to recuperate it, as though it were somehow lost or forgotten. The recovery of this ,former possession', however, presupposes the relation of the intellect to intelligible reality. In „Platonismo e scienze della mente: cosa è l'intuizione?" Francesco Fronterotta discusses the nature of the intuitive knowledge presupposed by Plato's theory of Forms, portrayed in the dialogues as a kind of vision (Symp. 210e-211e), contact or touching (Phaedo 79c-d). In the Analogy of the Line, visual and tactile language is used to describe a noetic act, as distinguished from the mediate, discursive acts of intelligence called dianoia, a faculty compared by Plato to the deductive demonstrations of geometry. As opposed to commentators who refuse to admit to immediate intuition as representing the pinnacle of knowledge in Plato and denounce its irrational or mystical character, Fronterotta proposes that the language with which Plato describes the act of intuition is meant to elaborate a distinction between two types of knowledge recognized

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by contemporary neuroscience, the first referring to a cognitive act which directly or immediately attains its proper object, the second to one which transverses or passes through the characteristics of its object in succession, attaining to it mediately or indirectly. Platonic intuition, in Fronterotta's view, far from being confounded with irrationality or a mystical vision, should thus be compared to recent hypotheses of neuroscience, which describe a process of simplification performed at the cerebral level, a process by which all irrelevant or exterior aspects of a particular mental image are omitted, allowing the attention to be concentrated on a simple form of that image stripped of all particularities not essential to it. Following in natural progression the articulation of the individual stages in the development of the book's topic, from reflection on the sensible and intellectual conditions of intelligence to reflection on the transindividual and transintellectual conditions of Intellect, Chapter 4 comprises a series of papers concerned with the unconditional ground of Intellect, the highest principle, God or the Infinite Ground of being and thought, as well as with the question of the accessibility or intelligibility of transcendence itself and concepts of God. In their joint paper „The Notion of Infinity in Plotinus and Cantor," mathematician Dionysis Mentzeniotis and Platonist scholar Giannis Stamatellos thus first undertake to explore, by a juxtaposition of Plotinus' metaphysics and Cantor's mathematics, the intelligibility of the concept of infinity. In Plotinus, the conception of infinity is „integral to the ontological structure of the Three Hypostases," as „related to the inexhaustible and endless productive power of the One, the internal partlessness of Intellect's intelligibles and the infiniteness of the forming principles in the Soul." At the same time, it is „connected to the indefiniteness of Matter and the unending expansion of the material universe from the simplicity and unity of the Soul to the plurality and complexity of the perceptible world." These two aspects of infinity appear in Plotinus as fundamentally opposed - a circumstance which reappears in modern mathematical conceptions. Plotinus' concept of infinity is shown namely by Mentzeniotis and Stamatellos to anticipate concepts of infinity found in modern mathematics and particularly Cantor's theory of infinity. Cantor, himself a professed Platonist, used the idea of „self-nesting" sets as a basis for his set theory, developing an ,arithmetic' of infinite numbers, and, in correspondence to its operations, a never-ending hierarchy of infinities. ,,[D]efinite multiplicities which are not at the same time unities," on the other hand, he designated as „inconsistent systems," ^absolutely infinite' totalities", sharply distinguishing them from the previously described transfinite sets, and allowing their existence only „in potentia." These and other parallels between the concept of infinity in Plotinus and Cantor cast light on the general question of the conceivability of the Absolute. In „Nous: Unity in Difference," Werner Beierwaltes examines the logical and ontological characteristics of Nous or universal Intellect in Platonism. Plato's differentiation in the Sophist of five „highest categories" or classes: Existence or Being, Sameness and Otherness (Identity and Difference), Rest and Motion, establishes the foundation for grasping reality as a whole and the basis for Proclus' development of a theory of community (koinonia) òr correlativity of the categories or ideas, by which he elaborates the being and activity of universal Intellect or Nous. In Nous, the intelligible is „differen-

INTRODUCTION

17

tiated without division (or indivisibly)" and „unified without mixture". Beierwaltes concentrates above all on the function of Rest and Motion (stasis and kinesis), i. e. their simultaneity in Nous, as condition for the differentiating and unifying activity of Intellect. Taking our investigation of universal Intellect a step further, John Dillon explores the relationship of intellect to the highest principle in Plotinus and later Neoplatonism. Whereas philosophical traditions in the Hellenic world until Plotinus considered intellection of some sort to be a characteristic of the supreme principle, or God, in Plotinus and later Neoplatonism, Intellect, as unity in multiplicity, finds its ground in the absolute unity and simplicity of a First Principle. In „The One of the Soul and the ,Flower of the Intellect' : Models of Hyper-intellection in Later Neoplatonism," Dillon addresses the question as to what form of apprehension we humans might be able to have of such an transintellectual entity, surveying first the approximations to such a faculty of the soul advanced by Plotinus, then passing on to the more precise identifications made by later Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus, Proclus and Damascius. In a similar vein, Patrick Quinn addresses the question of „The Influence of Platonism on St. Thomas Aquinas's Concept of Mind." Plato's insights are seen by Quinn to have decisively shaped Aquinas's concept of the human soul as an intermediate being between time and eternity, the physical and intelligible worlds. While respecting Aristotle's concept of human intelligence, Aquinas favours a model of intellect that is able to function independently of the senses. This can occur, according to Aquinas, in the momentary vision of divine rapture, and occurs ultimately in the vision of God after death. Evidence for intellect's ability to transcend the senses - in Aquinas a precondition for attaining divine truth and reality - is provided by the phenomenon of abstraction, i. e. the ability to focus on a particular object to the exclusion of superfluous or irrelevant details.1 While differing from Plato in affirming the importance of bodily life, as well as the necessity of the senses and imagination for the acquisition of knowledge, Aquinas' concept of mind in general and of the human mind in particular is, in Quinn's estimate, always defined by its ultimate objective, that is to say, by intellect's fundamental orientation towards God. In „Liberté divine chez Plotin et Jamblique," Jean Narbonne distinguishes various approaches to theology and the concept of God in the ancient world: theology of myth and of cult, philosophical or natural theology (as exemplified by Xenophanes, Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics and the Epicureans), the theology of the Mystery religions and Orphism, and finally a theology of a scientific' or ,geometric' tenor, such as found in Iamblichus or Proclus, who attempt to produce a systématisation or summa of divine knowledge according to the tradition of Platonism. It is this last form of theology, i. e. knowledge or , science' of the transintellectual ground of being and intellection, with which Narbonne is concerned in his consideration of divine liberty. In his rebuke of Porphyry's idea of theurgy in De mysteriis, Iamblichus argues that divine nature is not

1

A process which appears to be closely related to the one mentioned by Fronterotta in his discussion of noesis and neuroscience. Cf. above 15f. and below 191f.

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subject to physical passions or natural motion, that it is not in nature or physical necessity that the divine essence resides; rather, divine nature is defined by itself alone. Not only are the gods free with respect to natural necessity, they command natural necessity, and thus enable also the individual to transcend it. Human beings, namely, are possessed of two souls: one subject to becoming, destiny and the cyle of rebirth, and one which, having ,fallen down' into the first, is nevertheless the heir of the „first intelligible" and the power of the Demiurge, whose superiority to the cycle of rebirth enables us to reascend toward the intelligible gods and toward the „Ungenerated". Iamblichus, as Narbonne observes, strives to show that God is not subject to nature, while Plotinus is concerned to show that God is not subject to his nature. Neither, however, allows the workings of the universe to be attributed to chance or necessity, since that would contradict the concept of the divine as self-defined and superior to those workings as their cause. For Iamblichus, to refer to chance and necessity a reality of the rank and beauty of the cosmos is unreasonable; and a person would need to be deprived of intelligence and sensibility to believe that God is not concerned for the things here below, in view of the intellect and wisdom with which natural processes appear to be governed. To this tendency of human intelligence to find intelligence in the world around it, and to attribute the beauty of the cosmos to something like the activity of an intelligence like to our own, corresponds the complementary need of the knowing self to create an image of itself and its knowledge in nature and art. The intimate association of intelligence and creativity forms hence the natural transition to the concluding chapter: „Platonism and Forms of Intelligence in Art and Education." Aaron Hughes opens the topic with his exploration of the intersection between epistemology, ontology, and aesthetics in the Renaissance Platonism of Judah Abravanel in „Intelligible Beauty and Artistic Creation: The Renaissance Platonism of Judah Abravanel." Hughes addresses in this context the role of imagination in intelligent and creative processes, considering furthermore the relationship between imagination and ontology and the question as to how the creative activity of the human intellect relates to philosophical speculation. Abravanel follows medieval Islamic Neoplatonists in arguing that a world cannot exist without its ,display,' sense phenomena comprising thus the necessary condition for knowledge of the transcendent reality which is at their source, and sensual images and language enabling finite embodied individuals to move back up the ontic hierarchy to access a reality which exists without matter. As for many of the Renaissance Humanists, myth and allegory are, in Abravanel's view, not barriers to philosophical understanding but imitate the very ,fabric' of the divine. Without beautiful and poetic language one is unable to encounter the beautiful and, by extension, God. In stark contrast to the reductive tendency of today's prevalent philosophical currents, the goal of the philosopher for Abravanel is not to translate mythical explanation into analytical prose, but to understand the content of myth and allegory by composing other ,myths'. The good philosopher, accordingly, must create aesthetically pleasing treatises (i. e., „works of art") that replicate the beauty of the universe and the poetical language of myth. Such treatises, in turn, imitate the beauty of objective reality and participate in absolute beauty; and the interpretation of the treatises themselves leads the ideal reader back to the beautiful, the true, and the good (i. e. to God).

INTRODUCTION

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In a further development of the theme: intelligence, beauty and art, and a unique contribution to the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas striven for by the symposium and book, Platonism and Forms of Intelligence, pianist Vladimir Stoupel, in his exposé „La liberté est dans la mémoire: Zur Notwendigkeit des auswendigen Spiels am Beispiel der Werke von Alexander Skrjabin" provides rare insights into the guiding inspiration for his unforgettable performance in Hvar in October 2006. In the Platonic tradition, the philosopher and the musician share a specific affinity: that of love and devotion to beauty. This devotion is the expression of a gift or divine possession, which requires education and formation for its proper unfolding. As Stoupel explains, the education of the pianist requires the internalisation of complex structures and their transformation into finely tuned motoric ability, as well as technical and executory skills, something which presupposes education and training of a particular kind of memorisation. Both a trained memory and also the pianist's specific individual memories are required in order to establish the specific personality of an individual interpretation. Such memories are not immediately accessible, but subject to visible, acoustic, motoric or intellectual associations. Memorisation, paradoxically, forms a necessary condition for innovation and freedom of interpretation. The pianist, concious of the impossibility of ,stepping twice into the same river,' finds himself both pressured to conform to convention - and unable to hinder the influence of the associations and memories which rise unbidden from his unconscious. True inspiration, in the conviction of Stoupel, comes from this cooperation of the unconscious, permitting the composer's original inspiration to come to life in the interpretation of the pianist and giving the music its ,God-given' or magical inspirational power. The atonal music of Alexander Scriabin, in which harmony gives way to dissonance and the chord replaces the melody, embodies for Stoupel in a particular way the free expression of the unconscious in art. The sheer unpredictability and even unplayability of some of Scriabin's sonatas - in comparison with Classical works, where the pianist is able to rely at least partially upon the collective memory of an audience familiar with a Classical concert repertoire - represents an enormous challenge to the pianist, relying as he does on memorisation for the freedom of his interpretation. Without a grasp of the inner logic of the piece, the ideal of achieving the same freedom of expression aimed for by the composer is, according to Stoupel, impossible. The final contribution to Platonism and Forms of Intelligence embodies the written version of M. Zovko's contribution to a joint presentation and discussion forum conducted by Renate Kroschel (Stohrenschule; Margarete Ruckmich Akademie, Germany) and Marie-Élise Zovko, which concluded the original symposium in Hvar and addressed the relevance and significance of an understanding of forms of intelligence for education. Renate Kroschel introduced the topic with a synopsis, based on her experience in applying insights from Platonic and Platonist philosophy to elementary school and teacher education, of her own understanding of the idea of „philosophizing with children."2 Children's curiosity, their ceaseless questioning and desire to discover

2

An idea which originated in Germany in the 1920's with the reform movement initiated by Walter Benjamin and with Leonard Nelson's call for a revival of the Socratic conversation, and which

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and understand the world reflect for Kroschel Plato's concept of ,Eros', or love of wisdom and beauty, in its most original form, as the motive force and inspiration of philosophy (cf. Symposium 203d 7: Eros „philosophizes throughout the whole of life"). This love of knowledge Kroschel sees as particularly present in children, especially small children, although still in its inception and not yet at a conscious level. While Plato does not explicitly speak to children, but to youths and adults capable of consciously taking up the challenge of freeing themselves of ignorance, philosophizing with children has, in Kroschel's view, a vital role to play in the preservation and development of this original curiosity and questioning. For Kroschel, philosophizing with children' means „to keep alive and to cultivate childlike curiosity and joy of questioning, to develop the questions of childhood and the independent reflection natural to childhood with the goal of cultivating a permanent and fundamental attitude of questioning" - a characteristic of the utmost importance for the preservation of the values of a just and democratic society. In „The Way Up and the Way Back is the Same: The Ascent of Cognition in Plato's Analogies of the Sun, the Line and the Cave and the Path Intelligence Takes," Marie-Elise Zovko, finally, considers the overarching proportionality which conjoins the analogies of the Sun, the Line and the Cave to each other and to an ,unknown' fourth ,term', the proposed science of dialectics, as well as the role of the Divided Line in demonstrating the ,method' by which to ,solve' the proposed proportion and gain an understanding of its inherent direction and aim. Plato's proportion equation' is shown thereby to be not an external, but an intrinsic and essential aspect of the exposition of the ascent of cognition depicted by the Divided Line and reinterpreted and expanded in light of the task of paideia in the Analogy of the Cave. The „way up" to knowledge of the highest things and the „way back" to a rediscovery and redefinition of individual kinds and species, to a reproduction of the objects of intelligence in our words and acts, works and ideas, as well as in our efforts to „turn about" and encourage to the ascent those who have yet to turn their vision in the ,right direction', are, in Zovko's interpretation, the ,same' in an ontological and in an epistemologicaI sense, with regard to the original proportionality and hierarchy of the forms and functions of intelligence, and at the same time distinct, and distinguishable, relative to one another and to the one ,path', because of the irreversibility of their original orientation toward the Good. Plato's use of proportion in the central analogies of the Republic is compared with was subsequently carried forward and developed in the USA by Matthew Lipman (Institute For The Advancement of Philosophy For Children) and Gareth B. Matthews. As Kroschel put it, „The expansion of the movement gave philosophy and pedagogics in Germany important stimuli for further development of the idea of philosophizing with children. One can thus speak of a return of a school of thought which was exiled, so to speak, during the Nazi period." In her presentation, Kroschel highlighted two important representatives who gave the reform movement in Germany new momentum following World War II: education specialist Hans Ludwig Freese (Kinder sind Philosophen, 1989) and Ekkehard Martens, Professor for philosophical didactic in Hamburg {Philosophieren mit Kindern - Eine Einführung in die Philosophie, 1999), who conceives of the idea of philosophizing with children as a manner of introduction to philosophy for adults. [With grateful acknowledgement to R. Kroschel for permission to use her notes].

INTRODUCTION

21

research on analogical reasoning from the field of cognitive science and psychology, as well as with research regarding lateralization' or hemispheric distribution of brain function from the field of neural science and shown to corroborate insights gained by this type of research in important respects. Some of the distinct ratios which describe the interrelationships of our sensible and intelligible capabilities are considered in this light - dianoia and noesis in the realm of thought and the intelligible, eikasia and ρ istis in the realm of opinion and the sensible, their relationship to the overarching ratio of episteme and doxa - and the mathematical proportion which they severally comprise, a complex proportion, which on closer examination exhibits something like the character of a living, organic process. Plato's recognition that mathematical intuition represents a synthetic activity different from that of mere sense perception and also from that of discursive reason (cf. Phaedo 96d-97e), and his grasp of the aesthetic nature of noesis, the highest form of human thought, especially as it functions in the method of hyptheses described in the Phaedo and the Divided Line, anticipate modern and contemporary insights into the aesthetic nature of intuition and its relationship to something like dianoia or discursivity in intelligent processes. Despite their analogous relationships, however, Plato does not confound the aesthetic nature of judgement and intuition with the perceptive and emotional faculties. Rather, in keeping with the requirement of subjecting the manifold impressions of sense and the phenomenal objects which give rise to them to a process of definition and Justification" - the famous „flight to the logoi" is upheld, and later developed to a science of dialectic, whose task, as Heraclitus put it, is to „give an account of each thing and how it behaves according to its nature," applying methods of collection and division to trace the natural connections, the inherent rules and proportions which determine the character and functioning of complex beings and govern their interactions, and thereby paving the way for the soul to grasp truths that transcend the realm of discursive thought.

The work of the International Symposion Platonism & Forms of Intelligence was inspired by the efforts of a small group of philosophy teachers and students at the University of Zagreb, by their commitment to the reform of the system of higher education in Croatia and their dedication to the advancement of standards of excellence which might enable Croatian scholars to compete with the best of international research in philosophy. The language of Plato and the philosophy of Platonism shaped the vocabulary of science and of theoretical reflection on issues regarding the study of nature and humanity as a whole. The language and thought of Platonism formed the basis for modern declarations of human rights, and is still clearly comprehensible and relevant today. Platonism and Forms of Intelligence, like the symposium from which the volume issued, aims to encourage those concerned in an academic sense with the philosophy of Plato and the Platonist tradition to enter into a permanent dialogue with representatives of a variety of fields and interests, not only from an historical, but also from a theoretical and practical, as well as from a creative and educational point of view. This approach required and requires taking a certain risk: the risk of appearing to be unserious or dilettantish, because of encouraging experts in philosophy to speak a language understan-

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Marie-Élise Z o v k o

dable to specialists in other fields, and encouraging experts from other fields to communicate their insights in a more generously comprehensible manner as well. We believe that in the final estimate the risk-taking of this joint venture has paid off; for what participants at the conference experienced was the unique, almost enchanted atmosphere of a free flow of ideas rarely occurring in academic circles, invigorating and inspiring. What is presented in the book Platonism and Forms of Intelligence is, we hope, a not too distant reflection of that living atmosphere of philosophical conversation.

1. PLATONISM AND THE PHYSICAL AND SENSIBLE CONDITIONS OF INTELLIGENCE

JONATHAN DONER

The Origin and Nature of Intelligence

Toward a generalized functional theory This paper 1 is grounded in the hypothesis that, despite differences in their substance and complexity, the various processes that we identify as life, brain, mind, and consciousness 2 are all based on the same functional architecture and driven by the same dynamic principles. Workers from several disciplines have sought unity among these varied phenomena. 3 The present approach begins with the simple fact that life, brain, mind, and consciousness are all intelligent phenomena. On the one hand this is obviously the case; on the other, it is deeply problematic. Each constitutes a clear expression of intelligent functioning, yet unifying their understanding within a single theoretical framework is very difficult. Current conceptions are not adequate to this task. What is needed is a more encompassing and incisive philosophy of intelligence. Intelligence is not simply an attribute of animal and human behavior. It is a fundamental condition of the world - one that has emerged from purely physical processes and yet has redefined the nature of physical reality. Neither has it emerged as a magical consequence of complexity. It arises within specific conditions and will always be of a 1

2 3

Comments and questions by Luc Brisson, John Dillon, Byron Kaldis, Thomas Leinkauf, and Marie-Elise Zovko were very helpful in the revision of the original presentation, though only the author should be held accountable. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Timothy William Doner. For the present, these terms are used generically. Each, of course, encompasses a range of phenomena. Cairns-Smith, A. G (1996). Evolving the mind: On the nature of matter and the origin of consciousness. Cambridge, UK: The Cambridge University Press; Geary, D. C. (2005). The origin of mind: Evolution of brain, cognition and general intelligence. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association; Morowitz, H. J. & Singer, J. L. (Eds.) (1995). The mind, the brain, and complex adaptive systems. New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing; Newell, A. (1990). Unified theories of cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Penrose, R. (1989). The emperor's new mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Pfeifer, R. & Scheier, C. (1999). Understanding intelligence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Piaget, J. (1971). Biology and knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Schrodinger, E. (1992). What is life? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Smith, J. M. & Szathmary, E. (1999). The origins of life. From the birth of life to the origins of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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particular organization. Here is the heart of the matter, and the classic Aristotelian causes4 provide a preliminary glimpse into its nature. According to the proposed perspective, the formal cause of intelligence has three main aspects. First, an intelligent process has definable characteristics. Though intelligence comes in great variety, a generalized, functional theory is possible.5 Second, intelligence can emerge within any substrate capable of supporting those characteristics. Not all substrates support intelligence, but neither is intelligence limited to only a single substrate. Third, every intelligence is developmental, either through phylogeny, ontogeny, or learning. Its nature begins as a population of lower-level interacting functions and develops into a single, integrated intelligence operating at a new level of complexity. The efficient cause of intelligence is two-fold. The first aspect relates to its operation, and the second relates to its realization.6 According to the model, the operation of every intelligence, at any level of complexity, is describable in terms of the coupling of a stereospecific classification and a stereospecific action within a conditional relation. Clearly this echoes behaviorism's stimulus-response psychology. However, a stimulus is only a stimulus insofar as it is a classification,7 and a response is only a response insofar as it is an action conditioned by a classification. As to the realization of intelligence, the model argues that this follows a universal scheme. Structured populations of interacting agents provide a substrate supporting the critical characteristics of intelligence. This leads first to the growth of primordial intelligence, and subsequently, insofar as intelligence is its own best substrate, to the evolution of embedded levels of intelligent functioning.8 The substance, or material cause, of every natural intelligence is thus of three aspects. First, intelligence exists in a physical world and is therefore composed, fundamentally, of physical stuff. Second, an intelligence is composed of all of its constituent lowerlevel intelligences. And finally, the intelligence is manifested as a set of characteristic functions which are at the highest level of complexity, are not strictly reducible to lower-level functions, and which give integrity, unity, and efficacy to the intelligence. Lastly, the purpose, or final cause, of intelligence is best seen in terms of its actual consequences in the world. Intelligence takes a world that is purely physical and reconstitutes it into a world that is supportive of and conducive to the growth of ever

4

These are formal, efficient, material, and final cause [see, Physica, translated by R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye, in R. McKeon (Ed.) (1941). The basic works of Aristotle. New York: Random House]. Though interpretations can vary, as used here, the formal cause is the design or organization of an entity. Efficient cause concerns its operational dynamics. Material cause relates to the substance of the entity, and final cause is its purpose or reason-to-be.

5

Putnam, H. (1975). Philosophy and our mental life. In H. Putnam (Ed.) Mind, language and reality: Philosophical papers. (Vol. 2) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 48-73. Kim, J. (1998). Mind in a physical world. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hayek, F. A. (1952). The sensory order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smith & Szathmary identify what they call „major transitions" in evolution (Smith, J. M. & Szathmary, E. (1995). The major transitions in evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.).

6 7 8

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more varied levels of intelligent operation. Continually, at every level, intelligence recreates its world and itself, generating processes and conditions that would be otherwise impossible.

Principles of intelligence The remainder of this paper discusses these points within a précis of the full, generalized functional theory. Following the approach of Pfeifer & Scheier, the perspective is outlined through a set of design principles,9 These summarize the basic nature of intelligence, the conditions under which intelligence can arise, and the dynamic functions which guide it.

1. Intelligence can arise within any medium that supports its basic characteristics. This principle brings together functional and structural perspectives. Intelligence is not an emergent property of complexity. Emergent processes exist within the physical and computational universe,10 and intelligence most likely entails emergent processes. The concept of emergence, however, does not explain intelligence. Regardless of the complexity of a dynamic medium, intelligence will only arise within media that support its nature. Intelligence has defining characteristics, and a medium must support these characteristics if intelligence is to arise. There is no reason, a priori, to believe that intelligence is limited to only one kind of medium.11 Natural intelligence, in fact, occurs with respect to several different media, though generally speaking, these are of two classes. The primordial medium is made up of purely physical processes. It is essential that intelligence be capable of arising within a purely physical medium, such that the origin,

9 Pfeifer and Scheier's principles are summarized in Table 10.1, Pfeifer and Scheier, Op. cit., pg. 303. Their book is excellent and highly informative. The present theory has similarities with aspects of their perspective, but overall, it differs substantially. 10 Wolfram, S. (2002). A new kind of science. Champaign, IL: Wolfram Media. 11 Early work in computer science and artificial intelligence first raised the issues of intelligence being independent of substrate per se. This strengthened interest in a functional approach, especially Putnam, H. (1988). Representation and reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Influential discussions from Al include, McCarthy, J. (1977). Epistemologica! problems of artificial intelligence. Proceedings of the 5'h International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 1038-1044. Reprinted in B. L. Webber and N. J. Nilsson (Eds.), (1981). Readings in artificial intelligence. Palo Alto, CA: Tioga Publishing; Minsky, M. L. (1968). Matter, mind and models. In M. L. Minsky (Ed.) Semantic information processing. (425-432), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. This paper's perspective agrees that machine intelligence is possible, but only if it conforms to the proposed characteristics of true intelligence.

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operation, and evolution of intelligence obey the laws of thermodynamics. Nonetheless, intelligence is not constrained by those laws. Intelligence is constituted of, but not limited by, physical matter. Rather, it infinitely extends physical matter's possibilities. The other class of media which supports intelligence is intelligence itself. Intelligence begets intelligence. Within our world it is apparent that once primordial intelligence arises, it serves as the foundation for the evolution of successive levels of intelligence. Thus according to the present perspective, first, the Physical composes Life, then Life composes Brain, Brain composes Mind, and Mind composes Consciousness. A basic characteristic of intelligence, at every level, is that its dynamic growth always follows particular transformational principles. Intelligence grows in three general ways: through phylogeny, i. e., a lineage of successive generations, through ontogeny, i. e., a process of maturation, and through learning, i. e., change brought about through experience. According to the theory, despite the obvious differences, all three follow the same transformational dynamics. Another basic characteristic is that intelligence possesses a fundamental structure. That is, all intelligences are composed of certain basic types of operations which are interrelated according to a particular organization. Consequently, the operation of all intelligence follows the same functional principles. There is a basic functional form to everything an intelligence does.

2. Every intelligence can be characterized as a Λ(ΡΔ) function of some complexity. This is a defining characteristic. The operation of intelligence consists, fundamentally, of two components. Intelligence classifies its conditions and it acts into its world. This paper calls the process resulting in classification Ρ (rho), and the process resulting in action, Δ. The process designated as Λ represents the conditional relation of Ρ and Δ, Λ(ΡΔ) = {IF P, THEN Δ}. The operation of Ρ and Δ within the relation Λ is the most general characterization of the functions performed by any given intelligence. This captures the essence of the behaviorists' insight concerning the importance of stimulus and response, but avoids the many problems to which behaviorism is prone. For example, the present view does not deny the existence of Mind and Consciousness. Rather, it seeks to understand them within an encompassing model of all intelligence. The classification, P, is a fixating process, whereas Δ, the action, is a transforming one. Ρ codes conditions as a particular thing; Δ transforms conditions into something else. Consider Cairns-Smith's description12 of part of the molecular system which controls the locomotion of the bacterium E. coli:

12 Cairns-Smith, A. G , Op. cit.

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...allosteric proteins, embedded in and crossing the main cell membrane (the plasma membrane), ... have a binding socket on the outside and a catalytic socket on the inside. ... the catalytic socket on the inside is allosterically affected by whether the outer binding socket is occupied or not.13 This makes the point crystal clear.14 These proteins classify their conditions by specifically binding to a particular molecule (fixating). They then act back onto these conditions by catalyzing a chemical reaction (transforming). Ρ is a stereospecific classification of some input from the environment, and Δ is a stereospecific action into an environment. Stereospecificity here refers to a process possessing a particular spatiotemporal shape, pattern, or structure, and that this matters. Thus the process designated as Ρ classifies events that possess a particular spatiotemporal form. And the process designated as Δ constitutes actions of a particular spatiotemporal configuration. For example, enzymes play critical roles in all aspects of physiology. According to the late Nobel laureate Jacques Monod, the paradigmatic enzyme function comprises two steps: 1) The formation of a stereospecific complex between protein and substrate. 2) The catalytic activation of a reaction within the complex: a reaction oriented and specified by the structure of the complex itself.15 Unlike non-biological catalysts, enzymes act in specific ways and catalyze specific reactions. They do this by virtue of the stereospecificity of their binding and the precise orientation of their action. Monod says, „What is at work here, is, quite literally, a microscopic discriminative (if not ,cognitive') faculty."16 Monod realizes that protein complexes are intelligent agents, though he buries that realization within quotes within parentheses. By the present theory, enzymes are one form of primordial intelligence. Quite simply, as Monod acknowledges, they do what intelligences do. The function Λ(ΡΔ) can also be considered to be the general characterization of an intelligent state. An intelligent state is an intelligence. Whether we want to refer to a neural state, a mental state or a conscious state, if it is an intelligent state, it must be a Α(ΡΔ) function. Across levels of intelligence, this basic function will vary in terms of the complexity, qua information content, of Ρ and Δ. Human classification and action, for example, has far greater information content than protein classification and action. Nonetheless, what both are doing has the same functional form.17

13 14 15 16 17

Ibid., pg. 92. This passage was pivotal in the early development of the present perspective. Monod. J. (1971). Chance & necessity. New York: Vintage Books, pg. 54. The italics are his. Ibid., pg. 46. Thus every Λ(ΡΔ) intelligence is most generally characterized by six variables. These are 1) the accuracy of P, 2) the complexity (i. e., information content) of P, 3) the precision of Δ, 4) the com-

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Λ(ΡΔ) functions are clearly kin to Leibniz's monads.18 Monads perform two primary types of operations. First, they perceive. Leibniz construes this primarily as a kind of phenomenal experience or awareness, but it is clearly classificatory and fixative. Second, they change states, which is clearly transformational. Nonetheless, this transformation has no external consequences because monads are windowless. They have no direct interaction with their environment. Indeed, the concept of an environment is problematic in Leibniz's view. This is one major difference between his and the present perspective, which takes the logical structure of the full environment very seriously. Intelligence is embodied, situated and autonomous.19 Therefore, environments are real and must be given their place within the theory.

3. Every intelligence operates with respect to three environments (or domains): an external world, an internal body, and a social network. The behavior of each intelligence constitutes its solutions to the problems and tasks posed by its world, its body, and its network. An intelligence therefore operates within three types of niches, an external one, an internal one, and a social niche. Each is created according to how an intelligence classifies information from the relevant domain and how it acts back into that domain. This principle of three environments provides the basis for the claim that intelligence is situated, embodied, and autonomous. A situated intelligence is one that operates within a physical world.20 An embodied intelligence must operate within a material body.21 And finally, an autonomous intelligence is one that exists within a social network.22 An intelligence interacts with these three domains individually and together.

plexity (again, information content) of Δ, 5) the valence of A, and 6) the consistency (or reliability) of A. 18 Montgomery, G.R. (Trans.) (1902/1973). Leibniz: Discourse on metaphysics/ Correspondence with ArnauldΊ Monadologe. La Salle, IL: Open Court. 19 Pfeifer, R. & Scheier, C„ Op. cit. 20 No one debates the importance of the external environment, but not all see it in the same way. Direct perception [Gibson, J. J. (1966). The senses considered as perceptual systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin] argues that the stimulus is complete and sufficient for perception, which consists of the direct „pick-up" of species-relevant information. Constructivists [Gregory, R. L. (1966). Eye and brain. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson], on the other hand, argue that the stimulus is inadequate and that a perception must be constructed. This paper's perspective argues that both are correct. Direct perception is about P, the classification of conditions. Constructive perception is about Δ, the generation of a transformation in conditions. Full intelligence is based on the most accurate classification and the most precise action, the best perceptions and the best constructions. 21 The recognition of the importance of the body in understanding intelligence has been very slow in coming. See Damasio, A. (1999). The feeling of what happens. Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. San Diego: Harcourt; Leder D. (1990). The absent body. Chicago: University of

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In fact, though certain intelligent functions may be centered within or weighted with respect to one or two of the domains, the consequences of any intelligent process are ultimately determined by all three domains. Thus functionally, every intelligence operates in all three domains continuously and simultaneously. This is a primary factor distinguishing natural intelligence from all existing forms of artificial intelligence. The three environments have a logical relation. The physical world is the encompassing environment of every intelligence in that all realities have substance and consequence. It is also the primordial environment since primordial intelligence would not distinguish between the three. Part of the growth of all intelligence has to do with coming to differentiate the bodily environment from the physical domain, and differentiating the social network from both the physical and the bodily domains. The three domains are interwoven but nonetheless can be distinguished by the facts that each generates its own type of information, and each creates its own type of consequences. Thus there is natural selection23 with respect to each of the domains. The external world, the body, and the social network will each have their own set of selection pressures. For example, within the body all organs must evolve relative to constraints generated by the location and the operation of other organs. Within the social network, mate selection has wide-ranging consequences. In fact, social networks are of special interest. Not only are they domains within which intelligence functions, they can also be the basis for the evolution of new levels of intelligence.

4. Every intelligence is composed of a group or population of interacting agents that collectively express Λ(ΡΔ) functionality according to the integrality of their organization and dynamics. Plato provided three different characterizations of intelligence as interacting groups of intelligences. These are found in Theaetetus, Phaedrus, and the Republic.24 In Theaetetus, while discussing the difference between „having" knowledge and „possessing" knowledge, Socrates says, „Now let us make in each soul a sort of aviary of all kinds of birds; some in flocks separate from the others, some in small groups, and

Chicago Press; Bermudez J. L., Marcel, Α., and Eilan, N. (Eds.) (1995). The body and the self. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 22 Many have long argued for the importance of the social network. See, e.g., Cole, M. & Scribner, S. (1974). Culture & thought. New York: Wiley & Sons; Hutchins, E„ Op. cit.; Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Wertsch, J. V. (1985). Vygotsky and the social formation of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 23 Darwin, C. (1859/1968). The origin of species. London: Penguin Books. 24 All quotations are from J. M. Cooper (Ed.) (1997). Plato. Complete works, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

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others flying about singly here and there among the rest."25 Each bird is knowledge26 and the owner of the aviary possesses these birds but must make an effort to capture and therefore have any one of them. Socrates' point is that knowing is not a simple product of memory. Rather, it is the achievement of a kind of wholeness within the mind, and all component intelligences must actively come into positive relation for this to occur. In Phaedrus we find the well-known image of the two horses and the charioteer.27 Though the charioteer is „in charge", each horse constitutes an autonomous intelligence. Each, especially the „bad" one, has a mind of its own. Once again, wholeness is achieved by all component intelligences, horses and charioteer, coming into proper relation. The final example is the most extensive, and the most relevant to the present perspective. In the Republic, Plato characterizes intelligence as a functioning city. In the course of the dialogue, Socrates, in pursuit of the concept of justice, proposes a characterization of a perfect city as a model of a perfect person. He says. „... let's first find out what sort of thing justice is in a city and afterwards look for it in the individual, observing the ways in which the smaller is similar to the larger."28 What follows is an elaborate theoretical construction of human intelligence in terms of multitudes of functionally organized intelligent agents. Though there are important differences between the present perspective and Plato's city, the two also have much in common. The functionality of the city is a product of both its architecture, i. e., the functional organization of its citizens, and its operational dynamics. It is with respect to the latter that Socrates finds the meaning of justice, which is understood as a general quality of harmony among the population of interacting intelligences. This harmony is the foundation for the city's ability to operate as an integral unity. Similarly to Plato, Marvin Minsky defines the „society" of mind29 as a ... scheme in which each mind is made of many smaller processes. These we'll call agents. Each mental agent by itself can only do some simple thing that needs no mind or thought at all. Yet when we join these agents in societies - in certain very special ways - this leads to true intelligence.30 Minsky, as was Monod, is reticent to acknowledge the intelligence of agents. Within the present perspective, however, agents are intelligences and every intelligence is a society (or city) of agents.

25 Theaetetus, 197d. 26 „... by the birds we must understand pieces of knowledge", 197e. 27 „ . . . w e divided each soul in three... - two parts in the form of horses and the third in that of a charioteer", Phaedrus, 253d. 28 Republic, 368e-369a. 29 Minsky, M. (1986). The society of mind. New York: Simon & Schuster. 30 Ibid., pg. 17.

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The integrality of a society of agents relates to the wholeness or harmony within a population of agents and to the efficacy of a given level of intelligence. Wholeness or integrality is not given a priori, nor is it emergent. Wholeness comes about because, as both Plato and Minsky emphasize,31 the interacting population of intelligences takes on a particular functional organization and operates according to certain dynamic principles.

5. Integrality requires operational specificity, which results from the fusion of functional and spatiotemporal operators in the formation of the components of Λ(ΡΔ). Operational specificity means that the intelligence does something in particular that results in particular consequences. It derives from the stereospecificity of the Ρ and Δ components of the Λ(ΡΔ), though neither Ρ nor Δ individually create operational specificity. Ρ alone has no consequence, whereas Δ alone has no antecedent and thus no consistent context of operation. It is the combination Λ(ΡΔ) that creates specific consequences under specific conditions and thus possesses operational specificity. Both Ρ and Δ are productions,32 Ρ performing a stereospecific classification and Δ performing a stereospecific action. Both kinds of productions can be conceived as the fusion of functional and spatiotemporal operators. Functional operators perform the energy driven process, whether of a fixating or transforming nature, which constitutes the activity of a Ρ or a Δ production. For example, in a protein that binds another molecule, as in Cairns-Smith's example quoted earlier, those amino acids which actually perform the binding are the functional operators. There will be several such operators. All or some portion of the remainder of the protein will constitute the spatiotemporal (or in this case, simply spatial) operator. This configures the protein as a whole such that the functional operators can do their job and a specific molecule is bound. The protein in this example constitutes a Ρ production, since it performs a classification. Likewise, Δ productions are comprised of a spatial operator that gives configuration to some set of functional operators. The functional operators, by their type, determine whether a production is a Ρ or a Δ, but it is the spatiotemporal operators which are the basis for a production's stereospecificity. Lacking operational specificity, the activity of a Λ(ΡΔ) would be noisy, random and erratic. Natural selection33 would tend to eliminate such an „intelligence," though it may persist for awhile. If the Λ(ΡΔ) is operationally specific, however, though elimination remains a possibility,34 such an intelligence is now capable of being supported by

31 See also the relevant discussions in Pfeifer, R. & Scheier, C., Op. cit. 32 The concept of productions has been around for a while. The classic conception follows Newell, Α., Op. cit. My interpretation is simple. Productions are material entities that perform spatiotemporal operations having some consequence. 33 Understood as selection in each and all of the three domains. 34 Natural selection will generally eliminate intelligences suffering from inaccurate classifications, imprecise actions, or an inconsistent relation between them (see Footnote 17). It will be most selective, however, with respect to intelligences having high accuracy, high precision, and high re-

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natural selection. This is what makes operational specificity a critical aspect of integrality. Through specificity in its operation, an intelligence organizes its world into one that supports its existence. For all but primordial intelligence, both the functional and the spatiotemporal operators comprising an upper-level Ρ or Δ will, in fact, be Λ(ΡΔ) intelligences. In other words, the operation of an intelligence will define it as either a functional or a spatial operator. Given mixed populations of both types, they will combine to form higher-level Ρ and Δ productions. Thus, the evolution of levels of intelligence is driven, in part, by Λ(ΡΔ) intelligences differentiating into functional and spatiotemporal operators which then combine to form Pand Δ productions. These then combine to form Λ(ΡΔ) intelligences which differentiate into functional and spatiotemporal operators which then combine to form Pand Δ productions, etc., etc.

The realization of intelligence The five principles presented above address the general structure and process of intelligence. Obviously, a great deal more needs to be said concerning each one, and just as obviously, they only provide part of the full theory of intelligence. Nonetheless, they are sufficient to allow us to address two critical issues. The first concerns the realization of intelligence within the physical universe.35 The second concerns the realization of intelligence by other intelligences. The physical realization of intelligence relates first to the origination of intelligence within the purely physical. How is this possible and by what means does it come about? Second, realization concerns the material cause of intelligence. How is the ongoing operation of intelligence related to physical processes? Can intelligent processes be reduced to physical processes? If not, why not? The two aspects of realization are interrelated, since solving the problem of nascent realization helps clarify intelligence's material cause and vice versa. Generalizations of the previous problems also underlie the realization of intelligence by other intelligences. First, how do lower level intelligences realize higher level intelligences? Second, if lower level intelligences are material causes of a higher level, can the operation of the higher be reduced to the functions of the lower? Are conscious states reducible to mental states? Mental states to brain states? Brain states to cellular states?

gularity. Interestingly, such selection is not necessarily in favor of the intelligence. High accuracy, precision, and consistency can sometimes guarantee negative selection. 35 Kim, Op. cit..

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Physical realization Purely physical processes obey the laws of thermodynamics.36 Though intelligence is often discussed with respect to the second law37 of thermodynamics,38 the concern here is the first, which relates to energy conservation. By this law, physical processes neither create nor destroy energy. They only move it around or change its form. As a result, there is continuity in the flow of energy from initial conditions to subsequent events and consequences. This is the hallmark of physical processes. The physical realization of intelligence occurs where physical processes, which of themselves obey the first law, are combined in a manner that effectively neutralizes its constraints. We will say that primordial intelligence severs the flow of energy from conditions to consequences, subverting the law of energy conservation. It achieves this feat through 1) the arbitrary coupling of Ρ and Δ productions, and 2) the natural selection of Λ(ΡΔ) functions. The logical form of a generalized process has three components, an antecedent, a consequent, and a relational rule. For physical processes, the relational rule is based generally within the laws of thermodynamics (and specifically within the laws of the relevant form of energy). The rule of thermodynamics is energy continuity. The energy of the event flows continuously from antecedents to consequents. Let X be one kind of purely physical process and let Y be another. Further suppose the two are combined into a paired process, XY. XY is still expected to demonstrate energy conservation, and there should still be a continuous flow of energy throughout. As such, XY can never be an intelligent process. If there is energy continuity, there is necessity in the relation between X and Y. In this case, the action of XY is completely reducible to the combined actions of X and Y. Intelligence requires the subversion of the rule of energy continuity, though without violating any physical law. According to the present perspective, it does this by creating itself as an analogy of physical process, but without the constraints. Within this analogy, an active classification replaces the antecedent X, and a generated action replaces the consequent Y. Physical processes X and Y are replaced by productions Ρ and Δ. Imagine a variety of P's and A's existing within a population. Imagine further the coupling of these productions through the natural consequences of chance and circumstance. It was just argued that XY is not intelligent because its activity is completely explainable by physical principles. This is not true for ΡΔ. Ρ and Δ are not linked by the necessity of thermodynamic law. The theory contends that physical law is subverted by Ρ and Δ being arbitrarily linked. It is conceivable, however, that they could be linked by some other predetermined rule. Would this be sufficient? No, intelligence could not arise. A combination of

36 Fermi, E. (1936). Thermodynamics. New York: Dover Books. 37 The entropy of a process stays constant or increases unless work is done upon it. 38 For example, see Leff, H. S. & Rex, A. F. (Eds.) (1990). Maxwell's demon: Entropy, computing. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

information,

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predetermined rules is still a predetermined rule. The activity of the resulting ΡΔ would still be reducible to those rules. There would be no intelligence. Intelligence can not be predetermined. Its most essential nature is the resolution of uncertainty. It achieves this not by imposing a predetermined process, but by finding and clarifying the natural structure within the uncertainty. Such a process must be free to try anything. Hence the coupling of Ρ and Δ must be functionally, if not actually, arbitrary. Given that Ρ and Δ are arbitrarily coupled, the source of order in their relation must reside within the three-fold world of the ΡΔ. It is communicated through natural selection. The natural constraints in the three domains modulate the set of possible Λ(ΡΔ) functions. Surviving populations will possess an abstract logic of relation, a logic that is different from and independent of thermodynamic logic. Thus Λ(ΡΔ) is not reducible to its constituent physical processes and primordial intelligence achieves efficacy. These points also resolve the issue of material cause at its lowest level, that of physical realization. The same relations and factors operating in the original realization of intelligence apply to its ongoing realization. Hence all intelligence is fundamentally physical, being composed of matter and energy. Above this foundation, however, the intelligence's material cause consists of other intelligences. Here the problem concerns the realization of intelligence by intelligence.

Intelligent realization A menagerie of Λ(ΡΔ) variants will not develop further unless it is able to organize in a particular manner. How it should organize is a very difficult question. Using the current scheme, we can make the following points. First, natural selection dictates the logic of relation, given the set of possible A(PA)s. Second, development beyond this primordial form requires a memory. In this context, a memory is a system capable of copying, storing, duplicating, and generating A(PA)s. This memory is composed of Λ(ΡΔ) and is therefore intelligent. The operations of this memory and its consequences relative to the growth of intelligence are very complex. Third, the process of intelligent realization, that is the process of generating a new level of intelligence from a lower level set of intelligences, is a function of this memory. The realization of a higher level by a lower entails two aspects. First, just as primordial intelligence was operationally independent of physical law, so too an evolving higher level of intelligence must be operationally independent of the lower levels that form it. Second, the lower levels must be thoroughly capable of generating the higher level. This is the problem of competency, and it is central to the issue of intelligent realization. Suppose we have two levels of intelligent phenomena. For the sake of argument, we can label these Β for brain and M for mind, understanding that the process holds at all levels, not just mind-brain relations. We can say that M is realized by Β in the sense that we are confident that M-stuff is composed of B-stuff and nothing but B-stuff. Let LLC, for lower-level components, be a theory of level M using Β components. And let HLC,

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for higher-level components, be a description of level M using level M components. If we can use LLC to describe M, then HLC is superfluous. Pre-scientifically, the HLC is often our common-sense understanding of the world. Common sense theory is vague and often contradictory. Science, however, comes along and postulates an LLC which is far more precise and well-organized than the HLC. In this case the LLC is clearly superior to the HLC. It gives greater clarity and greater predictive power to our understanding.39 Thus plate tectonics is a better model than an immutable Earth. And evolution is a better theory than divine creation. Suppose, however, that the HLC is not a common sense theory, but is also scientific. For example, the HLC could be a psychological theory, whereas the LLC is a neurological one. The question is whether the HLC can be reduced to the LLC. If the HLC has a describable relation to the LLC, yet nonetheless cannot be strictly reduced to it, then the HLC possesses efficacy. A formal basis for efficacy can be established using concepts from algorithmic information theory.40 Think of the LLC as a collection of level Β algorithms or programs. Any explanation by the LLC is created by appropriately stringing together these programs. If the LLC is a good theory, then by using such collections, it can represent any intelligent phenomena of level M. Let us assume that LLC is a good model of its domain. According to algorithmic information theory, the algorithmic complexity of a program is its length, and the algorithmic information is the length of the shortest program that performs the given function. A program possessing a size equivalent to the algorithmic information is a minimal program. A program is constructed of a set of components and a set of rules for manipulating and combining different components. Then given any set of programs which all have identical input variables and identical output variables, the shortest program is the best candidate for being the minimal program. Algorithmic information theory says, however, that we cannot prove any particular program is minimal.41 It is simply our current best guess. Let us assume that since the LLC is a good model, the algorithms it uses for generating components and rules are minimal. It might be assumed that a program to generate higher-level phenomena constructed by combining these minimal programs would also be minimal. This is not the case, however.42 For example, let C = {0, 1} be a set of basic elements. For most possible strings generated using C, the generating program and the string itself have basically the same information. For some strings, however, it will be possible to define other generating

39 Brisson, L. & Meyerstein, F. W. (1995). Inventing the universe. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.. 40 Chaitin, G J. (1987a). Information randomness & incompleteness. Papers on algorithmic information theory. Singapore: World Scientific, and Chaitin, G J. (2005). Metamath! The quest for Ω. New York: Vintage Books. 41 Chaitin, (1987a), Op. cit. 42 See Cover, T. M. & Thomas, J. A. (1991). Elements of information theory. New York: Wiley & Sons, for an excellent course on probability and information theory.

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algorithms that are smaller than concatenation. For example, the string 11111111, can be generated either by program Pa = (11111111) or program Pb = (8x1). The second is obviously smaller, though it uses an expanded element set. We can incorporate into our LLC these minimal programs of larger-sized components. Let LLC+ be the theory utilizing this expanded set of components. If we compare LLC and LLC+, we will find that LLC+ is more likely to produce strings of higher complexity, and will do so using less information. First, because LLC+ utilizes elements that are already strings, LLC+ will be more likely to produce longer, more complex strings than LLC. And since the string components of LLC+ are generated by programs that are smaller than equivalent LLC programs, the algorithmic complexity of a given higher-level string is lower in LLC+ than in LLC. If we continue this process, it is apparent that LLC+ can bootstrap itself into LLC++ and so forth, finally achieving a theory containing high-level but minimal components. Call this final model LLC*. It will be capable of producing a level of complex functioning that would be virtually unattainable by the original LLC. And it will achieve this level using far less information (and therefore energy) than would LLC alone.43 According to the present perspective, if we can show that LLC* = HLC, then the fully minimized generative theory will be equivalent to a precise high level theory. The HLC is still in principle realized by the original LLC, but in fact, the minimal algorithms of LLC* are qualitatively beyond the LLC in terms of their scope and power. Thus in reality, the HLC is independent of the LLC. It has become efficacious as a next level of intelligence.

Some conclusions Life is underdetermined by the physical, brain is underdetermined by life, mind is underdetermined by brain, and consciousness is underdetermined by mind. The logical basis for the efficacy of successive levels of intelligence is the independence of the relational rules across levels. Nonetheless, consciousness is fully realized by mind, mind is fully realized by brain, brain is fully realized by life, and life is fully realized by the physical. Realization is possible because organized systems of minimal algorithms (which encode and generate productions) make the lower level competent to compose the higher level while preserving relational rule independence. In the truest sense, what determine life are the constraints of being a life. What determine brain are the constraints of being a brain. What determine mind are the constraints of being a mind. And what determine consciousness are the constraints of being a consciousness. Operational specificity allows a functioning Λ(ΡΔ) intelligence to be molded by environmental contingencies and furthermore, to find support and advantage within its three-fold world. 43 This is expertise.

AMBER Ο. CARPENTER

Embodying Intelligence Animals and Us in Plato's Timaeus

Intelligence,1 for Plato, does not require body. This I take to be fairly uncontroversial. But equally, intelligence can be embodied, or appear as a feature of bodies. Plato's perspective, particularly in the Timaeus, describes intelligence as something which - either metaphorically or literally - exists independently of bodies, but not of souls.2 These intelligent souls undergo something new upon becoming embodied, which provides opportunities for expressions of intelligence hitherto unavailable. While pure mind may exist unembodied, we have and see around us embodied intelligences, and these have a story of their own. In what follows, I shall be looking at this story. After considering intelligence in general as it relates to soul, I will be interested in what happens to intelligence when it becomes embodied. How is mind manifested physically, and how do physical constraints affect mind? I shall also be asking whether the answers to these questions vary according to the varying bodies there are, and whether these variations matter. Whether in Plato's living, intelligent universe everything that lives is also intelligent is a discussion that must be postponed to another occasion.3

1

2

3

Usually, but not always, nous. The cognitive success-word of choice is sometimes phronësis or epistëmë, and there are others. For an excellent study of Plato's rich and varied cognitive vocabulary, see Monique Dixsaut's Platon et la question de la pensée (Paris: Vrin. 2000). My focus in what follows will be largely on the later dialogues. So far as possible, I aim to remain agnostic about whether Plato ever changed his mind about these matters, while leaving room for supposing that at least some discussions across different dialogues can legitimately illuminate each other, and form a single view and set of motivations that might justly be described as .Platonic'. I pursue this discussion in „Embodying Intelligence?: Plant Life in Plato's Timeaus" (manuscript).

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I. Intelligence Intelligence for Plato is not a substance, in this sense: It is not capable of independent existence. 4 It is necessarily an attribute of soul - without soul, no intelligence. This was sometimes doubted by the later Platonist tradition. 5 So I bring forward a handful of relevant texts that seem to state the matter unambiguously: T 1 :6

A: „There could be no wisdom [sophia] and intelligence [νουν] without soul." (Philebus 30c9) B: „It is impossible for intelligence to be [or arise] without soul." ( ν ο υ ν δ' α ύ χ ω ρ ί ς ψ υ χ ή ς α δ ύ ν α τ ο ν π α ρ α γ ε ν ε σ θ α ι τω.) (Timaeus 30b3) C: „And if anyone should ever call that in which these two [νους ε π ι σ τ ή μ η τε, 37c2] arise, not soul but something else, what he says will be anything but true". (Timaeus 37c3-5) D: „But are we saying it has both those things in it [understanding (νουν) and life (ζωήν), 249a4], while denying that it has them in its soul? How else would it have them?" {Sophist 249a7-9) Why is this? Why should intellect, which is in other ways at least among the finest of existing things, require a soul to support it? This might seem like an odd question even to pose; for it may just seem obvious that intelligence is not the sort of thing capable of independent existence, and so requires some substance in which to inhere. Intelligence is a capacity, or faculty; and faculties or capacities must belong to something or another. But in a way, this is precisely the question: Why should intelligence be conceived as a faculty of something, rather than as a thing in its own right? In English, for example, we are happy to speak of,minds'; and, unphilosophically, this indicates a substantive, essentially intelligent thing. On the face if it, if we are getting into the business of adding substances to our ontology, it is unclear why ,being alive' should be more suited to reification into ,soul' than intelligent' is suited to become ,mind'. If objects apart

4

I leave to one side the thorny issue of whether ,capable of independent existence' is a Platonic criterion for ,substance'; but see Fine, .Separation' (recently republished in Fine, Plato on Knowledge and Forms. Oxford: Clarendon Press [2003], 252-300). With this I leave also the question, difficult for Plato, of whether nous is (an) ousia, in his sense o f , ousia '.

5

Including, more recently, by Stephen Menn in his robust defence of this ,independent substance' view of ν ο ϋ ς , Plato on God as Nous. (Journal of the History of Philosophy Monograph Series. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. 1995).

6

Translations of the Timaeus are generally modifications of Donald Zeyl's translation (Indianapolis: Hackett. 2000); Philebus translations follow Dorothea Frede (Indianapolis: Hackett. 1993); passages from the Sophist are taken, with occasional alteration, from Nicholas White's translation (Indianapolis: Hackett. 1993).

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from bodies are capable of independent existence, why should it be any odder to suppose that intelligence is one of these rather than - or perhaps in addition to - soul? Such a separation of intelligence from soul even has a certain Platonic pedigree. Plutarch distinguishes intellect from soul, suggesting intellect is capable of separate existence;7 and Plotinus later makes precisely this move when he distinguishes soul, and the sort of thinking proper to it (viz., διάνοια), from Intellect (νους). 8 Although there is some sense in which the exercise of true intellect can occasionally be ,ours', intellect proper, according to Plotinus, is not an attribute of soul, but rather something which the soul, through effort, can make use of or make contact with. So both ordinary speech, and later philosophers of a Platonistic bent - both the many and the wise - are comfortable with the notion that intelligence is something, a mind or an intellect, and is not simply a modification or power of something else.9 Thus, in insisting as he does that intelligence requires soul, Plato is making a choice - perhaps a philosophically motivated one. So it is legitimate to ask why it is that intelligence is, for Plato, an attribute. And there is a further question: Why, if intelligence must be an attribute of something or another, must it be an attribute of souls? Why not make it an attribute of bodies? Or posit some other entity - say ,mind', or consciousness', or ,us' - which can be the bearer of intelligence? Looking at this more specific question will, I think, illuminate the first question as well. For Plato's reasons for supposing intelligence is an attribute are inseparable from his reasons for supposing it must be soul of which intelligence is an attribute. Consider the surrounding context of the Sophist quote above (Sophist 248e7-249bl): T2: (Theaetetus speaks to the Visitor from Elea) EV: But for heaven's sake, are we going to be convinced that it's true that change, life, soul, and thought [φρόνησιν] are not present in that which

7

8

9

On which theme, see J. Dillon, , Plutarch and Separable Intellect' in Misticismo y Religiones Mistéricas en la Obra de Plutarco. (Acto de VII Simposio Español Sobre Plutarco). Edd. A. P. Jimenez & F. Casadésus. Madrid [2001] 35-44. See EnneadV.3 (49): „What then prevents pure intellect from being in soul? ... Nothing, we shall reply. But ought we to go on to say that it belongs to soul? No, we shall not say that it belongs to soul..." Intellect is separate (χωριστός). Of course, this simplifies the situation somewhat, for a Platonist might well hold that attributes' and properties - such as justice' and proportion' - are indeed separately existing entities. Menn's argument, for instance, is that ν ο υ ς is intelligence', and so a virtue, and so like justice' capable of existence independently of soul. This argument, however, surreptitiously relies on a tendentious claim about self-predication: that the Justice which exists eternally is a just thing, and likewise the ν ο ϋ ς that exists separately from soul is an intelligent thing. Fine's discussions of Reparation' and ,Immanence' in Plato are excellent for making clear what Plato did not have to mean by .exists independently'.

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ΤΗ: EV: ΤΗ: EV: TH: EV: ΤΗ:

wholly is, and that it neither lives nor thinks [φρονειν], but stays changeless, solemn, and holy, without intelligence [νούν]? If we did, sir, we'd be admitting something frightening. But are we going to say that it has intelligence [νούν] but doesn't have life [ζωήν]? Of course not. But are we saying that it has both those things in it while denying that it has them in its soul? How else would it have them? And are we saying that it has intelligence [νούν], life, and soul, but that it is at rest and completely changeless even though it is alive [έμψυχον]? All that seems to me completely unreasonable.

The aims of this much-contested passage concern more directly the question of whether change exists, really and properly exists. But we can avoid most of the controversies of interpretation, for the point we want is plainly stated: intelligence must be active.10 The priority is that whatever is intelligent be alive, in order that it be capable of doing something - viz. of thinking. To think is to do something. And doings - as opposed to mere events - require self-motion, or original motion that is not merely reactive, or an exchange of impulse between smaller parts. But capacity for this sort of motion just is what it is to be alive.11 And this, in turn, is synonymous with (or implies) having a soul.

II. Intelligent Souls So intelligence must be an attribute of souls because it is, or consists in, activity - not stasis or passivity; and to be active, one must be alive. And while intelligence cannot exist independently of soul, the souls to which the intelligence belongs - that is, intelligent souls - can exist independently. And this independently' here means, of course, independently of body; but also independently of any other parts or attributes' - that is to say, there can be something which is nothing but intelligent soul; it has no other parts or aspects.12 In fact, purely and exclusively intelligent is the primary way in which soul exists.

10 Compare Timaeus 36a-37d, where the world-soul's motion is its thinking. 11 Compare Phaedrus 245c6-9: „Every soul is immortal. That is because whatever is always in motion is immortal, while what moves and is moved by something else stops living when it stops moving. So it is only what moves itself that never desists from motion, since it does not leave off being itself." The centrality of non-mechanical motion, or ,self-motion', in ,being alive', and its relation to teleology - motivation by recognition of ,the good' - becomes acutely important regarding plant-life. 12 At least none that do not follow immediately - such as, e. g. knowing, thinking, reasoning, perhaps judging.

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In the Timaeus, ,primary' is indicated temporally: purely intelligent soul is the first created, and created by the most perfect creator; in Republic X, the suggestion is that intelligent soul is what is left when various unnatural accretions are shed (Republic X.611b8-612a6); 13 the Phaedo famously claims that all pleasure and pain belong properly to the body (Phaedo 80-85, esp. 84d), leaving little but intelligence to belong properly to the soul - intelligent, and only intelligent, is what soul really is; and while this is revised in the Philebus, this late dialogue still confirms the priority of intelligent soul, first by ascribing it to the gods (Philebus 33b6-7), and second by making all human experience dependent upon intelligence, while intellectual activity is not likewise dependent on less cognitive human experience. Except for the Timaeus, all of these contexts explicitly concern human souls. Our souls, at least, are primarily, truly, essentially intelligent souls, and purely intelligent souls. It may be that Plato thought soul was essentially intelligent in a stronger sense: namely, that all soul, qua soul is intelligent. An argument that might imply this is found in the Philebus. For now, however, we restrict our attention to those souls we know Plato took to be primarily intelligent. So we will begin our study here: While this is the primary state of soul, or at least of our souls, this is not the condition in which we actually find souls. Our experience with intelligent souls - at least, that experience which most of us can explicitly remember is with embodied intelligent souls. The question to begin with, then, is this: What happens when an intelligent soul finds itself embodied? How is its intelligence then modified and expressed?

III. Embodied intelligent souls 1 : Humans If we look only at the Timaeus, the consequences of embodiment for intelligent souls are pretty clear: two extra bits, called ,mortal', get added to the immortal intelligent soul created by the Demiurge (Timaeus 69c-70b). But we should be cautious about

13 „But to see the soul as it is in truth, we must not study it as it is maimed by its association with the body and other evils - which is what we were doing earlier - but as it is in its pure state, that's how we should study the soul, thoroughly and by means of logical reasoning ... [Like the sea-god, Glaucus] the soul, too, is in a similar condition when we study it, beset by many evils. That, Glaucon is why we have to look somewhere else in order to discover its true nature. To its philosophy, or love of wisdom. We must realize what it grasps and longs to have intercourse with, because it is akin to the divine and immortal and what always is, and we must realize what it would become if it followed this longing with its whole being, and if the resulting effort lifted it out of the sea in which it now dwells, and if the many stones and shells (those which have grown all over it in a wild, earthy, and stony profusion because it feasts at those so-called happy feastings on earth) were hammered off it. Then we'd see what its true nature is and be able to determine whether it has many parts or just one and whether or in what manner it is put together." (trans. Grube, rev. Reeve, in Cooper, ed. Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis: Hackett. 1997)

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taking this ,bolting on' of two distinct parts too literally. In fact, adding soul(-part) to soul(-part) might be altogether the wrong way to think of the relation between rational and appetitive soul. In spite of assigning the different functions of soul to different parts of the body, there must - as in the Republic - remain some sense in which humans have one soul, and not three. Holding to this thought may give us a way to model the tripartite soul, and so to understand soul as a whole. There are two ways in which we might consider the unity of this differentiated soul. First, the role of the intelligent part is to rule over, and be concerned with the whole. And this activity of concern, the process of considering wisely with respect to one another the various bodily and social demands and impulses in a person, makes these otherwise disparate inclinations into a unity. Such a notion of the unity of soul, familiar from the Republic, might safely be carried over into the Timaeus, which begins by so generously paraphrasing the Republic - especially since this sort of authority of reason is re-iterated in the Philebus.H Second, we might instead regard the resulting unity of a complex soul from another direction, from the perspective of the mechanisms by which the intelligent part of the soul exercises this governing power. All sensation,15 says Timaeus, arises via to phronimon - the intelligent part of the soul.16 Physical events occur in the body; some of these motions are communicated through the body, to the intelligent part, and from there to the soul as a whole. T3:

When even a minor disturbance affects that which is easily moved by nature, the disturbance is passed on in a chain reaction...until it reaches to phronimon (64b5) and reports the property that produced the reaction. (Timaeus 64b3-6)

So the multi-faceted embodied soul becomes a unity not only through the exercise of reason regarding the whole soul and animal, but also through bodily events affecting the soul, and hence reason, in becoming perception.17

14 See Philebus 63a-64a, where reason is granted the privilege of deciding which pleasures are suited to a good life. 15 Or .perception': the Greek α ΐ σ θ η σ ι ς does not distinguish between our .sensation' and .perception', nor does Plato. This, I take it, is not an oversight, but rather a substantial piece of theory. 16 This interpretation of to phronimon (τό φ ρ ό ν ι μ ο ν ) is contested: see Denis O'Brien's „Perception et intelligence dans le Timée de Platon". (Interpreting the Timaeus-Critias: Proceedings of the IV Symposium Platonicum. Edited by Tomás Calvo and Luc Brisson. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag. 1997). Doubt over the standard translation arises only when sensation is ascribed to plants (Timaeus 77b). In spite of objections raised, I still think the standard translation is the correct one (for reasons, see „Embodying Intelligence?: Plant Life"), and will use it here. 17 Luc Brisson's description, a variant of the same point, has sense perception as a .measuring operation' . „For Plato in the Timaeus, sense-perception is really a measuring operation as indicated by the frequent use of the word summetria...ultimately the capacity for a thing to be compared to something else, namely by way of measuring." (.Plato's Theory of Sense Perception in the TimaeusBoston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 13 [1999]: 147-176.)

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The moral psychology of the Philebus requires the same implication of cognition in perception and sensation. In a passage parallel to Timaeus 64b [T3], Socrates tells Protarchus that only those bodily motions that reach the soul cause sensation (aisthësis). T4:

You must realise that some of the various affections of the body are extinguished within the body before they reach the soul, leaving it unaffected. Others penetrate through both body and soul and provoke a kind of upheaval that is peculiar to each but also common to both of them. (Philebus 33d2-6)

To understand pleasure aright, we must grasp perception generally, and how this relates to memory.18 Perception not only provides material for cognition; it also takes its shape in the first place in a cognitive context. For to affect the soul is to become intelligible thus the imagined life devoid of all thought makes the sensations supposed to remain into something unrecognizable (Philebus 21b6-d4). This link between cognition and perception underwrites the claim that pleasures can be true and false, and indeed that the only thing that can go wrong with pleasures is that they should be false.19 Pleasures can be true and false because cognition is integral to determining their nature, and this is because cognition - the activity of the intellect - is an integral part in the process of any bodily affection becoming a sensory experience. All human experience involves intelligence, in some way or another. These complementary ways of regarding the unity of a complex, embodied soul are, however, misleading. For each suggests that we might still be thinking of separate souls or soul-parts growing into a unity through their interaction. But this will not do, most obviously for the lower types of soul. For in their case, there can be no existence independent of immortal, rational soul. For them to carry out their distinctive functions - in order for them to be anything at all - they must be communicating with intelligent soul. Sensation exists in virtue of intelligent soul. By contrast, while sensation essentially involves intelligence, mind is not essentially a percipient thing - for it does its own work perfectly well without having any bodily events to work with. It is in this way that we should understand the , addition of a sensible soul to an intelligent one. Rather than the association of two kinds of soul, we are better off thinking in terms of modifications of the only kind of soul there is. Percipient is something intelligent soul becomes in virtue of being in, or belonging to, a body. We might put this another way: sensory experience is what happens when intelligent soul is put into a body. New capacities and possibilities emerge in virtue of being causally affected by a body of a certain sort.

18 „It seems we have first to determine what kind of thing memory is; in fact I am afraid we will have to determine the nature of perception even before that of memory." (Philebus 33c8-10) Memory in the Philebus belongs explicitly to the class of cognitive success-terms: „Not these, but knowing, understanding and remembering [τό φ ρ ο ν ε ί ν και το ν ο ε ί ν κ α ι μ ε μ ν ή σ θ α ι ] , and what belongs to them, right judgement and true calculations, are better ..." (Philebus l l b 6 - c l ) 19 Philebus 36c ff., esp. 36c-42c; see 40e8-9 for the claim that pleasures are bad only by being false.

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One might object that allowing intelligent soul to be affected by embodiment makes eternal souls changeable, and so not eternal after all. But whatever Plato thinks ,eternal' implies, it is not total unchangingness. 20 For, in the Timaeus, he emphasizes the way that intelligence is affected by sensory experience: T5:

And they went on to invest this body - into and out of which things were to flow - with the orbits of the immortal soul. These orbits, now bound within a mighty river, neither mastered that river nor were mastered by it, but tossed it violently and were violently tossed by it... All these disturbances [ π α θ ή μ α τ α ] are no doubt the reason why even today and not only at the beginning, whenever a soul is bound within a mortal body, it at first lacks intelligence [άνους]. But as the stream that brings growth and nourishment diminishes and the soul's orbits regain their composure ... their revolutions are set straight, to conform to the configuration each of the circles takes in its natural course. They then correctly identify what is the same and what is different, and render intelligent [ ε μ φ ρ ο ν α ] the person who possesses them. {Timaeus 43a3-7,44a7-b7)

So intelligent soul becoming attached to mortal soul is less metaphorically a matter of intelligent soul acquiring additional capacities in virtue of its context, or latent capacities of intelligence being brought out by embodiment. The immortal, rational soul itself becomes, in part, mortal and percipient. T6:

Once the souls were of necessity implanted in bodies, and these bodies had things coming to them and leaving them, the first innate capacity they would of necessity come to have would be sense perception, which arises out of forceful disturbances. This they would all have. The second would be love, mingled with pleasure and pain. And they would come to have fear and spiritedness as well, plus whatever goes with having these emotions, as well as their natural opposites. (Timaeus 42a4-b2)

The mortal soul fashioned by the lesser gods is thus not distinguished from immortal soul by the fact that it is affectable or affected, while immortal soul is sublimely impassive. ,Mortal soul' cannot mean merely ,that part of the soul affected by the fact that it is in a body'; for it is intelligent, immortal soul that is primarily affected by embodiment. Nor does ,mortal' indicate that some part of the soul dies·, for the capacity to become percipient remains in every soul, whether or not it is currently embodied. ,Mortal' must then mean not,dying', but rather ,concerned with the dying bit': it is that aspect or function of soul that we have in virtue of involvement with mortal stuff, viz.,

20 See Gail Fine's discussion in .Immanence' (Plato on Knowledge implied by Forms' eternality.

and Forms, 301-349) on what is

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in virtue of having a body. Being embodied, immortal soul comes to have capacities relevant to being in the sort of world in which things die, and are born.21 Embodied rational soul is one in which inessential features of immortal soul are made manifest in virtue of its presence in body. Mortal soul is, we might say, one way immortal soul manifests itself. The lesson of animals on this point is instructive.

IV. Embodied intelligent souls 2: Non-human animals The Timaeus tells a tale of degenerative creation. The finest possible intelligent agency looks to the finest of intelligible things, in order to instantiate it as well as possible in the recalcitrant materials available. This intelligence does this by creating a perfect soul·, for [T7] „in all the realm of visible nature, nothing without intelligence ( ά ν ό η τ ο ν τού ν ο υ ν , 30b2) is ... superior to anything with it" (Timaeus 30bl-3), and as we have seen soul is the bearer of intelligence. But anything created by a perfect intelligence could only be perfect; so the Demiurge engages other, created and hence dependently good intelligences (the lesser gods) to complete the body of the world-soul by creating mortals. To these demi-gods, then, also falls the task of creating further psychic capacities suited to, and required by an embodied intelligence, in virtue of its embodiedness (see Timaeus 40b-42e). By embodying immortal souls, the lesser gods create human beings, who in their turn create all the other animals, albeit inadvertently - for the degree and kind of moral imperfection or degradation of each living human being dictates a reincarnation in the sort of body suited to what his degenerate soul, during his human lifetime, has become. Just as the creative activity of the lesser gods is a lesser imitation of the Demiurge's original creative activity,22 so too this human creation of the animals is a fainter imitation still of the ideal creative activity. There are two obvious ways in which the human creation of the animal world is less perfect than the sort of creation the Demiurge modeled in creating the cosmos: (1) Although in some sense still aiming at the good, human beings are desperately confused about what this is; the Demiurge has a clear view of it. (2) Because this creation of animals is inadvertent, it does not come from wisdom, intelligence, or consideration of ideal exemplars. Human creators of animals

21 Such an interpretation may bring the human soul of the Timaeus closer to that in the Phaedo presumably a virtue in an account of Plato's psychology. Christopher Shields offers further and detailed accounts of specific respects in which the apparently multi-partite soul of, e. g., the Republic is compatible with the simple souls of the Phaedo („Simple Souls" in Essays on Plato's Psychology, edited by Ellen Wagner. Lanham, Boulder, New York and Oxford: Lexington Books. 2001: 137-156; see especially page 149). 22 „Imitate the power I used in causing you to be." (41c6); „Now that they had received the immortal principle of the mortal living thing, they began to imitate the craftsman who had made them." (42e7-9)

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have neither the good, nor a good horse (or cow or bird) in view when engaging in the activity that amounts to the creation of an animal soul. But more interesting to note is the way in which the human creation of the animal world does resemble the Demiurge's activity: it is still from and in virtue of who they are that human creations have the character they have. The Demiurge, being good in himself, passes that goodness on to his creations (Timaeus 30a); so similarly, a human being passes on his characteristics to his creation. T8:

If even then [after being re-born as a woman] he still could not refrain from wickedness, he would be changed once again, this time into some wild animal that resembled the wicked character he had acquired. (Timaeus 42c2-4)

Thus later, Timaeus tells us that a frivolous human being, being frivolous (or because he is frivolous), creates another frivolous being - a bird, say. T9:

As for birds ... they descended from innocent but simpleminded men, men who studied the heavenly bodies but in their naïveté believed that the most reliable proofs concerning them could be based upon visual observation. (Timaeus 91d9-e3)

The mechanisms for this transference of characteristics may differ, for a human being is not separate from his creation. 23 A human being creates by becoming - creates a bird by becoming a bird, creates a lion by becoming a lion, and so on. That is, it is numerically the same soul that occupies the new, animal body.24 Is it also qualitatively the same soul? We might think that a soul moving from one body to another - indeed, from one type of body to another kind of body altogether undergoes some radical transformation. Is the formerly human soul, now in a lion body, say, the same in kind as it was before, with the same qualities or characteristics? From the foregoing discussion, the answer to this should already be clear, if surprising, with profound implications for how we think of non-human animals and ourselves. The soul migrating between two different kinds of body must have the same qualities before and after its migration; for the qualities came first, and so determined the second body. Timaeus goes into some detail emphasizing this.

23 Interpreters differ on whether the Demiurge is at one with his creation. 24 I take it that all animals are generated in the same way, and that human degeneration is not responsible merely for proto-type animals, which then generate others of their kind without this human ,donation'. This is for two reasons: first, the moral force of Timaean cosmology is lost if the current human beings no longer risk degeneration into animal bodies in future; second, if prototype animals generate others without those others also being incarnations of previously (if not immediately previously) human souls, then the children would be something markedly different in kind from their parents.

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TIO: Land animals in the wild, moreover, came from men who had no use for philosophy and who made no study of the universe whatsoever, because they no longer made use of the revolutions in their heads but instead followed the lead of the parts of the soul that reside in the chest. As a consequence of these way of theirs, they carried their forelimbs and their heads dragging towards the ground, like towards like. (Timaeus 91e4-9) The frivolity in the human soul was what required the home of a body suited to a frivolous life; the lust or avarice in a human soul was what called forth the need for a body more suited to a lustful, avaricious life; and so on. So the particular qualities of an individual animal soul - lust or cowardice or ignorance - must be the very same as the qualities of soul of the human that the animal is descended from. This is true not just of moral qualities, which a soul could - at least in principle gain or lose. For purely logical reasons, the lesser animal, no matter how lowly, must have intelligent soul - the very same intelligent soul as the human being from whom it is descended. For intelligent soul is, as such, immortal. It cannot be destroyed, and so must survive any changes in lifestyle or living body.25 And it cannot go anywhere else, if it is to be this soul which is reincarnated. Immortal intelligence is the principle of identity in souls: This soul is the very same soul that it is, whatever else may happen to it and whatever other qualities and capacities it may acquire, just in case it is or hosts just this particular intelligence. The more clearly we see this, the more sharply we are pressed to wonder what the difference is between animals and us. Given that they and we are both embodied intelligences in some sense, what accounts for the fact that we are the ,rational animal' and they are not? Or, what distinguishes the way in which animals are ,rational' from the way in which we are? The short answer and, I shall argue, the (very nearly) correct answer, is (Al) absolutely nothing. But seeing why and exploring the consequences reveals some remarkable aspects of Plato's conception of the natural world, our place in it, and relation to others. The best way to do this is to try some alternative answers to what makes ,us' different from ,them'. The tempting answer (A2): We are actively intelligent; we have an intelligence to call our own, while animals merely express intelligence through being what they are. That is, how an animal is organized, and how it is constructed to behave shows evidence of an intelligence - an intelligent creator perhaps, or an intelligence at work throughout Nature - but not an intelligence which belongs specifically to that animal and no other. We might be tempted to suppose that animals merely express an intelligence not their own, through their behaviour and constitution, while we by contrast 25 See Timaeus 43d-e; e. g., regarding the circles of the Same and the Different, however „mutilated and disfigured" they become, „cannot be completely undone except by the one who had bound them together." Stephen Menn offers the opposite view, in Plato on God as Nous, esp. pp. 53-57; it is difficult to see, on his view, why souls originally having intelligence and implanted into human bodies should be reborn at all, or in what sense it is ,the same' soul.

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actively reflect on, and so shape and govern our own intelligent activities. Animals on this view would be intelligible things, but intelligent themselves merely by playing a function role within an intelligent whole. Now, there might be a place in Plato's universe for such minimal, functionallydefined intelligence'; the whole body of the cosmos might be alive in such a way. But this is not what Plato's animals are. Animals, in the Timaeus, each carry within them a distinct immortal soul, distinct in particular from the world-soul. This is because they are descended from us, carrying with them the very same active intelligence that was originally made human. Indeed, it is the condition of that intelligence - not its presence or absence - that determines which sort of body it will come to inhabit. Notice how the physical degeneration between animals (continued from Τ10, above) is marked specifically by a decline in the quality of their intelligence: deficient engagement with philosophy (91e4) and natural explanation (9lei-3, e4) first, and now ignorance and stupidity: Til:

The god placed a greater number of supports under the more mindless beings, so that they might be drawn more closely to the ground. As for the most mindless of these animals, the ones whose entire bodies stretch out completely along the ground, the gods made them without feet, crawling along the ground, there being no need of feet anymore. The fourth kind of animal, the kind that lives in water, came from those men who were without question the most stupid and ignorant of all. (Timaeus 92a3-b2) 26

And it is because of the persistence of intelligence, no matter how degraded, that the telos of animals is the very same as ours: to restore the proper circling of rational activity and thus ultimately to return the soul to its native star. T12:

... And he would have no rest from these toilsome transformations until he had dragged that massive accretion of fire-water-air-earth into conformity with the revolution of the same and uniform within him, and so subdued that turbulent, irrational mass by means of reason. This would return him to his original condition of excellence [ π ρ ώ τ η ς κ α ι α ρ ί σ τ η ς α φ ί κ ο ι τ ο είδος εξεως]. (Timaeus 42b5-d2)

Animals, at least animal souls, can in principle become better than they are. And this ,becoming better' is nothing other than re-ordering the circles of the Same and Different which constitute the correct operation of nous. Conversely, they can also become worse; and this would be a matter of further disorder, or more entrenched disorder, in the motion of the circles of the Same and Different, induced by the assault on rational soul by sensation, appetites and desires originating in the other, mortal parts of the soul. That is, improvement and corruption consist in the very same thing, for humans and other

26 αφροσιν, 92a4; άφρονεστάτοις, 92a5; άνοητοτάτων, 92bl-2.

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animals alike. And likewise, the proper aim or end of every animal, no matter how lowly, is exactly the same as ours: viz., to restore intelligent soul to its original, uncorrupted state, and so allow the rational soul to return to its native star. It is the very same star that is native to, or the proper aim of, a given human being and the animal he becomes. Psychically (or psychologically), in both character and intellect, animals are identical to confused, ignorant human beings: the very same circles of Same and Different are running amok in both cases, just as when humans are young and overwhelmed by sensory input or influences. In animals, just as in most humans, the rational part of the soul is at the mercy of the less rational parts of soul, so that animals are irrational in the truest sense of the word: they have rationality, but they consistently fail to follow it; it is, if it operates at all, a slave to the passions. Focusing thus on the fact that animals and humans have, in all respects, the same souls, has the advantage of explaining Aristotle's complaint, in de Anima 1.1, [T13] that „as things are, people who speak and inquire about the soul seem to study the human soul only" (402b3-5). Since animals, and even plants, are granted souls in the Timaeus, this complaint seems misplaced - and so Alexander's comment that Aristotle's target here is indeed Plato, and in fact the Timaeus itself, has been disputed. 27 But the souls that animals are granted in the Timaeus are clearly nothing other than human souls; and this is likely to occasion Aristotle's frustration that animal souls as such have not been investigated - because, as we have seen, the Timaeus does not even recognize there is such a thing. Since all animal souls of all sorts are descended from human beings, everything alive under the sun is either a plant, or a fallen star. If the nature of reason and virtue is identical in humans and other animals, then perhaps (A3) the difference between animals and us is really just one of body. Ours are shaped like this; and theirs are shaped like that (pl.). In particular, setting aside all the different animal body-shapes that make for various modes of living, humans - but not other animals - have bodies in which the circles of the Same and the Different might possibly return to their proper, uncorrupted state. Such improvement is, at least, phy-

27 By R. D. Hicks (Aristotle's de Anima, with translation, introduction and notes. Cambridge: CUP [1907], 184) T14: [A] „Obviously the solution of the present problem presupposes a comparative study of all species of animals and (cf. 41 lb27 sq.) plants. For A.'s own procedure the precept given 414b32 is ώστε κ α θ ' έ κ α σ τ ο ν ζητητέον, τις έκαστου ψυχή, οίον τις φ υ τ ο ύ και τις ά ν θ ρ ω π ο υ ή θηρίου. Alex. Aphr. apud Philop. 36.13 and Simpl. 12.31 sqq. think the criticism is aimed at Plato, especially in the Timaeus, where, however, the soul even of the plant is distinctly recognised (77a, b), and everything which partakes of life is declared to be a ζ ω ο ν and to have some sort of soul." And by W. D. Ross (Aristotle: de Anima. Oxford: Clarendon [1961], 167) T14: [Β] ,,(νϋν ... έπισκοπεϊν; the reference may be, as Alex. ap. Philop. 36.15 and Simpl. 12.31 think, to the Timaeus. But in fact Plato takes account of the lower animals (Timaeus 91d6-92c9), and of plants (76e7-77c5) and the reference is more probably to other members of the Academy." [The Philoponus text referred to, On Aristotle's ,de Anima', 36.13-16, can now be found translated by Philip J. van der Eijk (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2005), p. 52]

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sically possible. Animals, on the other hand, have bodies shaped in such a way that those circles cannot, physically cannot, ever right themselves. For example, in land animals [T15] „the tops of their heads became elongated and took all sorts of shapes, depending on the particular way the revolutions were squeezed together from lack of use" (Timaeus 91e9-92a2). Once a skull is elongated, it would seem to be impossible for the intellect housed in that skull to return to its normal activity. If this is right, and the difference between animals and us is that, while we both have rationality and behave irrationally, only humans are at least physically capable of living according to reason. Recall that for a horse, say, ,to be good' is exactly the same thing as for a human - it is to restore the natural state of rational soul; but now the only difference remaining is this: that no matter what the horse does, it can only do this badly. No credit is given to the horse for being a good horse; for, a ,good horse' might be one that serves our human purposes well, or it might be one that grazes as and when it should, runs as and when it should. But neither the human-carrying nor the grazing will restore the circles of the Same and Different in the horse's misshapen skull; and only this is the true aim of its soul. Horses have disordered souls, we might think, just because they are horses, in horsey bodies; and so too with birds, snakes and the rest. 28 The type of body the soul has been born into makes it impossible for that soul to recover its original state. But then, if the difference between ,them' and ,us' is that they are absolutely incapable of attaining their natural end, while we are not, this would make a mockery of the suggestion that there could be any return to the heavens once a human soul has fallen among animals (e. g. T12, above). Supposedly souls fallen among animals have some chance at least - it is not outright impossible - of improving the state of their souls, where this means restoring the reasoning apparatus to a state no longer suited to an animal body. If Timaean cosmology is not to be just a gloomy tale of inexorable decline, then we must suppose Timaeus means it when he suggests it is at least possible for fallen souls to recover themselves. Thinking of the good and bad horses of the Phaedrus (246a256e) gives us an intuitive picture of what it might mean for an animal to behave more or less rationally.29 And it is, after all, not inconceivable that the ,circles of the Same and Different' might come to move more regularly within the irregular space allowed them by an elongated skull.

28 Is it all animals that have misshapen skulls, or only some? Do some, like birds perhaps, have skulls that are not misshapen in such a way that the circles can never run true? Plato does not suggest it; but in the case of other animals - snakes and fish - he gives other reasons why the body most suited to expressing the sort of disorder of soul it has inherited will interfere with the restoration of rationality. 29 See also the Republic's dogs, Book II, 375a-376c. In both of these cases, Plato is using animals to model characteristics of the human soul. But there is no reason why we should not take that to be revealing to us something of what he thinks of animal lives.

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If this is right, then animals should not differ from us by being physically incapable from attaining their proper goal. But there is a closely related way in which we might try to capture the difference. (A4) Moral responsibility·, they cannot be; we can. Perhaps the significant difference between humans and other animals is a difference in moral responsibility, rather than physical possibility. Our bodies, unlike theirs, actually conduce to rational activity; animal bodies merely do not rule out some accomplishment in this direction. 30 Because we are physically endowed in such a way as to readily rectify the disordered activity of rational soul, we are obliged or required to do so. For us to have disorder in the rational part of our soul is a failing in a way it would not be meaningful to say of a horse or snake. For ,could have done otherwise' is a much more real possibility for us than for them. If we stray from perfect reason, it is contrary, we might think, to the natural opportunities provided by bodies such as our own; whereas, if they succeed in becoming more rational, this improvement is contrary to the physical body with which they have been equipped. For us, vice is a choice; for them, it is simply what they were born to. The problem with cutting the difference this way is that, while it is true that animals cannot be responsible for choosing their continued degraded state, neither can we. We do not choose our bodies any more than they do; and for us, just as for them, most moral failings are grounded, in the Timaeus, in biological or physical flaws. Take lust, for example: Τ16: But the truth about sexual overindulgence is that it is a disease of the soul caused primarily by the condition of a single stuff which, due to the porousness of the bones, flows within the body and renders it moist. (Timaeus 86d3-5) A similar physical basis is described for other diseases of the soul: acid and phlegm and bile cause recklessness, cowardice and stupidity.31

30 About human bodies, Thomas Johansen writes, „By showing how the body is organized so as to maximize rational order we also see that the body may cooperate with reason and need not present an obstacle to rational life. Rather.. .the body itself can be seen as an instance of good order (kosmos) ... the natural tendency of the soul and the body is towards rational order" (Plato's Natural Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004. Chapter 1 : What is the Timaeus-Critias About?, p. 19). He does not draw any contrast between human and other animal bodies in this regard. 31 T17: When any of a man's acid and briny phlegms or any bitter and bilious humours wander up and down his body without finding a vent to the outside and remain pent up inside, they mix the vapour that they give off with the motion of the soul and so are confounded with it. So they produce all sorts of diseases of the soul, some more intense and some more frequent than others. And as they move to the three regions of the soul, each of them produces a multitude of varieties of bad temper and melancholy in the region it attacks, as well as of recklessness and cowardice, not to mention forgetfulness and stupidity. (Timaeus 86e6-87a7)

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These physical flaws are not ,chosen', and we have no control over them. We are simply born with them, just as the horse is born with an elongated head. The runny marrow that leads to vice may not belong to us in virtue of the kind of animal we are; but it belongs to whatever soul has the misfortune to be tied to such a body, without his wanting it, choosing it, or being able to escape from it. Even the original bodies must have had some such flaws, if souls were to become corrupted and thus to create the rest of the animal world. But, we might object, this style of accounting for vice only betrays Timaeus' naturalistic tendencies. There are other, non-physical, sources of moral error and improvement. And indeed even the Timaeus, concerned as it is with naturalist explanations, does not claim that all moral failings come from physical flaws; Timaeus explicitly mentions a second source of moral error: culture. [T18] „A man becomes evil, rather, as a result of one or another corrupt condition of his body and an uneducated upbringing" {Timaeus 86el-3). But if choice is what is at issue, this will not help; for we do not choose our upbringing, either. And so it is unsurprising to find Timaeus repeating his own version of the Socratic dictum that no one does wrong willingly. Timaeus's focus on the physical factors causing bad behaviour is an elaboration, from a particular perspective, of the old Socratic denial of akrasia. T19: [A] And indeed, just about every type of succumbing to pleasure is talked about as something reproachable, as though the evils are willfully done. But it is not right to reproach people for them, for no one is willfully evil. A man becomes evil, rather, as a result of one or another corrupt condition of his body and an uneducated upbringing. No one who incurs these pernicious conditions would will to have them. (Timaeus 86d5-e4) [B] that is how all of us who are bad come to be that way - the products of two causes both entirely beyond our control. It is the begetters more than the begotten, that bear the blame for all this. (Timaeus 87b4-6) We do not choose either our upbringing or our bodies; yet these are the sources of all moral failings. If we are to be held accountable at all, the ground of accountability cannot be ,choice' or that some action or character trait was ,up to us'. 32 Notice how

32 This may mean that the Myth of Er from Republic X is not carrying over into the Timaeus - for according to Er, „Your guardian spirit" and your life „will not be assigned to you, you will choose him...The responsibility is his who makes the choice, the god has none" (617e 1, 4-5). On the other hand, Er's tale maintains that „The arrangement of the soul was not included" in the sample lives to be chosen between, „because the soul is inevitably altered by the different lives it chooses" (618b2-4) - that is, as Timaeus also says, how vicious or virtuous one is depends upon one's life, upbringing and circumstances (compare 618el-2: „He will call worse that [life] which leads to being more unjust, better that which leads it to being more just"). The chooser finds different lives attractive according to his current character. J η his folly and greed he chose [a tyrant's life] without a careful look" (619b7-8); but this folly and greed has likewise been determined by a

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Timaeus says it is a mistake to reproach wrong-doers (T19[A]). In this way, we are in exactly the same position as the naughty horses - we acquire bad souls suitable to a badness which we did not, and would not choose, and which we can do nothing about. For the uneducated person's lack of education consists precisely in his lack of tools for recognizing and remedying his ignorance; and the physical flaws grounding vice are not the sort that can be fixed. This is why we should not blame wrong-doers. In both cases, it is enough that we are bad, for the appropriately bad consequences to follow. Responsibility either is radically re-understood, or else drops out of the picture entirely. If there remains any basis for a meaningful difference between us and animals, it will not be found in whether or not we can be responsible for our actions, or what this responsibility amounts to; it will not rest on whether it is within our power to become better than we are. Any meaningful difference can only consist in the modes through which moral degradation and improvement might take place, the sorts of corruptions to which we are vulnerable. (A5) For we, but not horses and snakes and starfish, can be corrupted by our upbringing or improved by it. Humans have culture, and language with which to learn and to teach one another. And while it is not in my power to determine what sort of culture I am born into; nor is it in my power to determine whether I have a body which interferes fatally with responding appropriately to good influences and avoiding bad ones; still this mode of the inevitable corruption or improvement is one not available to animals. Timaeus says, in passing, that even though this badness is not our fault, one must [T20] „make every possible effort to flee from badness, whether with the help of one's upbringing, or the pursuits of studies one undertakes, and seize the opposite. But that is the subject for another speech." (Timaeus 87b8-10). Indeed. But we have already seen that it is mere luck whether one has resources from one's upbringing to overcome societal corruptions; and it will likewise be a matter of temperament - as these is constituted physically, and shaped socially - whether or not one can engage in serious study, or even be moved by Timaeus' exhortations. It is all very well for Timaeus to say we should ,make every possible effort'; but it is difficult to see what this other speech could say that turned up anything that was in our power to do or avoid. We have language, and so culture, with which to learn and teach one another, with which to corrupt and harm one another; it is out of our power which of these we do, and which we respond to. 33

person's previous life and after-life - „It was pitiful, ridiculous, and surprising. For the most part their choice depended upon the character of their previous life" (620al-3). 33 Call this the paradox of Socratic exhortation. We must be encouraged, and encourage each other, to follow virtue and eschew vice; but whether these exhortations move us is out of our hands. Those hear Socrates' call best who need it least; and he (and we) engage in exhortation knowing this. This marginalisation of self-determination or will is not, I think, due to any inordinate emphasis placed here on physical explanation. What explanation could there be for why some people

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The upshot of this exploration is to return us to ( A l ) : there is in principle no real difference between us and other animals; any remaining difference lies only in the particularities of practice. 34 One might, reflecting on this, come then to take seriously the vegetarianism practiced in the City of Pigs {Republic II. 372-373). In the truly happy city, the one that is healthy and not ,feverish', w e would drink wine and eat barley cakes and figs, play with our (not too numerous) children (Republic 2 7 5 a 5 - c l ) , and w e would no doubt engage in philosophical discussions in our spare time 35 - but w e would not eat animals. 36 Socrates means it, and Plato does think a truly temperate life, led by understanding of one's place in the universe, would not include eating animals. 37 This is partly because grazing animals require more land, which can only be got by taking it from our neighbours (373d7-10). But the Timaean cosmos suggests another reason: the perfectly happy citizens will not eat animals because their correct understanding of the cosmos involves a recognition of animals as embarked on the very same moral journey as any human being.

Works cited: Brisson, Luc. „Myths in Plato's Ethics" in Plato Ethicus: Ethics is Life, M. Migliori and L. M. Napolitano Valditar, eds. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag. 2004. Brisson, Luc. ,Plato's Theory of Sense Perception in the Timaeus', Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 13 (1999), 147-176.

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respond to improving words, while others do not; why some people respond to flattery, and others do not? Although for a recent suggestion, from another context, that this last difference may be the one that makes all the difference, see Matthew Cobb's review of recent work in evolutionary psychology („Moral Mammals". Times Literary Supplement, No. 5430. 27 April 2007: 12-13). He concludes that „A final facet of this problem, which anchors the real differences that exist between ourselves and other animals, is that morality is also consciously, deliberately taught by humans, above all to children. This is one particular aspect of our unique teaching behaviour: unlike every other animal, as far as we know, humans teach." Consider the Statesman's observation that philosophical discourse makes the difference between a worthwhile and a worthless orderly society. (Pol. 272b-d) Notice that when the true (372e6) and ,healthy' city (372e7; 373b3) is enlarged into a luxurious and feverish one (372e3, e8) - the one the Republic is devoted to describing - it is husbandry which appears as the first of the unnecessary professions (737b5): „There was no need for [swineherds] in our original state, but we shall want them now; and a great quantity of sheep and cattle too, if people are going to live on meat" (373c5-8). Notice also that in the Timaeus plants are introduced into specifically for the nourishment of other living things (Timaeus 77al-6) - as if, with animals alone, nourishment had not yet been provided. Agreeing to undertake the task of describing the luxurious city, Socrates still prefers the first, simpler society: „It seems to me that the one that we described before is the true city, the healthy one" (372e6-7).

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Carone, Gabriela Roxana. ,The Ethical Function of Astronomy in Plato's Timaeus'. Interpreting the Timaeus-Critias: Proceedings of the IV Symposium Platonicum. Edited by Tomás Calvo and Luc Brisson. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag. 1997. Carone, Gabriela Roxana. Plato 's Cosmology and Its Ethical Dimensions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2005. Cobb, Matthew. „Moral Mammals". Times Literary Supplement, No. 5430. 27 April 2005: 12-13. Dillon, John. ,Plutarch and Separable Intellect' in Misticismo y Religiones Mistéricas en la Obra de Plutarco. (Acto de VII Simposio Español Sobre Plutarco). Edd. A. P. Jimenez & F. Casadésus. Madrid. 2001: 35-44. Dixsaut, Monique. Platon et la question de la pensée. Paris: Vrin. 2000. Fine, Gail. ,Immanence', Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 4 (1986), 71-97. Reprinted in Fine, Plato on Knowledge and Forms. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2003: 301-325. Fine, Gail. .Separation', Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 2 (1984), 31-87. Reprinted in Fine, Plato on Knowledge and Forms. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2003: 252-300. Hicks, R. D. Aristotle's de Anima, with translation, introduction and notes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1907. Johanson, Thomas. ,Body, Soul, and Tripartition in Plato's Timaeus'. Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 16 (2000), 87-111. Menn, Stephen. Plato on God as Nous. Journal of the History of Philosophy Monograph Series. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. 1995. O'Brien, Denis. „Perception et intelligence dans le Timée de Platon". Interpreting the Timaeus-Critias: Proceedings of the IV Symposium Platonicum. Edited by Tomás Calvo and Luc Brisson. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag. 1997. Philoponus. On Aristotle's ,de Anima'. Translated by Philip J. van der Eijk. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2005. Plotinus. Ennead V.3. Ross, W. D. ed. Aristotle: de Anima. Oxford: Clarendon. 1961. Shields, Christopher. „Simple Souls" in Essays on Plato's Psychology, edited by Ellen Wagner. Lanham, Boulder, New York and Oxford: Lexington Books. 2001: 137-156.

BYRON KALDIS

The Question of Platonic Division and Modern Epistemology*

Π ο λ ύ δέ μάΛιστα και πρώτον την μ έ θ ο δ ο ν α ύ τ ή ν τ ι μ ά ν τού κατ' είδη δ υ ν α τ ό ν είναι διαιρεϊν Statesman 286d8-el ΑΛΛά μην τό γ ε διαλεκτικόν ούκ άΛΛω δ ώ σ ε ι ς . . . π λ η ν τώ κ α θ α ρ ώ ς τε και δικαίως φιΛοσοφούντι Sophist 253e4-5 Κατ' είδη δ ύ ν α σ θ α ι διατέμνειν κατ' ά ρ θ ρ α ή π έ φ υ κ ε ν Phaedrus 265e 1-2 „The uniformity of nature we marvel at or the unreliability we protest belongs to a world of our own making ... [T]wo worlds contain just the same classes sorted differently into relevant and irrelevant kinds" Goodman (1978, 10) ,,But then the world is, after all, being claimed [by metaphysical realism, attacked by Putnam: BK] to contain Self Identifying Objects [D. Wiggins' phrase], for this is just what it means to say that the world, and not thinkers, sorts things into kinds" Putnam (1981,53)

Diairesis, the dialectical procedure posited as complementary to that of Collection [Synagwgë] and the one Plato pays most attention to in the later dialogues in which he develops the method of Dialectic, has as its most precious merit the power to reveal that its ,cuts' - the joints at which it divides reality or being into kinds - are indeed the natural joints of reality. This, if accomplished by applying the procedure qua method correctly, is extolled as offering us anything but accidental connections, or haphazard or artificially partitioned wholes or kinds. That is, it is aiming at ,real Kinds' as Mill first called them coining the term in English. However, what constitutes reality in the context of Plato's method of dividing is not, I believe, to be taken as metaphysically innocuous; Plato is not interested in individuating ordinary particulars in the relevant passages. More generally, though, the idea of cutting up reality into its proper joints has

*

I would like to thank Dr. L. Zovko for her help and patience.

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been a constant theme under various modes and variations - not all of them equivalent. While Plato is giving us Dialectic within a carefully circumscribed domain in which Forms are the protagonists, the idea of naturally cutting up the natural world (not reality abstractly conceived) especially that of the biological order is recast in terms of essences in Aristotle's epistemological norms for a properly defined science of biology. In fact Aristotle (both in the Analytics and in the Parts of Animals) considered Plato's efforts at diairesis as ultimately flawed because of having failed to respect the naturalness they meant to safeguard: Aristotle found them artificial and attempted to reform them or reject them as it suited him. Similarly, Buffon found Linnaeus' type of taxonomy as evidently artificial, too, for empiricist reasons, while post-17th century taxonomic endeavours are themselves clear departures from the aristotelian biological project which rejected any clear-cut Linnaean-type of singular once-for-all itemized species-essences. Aristotle's treatment of in-between biological anomalies that fall within taxonomies is reminiscent of the way Plato describes the evasive falling or slipping through divisions. In this paper I wish to discuss some points about Division in order to see whether it can throw light on two particular areas of modern worries in epistemology: one is the well-known ,new riddle of induction' of Nelson Goodman's (vide his ,grue properties'), while the other area is the proposal to abandon traditional a priori philosophical argument and replacing it by naturalized epistemology. Platonic Division is supposed to arrive at the ,natural joints' [or as in Philebus see which kinds coordinate with each other and which not] and as such may be a way at re-positioning at a deeper level the problem of deciding between natural vs. spurious grue-properties: i. e. we may have in this a philosophical justification for a sort of essentialism. If so, then there is, in addition, a justification for the autonomous role on behalf of philosophy against the second worry. It is no accident that the phrase ,to cut nature at its joints' re-appears almost exactly in so many words in Popper's belief that falsification will bring us close to the natural articulations of reality; nor is it an accident that we have in the case of E. Mayr (1976, p. 27) a resurrection, form within the contemporary language of up-to-date modern evolutionary biology, of the contrast between a Platonic conception of the eidos as the real, with change taken as unreal, on the one hand, and its opposite conception whereby all kinds are constructed abstractions. That we are free to construct kind-classifications or literally ,world-making' because of,kind-making'- is a lesson well-learned thanks to those peculiar Goodman-properties whereby projecting lines of generalizations (kinds) into the future on the basis of stable kinds depends on the predicates chosen to carry out the projection. Classifying objects into natural kinds seems thus to depend on certain decisions on our part. Worse, still, as Goodman taught us, even if the future would resemble the past in identifiably stable ways, these ways are multiple and the evidence at this time cannot choose between multiple stable future-possibilities - i. e. we cannot know how the future will resemble the past unless we decide on a schema. Worse still as modern followers of Goodman declare - as, e. g. Ian Hacking with his „interactive kinds" - conceptual, classificatory or scientific decisions made from the future point of view will even alter our past. In many essays and in a forthcoming book Hacking relates

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the tradition of Kinds and shows that the whole idea of classifying by trees, i. e. constructing tree-like hierarchies, as a logical model of reality is no more accepted. Indeed this ,looping' or interaction' between classifying and the objects thereof is something that clearly violates Bollean-based tree divisions exemplified in Plato's texts under discussion or even their evolution into non-Boolean Neo-Platonic hierarchies of emanation. Clearly such a contemporary change of course must be taken into account if Platonic metaphysics is to be of any use here. Let me present the modern connection in some further detail. Cutting nature at its joints is of course a perennial and venerable ontological desideratum. How to effect it, though, is more clouded in doubts. In our times after Russell's and Quine's dismissal of,natural kinds based on the idea of similarity' as an infantile stage of human intellectual and scientific development to be superseded by a mature abandonment of such essentialist talk, novel forms of nominalist tendencies (such as Putnam's internalism or Hacking's so-called dynamic naturalism) have appeared. One inspiring voice at the background of these latter tendencies in our times is of course Wittgenstein and, not surprisingly in the least, given the fashionable context and the time a few decades ago, in the case of Plato's own texts, too, there have been interpretations (such as Minardi 1983, p. 420) reading the diairetic dialogues in the light of ,family resemblance' or of the ,modern master's' injunction „I shall teach you differences". I regard such anachronisms as unwelcome. But I believe that the obverse is fruitful. The Platonic texts may lead us out of some modern impasses without of course claiming that their author intended them thus; they can throw light on a new or strengthened understanding of modern epistemological worries. True, such worries may originate from intellectual horizons beyond or clearly antipodal to Plato's. One clarification is in order here: some of the contemporary detractors of natural kinds are nevertheless realists of sorts with respect to the origin of such kinds, i. e that should they exist or should they be found rewarding for science, they (i. e. kinds) arise from nature and are not thus socially or humanly constructed. A clear exception to this is the Goodman-Putnam line, as well as Hacking's (in a slightly different manner): Goodman's own name for this position is „constructionalism". The use of the phrase ,natural joints' still goes strong in our times. Contemporary opponents of such detractors of the ,naturaleness' of classifications, such as David Lewis (1984, pp. 228-229) talk explicitly in favour of a ,realism that recognizes objective sameness and difference, joints in the world, discriminatory classifications not of our making' but deny the necessity of universale. The latter though can be provided by the diairetic dialogues of Plato's: it is I think the so-called ,saving constraint' needed in order to block the constructionalist argument to the effect that a meta-theory that tries to absolve any lower level empirical theory of self-constructing its own classifications is itself, at the meta-level, nothing but ,more theory', too, and hence itself suspect of constructing classifications', too. It is in this sense salutary, though a point sadly burked, that Goodman (1978, p. 94) himself allows that his preferred nominalism should not necessarily favour only one type of individuals, the usual one, but should instead be pluralistic about types (presumably allowing classes but only if taken as individuals, like e. g. in some current views on biological species regarded as individuals with organisms as parts and not as members -

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e. g. views such as those of M. Ghiselin's, quite suiting anti-natural kind camps or any anti-essentialist construal that would allow talk of essentialist typologies of properties banned by the empiricist-nominalist faction). Notice that for our purposes and in order to effect a connection with Platonic Division, the mode in which I cast the debate here is in terms of nominalism not in terms of the contingency or not of the development of actual physical theories as opposed to non-equivalent alternatives (recognizing different elementary substances of the world) being equally possible. If so Platonic metaphysics may be put forward as a candidate for the opposition: stable kind-Forms are the object of authentic knowledge - any constantly volatile grueworld of multiply classifiable natural kinds cannot be the object of such knowledge. Now, Division plays a role in this but provided it is taken together with the blending of forms. As Plato says τ έ μ ν ε ι ν is Λέγειν. Perhaps we have a candidate against grue-like flux imposing order into disunity. But for this to work I propose at the end of this paper a metaphysical modification or interpretation of Division in connection with Formblending that emphasizes the idea of synamphotera employed in a new way. The results, I must add, are tentative.

I. Dialectic [,,έπιστήμης ... της μεγίστης" Sophist 253c4-5], as both a method for unearthing hidden treasures in metaphysics or clearing away ontological puzzles as well as the kernel of a higher type of knowledge appropriate to specified activities, is central to Plato's later thought. As such it is itself indeed a combined ,method and metaphysics'} It is here taken to comprise Collection and Division as well as the metaphysical principle of Koinwnia Eidwn. The specified activities mentioned, honoured by embodying dialectic, and their special practitioners, the dialektikoi are of course none other than those discussed and sought for in the Sophist and in the Statesman. Despite Plato's own emphatic yet terse pronouncements on the subject of ,becoming dialecticians' when it comes to defining its actual operation or spelling out the gamut of its domain it is generally agreed - despite opposing views about it on the part of recent scholarship - that

1

In this paper, I have no space to defend, but take it for granted, that Plato's so-called ,later dialectic' does not exhaust itself in linguistic analysis or exercises in conceptual grammar, but that it is genuinely concerned with ontological issues (see also Kahn 1996, p. 300 & p. 321). In this sense I take it for granted, too, that in Plato's later thought we still encounter Forms albeit in a more critical mode with refinements allowing them a more powerful role (esp. through the idea of koinwnia eidwn or symplokë eidwn being the second constituent - along with synagwgë and diairesis of the method of Dialectic itself). But whether Forms are to be construed as perfect archetypes or hypostasized abstract exemplars is something I do not favour for reasons having to do with the basic idea I put forward; they are rather abstract patterns that can be equivalent to modern , abstract objects'. See also note 21.

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dialectic is of great consequence in trying to understand novel paths along which Plato's thought developed. 2 Nevertheless it should not be kept restricted within a closed field of ancient scholarship. It has a richer potential. Much of interest in it lies certainly in several points crucial to understanding the nature of Forms or the senses of ,is' in the actual context of the Platonic dialogues themselves. But furthermore once we choose to look deeper behind the way the method itself unfolds in the relevant texts or how far it accomplishes what it sets out to do, by means of its basic components, viz. the techniques of collection Σ υ ν α γ ω γ ή and division Διαίρεσις, there is also another lesson resonant with insights about the role of philosophy and philosophical method itself. This is quite timely in our days. Division and Collection are not simply routine procedure even for their enthusiastic practitioner who may hopefully be educated in it by a Platonic optimism on its behalf. But neither is the further lesson we may extract out of it for our modern concerns either. It is not a mere routine mainly for two reasons: on the one hand, Plato himself does not spell out the details of these procedures such that the dialectic which they constitute in combination with each other can be said to be given a complete description in the texts; on the contrary only a fraction, albeit a significant one, is shown of its actual operation with respect for instance to the five so-called ,great kinds' in the Sophist - the rest is left for the dialectician him/herself to uncover. The second reason, on the other hand is that the actual procedure of dividing as laid out in the texts themselves is not quite or not always successful for much turns out to be untangled yet without having reached a solid definition of a kind or with loop-motions resorted to. All this attests to the fact that dialectic bears the mark of logical creativity akin to the structure of natural languages; it is not circumscribed. As such it delineates a field in which philosophical argument as distinct from empirical scientific theorizing has a legitimate - and perhaps exclusive - role to play. While trying to hunt down the sophist, the interlocutors come to a pivotal point just prior to division getting activated in a rather vague manner: at that point there is a rhetorical question enunciated by the Eleatic Stranger as to whether perhaps they have found instead the philosopher, presumably lying behind the ability to carry out the intricate, and quite obscurely described, activity of dividing that follows in the subsequent lines. This is not a facetious selfposing on the part of Plato. I agree with those commentators who see in the struggling acrobatics of divisions the concomitant philosophy's presence. Circumscribing a distinctive sense of non-being makes available, too, an analogous sense in which modern questions on how to project ontic lines to the future can be rephrased. Demarcating kinds of predication suitable for providing solutions to the problem of false stating could also mark out regions of similar use in modern quests for a return to an essentialism of powers. More generally: Carving out non-spurious Kind-Forms by means of division is carving out a place for philosophy.

2

Scholarship underlines Speusippus' personal role in subsequent developments prioritizing exercises in divisions at the Academy - but see Falcon (2000) for a recent somewhat dissenting view. Speusippus worked with homoia extending the expressed significance attached - by Plato himself - to the danger of mistreating homoiotëtes which I place my argument on.

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II. I Start with an analysis of certain points relevant to our theme in the Statesman and then proceed to the Sophist. This inversion of the usual order of the two dialogues will be apparent as we proceed. The Statesman, ostensibly a sustained search for the correct definition of that one amongst the έ π ι σ τ η μ ό ν ω ν who wields the distinctive art comprising a special kind of knowledge proper to political government, contains the most telling passage exhorting the interlocutors to become better (or more intensively) dialecticians; it thus exhorts philosophy to sharpen the method of defining in order to avoid fallacious reasoning about classes and Kind-Forms (287d5-7/287a2). To this end Σ υ ν α γ ω γ ή and Διαίρεσις are introduced, again guarding against arbitrary or faulty generalizations similar to the sort that Hume, and in our times Goodman with his new riddle of grue, have shown to plague any advance towards scientific confirmation or safeguarding projectibility of theoretical claims about natural kinds into the future. The two features I wish to identify as essential to both the Sophist and the Statesman are present from the start: these are on the one hand, the contrast between likeness/authenticity and the importance of naming, on the other. When (287bff) in what appears to be the more successful search for the definition of π ο λ ι τ ι κ ό ς , after several abortive attempts, the thesis is advanced that the true ,scientific' statesman should practice an art best modeled on the π α ρ ά δ ε ι γ μ α of the art of weaving, it is claimed in support of this equivalence that true statesmanship, like weaving, involves as contributory arts ( ξ υ ν α ί τ ι α ) several specified other ones subsumed under it. This can be seen as a counterpart to the larger issue. Weaving/Statesmanship can be seen as a version at the practical level of the epistemological and metaphysical issue of ,blending of Forms' that we will encounter below - and in this sense it is an instance of the isomorphic application at a lower level of philosophical method that dialectic ensures. Division (dichotomous) is employed right from the start (258c6-7), gets named at e4, and is carried on with subdivisions clearly resting on ,kind-forming differentiae', until at 261a á propos of a right answer on the part of Young Socrates with regard to dividing in half, the Eleatic Visitor wishes to block further such right divisions struck simply by fluke. He therefore offers a digression in epistemology and logic (starting at 262a9), the basic idea being that division should not be precipitately carried through - μηδέ σπεύσαντες Ινα δή τ α χ ύ γ ε ν ώ μ ε θ α π ρ ο ς etc. (264a9-bl) - i. e. in order to ,hunt' the true epistëmê and also in order not be led by precipitation to j u m p ' cuts: it is safer to go down the middle. These instructions have become as well-known as they are puzzling. For clearly on some occasions even without dwelling on the Logic of Wholes and Parts3 we can correctly cut through towards the target part by jumping steps or by not cutting in the middle. So what is the special import of this injunction?

3

I do not confine the whole idea of Division (and Collection) to what amounts to simply guarding against simple fallacies of composition and division as they are known in modern logical parlance and thus I disagree with Crombie's (1963) approach making these operations solve problems like the ,Protarchus Fallacy' (which is not so much of a fallacy either) found in the Phaedrus.

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Just before the official start of the digression (and also at 262el) we get a warning that connects what I have said I consider as one of the significant couple of principles running through the two dialogues: that of naming properly. The idea connecting division and naming is that we must not be carried away by naming in being led to faulty, i. e. ,direct' or ,speedy', divisions that are unreal or unnatural. Inventing names, however, is not as innocuously avoidable: it points to problems like the artificially constructed ,abnormal' Goodman's properties equipossible to those we consider inductively ,normal'. At 262b the specific differentiae that we were covertly operating with are being made explicit by means of an additional warning that any part that gets broken off or pulled out from a whole does not thereby necessarily result in a genuine kind (cf. Parmenides 158e) - severing off a μόριον or μέρος of the objects of the domain only when it, the part, „has at the same time" an είδος: 262b 1-2 - i. e. when the part participates in a Kind-Form. The disparate many and the numerically larger wholes or parts are left on the other side of the division (the not-Xs of the Sophist). Though a chance direct cutting maybe quicker and κ ά λ λ ι σ τ ο ν (ibid), it is safer άσφαΛέστερον to go through the slow or longer way by halves (i. e. by kinds) because in this way „one rather chances upon Ideas" 262b7 (see 262d-e for the well-known example of Greeks divided off, unnaturally, in a non-half way from barbarians). We must be careful here to identify two elements in the import of this lesson: there are two mistakes not just one. There is a mistaken process as well as a mistaken result. So the natural way to interpret Plato's combined injunction here is to say that by not jumping divisions we do not miss any attributes essential to the definition of the eidos sought for by making cuts on the basis of inessential though perhaps otherwise important properties (given another inquiry altogether searching for another kind) such as ,blond hair'. But this is re-stating the problem rather than solving it. Hair colour, e. g., gets classified as inessential - it is not by itself so (vide Plato's whole discussion on the ,,in-itself vs. the ,,in-relation to something elsdpros allo ti" in the Sophist that will play a role at the upshot of my paper below) nor is it essential or inessential prior to our investigation. So is it the latter's raison d'être that sets the differentiae. Hair colour is irrelevant to statesmanship - on normal circumstances; hence that it is irrelevant is no more than a contingent truth (see current ethical issues with bio-ethnicity and bio-differences in danger of disappearing). If it is a contingent truth, it is so in so far it is a kind of a Kripkean sort of a posteriori natural necessity. There is no other way we could be saved from the impasse we are in. The Platonic injunction is thus inherently unstable - at least at this point without the benefit of the whole machinery of the ,is-not' of the Sophist. The intended lesson to be drawn is untenable should contingency be allowed to enter here.4 In general, as a historical aside, it must be noted that in the Logic of Trees the worry of nodes being proximally dense (i. e. not missing out on divisions) is a veritable worry. To return to our specific topic: If it is the definition of a kind we are after, e. g. the art of statesmanship, that sets the criterion of which properties of its subject matter are essential to it, then it must be shown why this is so; yet we cannot do this as long as the definition

4

For a different treatment and a not so alarmed verdict of this see Gill (forthcoming).

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sought for is not available, for this is what we are hunting.5 Thirteen or so Stephanus pages later when the revised definition is attempted (274eff) we get a better glimpse of the same idea and of the danger of naming. There the quandary I just pointed to is met again in connection to defining the similarity of the statesman and his subjects with regard to their essential natures; this gets solved in tandem with a division of the right ,care' (έπιμέλειαν) he is engaged in, and at 275c7 we are offered, significantly, the word π ε φ ύ κ α σ ι ν conveying the sense of real nature caught by the methodologically correct division. But still the uneasiness is not dissipated. First the examples underline the demand for objective division, not one done from an accidental ,grue' point of view and this is not independently identifiable. Second, to say that being a part of a whole does not by itself entail being a kind (whereas the converse holds) does not make the problem, of how to decide upon which one is a kind and which is not, go away. We are helped a bit at 261e7-8 when we are reminded that each of the divided parts must be a genos by itself, or of its own type and not just one part out of the two6 - though it is not again clear why we cannot have just one successful kind on the one side only of a dichotomous division. Perhaps the answer is that eventually if we had to carry out the whole array of divisions in the slow way we would discern that that kind was after all the non-x of its ultimate ,other', taken in the sense of the Sophist's ,Difference' - see more below in Section III. But even if so, even if, that is, we can see the merits of the slow division eventually offering us two sets of features grouped on each side of the no further dividable kinds, features all of which are related to those of the other in an ,other-than' relationship - e. g. male vs. female - yet it is still not clear that we have isolated the essential rather than the artificial features. We could have two equally downthe-middle separations without thereby ensuring naturalness as opposed to artificiality or ,grueness'. Instead of male/female you could have ruled/ruling kinds mutually contrasting on an equally mid-point basis, as different as they can be compared to the others, yet the question of naturalness is still with us. Left at this point, dialectic's division appears as a not successful procedure - and this is perhaps why Aristotle bypassed it, for instance in the case of distinguishing political rule from other types of rule in his Politics, in favour of a solution in terms of part/whole relations in which an hëgemonikon part was appropriately separated by Aristotle and assigned a role to play. So at bottom the first attempt throughout 258b-268d is plagued by the indecision as to whether it is about a definition of statesmanship, given that such an art is about human beings only, and we already know about the latter enough to have known the former or alternatively whether it is a definition of the subject matter of this practical science,

5 6

The problem of having pre-defined divisions is intimated at Soph2l9a5 when the division between lifeless vs. live creatures is rhetorically at least questioned. Though I cannot go into any detail here, my proposal about what goes on with Diairesis as exhibited in the Platonic texts themselves at the level of kinds (not Forms) is captured by the modern sub-discipline of Cladistics and the way it divides up lines of species-descend. This is congruent to the upshot of my analysis and the proposal at the end of my paper. For something analogous see Moravcsik (1992, pp219) for what he calls Plato's ,quilts'. On the other hand, I do not think we make much progress if we take Platonic Division in the geometrical mode as Lloyd (1965) does.

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about which, qua science, we already know that it has to have certain features like, e. g. ,nurturing'. Do we have to know something before we embark on defining by division - as the ,medusa paradox' in the Meno reminds us?7 As one step towards a solution I regard the whole section on ,measurement' or on ,Excess and Deficiency' starting at 283b6 (ostensibly about proper length of discourse). There we are told that two sorts of measure, one relative and one absolute, must be distinguished. This art of due measure offers what is essentially right or suitable in a non-comparative way. What is not usually noticed here - a section of the dialogue rather pregnant with significant entailments - is that while talking about maintaining due measure in all the arts people achieve effectiveness ( π ά ν τ α α γ α θ ά και κ α λ ά α π ε ρ γ ά ζ ο ν τ α ι 284b2) and beauty (in itself an important Platonic observation because it effectively locates, i. e. provides a clearcut and practical, to boot, locus for absolute norm, viz., the technai themselves), it also lays claim to important metaphysical assertions not detected before. For one thing, to hold that due norm in an absolute measurement has being (and in a circumscribed site) reiterates the basic claim of the Sophist on the otherness of being, for the section here (esp. 284a-b) establishes that absolute measure can have a being ,alongside' the relative measure - reminiscent of the Limit entering the extremes of Unlimitedness and imposing order in it without thereby denying being to the latter (cf. Philebus). In like fashion the arts in our passage „do not treat excess or defect as nonexistent" even if they „shun it in action". This, furthermore, alludes to a plausible argument in favour of metaphysical realism - together with the ideas of effectiveness and beauty that may further support it. Thirdly, to claim the being of non-comparative norms of absolute measure implies that reality's compartments are not related in such a way that in order to be knowable they must be approached in comparison to each other - their essential attributes may be regarded as absolute in the sense of not being revealed by a standard of measure or of metaphysical intensiveness, as it were, common to all. In view of what comes shortly afterwards, this suggestion of mine needs some explication. At 285c3, just before the famous exhortation to become better dialecticians we already spoke of, and in order to make room for having the Dialectic posited as foundational and at the same time as a unitary method, the Eleatic Visitor reverts to the example of learning grammar and language in general he has already used, in order to better consider the idea he is driving at, namely that in all such learning, the student learns not piecemeal truths but the whole field at hand in its entirety. This clearly is a plea for a unity of knowledge and indeed I am not averse to claiming that the two dialogues we are discussing taken in tandem posit such a unity of method leading to a unity of knowledge.

7

Sayre (2007) points out this prior knowledge but he seems not to consider it a problem. In fact he gives a schema of mutually exclusive and also exhaustive identification of a unique type X with reference to what it excludes (ibid., 128-131) affirming that this works once we specify precisely the range of itemized categories and know their number, too. But knowing all this gives the whole game away. What we learn from contemporary epistemology is that covert assumptions like these are exploded by the myth of ,pure' induction: Goodman-examples are potentially denumerable (see also end of this paper).

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But all this is set at a higher level or as a meta-claim.8 At 285d there is no doubt that the essential unity of all knowledge is posited (,the larger aim') and as further mirrored in (or by) the order and interconnection exhibited by reality. But I think that what we have here is the interconnectedness of (some, allowed) Forms as encountered in the Sophist. And what is more the unity at 285d is not contradicting what I just said about the compartments of reality not necessarily being supervised by common metaphysical principles that the lesson of absolute or due measures teaches us. Let us proceed along this course The later passage makes a meta-epistemological claim about the role of the Dialectic itself as a more basic, as it were, method of argument or rigorous philosophical intuition that transcends and supports what we now call, in modern parlance, the separate methodologies of different scientific fields - I mean the philosophical underpinning of science that is part of my theme here, and for which we are trying to find supporting evidence in Platonism. In contemporary discussions looking elsewhere sources for denaturalizing epistemology, it will perhaps come as a surprise that Plato's later Dialectic may be an ally from unexpected quarters (though I am not claiming that this is yet cleared of all problems, esp. those associated with the non-elimination of grueparadoxes, some of which were mentioned above as deficiencies of the cut-in-themiddle rule). A rather terse formulation of absolute measure at 283d8-9 occurs on the heels of a division of the μετρική art itself,9 and this non-comparative μέτριον is defined in revealing terms reminding us among other things of the ,blending'terminology of the Sophist, the μέτριον is defined not in comparative ,association' (κοινωνίαν d8) with the greater and the smaller but as (,in accordance with') the necessary essence ( ά ν α γ κ α ί α ν ούσίαν d9) of (its) becoming (της γ ε ν έ σ ε ω ς d8). Later at 283e8 the language of,these ousias' reappears as well as the word physis and the phrase ,as ontws gignomenon', viz. the due μέτριον. The most plausible rendering of the notion of such an absolute measure is as something responsible for bringing forth anything else (an action or a state of affairs) such that it, i. e. the latter, is defective or excessive in relation to that absolute standard. This absolute has the generative force not to produce the action or state of affairs of course, but to render it defective or excessive. It thereby assigns a real property to that state of affairs, by comparison to itself, really making it (ontws gignomenon)10 such as the case may be, too small or too large. In this sense, that state of affairs by acquiring this property is in a state of non-being with respect to the being of this metrion - in the language of the Sophist.

8 At 305e2 (and at d l ) Plato calls statesmanship the governing art and what weaves all the other sciences together, translated as .universal' science: this of course does not mean that in terms of its methodology or metaphysics any of these other sciences receives directions from a unified point where a higher one rules over them imposing its concepts or commitments. Politics of course could hardly be that kind of higher source. 9 It is instructive that we never get a lesson of how to apply division on .Division' itself. 10 At 285al the gignomena are said to be the result of metrëtiké in the Pythagorean sense of result.

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Here, to draw our threads together, we get a more effective way in which the Dialectic can accomplish what it set out to do by means of one of its two constituents, that of Division/Definition, without of course having so much as approached a fullproof mechanism by means of which the latter operates. We cannot be sure whether we approach or happen upon the natural joints of reality by means of following the rule of dichotomous cuts in the middle for as we have seen multiple such instantiations of the rule can yield equipossible inductive grue-projections. So in defining, we may at least make a short step towards claiming that a notion of a non-comparative, absolutely, due measure is established as necessary - whether we can locate it in practice or not is another matter. But the Dialectic is at least still on. And hopefully there are two more elements to add on its favour in relation to the topic of measure. Both are well-entrenched elsewhere and this is an added strength. First, historically, the notion of due measure or due ratio or proportion has been central to Aquinas' definition of law and justice, and it has overall proven a viable major way of thinking on these matters. Second, the two sorts of measuring, relative and absolute, correspond to the pros allon ti and kat 'ayto, respectively, which if anything proves consistency and continuity in the Platonic theses that can help us deal with both together. Indeed shortly afterwards, once the Eleatic Visitor feels confident about the place and nature of the absolute standard, the twin operations of Division and Collection reappear (285a-c) but with a twist: on the one hand, the right method is to discern all the distinctions and differences in kind - en eidesi keintai (all those that are coextensive with the eidos they thus constitute) - within a multitude that first appears as a whole (in which its parts are in koinwnia); while on the other, when they discriminate these differences they must group them together in their ousia. This latter is a micro-collection, so to speak, or alternatively phrased, a post-division collection: after a single major division, the kinds of properties isolated must be collected into commonalities - the obvious question being: what does the second micro-collection do which the prior major division had not already accomplished? That is, kinds were already brought forth by means of the prior division into differences. But perhaps what the point here may be is that during the first operation Dialectic identifies kinds derivatively, as it were, in the sense of the ,Difference' that we learn from the Sophist: properties are grouped into distinct classes without ourselves being fully aware of the underlying possible KindForms necessitating them. Their being is charcterized merely as ,different-to' in the sense of ,other-than' - something that lends further support this time the other way, i. e. towards the Sophist's metaphysics of non-being as equivalent to Difference and thus as a kind of its own. But, now more concretely, we have an instantiation of the picture Plato gives in the Sophist, of the Different being constituted by an apeiron tw plethei of internal ,others' or compatible différents' (more of which below in Section III). Once Collection is underway, however, inchoate groupings of differentiae or just strings of non-Xs acquire determinate being by a dual sub-operation: kinds are revealed to which the groupings correspond. But also Blending of Forms is revealed as well as exemplified in various (among the allowable) combinations of Form-participation responsible for the being of the elements comprising each grouping (and thus underpinning their difference). This is a case of Dialectic moving us from mere non-Xs to kinds captured

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by statements of positive predication or symplokë eidwn. The only prior thing needed for the dialectician, amply provided by the analysis we get in the Sophist, is the ability to hold onto the distinction of higher Forms and lower ones - the ,consonant' or ,formal' ones as opposed to the ,vowel' or determinate' ones - in order to be able to know by means of the former which ones of the latter are allowed to blend. Here we have reached the point of entry into the other dialogue and the promise of dealing with puzzles such as the pojectibility of grue-properties now being seen as somehow non-permissible blendings. Whereas trying to solve puzzles thrown at us from the point of view of an analysis of inductive reasoning may prove the wrong way to go along, the Platonic Dialectic may give an insight into how to distinguish genuine from spurious property-projectibility. At least we can feel secure about the central puzzle, i. e. as far as being in general is concerned, without erring along the periphery of unwarranted existential claims. That is, we may make headway as to the being or non-being of some projectibilities even though we do not lay claim as to the actual existence of this or that combination of properties (e. g. green before a certain time and non-green afterwards).

III. In the Sophist, the discussion aiming at defining the sophist by means of establishing the possibility of falsely stating (or entertaining false beliefs) comes up against the hurdle of non-being. It must be overcome before the possibility of false statements (the successful stating of that which-is-not) is ascertained - and thus the existence of sophists. In the process, the Dialectic of Division is employed. That the issue of false stating is linked to that of not-being is beyond doubt, but (contrary to the opinion of others) the questions of non-being are found within the dialectic exercise (i. e. prior to 232a) and therefore the process of division is already significant. Now, in order to allow for the possibility of non-being alongside being, Plato introduces the well-known general principle of συμπλοκή ειδών and this in turn presupposes, among other things, a certain distinction between something being what it is kath ' ayto as opposed to having certain properties that it has in relation to something else pros allo ti - a distinction we had occasion to encounter above in the guise of absolute and relative measure. The notion ,(the) in no way being' (awkwardly translating ,to mêdamws on') - apart from allowing the analysandum, the not, to reappear - is ambiguous between two respects of construing the issue. One of them concerns modern epistemology's puzzle generated by predicates like Goodman's grue, while the other has to with modern essentialism and its view of properties (dispositional or otherwise - see e. g. Ellis 2005). If the issue is taken as the puzzle of how it is possible to handle simultaneously self-contradictory predicates then we take it as being asserted that something that is is at the same time not-is. So if predication is at issue, the self-contradiction has to do with saying that something can be allowed to be in some way and not to be in the same way at the same time (though Plato keeps the discussion at the level of Forms, at this point we can transpose it to beings in

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general). Analogous treatments can be found among modern discussions of contradictory predicates. 11 Now, this version is what concerns us here, for a Goodman property is analogous to saying that some (temporally identical) item exhibits such and such a property while at a later time it exhibits a not-such and such a property, or a contrary (projectible) property. This formulation differs from the Platonic one in adding time into it but in all other ways that concern us here they are equivalent formulations. The issue, then, is whether we have a paradox by saying of something that it is moving and that it is not or it is of some colour and of some other all over, i. e. a paradox of contradictory predication, and if so whether the paradox can be resolved. That it can be so resolved, is what Plato undertakes to show by means of the principle of blending eidë, that allows the non-x to partake in Difference which is itself, autonomously, a genus in its own right, thus having being by participating in Being. The other way of construing the mëdamws on is as a hypostasized entity to which we are trying to refer by means that undermine such referring. Here we are closer to modern essentialism disallowing incompossible properties or powers ever to be true of the same natural kind, 12 while at the same time, I propose, we can have the beginnings of a solution to the modern puzzle of what it means to hold that dispositional powers can be, i. e. really have being, without thereby unsettling their non-continuous existence or realization which ex hypothesi makes them dispositional in the first place. Division appears from the start at 217a3 with a telling methodological point (equivalent to one made in the Republic and the Statesman) that adds credence to the operation's importance in delineating core essences: that when facing complex issues we must move from the big picture to the small (cf. 235c-d; also in one line we have both key terms here appearing together and the basic thought laid out for us: 235dl-2 a common ιδέα divides eidë τά διαιρεί). All along the discussion, the twin worries of right naming and of spurious ό μ ο ί ό τ η ς (the not-x as we shall learn) being falsely stated as the true, both of them present also in the Phaedrus and in the Statesman, turn up constantly here too, as should be expected. The latter in particular being central since here the sophist is getting defined, i. e. this mixing of unlikenesses with authenticity being one his chief wares, is constantly touched upon as the main danger of false homoiotëtes blocking at the same time the prospects of a taxonomy by means of a ,common essence' at 232a (cf. 231a/234b-c and significantly at 253d and 259d,where the danger of homoiotëtes is treated at a second remove in the case of confusing Forms or allowing wrong blending, equivalent also to mixing parts of the soul tantamount to vice). The importance of the other twin element, that of naming, is underlined by its crucial appearance in a pivotal argument at 237c when the very uttering of the to më on einai appears problematic at first sight since even grammatically we contradict ourselves when trying to say something of it - since in Plato's philosophy of language the name applies to nothing in this case, there is no ,what' to apply to (,speaks but says

11 With respect to abstract objects - the Platonic Forms being such objects - cf. Zalta (2002). 12 Contemporary metaphysical essentialism (cf. Ellis ibid) - in contradistinction to the cotemporary nominalism or internalism of Quine's, Goodman's, Putnam's or Hacking's - speaks of the world as a highly structured reality containing objective hierarchies of distinct kinds of things.

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mëden'). He therefore sets himself the problem of providing an analysis of to më on without recourse to the existence of a something to which it, qua name, corresponds. He must therefore conduct the whole analysis of being (as set by the self-constraint just mentioned posited by non-being) without availing himself of the ,is' of existence. Scholarship on the matter of how many ,is' appear in the dialogue and what Plato's own is or what the most plausible interpretation might be is full of internal strife here. But I wish to point that at this early passage, when the problem of naming is introduced as pivotal, the ,is' of existence is ruled out. This is I think congruent with what is going to be the analyses of non-being later, i. e. by means of the notion of participation. In this sense the complemented sense of ,is' seems to be the case from the start. Now from then on, once non-being has been placed outside being (not yet shown to be related to it as we shall see later), something else must help us in order to speak of it (or think of it): for it to be accomplished, the language of 238a5 & a8 [vide verb προσγένοιτ' & προσγίγνεσθαι] introduces the idea that something like properties of, or something belonging to or being ascribed to, being will play a role for non-being, too, (be ascribed to it, too). The whole new discussion will be leading to the further crucial ideas of (a) a (sophistic) ,copy' taken as contrary to, or incompatible with, the ,true' - to which non-being/being will not be assimilated and of (b) the model of ,weaving together'. The sophist produces copies that are contrary to ,is' but at the same time they have causal powers in producing false beliefs. And the ,contrary' gets abandoned finally at 243ff.13 Just prior to this, division gets going in order to cut up falsity into two sorts by means of their respective formal objects: a sort of falsity about those that are (stating of the ,is' that it is a not-is) and the other sort stating that the ,isnot' is, or that it (the ,is-not') is an ,is'. But at 241al we are told that both prongs of falsity are equivalent (,in the same way') so either way there is essentially only one falsity - but this poses a problem for the definition of the sophist copy-maker or falsitymaker. The interesting thing is, I propose, that the discussion conceals some significant moves here: the sophist is free to deny both prongs of the falsity division as contradictory and can thus exonerate himself from the accusation of believing and teaching falsehoods since he has proven them impossible (because contradictory), and thus Plato must play his cards analogously. Basically the sophist (first at 240c) utilizes the interweaving gambit in order to say that copying/appearance is somehow connected to being (therefore he is not to be blamed for falsity); but subsequently, after Plato pushes for falsity all the way (240e-241b3) Plato falls back on the interweaving somewhat unwillingly, it seems to me, therefore the sophist now can exonerate himself again for the second time by denying the prongs of the falsity division. Part of the reason is that, as I hold, saying that the ,is-not' is an ,is' (second prong) is a misleading way of putting the matter, as if we were saying that the ,is-not' is a ,not', and hypostasizing the latter:

13 That there is a mirroring danger here is shown at 240aff: if the ,is-not' must copy the ,is' somehow (to be specified precisely by the process of division in order to define sophistikë) then the ,is' may be symmetrically copying the ,is-not'. An analogous symmetricity plagues any discussion of inductive reasoning once it is acknowledged that grue properties can have their projected part („ observed after t0 and is B") symmetrically interchangeable with their observed part.

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i. e. if I say „false belief is to believe that the ,is-not' is not" (what the sophist would need in the second round to block the accusation), then the latter use of „not" in the above sentence appears to ascribe a property to the ,is-not'. For this reason the conceptual machinery best suited for extirpating Plato from this quandary is to use the notion of,privation' (thus blocking the hypostasizing of ,not'). The crucial next step - before the full-blown innovative treatment of non-being as non-contrary to being is laid out - is introducing what I consider central to the whole argument: the notion of συναμφότερα at 249d4 (cf. 250c3) [a combined state of opposite properties, a presence of ,both'] that a true philosopher must not shirk from - an idea that I think accompanies the whole discussion from then on. A clear view of the ,synamphotera argument' as we may call it is rather a procedure that Plato adopts and its clearest first view is provided by the argumentation starting at 250a9. Plato wishes to link Motion (Change) and Rest with the innovations he will eventually introduce into the theory of Forms. Each of the two certainly are έ ν α ν τ ι ώ τ α τ α άΛΛήλοις, but either α μ φ ό τ ε ρ α or έκάτερον cannot (είναι ομοίως) be κ ι ν ε ΐ σ θ α ι nor έστάναι. Since the answer to both the latter two possibilities is negative, it follows that τρίτον ά ρ α το òv. The ,is' must be something other than either Rest or Change because we must allow it to be characterized in a synamphotera-manner to both: it must have this self-opposed property. And we have just proven, says the Eleatic Visitor, that neither Rest nor Change shares this peculiar property with each other. Therefore each and both together must be other than Being without appropriating from both of them their being. The way out is to say that the öv περιέχει Change and Rest but not as jointly exhaustive parts of it, but as a third thing (τρίτον öv) - ετερον to, and of, both of them, hence ούκ ... έστί σ υ ν α μ φ ό τ ε ρ ο ν [of these] τό òv (250c3) in the contradictory sense of exhibiting simultaneously incompossible properties. It is crucial to understand what is exactly going on. Here we avoid contradictions, I think, if we distinguish two things being carried out here: on the one hand, being qua Being is a third thing (even if it contains Change and Rest) because we have analysed τό öv κ α τ ά την φ υ σ ι ν του - that is, the way we analysed it is such as we have just said because logically speaking we cannot conceptualize it in any other way; whereas, on the other hand, this does not preclude whatever comprises being in the sense of particulars either to be changing or be fixed. Defined in itself (kath ' ayto) being by being or what it is in itself can neither change nor not change. If the synamphotera argument is to have any purchase, the idea would be that what Plato calls μεταΛαμβάνειν α λ λ ή λ ω ν (251d7) must be taken as part and parcel of the synamphotera when this takes over the second way of defining by means ofpros ti allo that introduces the thesis of the blending of Forms. Division reappears at this juncture (253bl 1) as well as the idea of an epistëmë. While the convoluted passage on dividing that follows has been the bone of contention among commentators,14 the implicit treatment of science at its start points to definite taking-sides on the part of those who would regard philosophical argumentation as providing an autonomous basis against contemporary pleas for naturalizing epistemology.

14 See Stenzel's classic early treatment and for an opposite view Gomez-Lobo (1977).

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One crucial reason militating I believe in favour of such a position, which the Platonic Method and Metaphysics of Division affords us as support for the independence of philosophy, is not only that we get in all of this (as well as in this passage that ends at 253c3) a re-affirmation of metaphysical essentialism I spoke about also in the case of the Statesman above that cannot be handled by science but only self-contradictorily presupposed by it, but also that we obtain a stable conceptual platform from which to engage in analyses of the possibility of σύμμειξι,ς needed for the synamphotera argument [vide σ υ μ μ ε ί γ ν υ σ θ α ι 252e2 & 253cl, σ υ γ κ ε ρ α ν ν υ μ έ ν ο υ ς 253b2], This does not amount to replacing modern science by philosophy - far from it. It amounts to a clear separation of intellectual endeavours: empirical science from metaphysics. The latter reveals possibilities of mixing that at no point can the former countenance in its own language. My position on this is corroborated by the manner which Plato affords us in order to analyze a phrase, puzzling at first sight. When he finally arrives at the kernel of his theory of non-being we are told (256e6-7 and again at 257a5-6) of a significant difference between them - one that is made possible to discern by any means other than metaphysics. While Being is π ο λ ύ or εν, meaning one but extensive in quantity, NonBeing, by contrast, is ά π ε ι ρ ο ν πΛήθει or, equivalently, things other than being are α π έ ρ α ν τ α ... τ ο ν α ρ ι θ μ ό ν τ ά λ λ α . The latter makes Non-Being of innumerable variations or possible differences but not actual, of course, or actualizable. There is in this a pointing towards the idea of indefinite instantiations couched in the contemporary philosophical language of possible worlds, which in the Platonic modelling, structured interrelationships between vowel and consonant Forms permit. The possible instantiations of combinations of them could be innumerable. In addition, if Being is one in its „manyness" (qua π ο λ ύ ) and by itself, the other four great gene being other than it, must themselves lack this property and be innumerable in their instantiations (in different ways of course as their functions change from vowel to consonant gene). So the innumerable possible ways in which the Different can be internally chopped up (corresponding to all pairwise posited antitheses of properties that constitute the NonBeing) can represent the innumerable ways in which we could expect (or construct the language of our scientific theories to express by means of predicates) the world lines to be like with respect of the possible combinations of the pairs comprising the Platonic Different without thereby the items of the not-side of each pair losing the property of being: being in a possible world. Had we remained within the confines of a theory of confirmation of the inductive strength of empirical science we could certainly not have identified a different kind of being available for us to characterize what is going on. But in addition, we are given by Plato a means (of course incompletely specified) to identify cuts, or possible pairwise ,différents' comprising the whole extent of the Different: the means is both the Method and the Metaphysics of Division encountered in the relevant dialogues. Not any kind of (projectible) world-line is possible, not any one set of characteristics defines a genuine kind opposed to the one left off on the other side of the division. That is, while Blending and the attendant machinery gives a metaphysical possibility to speak meaningfully the language of synamphotera and get hold of a better overall picture of what the nature of the Forms is, the method of Division allows us to regiment, structure and order the

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internal lay-out of the extension of the Different.15 Cutting at the natural joints, i. e. at no artificial or happenstance point, appears now not to be directly relevant to scientific methodology but to the underpinnings of philosophical epistemology and renewed versions of essentialism of powers. We shall not expect to, and do not in fact, learn from the Method of Division being constantly coupled with the whole Metaphysical baggage that goes with it what to do in biology, for instance, but we do learn how to handle puzzles when we confront conceptual disagreements, e. g., between species, families or individuals being the appropriate cutting-points for the science of biology. In discussions of negative predication, some proposals see negative statements as really affirming that the item in question, the subject of the statement, is not such and such, by participating in the Form of Difference - bypassing thus negation. But this is not enough: which one of the internal pairwise différents comprising the Form of Different must be drawn from the operation of Diairesisl If something is said not to be the case (not to be green after a certain time rather than not being consistent with the chemical formula of barium after that same time) by way of participating in that Form, it is highly unlikely that a metaphysical thesis simply left at this will be at all helpful in deciding upon which properties are to be opposed to which. If the matter is merely left at that (i. e. only as an invocation of participation only or άπλώς without some other qualification or further blending with some other vowel Form) then, the objection may arise that apart from thus confounding all differences into a single one - i. e. blurring all differences among negative statements - there is also a regress being started: something being different from different and so on. It follows from this, as an added lesson to be learned, that there will be no difference, real or essential between a property and its negation. Therefore, it appears now, after the detour via the Sophist's treatment of the Different as heteron together with the further emendations just discussed, that the Division and its problems we encountered above cannot operate without the added complement of the metaphysics of non-being. Division on its own is half the story.16

15 Gill (forthcoming) is confident that Plato is clear about this: we do not get any odd series of nonothers but what is different within the circumscribed field we happen to operate negative predication on. Cf. Benardete (1963, p. 215ff) for a different treatment of ,other-than' or ,non-others'. My reading above receives additional confirmation form Philebus 16d.ff and in particular from the phrase: ίδέαν π ρ ο ς τό π λ ή θ ο ς μή π ρ ο σ φ έ ρ ε ι ν π ρ ι ν άν τις τ ο ν α ρ ι θ μ ό ν α υ τ ο ύ π ά ν τ α κατίδη τ ο ν μ ε τ α ξ ύ τού α π ε ί ρ ο υ τε καί του ενός, τότε δ' ήδη τό εν ε κ α σ τ ο ν τ ω ν π ά ν τ ω ν - where the word π ά ν τ α (in the nominalized phrase τ ο ν α ρ ι θ μ ό ν α ύ τ ο ύ π ά ν τ α ) refers to the neuter π λ ή θ ο ς and thus the number in-between the one and the (arithmetically) indeterminate is of the π λ ή θ ο ς i. e. of the how-many in-between: in other words of how many kinds can a proper Division reveal. 16 Thus I disagree with Crombie (1963, p.373) who, by setting the two ingredients of the Dialectic under a completely different light (basically as akin to more sophisticated taxonomies) he ends up by saying that the Koinwnia Eidwn contradicts Division. Similarly while I agree with Moravcsik (1973) in the general thrust of his approach by means of a sort of intensional mereology (cf. also Cohen 1973) as well as with the importance he places on Division, I disagree with his judgment (ibid. p. 179) that it must be left unrelated to the thesis on the symplokë eidwn. More radically, I disagree with views such as Trevaskis' (1967) that Division has nothing to do with relations

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To appreciate this we can add that the Platonic analysis of ,not' does not by itself harmonize with the ,cut-down-the-middle' dichotomic injunction, since the ,not X' does not meet the required condition by itself in terms of merely participating in the Different: you can cut into ,be' and ,not be' in terms of a specified X but if you adopt the line that all negative statements are in the end affirmations of a participation in a Form, that of the Different, then opposition as a hallmark of the two prongs of any division is no longer appropriate if negative statements turn into affirmative ones, too. Cutting into Xs and not-Xs we cut into two sorts of participation. Furthermore if we add to this our reservations of the previous paragraph (regarding innumerability) then we may posit anew the question of whether reality has a finite number of (natural) joints at which to cut: should we re-read the passages where Plato seems to operate with one Form, qua universal, doing the collecting going upwards and with another doing the division downwards? Should we take Forms as universale (divisible into species) and not as abstract particulars or abstract patterns? If taken as universale with class-inclusion, then what is known as the no-further divisible atmëton eidos cannot be said to preclude the possibility of further species-like subdivisions. In fact if grue properties are allowed, then there is no limit to such (sub-)division. In the wake of celebrated attempts in the 20th century at dismissing traditional a priori epistemological inquiry into the justification conditions validating claims to knowledge in favour of naturalized epistemology, there arose a recent trend to put up a barricade against a totalizing naturalization of knowledge. It is helpful to investigate to what extent Plato's later views about the interrelationships of Forms might offer us a standpoint form which to offer an alternative barricade. 17 The network of relations allowed between Forms in Plato's later metaphysics is of course not applicable entirely or absolutely to sensible particulars, but the prospects of Division, once it is cleared of its ambiguities, and its real strength shown, may be of considerable help in support of philosophical argument to this effect. Grue-properties (or Goodman's ,relative kinds' espoused by Hacking) are relative to observation and time (or, to purpose and scientific ,making', respectively) whereas Kind-Forms are timeless. Forms interweave (via Diairesis and Symploke) but retain their (participation in) Difference; sensible particulars, on the other hand, are instances of applications of observable properties that may well be contraries due to any rival grue-projectibilities (i. e. here we go beyond the simple divisions into ,Greeks vs. non-Greeks' contraries in order to struggle with more complex predicates such as ,green and not-green plus a time-element' and innumerable others of that ilk along side the normal one of,green') or contraries because of ordinary relativity of perception. Thus Forms retain their relation to Platonic Difference while sensible particulars exhibit contrariety. Difference, though, is not contrariety. The network of Forms can be between Ideas and that it does not aim at producing an ,ontological map'. My view is not of course merely the converse but as it will appear at the end it is more of a programmatic re-construction of Plato's position. 17 For the converse approach see Sayre (2007, pp. 197ff): he asks the question of how it is possible to employ numbers and measures in dealing with a subject matter that is by definition eternal.

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shown to be fixed 18 but no secure (scientific) predictability can be expected in the realm of material contraries. Plato dropped Contrariety for Difference at the level of the interweaving of the Forms themselves retaining it at the level of physical properties of sensible particulars; there, viz. at the higher level of Forms, he concentrates on rebutting contrariety having already excluded relativity (pros ti allo) tout court from that realm of the kath 'autas Forms.19 If to define something kath ' auto reiterates the generlly debilitating difficulties of defining intrinsic value' by means of no relation to anything else, then Plato's efforts to reduce without elimination the pros allo ti relation to the kath 'ayto rendering of being explains why he thought that the route via the Different is a route that can throw light on the contraries of the lower level. If something is not-X by means of a corresponding Form being shown to be in an ordered relation of Difference to the Form of the X then we can better appreciate by means of the operation of the Platonic Division (plus the above employment of the synampphotera argument) that at the lower-level, items having observable properties , not being green and observed after t¡ ' must not be left as contraries20 but somehow be worked out as reflecting relations admissible at the level of the interweaving of Forms.21 So the modern-riddle-of-induction's predictability of regularities jeopardized by grue-projections may be checked. Somewhat surprisingly at first sight, support for my interpretation comes from unexpected quarters. In congruence with what I wish to claim here on behalf of re-modified Platonic Division, Goodman22 himself comes up in the end of his subversive Fact, Fiction and Forecast with a solution to his riddle that approaches epistemological holism: the inductively better entrenchment of a predicate (as opposed to another less so) that marks it off from grue-some eventualities is a matter of a network of interrelationships with other co-extensive predicates with which, we could say, its fortune is

18 Gadamer (1980, p. 110) is also not overoptimistic that we can have a positively given, unequivocal pyramid of ideas (forms) but the interweaving of forms can give us the negative insight that no idea (eidos) can be defined in isolation and purely by itself. Goodman comes to believe the same thing. Cf note 21 below. 19 Going back to the two kinds of measures treated above, we can now say that the first corresponds to contraries (particulars) while the latter to the internal structure within the extension of Difference (Forms). 20 In light of what I say at this point, difficulties with establishing the rationale of dichotomous division down-the-middle (some of which we have seen at II above) and its abandonment in favour of trichotomous or multiple cuts may make us decide whether the former one employs halves which are contraries whereas the latter one indicates the employment of difference. Gill (forthcoming) contrasts the shortcomings of dichotomous division with the one employing limbs. Philip (1966) alerts us to the fact that Plato's Division is only a dichotomous operation going downwards and not horizontally - an important omission that my treatment of the two levels in this and the previous paragraph tries to deal with at least indirectly. 21 I agree with Moravcsik (1992 p. 191) that in the later dialogues Plato introduced a new participation relation, this time between Forms, and that this transformed the participation-relation into a necessary one. 22 Goodman (1983, p. 95). This is, curiously, a point little noticed.

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tied up. Knowing a way to mark off distinctions in such networks, to group and divide on the basis o f underlying essential features, may not prove the indelible existence o f such kinds irrespective o f our classifications, but it sure is quite a rewarding method for at least getting us to know the latter, i. e. how w e do - and why 2 3 - make these classifications rather than others, and how far w e must respect the canons o f intellectual synthesis in order to avoid mental prestidigitation into wild grue-classifications. Hence, what is in a crux Plato's contribution in this respect? I should say that perhaps in the end the operation of Division offers a foot in both worlds, o f both sensible particulars and Kinds.

Bibliography Benardete, S. (1963) ,Eidos and Diaeresis in Plato's Statesman', Philologus, 107:3/4, pp. 193-226. Cohen, M. (1973) ,Plato's Method of Division' in J. Moravcsik (ed.), Patterns in Plato's Thought, Riedel: Dordrecht, pp. 181-191. Crombie, I. M. (1963) An Examination of Plato's Doctrines - Volume II: Plato on Knowledge and Reality, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Deslauriers, M. (1991) ,Plato and Aristotle on Division and Definition', Ancient Philosophy 10, 1991, pp. 203-219. Dupré, J. (1991) .Natural Kinds and Biological Taxa', The Philosophical Review, 90/1, pp. 66-90. Ellis, B. (2005) .Physical Realism', Ratio XVIII, Dec., pp. 371-384. Falcon, A. (2000) .Aristotle, Speusippus and the Method of Division', The Classical Quarterly, 50/2, pp 402-414. Frede, M. (1992), ,Plato's Sophist on False Statements' in R. Kraut (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Plato, Cambridge: CUP, pp. 397-424. Gadamer, H.-G (1980) Dialogue and Dialectic, N. Haven: Yale University Press. Gill24, M. L. (forthcoming) ,Division and Definition in Plato's Sophist and Statesman', in Definition in Greek Philosophy, D. Charles (ed.), Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gómez-Lobo, Α., (1977),Plato's Description of Dialectic in the Sophist 253dl-e2', Phronesis 22: 29-47. Goodman, N. (1983) Fact, Fiction and Forecast, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Goodman, N. ((1978) Ways of Worldmaking, Indianapolis: Hackett. Hacking, I. (2007) .Natural Kinds: Rosy Dawn, Scholastic Twilight' Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements pp. 203-239. Hacking, I. (2002) ,Making Up People' Chap 6 of Historical Ontology, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Hacking, I. (2001) .Aristotelian Categories and Cognitive Domains', Synthese 126, pp. 473-515. Hacking, I. (1999) The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

23 That is, we are offered a philosophical clue as to why certain inductive strategies work by means of an explanation that does not appeal to a merely empirical or scientistic explanation of the evolutionary strength of our .internal quality spacings' having a .lien with the future' as Quine had put it - i. e. a philosophical justification as opposed to a Darwinian-evolutionary one (which may of course run in parallel) 24 I thank Professor Gill for making available to me her paper before publication.

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Hacking, I. (1993) ,Goodman's new riddle is pre-Humian', Revue internationale de philosophie, 46, pp. 229-243. Hacking, I. (1993) ,On Kripke's and Goodman's Use of Grue' Philosophy, 68/265, pp. 269-295. Hacking, I. (1991), A Tradition ofNatural Kinds', Philosophical Studies, 61, pp. 109-126. Kahn, C. (1996) Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form, Cambridge: CUP. Lewis, D. (1984) .Putnam's Paradox', Australsian Journal of Philosophy, 62/3, pp. 221-236. Lloyd, A. C (1965) ,Plato's Description of Division' in R. E. Allen (ed.), Studies in Plato's Metaphysics, London: Routledge, pp. 219-230. Mayr, E. (1976), .Typological versus Population Thinking' in Evolutionary and the Diversity of Life, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, pp. 26-29. Minardi, S. (1983) ,On Some Aspects of Platonic Division', Mind, 92/367, pp. 417-423. Moravcsik, J. (1973) ,Plato's Method of Division' in J. Moravcsik (ed.), Patterns in Plato's Thought, Riedel: Dordrecht, pp 158-180. Moravcsik, J. (1992) Plato andPlatonism, Oxford: Blackwell. Philip, J. (1966) .Platonic Diairesis', Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 97 pp. 335-358. Putnam, H. (1981) Reason, Truth and History, Cambridge: CUP. Sayre, K. (2007) Metaphysics and Method in Plato's Statesman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trevaskis, J (1967) .Division and its Relation to Dialectic and Ontology in Plato' Phronesis, 12, pp. 118-129. Wedin, M. (1987) .Collection and Division in the Phaedrus and Statesman', Revue de Philosophie Ancienne 5, pp. 207-33. Zalta, E. (2002) ,A Common Ground and Some Surprising Connections', Southern Journal of Philosophy Suppl. Vol. XL, pp. 1-25.

FRANCO FERRARI

Intelligenza e Intelligibilità nel Timeo di Platone

1. Introduzione: le forme dell'intelligenza nel Timeo Mi sembra che gli organizzatori di questo Colloquio su Platonism and Forms of Intelligence siano stati guidati da una felice intuizione quando hanno proposto ai partecipanti due interrogativi che reputo non solo fondamentali dal punto di vista filosofico, ma anche particolarmente congrui con la prospettiva che si è soliti considerare propria del platonismo. Per questa ragione vorrei iniziare il mio contributo formulando le due questioni alle quali sto alludendo. La prima si chiede: In che modo l'intelligenza ci consente di conoscere e agire? La seconda può venire espressa in questi termini: Come l'intelligenza si manifesta al di fuori del pensiero soggettivo e dei suoi atti (consapevoli o inconsapevoli)? Ho affermato che si tratta di interrogativi perfettamente inseribili all'interno di un quadro filosofico di matrice platonica. In effetti a entrambi un dialogo come il Timeo fornisce una risposta che è consistente dal punto di vista filosofico e destinata a esercitare un'influenza enorme sulla riflessione occidentale. In questa sede vorrei concentrarmi soprattutto sulla seconda questione, quella relativa alla presenza dell'intelligenza al di fuori degli spazi della soggettività. Tuttavia per Platone, come per ogni filosofo di osservanza platonica, i due problemi risultano in realtà tra loro strettamente collegati. Sarebbe infatti facile dimostrare che nel Timeo le risposte ai due interrogativi sopra formulati appartengono a un medesimo disegno teorico, che consiste esattamente nel tentativo di stabilire una connessione tra l'etica e la politica, da una parte, e l'ontologia e la cosmologia, dall'altra. 1 Nel celebre e misterioso proemio del dialogo Socrate riassume i risultati della conversazione (che si presume essere stata raccontata il giorno prima) riportata nella Repubblica, i quali vertevano sulla corretta forma di governo, e così facendo invita il lettore a collegare i due dialoghi e i temi in essi contenuti, ossia l'etica e la politica

1

Sulla struttura complessiva del Timeo si può rinviare al classico commento di F. M. D. Cornford, Plato's Cosmology. The ,Timaeus' of Plato translated with a running commentary, London 1937, il quale individua l'esigenza di stabilire un nesso tra il contenuto fisico del dialogo e la dimensione etico-morale.

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(nella Repubblica) e la fisica e la cosmologia (nel Timeo).2 Non è certamente questa la sede per affrontare la vexatissima quaestio dell'interpretazione complessiva del Timeo-, tuttavia, anche senza prendere posizione in maniera diretta sulla natura dei rapporti tra fisica ed etica, 3 credo si possa tranquillamente affermare che una relazione tra di esse esiste senz'altro, nel senso che la lunga descrizione della struttura del cosmo deve pur possedere un qualche significato etico e dire dunque qualcosa su come gli uomini devono vivere. E del resto l'idea che i risultati dell'esposizione „fisica" (su come è il mondo) abbiano una ricaduta etica, e dunque forniscano una precisa indicazione su come l'uomo deve vivere e pensare, viene espressamente sostenuta proprio da Timeo, il quale afferma che il fine per cui all'uomo è data dalla divinità la possibilità di conoscere il cosmo (e in particolare i movimenti ordinati degli astri) consiste proprio nell'invito ad assimilare i movimenti della propria anima a quelli del cosmo, nella convinzione che questi ultimi costituiscano l'espressione fisica (e dunque sensibile) dell'intelligenza (nous) e della sua capacità di governare le istanze irrazionali. Afferma Timeo: Ma diciamo che la ragione e la finalità di questo bene siano le seguenti: che il dio ha trovato per noi e ci ha donato la vista, perché, osservando i periodi dell'intelletto nel cielo ( τ ά ς έν ο ύ ρ α ν ω τ ο υ ν ο ϋ π ε ρ ι ό δ ο υ ς ) , noi ce ne servissimo per comprendere i movimenti circolari del pensiero che è in noi, che, pur essendo dello stesso genere di quelli nel cielo, sono perturbati, mentre quelli sono imperturbabili, e perché, dopo averli appresi e avere preso parte alla correttezza dei ragionamenti secondo natura, imitando i movimenti assolutamente regolari della divinità, noi correggessimo i nostri movimenti erranti. 4 In questo passo sono presentati in forma condensata alcuni teoremi filosofici fondamentali non solo per la comprensione del senso complessivo del dialogo, ma soprattutto per la questione che qui si intende affrontare, ossia il tema della presenza dell'intelligenza al di fuori degli spazi della soggettività. Timeo sostiene infatti che l'intelletto 2

3

4

Sull'ipotesi che il racconto di Socrate contenuto nella Repubblica sia esattamente rivolto ai personaggi che prendono parte al Timeo (essendo stato narrato proprio il giorno prima dell'incontro che dà luogo a questo dialogo) cfr. G. Cerri, „Dalla dialettica all'epos: Platone, Repubblica X, Timeo, Crizia", in G Casertano (ed.), La struttura del dialogo platonico, Napoli 2000, pp. 7-34 (spec. 10-11). Sulle modalità con le quali Socrate riassume nel proemio del Timeo il contenuto della Repubblica cfr. M. Vegetti, „L'autocritica di Platone: il Timeo e le Leggi", in M. Abbate - M. Vegetti (eds.), La Repubblica' di Platone nella tradizione antica, Napoli 1999, pp. 13-27 (spec. 18-21). L'interpretazione corretta del dialogo è stata a mio avviso fornita da P.L. Donini, „II Timeo: unità del dialogo, verisimiglianza del discorso", Elenchos, 9 (1988), pp. 5-52, il quale riconosce che l'esigenza di una fruizione etica e morale del discorso di Timeo non comporta una svalutazione delle informazioni fisiche e cosmologiche in esso contenute. Tim. 47 B-C (trad. ital. di F. Fronterotta). Su questo passo e in particolare sul motivo dell'assimilazione dell'anima ai movimenti del cosmo cfr. J. Kung, „Mathematics and Virtue in Plato's 77maeus", in J. P. Anton - A. Preus (eds.), Essays in Ancient Philosophy, 3: Plato, Albany 1989, pp. 309-39 (spec. 325).

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regola i movimenti del cielo, ossia le rivoluzioni circolari e regolari degli astri, e che l'uomo deve adeguare, naturalmente nella misura del possibile, i movimenti della propria anima, - i quali sono anch'essi di natura intellettiva (sono movimenti della διανόησις παρ' ήμιν) e infatti risultano affini (συγγενείς) a quelli dell'intelletto (cosmico o meta-cosmico), - a quelli del cielo, perché solo in questo modo potrà avere parte della correttezza presente in natura, ossia della razionalità del mondo. Tutto ciò comporta evidentemente che, secondo Platone, a) esiste un'intelligenza cosmica, o più esattamente meta-cosmica, al di fuori di quella posseduta dall'uomo; b) che questa intelligenza (νους) governa l'universo e manifesta la propria presenza soprattutto nell' ambito dei movimenti del cielo, che risultano infatti circolari e regolari; c) che l'intelligenza presente nell'uomo è affine a quella dell'universo, ma che è anche inferiore ad essa (in realtà deriva da essa, essendo tuttavia composta a partire da materiale di scarto);5 d) che il compito dell'uomo consiste nel riprodurre all'interno della propria anima la perfezione dei movimenti del cosmo e che dunque la razionalità e l'ordine etico e morale dipendono sostanzialmente dalla capacità di adeguare se stessi all'intelligenza dell'universo. Quest'ultimo motivo, ossia l'invito rivolto all'anima dell'uomo a uniformarsi ai movimenti del cosmo, viene tradizionalmente considerato come una variante della celebre concezione dell'assimilazione a dio (όμοίωσις θεώ), presente, come è noto, in forma diversa anche nel Teeteto e nella Repubblica,6 Si tratta, come dovrebbe essere ormai chiaro, esattamente dei problemi evocati all'inizio di questo contributo. Come si è premesso introducendoli, in Platone, e in particolare nel Timeo, la questione di come l'intelligenza consenta all'uomo di agire e quella intorno alla presenza dell'intelligenza al di fuori dell'ambito della soggettività, appaiono strettamente collegate fino quasi a formare un unico nodo problematico.

2. La natura della causa intelligente Il punto di partenza di ogni indagine intorno alla concezione platonica dell'intelligenza deve inevitabilmente partire dall'accettazione dell'assunto, del tutto fondamentale per un filosofo di osservanza platonica, che l'intelligenza si manifesta in nature and the universe as a whole (per citare l'espressione usata nell'introduzione a questo colloquio). In effetti, il Timeo rappresenta il primo (e forse insuperato) tentativo di dimostrare come

5

6

Sulla derivazione dell'anima umana da quella del mondo cfr. Tim. 41 C-Ε. Sulla natura divina della parte superiore dell'anima individuale cfr. sotto § 9. Sul tipo di immortalità dell'anima individuale (della sua parte razionale) cfr. A. S. Mason, „Immortality in the Timaeus", Phronesis, 39(1994), pp. 90-7. Theaet. 176 Α-B e Resp. VI 500 B-D. Sulla formulazione presente nel Timeo (cfr. anche 90 D) si veda D. Sedley, „Becoming like God in the Timaeus and Aristotle", in T. Calvo - L. Brisson (eds.), Interpreting the , Timaeus-Critias Proceedings of the IV Symposium Platonicum, Sankt Augustin 1997, pp. 327-39. Sul tema della assimilazione a dio in Platone cfr. ora S. Lavecchia, Una via che conduce al divino. La „ homoiosis theo " nella filosofìa di Platone, Milano 2006.

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l'intelligenza sia presente nel mondo físico e come la mente dell'uomo sia nelle condizioni ontologiche per ri-conoscere questa presenza. Si potrebbe addirittura affermare, invocando secondo l'uso platonico la benevolenza degli dèi e dei lettori, che il Timeo, attraverso l'uso del paradigma artigianale (sul quale si tornerà più avanti), costituisce la prima grandiosa messa in scena del principio, formulato molti secoli dopo dall'autore cristiano Lattanzio, che stabilisce che solo chi ha costruito un'opera può pienamente conoscerla (Quis scire nisi artifex potest cui soli opus suum notum est?)? La presenza dell'intelligenza nel cosmo si esprime essenzialmente nel fatto che esso è intelligibile (νοητόν), ossia è prodotto dall'intelligenza (νοϋς). Quella del cosmo non è solo una intelligibilità a latere objecti; in realtà, il mondo è intelligibile anche a latere subjecti, dal momento che la stessa intelligenza risulta presente in forma derivata nell'uomo (la cui anima razionale viene considerata come un demone che il dio ci ha assegnato),8 il quale diventa dunque in grado di ri-conoscersi nel mondo, vale a dire di comprendere il mondo come qualcosa di intelligibile, ossia come un prodotto dell'intelligenza (di cui egli ha parte in forma derivata). Ma quale è la natura dell'intelligibilità? Quale è la forma della presenza dell'intelligenza nel mondo? Secondo Platone la caratteristica discriminante dell'intelligenza, ciò che distingue il prodotto dell'intelligenza da qualsiasi altro prodotto, risiede nella corrispondenza a uno scopo, vale a dire nella sua natura teleologicamente orientata: l'agire intelligente è caratterizzato dal riferimento a un proposito. Ma questo non è ancora sufficiente per definire la natura dell'attività dell'intelligenza. Lo scopo dell'azione del nous ingloba infatti, agli occhi di Platone, un altro motivo fondamentale, consistente nella sua connotazione assiologica, vale a dire nel fatto che l'intelletto agisce in vista del bene o del meglio. Il lungo monologo di Timeo dedicato all'esposizione della γ έ ν ε σ ί ς και σύστασις dell'universo si muove esattamente nella prospettiva filosofica circoscritta da questi due assunti relativi alla natura della causalità intelligente. Per comprendere il significato della posizione maturata in questo dialogo, occorre però fare un passo indietro e ricordare rapidamente come Platone, nel Fedone, definisca i contorni teorici della causalità prodotta dall'intelletto, da lui contrapposta a un'altra forma di causalità, quella necessaria o materiale.9

7

8

9

Lact. De opificio dei, 14,9 (= Opera omnia, eds. Brandt - Laubmann, 11,1 p. 50). Cfr. in proposito quanto scrive K. Gloy, „Piatons Timaios und die Gegenwart", in A. Neschke Hentschke (ed.), Le ,Timée' de Platon. Contributions à l'histoire de sa réception, Louvain-Paris 2000, pp. 317-32 (part. 326). Tim. 90 A. Sull'attribuzione alla parte razionale dell'anima individuale della qualifica di „demone" cfr. L. Brisson, Le même et l'autre dans la structure ontologique du , Timée ' de Platon, Sankt Augustin 1994, p. 417. Si veda comunque sotto § 9. Secondo M. Bordt, Piatons Theologie, München 2006, p. 241, appartiene alle convinzioni certe della ricerca platonica la tesi secondo la quale „Piaton im Timaios ein philosophisches Projekt aufgreift, das er im Phaidon knapp skizziert, aber nicht durchgeführt hat". Sulla connessione tra i due dialoghi è fondamentale lo studio di F. Karfik, Die Beseelung des Kosmos. Untersuchungen

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Come è noto, nell'ambito del suo celebre excursus autobiografico Socrate espone le ragioni che lo hanno indotto a superare la prospettiva teorica che ai suoi occhi aveva caratterizzato l'indagine naturalistica dei presocratici. Il limite di quest'ultima risiede, secondo il Socrate del Fedone, nell'incapacità di individuare una nozione di causa che rispetti alcuni parametri da lui avvertiti come fondamentali (ad esempio il principio per cui una medesima causa non può produrre effetti opposti, oppure quello che stabilisce che un effetto non può venire generato da due cause opposte).10 Socrate reclama inoltre l'esigenza che la causa (αιτία) di qualcosa - e più esattamente la causa per cui ciascuna cosa nasce, per cui viene meno e per cui è - sia effettivamente in grado di indicare il perché questa stessa cosa si comporta in un certo modo, vale a dire perché è ordinata in una maniera piuttosto che in un'altra, e in che modo questo ordinamento si rapporta al bene o al meglio, ossia perché è bene che sia così come è e non altrimenti. Dunque, i requisiti fondamentali che la causa deve possedere sembrano di tre tipi: a) non deve risultare contraddittoria; b) deve spiegare la struttura dell'oggetto o dell'evento di cui è causa; c) deve contenere un qualche tipo di riferimento al bene. E' facile rendersi conto che se alla dimensione causale sono richiesti requisiti di questo tipo, è quasi inevitabile che essa si richiami in qualche forma all'azione dell'intelligenza {nous). Esattamente per questa ragione Socrate dichiara di essersi indirizzato verso il celebre scritto di Anassagora, nel quale l'intelletto, inteso come „ciò che ordina tutte le cose e dispone ciascuna nel modo migliore (τόν γ ε ν ο υ ν κ ο σ μ ο ύ ν τ α π ά ν τ α κ ο σ μ ε ΐ ν κ α ι εκαστον τ ι θ έ ν α ι ταύτη ο π η α ν βέλτιστα έχη)", 11 sembrava giocare un ruolo decisivo, per poi rendersi conto che anche questo pensatore finiva con il ricorrere alle cause materiali (prive di orientamento teleologico), lasciando sostanzialmente inutilizzato il nous. Il fallimento del tentativo anassagoreo indusse Socrate, come è noto, a ricercare la causa nell'ambito di una dimensione diversa da quella della Ιστορία naturalistica; la celebre fuga nei logoi (ragionamenti, discorsi, asserzioni) segna infatti l'ingresso nella dialettica vera e propria, ossia in un campo teorico dominato essenzialmente, sebbene non esclusivamente, dal principio di coerenza.12 L'instaurazione della dialettica è poi segnata dall'ammissione di entità dotate di caratteristiche logico-ontologiche eccezionali, le idee, che proprio in virtù della loro natura risultano in grado di assolvere in larga

zur Kosmologie, 2004.

Seelenlehre und Theologie in Piatons ,Phaidon ' und, Timaios ', München-Leipzig

10 Phaed. 96 C-97 B. Una buona introduzione generale (aggiornata dal punto di vista bibliografico) a questo ordine di problemi viene fornita da A. Gajano, „Sulla causa nel Fedone platonico", Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofìa dell'Università di Siena, 23 (2002), pp. 1-42. 11 Phaed. 97 C. Sul nous anassagoreo e sulla tradizione del naturalismo presocratico in esso compendiata cfr. T. M. Robinson, „Socrates, Anaxagoras, Nous and Noesis", in A. Havlicek - F. Karfik (eds.), Plato's ,PhaedoProceedings of the Second Symposium Platonicum Pragense, Praha 2001, pp. 357-67. 12 Sul ruolo del principio di coerenza nella dialettica platonica cfr. ora J. Szaif, „Piaton über Wahrheit und Kohärenz", Archiv fiir Geschichte der Philosophie, 82 (2000), pp. 119-48.

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parte alla funzione causale reclamata nel dialogo.13 Tuttavia, l'introduzione delle idee sembra lasciare ai margini il nous, almeno nel senso che Socrate non chiarisce affatto se e in che modo la spiegazione dell'essere delle cose fondata sulle forme intelligibili inglobi la dimensione teleologica apparentemente garantita dal richiamo all'intelletto e al bene (che nella seconda parte del discorso di Socrate scompaiono del tutto).14 In effetti, lo sviluppo del ragionamento di Socrate nella sezione autobiografica del Fedone si presenta tutt'altro che lineare, tanto che ogni tentativo di ricostruire un percorso unitario è esposto a difficoltà apparentemente insormontabili. All'inizio egli critica il tipo di indagine fisico-naturalistica e stabilisce con chiarezza l'esigenza di assegnare all'intelletto il ruolo di causa, motivando tale scelta soprattutto sulla base della capacità del nous di rappresentare un principio di ordine (assolta dal richiamo all'azione di κοσμειν assegnata all'intelletto) e insieme di incorporare una forte componente assiol o g i a (espressa dall'orientamente al bene e al meglio). Poi, però, Socrate introduce la seconda navigazione (δεύτερος π λ ο υ ς ) e la fuga nei logoi, e in tale contesto assegna esplicitamente alle idee, e non all'intelletto, il ruolo di causa (logica e forse anche efficiente) delle cose. L'aspetto problematico di tutta la faccenda consiste nel fatto che egli non chiarisce affatto se e in che misura la causalità esercitata dalle idee realizzi il programma delineato a proposito dell'intelletto (oppure se questo venga di fatto accantonato). Quale che sia l'interpretazione corretta del Fedone e quale che sia il rapporto tra la causa intelligente (e teleologicamente orientata) e le idee, non mi sembra azzardato sostenere che proprio all'interno del grande racconto di Timeo Platone tenti di operare quella saldatura tra causalità eidetica e dimensione teleologica che nel Fedone era stata solo ventilata e poi, di fatto, lasciata cadere. Il tema della causa, e in particolare quello della causa dell'universo (della genesi e della disposizione di esso), gioca nel Timeo un ruolo centrale, tanto che risulta quasi inevitabile stabilire uno stretto parallelo con le indicazioni programmatiche esposte nel Fedone a proposito dell'intelletto anassagoreo; nel Timeo, inoltre, le idee esercitano una funzione di natura causale rispetto all'essere e al divenire delle cose; a differenza che nel Fedone, tuttavia, nel Timeo Platone sembra avere operato un tentativo abbastanza organico per chiarire i rapporti tra la dimensione logico-esplicativa della causalità (che intende la causa prevalentemente in senso paradigmatico e formale) e quella propriamente dinamico-efficiente (che privilegia l'aspetto dinamico-produttivo). In tale contesto, come si vedrà più avanti, gioca un ruolo decisivo

13 Sul tipo di causalità esercitata dalle idee (che è anche efficiente e dotata di una componente finalistica) si cfr. l'epocale studio di G Fine, „Forms as Causes. Plato and Aristotle" in Α. Graeser (ed.), Mathematics and Metaphysics in Aristotle, Akten des X Symposium Aristotelicum, Bern 1987, pp. 69-112 (spec. 97-107). 14 Sebbene non manchino studiosi che hanno creduto di vedere nell'ipotesi eidetica una soluzione rispettosa dei parametri (teleologici) fissati da Socrate nella prima parte dell 'excursus autobiografico: cfr. ad esempio D. Wiggins, „Teleology and the Good in Plato's Phaedo", Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 4 (1986), pp. 1-18. Resta in ogni caso irrisolta la questione relativa a se e in che misura la seconda navigazione e la fuga nei logoi realizzino o rinuncino a realizzare il programma inizialmente delineato da Socrate (incentrato sul nous come causa attiva).

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il richiamo al modello artigianale, che sembra effettivamente saldare i principali aspetti della causalità evidenziati nel Fedone, ossia quello efficiente e produttivo (fondato sull'assegnazione all'intelletto di un'attività ordinatrice), quello teleologico (espresso dal richiamo al bene) e, infine, quello logico-paradigmatico (dominato dal riferimento al principio di coerenza e non contraddittorietà).15 Se, come più di uno studioso sostiene, il programma causale delineato e poi apparentemente lasciato cadere nel Fedone viene ripreso e portato a compimento nel Timeo,16 è inevitabile attendersi che la causalità presentata in quest'ultimo dialogo sia in qualche modo collegata all'intelligenza. Non può dunque sorprendere che Platone ribadisca a più riprese che il complesso dell'attività causale dalla quale il cosmo dipende ricade sotto l'egida dell'intelligenza, vale a dire risulta una causa κατά νουν. Nel Timeo infatti il mondo viene concepito come il prodotto dell'azione combinata di due tipi di causa, quella intelligente o divina, e quella materiale o necessaria. Non si tratta però di due cause equipotenti, dal momento che la causa intelligente esercita una certa supremazia, alla quale Platone allude affermando, per esempio, che l'intelligenza opera una sorta di persuasione (πειθώ) nei confronti della causa necessaria (νοΰ δέ ανάγκης άρχοντος τώ πείθειν). 17 La causa intelligente viene invocata sistematicamente nella prima parte della esposizione di Timeo (da 29 E a 47 E), e poi compare, sia pure relegata a un ruolo più marginale, anche nella seconda parte di questo lungo monologo (che è invece consacrata principalmente alle operazioni della causa necessaria). Si può dunque affermare che le prime venti pagine del discorso di Timeo costituiscono la descrizione dell'attività della causa intelligente (e dipendente dall'intelletto), come del resto Timeo dichiara in conclusione di esse, quando ammette che „le cose dette finora hanno mostrato, salvo qualche cenno, le realtà prodotte dall'intelletto (τα μεν ούν παρεΛηλυθότα τών είρημένων πλην βραχέων έπιδέδεικται τά δια νοϋ δεδημιουργημένα)". 1 8 La lettura di questa sezione del dialogo induce a ritenere che l'azione della causa intelligente comporti l'apparente riferimento a una pluralità di entità (le idee, il demiurgo, l'intelletto, l'anima, il bene). Nelle pagine che seguono si intende tuttavia dimostrare 15 Sulla nozione di causa presente nel Fedone,

oltre all'importante saggio di G Fine, Forms

as

Causes, cit., si può vedere l'ormai classico articolo di D. Sedley, „Piatonic Causes", Phronesis, 43 (1998), pp. 114-32. 16 Cfr. ancora M. Bordt, Piatons Theologie, cit., p. 247, il quale scrive: „es ist unstrittig, dass das im Phaidon skizzierte Projekt, die Welt durch den nous zu verstehen, im Timaios aufgenommen wird". 17 Tim. 48 A. Sul tema della persuasione della necessità ad opera dell'intelligenza cfr. GR. Morrow, „Necessity and Persuasion in Plato's Timaeus", in R. E. Allen (ed.), Studies in Plato's Metaphysics, London 1965, pp. 421-37 e Κ. Alt, „Die Überredung der Ananke in Piatons Timaios", Hermes, (1978), pp. 426-66. Più recentemente si può vedere lo studio di K. J. Lee, Piatons

106

Raumbegriff.

Studien zur Metaphysik und Naturphilosophie im , Timaios ', Würzburg 2001. 18 Tim. 47 Ε. Sulla distinzione tra i tipi di causa, razionale e necessaria, cfr. S. K. Strange, „The double Explanation in the Timaeus" ora in G Fine (ed.), Plato 1. Metaphysics and

Epistemology,

Oxford 2000, pp. 397-415 (spec. 406 ss.); importanti considerazioni anche in G. Casertano, „Cause e concause", in C. Natali - S. Maso (eds.), Plato Physicus. Cosmologia e antropologia nel, Timeo ', Amsterdam 2003, pp. 33-63.

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che il richiamo a questa pluralità di soggetti non indebolisce la loro appartenenza a una dimensione chiaramente unitaria, quella appunto dell'intelligenza, e che anzi, tale pluralità è motivata essenzialmente da ragioni didattico-espositive, dal momento che, da un punto di vista strettamente metafisico, l'insieme delle operazioni dell'intelligenza rinvia in realtà a un'unica entità.

3. Il discorso verosimile Prima di entrare nel merito della natura della causalità intelligente e delle operazioni che ad essa risultano riconducibili, è opportuno dedicare qualche rapida considerazione al tipo di esposizione alla quale Platone affida la trattazione in questione. Si tratta, come è universalmente noto, di un discorso (λόγος-μύθος) verisimile (είκώς), ossia non vero, ma somigliante a quello vero. Le considerazioni epistemologiche di Platone, sebbene molto celebri, meritano di venire riportate. Afferma dunque Timeo: Ma la cosa più importante è cominciare ogni esame prendendo le mosse dal suo principio naturale. Così, dunque, bisogna distinguere fra l'immagine e il suo modello, poiché i discorsi sono congeneri a ciò di cui parlano: da un lato, dunque, i discorsi su ciò che è stabile, saldo ed evidente al pensiero, bisogna che siano anch'essi stabili e solidi e, nella misura in cui, per i discorsi, è possibile e conveniente essere inconfutabili e invincibili, di nulla devono mancare; dall'altro, i discorsi su ciò che imita il modello, e che non è che una sua imitazione, bisogna che siano, rispetto ai primi, verosimili; l'essere è rispetto al divenire nello stesso rapporto in cui è la verità rispetto alla credenza. Se dunque, Socrate, non saremo in grado di proporti, su molti aspetti e riguardo a molte questioni, sugli dèi e sulla generazione dell'universo, dei ragionamenti perfettamente e compiutamente coerenti con se stessi e del tutto esatti, non stupirti; me se ti presenteremo dei ragionamenti non meno verosimili di altri, dovremo esserne soddisfatti, ricordandoci che io che parlo e voi che siete i miei giudici apparteniamo alla natura umana, sicché, se ci si offre un racconto verosimile su questi argomenti, conviene non cercare ancora oltre.19 In questo brano sono condensati alcuni dei motivi teorici (metafisici ed epistemologici) più importanti della filosofia platonica. In primo luogo, Timeo riconduce le pretese epistemico-veritative di un discorso alla natura del campo oggettuale al quale esso si 19 Tim. 29 B-D (trad. ital. F. Fronterotta). Sull'epistemologia esposta in questo celebre passo, oltre allo studio ormai classico di B. Witte, „Der Eikos Logos in Platos Tìmaios. Beitrag zur Wissenschaftsmethode und Erkenntnistheorie des späten Plato", Archiv flir Geschichte der Philosophie, 46 (1964), pp. 1-16, cfr. ora F. Romano, „Epistemologia e scienza fisica nel Timeo di Platone", in G Bentivegna - S. Burgio - G Magnano San Lio (eds.), Filosofìa Scienza Cultura, Studi in onore di Corrado Dolio, Soveria Mannelli 2002, pp. 793-806.

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rivolge. Dunque, dal momento che lo statuto epistemico di una trattazione dipende in larga misura dalla natura ontologica dell'oggetto al quale essa si riferisce (i discorsi sono σ υ γ γ ε ν ε ί ς alle cose di cui parlano), e dal momento che il mondo fisico costituisce una copia (είκών) di un modello, e che esso rappresenta un'entità generata (το γ ι γ ν ό μ ε ν ο ν ) , ossia soggetta a generazione (γένεσις), ogni discorso che lo riguarda non potrà ambire all'esattezza e alla inconfutabilità proprie della trattazione di un oggetto immobile, eterno e perfetto, ma dovrà inevitabilmente accontentarsi di raggiungere nel migliore dei casi il livello della verosimiglianza. Del resto, come Timeo dichiara in modo assertorio, l'essere sta alla generazione (προς γ έ ν ε σ ι ν ούσία) come la verità sta alla credenza (προς πίστιν αλήθεια), il che significa che il contenuto del discorso di Timeo relativo alla generazione e alla costituzione del mondo non può essere considerato in tutto e per tutto vero, ma solamente credibile, ossia verisimile, almeno nella misura in cui esso discende da premesse metafisiche inconfutabili e invincibili, queste sì autenticamente vere. E dal momento che la sua descrizione del mondo deriva effettivamente, come si dirà più avanti (§ 5), da premesse assolute, ossia sottratte alla limitazione della verosimiglianza, si può essere certi che questo discorso sarà affidabile, almeno nella misura in cui può esserlo un discorso non vero ma verisimile. Ciò significa che da esso non sarebbe legittimo attendersi l'esattezza e la stringenza argomentativa di un discorso relativo ai principi dialettico-metafisici, ma significa anche che nelle sue grandi linee esso descrive in modo corretto la struttura del mondo e l'intelligibilità che lo attraversa. Quanto appena detto ha l'obiettivo di mettere in guardia da due possibili modi, entrambi fuorvianti, di leggere il discorso-mito verisimile di Timeo. Sarebbe, infatti, sbagliato sia pretendere di vedervi una descrizione „scientifica" della natura dell'universo e dei principi che ne regolano la genesi (ossia fornirne una lettura di carattere appunto scientifico),20 sia operarne una radicale svalutazione, magari assimilandolo a un mito letterario, come ha tentato di fare ad esempio un autorevole studioso francese.21 In realtà, il racconto di Timeo non può ambire per ragioni intrinseche all'esattezza e alla piena affidabilità del ragionamento dialettico, perché la natura dell'oggetto da esso descritto non lo consente. Tuttavia, tale discorso non è neppure assimilabile a una histoire mythique priva di rilevanza filosofica. Ciò che vi viene asserito non può venire considerato affidabile alla stregua di un'argomentazione dialettica relativa a entità metafisiche (come le idee), ma neppure respinto come un racconto estraneo alla verità filosofica. Si tratta certamente di un discorso non vero, ma neppure falso, bensì appunto verisimile. Il suo contenuto è dunque non solo sensato, ma anche in larga parte affidabile, sebbene non tutto ciò che vi si dice vada preso alla lettera. Il suo alto grado di affidabilità dipende dall'assunzione di principi dialettico-metafisici (sottratti dunque al vincolo della verisimiglianza), mentre l'assenza di una cogenza assoluta va ascritta alla natura dell'oggetto intorno al quale questo discorso verte.

20 Come in qualche modo sembra fare L. Brisson, Platon,, Timée ', Critias Paris 1992, pp. 9-76. 21 Cfr. P. Hadot, „Physique et poésie dans le Timée de Platon", Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie, 115 (1983), pp. 113-33.

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4. L'intelligibilità del mondo Il lungo racconto di Timeo rappresenta dunque il tentativo di descrivere l'intelligibilità del mondo, o meglio una particolare forma di intelligibilità: quella prodotta dall'azione dell'intelletto (inteso, come si vedrà, nel senso di totalità unificata della causalità intelligente, attiva e teleologicamente orientata). Già nel Fedone era risultato evidente che la spiegazione platonica dell'intelligibilità del mondo si contrappone programmaticamente a quella fornita dall'indagine naturalistica, il cui esito più raffinato può essere probabilmente individuato nella fisica atomistica. Secondo gli atomisti l'intelligibilità si produce nel momento in cui un evento (e dunque anche un oggetto) viene scomposto nei suoi costituenti elementari, ossia nei fattori primi che lo determinano. Tanto le realtà „sostanziali" (ossia gli oggetti), quanto gli eventi (fisici e percettivi) risultano intelligibili solo nel momento in cui vengono risolti nelle loro parti atomiche costitutive. In una simile prospettiva teorica la parte, ossia l'elemento costitutivo, acquisisce una netta priorità nei confronti del tutto, ossia del composto, nel senso che quest'ultimo finisce per equivalere alla somma delle sue parti elementari. Inoltre l'atomismo democriteo rinuncia al finalismo, vale a dire alla spiegazione teleologica dell'essere-così delle cose, e abbraccia una visione meccanicistica e necessitante (solidale in questo alla posizione di Anassagora, almeno nella ricostruzione polemica fatta da Platone nel Fedone)}2 Il Timeo può essere letto come una formidabile risposta alla fisica addizionalistica, a-teleologica e meccanicistica di Democrito, dal momento che il programma esplicativo che esso persegue ricerca l'intelligibilità del mondo sulla base di parametri esattamente opposti a quelli di cui si erano serviti gli atomisti. Al meccanicismo necessitante e ateleologico di questi ultimi Platone contrappone sul piano macro-sistemico una causalità di tipo teleologico, stabilendo che il mondo è come è perché esso rappresenta il prodotto dell'azione di un'intelligenza (nous) orientata al bene. In questo modo egli adotta un paradigma esplicativo di tipo artigianale, e assimila l'universo a un manufatto prodotto da un artigiano divino, il celebre demiurgo. Timeo si richiama poi a un principio di intelligibilità biologico, anch'esso alternativo al meccanicismo atomistico, e a uno matematico. In base al paradigma biologico, il mondo è un vivente dotato di corpo, anima (ψυχή) e intelletto (νους) e, in quanto tale, è un'entità nella quale l'organismo inteso come totalità, e per la precisione come totalità organica delle parti, precede la somma dei costituenti.23 In base al modello matematico, infine, la struttura materiale del mondo risulta in ultima analisi risolvibile in principi di natura geometrico-matematica,

22 Un'introduzione efficace e aggiornata all'atomismo è fornita da C. C. W. Taylor, „The Atomiste", in A. A. Long (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, Cambridge 1999, pp. 181-204. 23 Sull'importanza del principio di totalità e interalità nella descrizione del cosmo cfr. A. Peratoner, „La struttura del cosmo nel Timeo", in C. Natali - S. Maso (eds.), Plato Physicus, cit., pp. 149-63 (spec. 150-54); sul passaggio in Platone da una logica mereologica (in cui l'identità ontologica è data dalla somma dei costituenti elementari) a una olistica (in cui l'identità è stabilita dalla struttura complessiva che precede le parti) cfr. il volume di V. Harte, Plato on Parts and Wholes. The Metaphysics of Structure, Oxford 2002.

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secondo uno schema teorico che ha riscosso l'interesse di un grande fisico del novecento come Werner Heisenberg.24 Platone dunque sostituisce un universo addizionale (e mereologico), aperto, meccanicistico, come quello atomistico, con uno olistico, chiuso e finalistico. Al principio che riconduce i composti alla aggregazione delle loro parti costitutive, oppone l'idea che la struttura organica del tutto non solo non è riducibile alla somma delle parti, ma la precede e le fornisce il senso.25 A tutto ciò aggiunge una forte componente matematica (che spiega come una realtà sensibile possa diventare un'immagine abbastanza fedele di qualcosa di immutabile), presente tanto nella descrizione delle operazioni dell'intelletto (si pensi alla divisione dell'anima del mondo) quanto nell'ambito dell'attività del principio necessitante (soprattutto nella risoluzione dei corpi in strutture geometricomatematiche).26 Quanto osservato finora consente di concludere che tutti e tre i modelli esplicativi ai quali Platone ricorre per rendere ragione dell'intelligibilità del mondo - quello teleologico-artigianale, quello biologico-olistico e quello matematico - rinviano in qualche modo all'azione dell'intelligenza.

5. Gli assiomi dialettico-metafisici Abbiamo visto che nella sua costituzione complessiva il cosmo risponde a un proposito. Esso è ciò che è, possiede cioè una determinata struttura, perché è bene che sia così e questo accade in virtù dell'azione di un'intelligenza che agisce in vista del bene. Tutto ciò viene affermato da Timeo all'interno del racconto verisimile relativo alla γ έ ν ε σ ι ς και συστασις τού π α ν τ ό ς , ovvero alla generazione e alla costituzione dell'universo. Prima di dare avvio a questo racconto (definito indifferentemente logos e mythos), Timeo aveva enunciato una serie di principi di ordine dialettico-metafisico, sottratti al vincolo epistemologico della verosimiglianza in quanto dotati di un grado di certezza assoluto. Si è osservato sopra che proprio in virtù del riferimento a questi principi (dai quali viene sostanzialmente dedotto) il ragionamento intorno all'universo acquisisce quella

24 Sulla presenza della matematica nel discorso di Timeo cfr. B. Vitrac, „Les mathématiques dans le Timée de Platon: le point de vue d'un historien des sciences", Études Platoniciennes, 2 (2006), pp. 11-78. Importante anche il saggio di L. Brisson, „Le rôle des mathématiques dans le Timée selon les interprétations contemporaines", in A. Neschke Hentschke (ed.), Le , Timée ' de Platon. Contributions à l'histoire de sa réception, cit., pp. 295-315. 25 Per tutto ciò sono illuminanti le considerazioni di S. Scolnicov, „An Image of Perfection. The Good and the Rational in Plato's material Universe", Revue de Philosophie Ancienne, 10 (1992), pp. 35-67 (spec. 38 ss.). 26 In realtà, la stessa natura del principio spaziale e materiale, che esprime l'ambito causale della necessità, non è del tutto priva di una qualche forma di partecipazione all'intelletto: cfr. quanto dice S. Broadie, „Mind, Soul and Intellect in Plato and Aristotle", Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, 19 (2003), pp. 19-33 (spec. 30-2).

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verisimiglianza che lo rende capace di sostituirsi ai racconti arcaici relativi alla generazione del mondo.27 Dopo avere rivolto l'invocazione agli dèi, Timeo presenta alcuni assiomi fondamentali che colloca, in forma di prologo, all'inizio del suo lungo monologo. Come detto, si tratta di affermazioni dotate di uno statuto epistemologico differente rispetto alle tesi sviluppate poi all'interno del racconto sulla generazione dell'universo. Tali assiomi possiedono un'affidabilità assoluta, appunto perché costituiscono asserzioni di natura dialettica e non proposizioni verisimili relative a un oggetto instabile. Il primo di questi principi è universalmente noto e viene solitamente considerato come uno dei „fondamenti inconcussi" della filosofia platonica. Esso ripropone la classica distinzione ontologica ed epistemologica tra ciò che è sempre e non ha generazione, da una parte, e ciò che diviene sempre e non è mai veramente, dall'altra. Afferma dunque Timeo: Questo dunque, secondo la mia opinione, è ciò che bisogna innanzittutto distinguere: che cosa è ciò che sempre è, senza avere generazione, e che cosa è ciò che sempre diviene, senza mai essere? L'uno, certo, si coglie con il pensiero e se ne può rendere conto razionalmente, poiché rimane sempre identico a se stesso; l'altro, dal canto suo, è oggetto dell'opinione che deriva dalla sensazione di cui non si può rendere conto razionalmente, poiché si genera e si corrompe e mai è realmente. 28 Si tratta di un principio troppo noto perché valga la pena soffermarvisi analiticamente in questa sede. Platone ripropone il celebre parallelismo onto-epistemico tra ciò che è sempre ed è privo di generazione (τό öv αεί, γένεσιν δέ ούκ εχον) e che risulta epistemicamente trasparente all'intellezione accompagnata dal ragionamento (νοήσει μετά Λόγου περιΛηπτόν), da una parte, e ciò che diviene sempre e non è mai in senso pieno (τό γιγνόμενον αεί, öv δε ουδέποτε), e che è opinabile dall'opinione unita alla sensazione priva di ragione (δόξη μετ' αίσθήσεως αλόγου δοξαστόν), dall'altra. Non vale neppure la pena di sottolineare la natura dialettica (e per ciò stesso sottratta al vincolo epistemologico della verisimiglianza) di questo principio. Altrettanto importante il secondo assioma formulato da Timeo. Esso si riferisce a uno dei due ambiti onto-epistemologici stabiliti dal primo assioma e recita:

27 Sul Timeo come parte di una trilogia (composta anche dal Crizia e dalle Leggi) finalizzata a fornire una spiegazione alternativa (rispetto alle cosmogonie presocratiche) della generazione del mondo e della formazione della società cfr. G Naddaf, „Plato and the Peri physeos Tradition", in T. Calvo L. Brisson (eds.), Interpreting the , Timaeus-Critias ', cit., pp. 27-36. 28 Tim. 27 D-28 A. L'interpretazione corretta della dicotomia essere-divenire, da intendersi come opposizione tra due modalità di rapporto con il predicato che descrive il soggetto, è stata fornita da M. Frede, „Being and Becoming in Plato", Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Suppl. 1988, pp. 37-52; sui problemi che questo primo assunto comporta cfr. T. Ebert, „Von der Weltursache zum Weltbaumeister. Bemerkungen zu einem Argumentationsfehler im platonischen Timaios", Antike und Abendland, 37 (1991), pp. 43-54 (spec. 45-7).

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tutto ciò che diviene, diviene necessariamente in virtù di una qualche causa; è infatti impossibile per qualsiasi cosa avere generazione separatamente da una causa (πάν δέ αύ το γιγνόμενον ύπ' αιτίου τινός έξ ανάγκης γίγνεσθαι · παντί γ α ρ α δ ύ ν α τ ο ν χωρίς αιτίου γ έ ν ε σ η σχειν). 2 9 Si tratta di un'asserzione alla quale Timeo attribuisce una funzione strategica fondamentale. Essa si riferisce infatti all'ambito ontologico del divenire, sul quale verte il suo lungo discorso. Subito sotto egli si premura di assegnare l'oggetto della trattazione, ossia l'universo, al campo del divenire: Per quanto riguarda il cielo intero o il mondo - o qualunque altro sia il nome con cui conviene chiamarlo - bisogna innanzittutto esaminare di esso ciò che è stato stabilito si debba esaminare in primo luogo di ogni cosa, vale a dire se sia sempre stato, senza avere né principio né generazione, oppure se sia stato generato a partire da un principio. E ' stato generato: infatti è visibile e tangibile e ha un corpo, e tutto ciò che è dotato di tali proprietà è sensibile; e il sensibile, che si coglie attraverso l'opinione che deriva dalla sensazione, ci si è rivelato soggetto al divenire e alla generazione". 30 L'assioma di causalità (come viene talora definito il principio che stabilisce che tutto ciò che diviene, diviene necessariamente in virtù di una causa) si riferisce dunque alla realtà soggetta al divenire, ossia all'universo fisico (che possiede caratteristiche tali che lo collocano in questo ambito ontologico). L'argomentazione dialettica sviluppata da Timeo stabilisce dunque che l'universo è un'entità soggetta al divenire e che, come tutte le realtà di questo genere, essa risulta sottoposta a una causa.

29 Tim. 28 A. Per un esame dettagliato delle implicazioni di questo principio mi permetto di rinviare a F. Ferrari, „Separazione asimmetrica e causalità eidetica nel Timeo", in L. M. Napolitano Valditara (ed.), La sapienza di Timeo. Riflessioni in margine al , Timeo ' di Platone, Milano 2007, pp. 157-82 (spec. 174 ss.). 30 Tim. 28 Β. Come è universalmente noto, questo passo (con la celebre affermazione della „nascita" del cosmo) rappresenta forse il testo in prosa più commentato dell'antichità. In particolare ci si è domandati se la nascita del mondo sia da intendersi in senso temporale (come reputava Aristotele) oppure metafisico (come pensava ad esempio Senocrate), ossia se l'affermazione platonica vada letta in modo letterale oppure metaforico. Nel primo caso l'universo avrebbe effettivamente una nascita temporale (esisterebbe cioè un preciso „istante" in cui esso è venuto all'essere), mentre nel secondo caso la generazione del mondo andrebbe intesa nel senso che esso è un ente generato, ossia soggetto al divenire (che è un processo eterno, senza inizio né fine). I testi relativi a questa aporia sono stati raccolti e splendidamente commentati da M. Baltes, Der Piatonismus in der Antike, Bd. 5: Die philosophische

Lehre des Piatonismus. Platonische Physik (im antiken Verständ-

nis) II, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1998, test. 136-45, commento a pp. 373-535. A parere di chi scrive l'interpretazione corretta è quella didascalico-metaforica, sostenuta, ad esempio, da M. Baltes, „Γέγονεν (Platon, Tim. 28 Β 7). Ist die Welt real entstanden oder nicht?", in Id., Dianoemata. Kleine Schriften zu Piaton und zum Piatonismus, Stuttgart-Leipzig 1999, pp. 303-25.

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Quindi egli accenna per la prima volta nel dialogo alla metafora artigianale, per dire che, quando l'artefice di qualsiasi prodotto (οτου μεν ούν α ν ó δημιουργός) guarda a un modello che è sempre identico e di questo si serve, il prodotto che ne scaturisce è bello, non bello invece se egli si serve di un modello generato. Infine, dopo avere stabilito l'appartenenza del cosmo, ossia dell'universo sensibile, alla categoria di ciò che diviene, Timeo riconosce la difficoltà di parlare dell'artefice e del padre (ποιητής και πατήρ) di questo cosmo.31 A proposito dell'accenno al demiurgo, bisogna osservare che non si tratta, come pure molti studiosi ritengono, dell'introduzione di una figura metafisica, individuata e definita, quella appunto dell'artefice divino del cosmo. Timeo parla infatti „dell'artefice di un qualsiasi prodotto", e non dell'artefice del cosmo (il quale viene introdotto solo qualche linea dopo). Ciò significa che egli sta alludendo, in forma fortemente ipotetica ed eventuale (âv), alla possibilità di concepire una qualsiasi realtà in termini di produzione artigianale, allo scopo di sostenere che ciò comporterebbe l'introduzione di un modello al quale l'ipotetico artigiano dovrebbe rivolgersi. E' poi evidente che il ricorso alla metafora artigianale rende più facilmente comprensibile la presenza di un disegno intelligente all'interno del prodotto, ossia dell'universo. Non dunque dell'artigiano divino (precursore della divinità biblica) sta parlando Platone, bensì di un ipotetico artefice di un altrettanto ipotetico prodotto.32 E del resto, egli si premura immediatamente di riconoscere che è molto difficile trovare l'artefice e il padre del cosmo, ossia la causa dell'universo, e, una volta trovatala, è addirittura impossibile comunicarla a tutti. Il fatto è che l'immagine artigianale è una metafora (e non un assunto dialettico, come la bi-partizione del reale e il principio di causalità) e come tale va trattata, senza pretendere di ricavare da essa tesi eccessivamente definite. In altri termini, il paragone tra il prodotto di un artigiano umano e il cosmo non va perseguito in tutti i minimi dettagli, fino ad ammettere l'esistenza metafisica di un artigiano divino (il demiurgo), ma è valida solo nella misura in cui riconosce che l'universo costituisce un'entità intelligibile, in quanto è percorso da un'intelligenza (la cui presenza risulta più facilmente comprensibile se è assimilata all'effetto di un atto artificiale).33

31 Tim. 28 Α-C. Sul significato di questa formula e sulla sua fortuna nell'ambito della tradizione platonica cfr. F. Ferrari „Poietes kai pater, esegesi medioplatoniche di Timeo, 28c3", in G De Gregorio - S. Medaglia (eds.), Tradizione, ecdotica, esegesi, Miscellanea di studi, Napoli 2006, pp. 43-58. 32 Scrive in proposito J. Dillon, „The Riddle of the Timaeus. Is Plato Sowing Clues?", in M. Loyal (ed.), Studies in Plato and the platonic Tradition. Essays Presented to John Whittaker, AldershotSingapore-Sydney 1997, pp. 24-42: surely the natural meaning of such a term ... is simply any craftsman, not the Craftsman (p. 28). Cfr. anche quanto dico in F. Ferrari, „Causa paradigmatica e causa efficiente: il ruolo delle idee nel Timeo", in C. Natali - S. Maso (eds.), Plato Physicus, cit., pp. 83-96 (spec. 86-7). Sulla problematicità della figura del demiurgo sono brillanti le considerazioni di T. Ebert, Von der Weltursache zum Weltbaumeister, cit., p. 48 ss. 33 Sull'esigenza di non interpretare troppo alla lettera la metafora artigianale cfr. E. D. Perl, „The Demiurge and the Forms: A Return to the Ancient Interpretation of Plato's Timaeus", Ancient Philosophy, 18 (1998), pp. 81-92.

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Il complesso degli assunti dialettico-metafisici che Timeo premette al suo discorso stabilisce dunque la dicotomia del reale in essere e divenire; la dipendenza del divenire da una causa efficiente (o meglio da una causa orientata in senso efficiente); il riferimento di ciò che è generato a un modello e la possibilità di comprendere la generazione del mondo con l'ausilio del paradigma tecnico-artigianale; e infine l'appartenenza del cosmo sensibile alla dimensione del divenire. A partire dall'accettazione di questi assunti di natura metafisica, Timeo si propone di costruire il suo racconto (verisimile non vero) intorno alla generazione del mondo.

6. Le operazioni dell'intelligenza Il primo passo nella costruzione del discorso verisimile è rappresentato dall'individuazione di un principio proprio (άρχή κυριωτάτη) al quale Timeo riconduce la generazione del mondo. Questo principio, che viene esplicitamente indicato come la causa autentica della generazione dell'universo, è costituito dalla bontà di colui che produce il divenire: egli era buono ( α γ α θ ό ς ήν) e privo di invidia (φθόνος) e dunque desiderava che tutte le cose fossero per quanto possibili simili a lui ( π α ρ α π λ ή σ ι α έαυτώ). 34 Il motivo costruttivistico-artigianale e il riferimento alla dimensione assiologica segnano dunque l'inizio del ragionamento di Timeo intorno alla generazione (e all'intelligibilità) del cosmo. Non si tratta, tuttavia, di assunzioni dialettiche, ma di affermazioni fatte all'interno del Λόγος είκώς, che, per sua stessa natura, non può ambire alla esattezza e alla precisione di un ragionamento intorno alle idee e ai principi metafisici. Questo significa, prima di tutto, che le figure che vi compaiono non vanno prese alla lettera, ma considerate, come si dirà meglio più avanti, alla stregua di personaggi di un racconto. Dopo avere introdotto la metafora artigianale del costruttore, Timeo si rivolge all' immagine biologica, e assimila l'universo a un essere vivente. Dal momento che il cosmo è buono e bello, esso deve risultare anche intelligente, ossia dotato di intelletto (νούς), perché nulla che sia privo di intelletto può essere migliore di ciò che lo possiede. Ma l'intelletto non può sopraggiungere senza che ci sia l'anima (χωρίς ψυχής); dunque il cosmo deve risultare anche animato, ossia vivente (ζφον). Per il modello biologico la presenza di un'intelligenza nel mondo (qualsiasi cosa ciò significhi) comporta l'introduzione dell'anima; il cosmo, in questo simile a un vivente, è dotato di corpo (scomponibile nei quattro elementi empedoclei) e anima; quest'ultima garantisce

34 Tim. 29 E-30 A. Sul motivo della bontà del demiurgo cfr. S. Lavecchia, Una via che conduce al divino, cit., p. 216 ss. e M. Bordt, Piatons Theologie, cit., pp. 247-48. Si può vedere anche A. Motte, „De la bonté du démiurge (Platon, Timée, 29d6-e4)", Revue de Philosophie Ancienne, 15 (1997), pp. 3-13.

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la presenza dell'intelligenza, essendo l'universo un vivente animato e intelligente (ζώον έ μ ψ υ χ ο ν εννουν). 3 5 La qualifica di vivente - e dunque l'introduzione del paradigma biologico - prepara il terreno per l'assegnazione al cosmo di un'altra caratteristica fondamentale, che ne qualifica in modo significativo la forma di intelligibilità. Il modello al quale il cosmo assomiglia deve essere onnicomprensivo, deve cioè comprendere organicamente tutte le sue parti. Infatti, se il mondo assomigliasse a qualcosa che esiste in quanto parte (έν μέρους είδε ι), non potrebbe essere bello, dal momento che la parte è inferiore alla totalità (oAov). Dunque, il modello è una totalità (τέΛεον) vivente, comprensiva delle sue parti; e il cosmo, in quanto copia di una totalità, non può che risultare esso stesso una totalità vivente e animata, e comprensiva di tutte le sue parti (anch'esse viventi e animate).36 Come si vede, l'assegnazione al cosmo della qualifica di vivente, porta con sé l'inevitabile rifiuto della logica mereologica, compositiva ed elementarizzante della fisica atomistica a vantaggio del primato del principio olistico. Attraverso un'argomentazione abbastanza tipica del platonismo (basata sulla natura onnicomprensiva e perfetta del modello), Timeo ricava poi l'unicità del cosmo, ossia il fatto che esiste un solo universo vivente, comprensivo di tutti i viventi parziali.37 Dunque, la prima parte del discorso verisimile ha condotto ad affermare che il mondo è un vivente, animato e intelligente; che è una totalità onnicomprensiva e che è unico. Per arrivare a queste conclusioni Timeo è ricorso all'introduzione di una figura celebre quanto bizzarra, quella del demiurgo, il dio dalla cui bontà e dalla cui volizione (βούΛησις) dipende l'essere-così del cosmo. L'applicazione del paradigma tecnico-artigianale alla generazione del mondo induce quasi automaticamente a considerare il demiurgo come un'entità dotata di piena autonomia, collocata, in funzione di artigiano divino, accanto al mondo delle idee, ossia al vivente intelligibile (νοητόν ζώον) e al principio spaziale e materiale. Lo schema interpretativo consueto intende infatti la generazione del cosmo come il prodotto dell'azione di un artigiano divino che opera su un sostrato materiale disordinato, avendo a modello della sua azione il paradigma intelligibile costituito dal mondo delle idee: dunque, la divinità demiurgica, guardando al modello intelligibile, ordina il sostrato indeterminato che le preesiste e dà così origine all'universo, il quale riproduce, naturalmente nei limiti del possibile, la perfezione del mondo eidetico.38

35 Tim. 30 B-C. Sulla equiparazione del cosmo a un essere vivente cfr. G E. R. Lloyd, Polarità e analogia. Due modi ài argomentazione nel pensiero greco classico, trad. ital. Napoli 1992, p. 259 ss. 36 Tim. 30 C-31 A (cfr. anche 92 C). Sul significato del principio di completezza cfr. R. D. Parry, „The Intelligible World-Animal in Plato's Timaeus", Journal of History of Philosophy, 29 (1991), pp. 13-32. 37 Tim. 31 Α-B. Sull'unicità del cosmo cfr. R. D. Parry, „The Unique World of the Timaeus", Journal of History of Philosophy, 17 (1979), pp. 1-10 e R. A. Patterson, „The Unique Worlds of the Timaeus", Phoenix, 35 (1981), pp. 105-19. 38 Tra i fautori di questo tipo di esegesi si possono menzionare A.E. Taylor, A commentary on Plato 's , Timaeus ', Oxford 1928, pp. 76-7; L. Brisson, Le même et l'autre, cit., p. 31 ss., 85 e 105; F. Fronterotta, Methexis. La teoria platonica delle idee e la partecipazione delle cose empiriche. Dai dialoghi giovanili al,Parmenide ', Pisa 2001, pp. 81-95.

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7. Natura e funzione del demiurgo Un'interpretazione di questo genere, in base alla quale demiurgo e idee sono due fattori distinti e irriducibili della generazione del mondo, non è però priva di difficoltà. Prima di tutto essa accredita un peso eccessivo a entità introdotte all'interno di un racconto verisimile, il cui scopo è esattamente quello di semplificare δ ι δ α σ κ α λ ί α ς χ ά ρ ι ν (ossia a fini didattici) per mezzo della dimensione narrativa del mythos nessi teorici complessi ed estremamente difficili da esporre. In generale il racconto si propone infatti l'obiettivo di rendere accessibili attraverso la forma della narrazione (scandita temporalmente nel prima e nel poi e costellata di figure diverse) una materia non solo complessa, ma costituita da relazioni temporalmente simultanee e da rapporti di priorità logicometafisica (non temporale). La forma del racconto temporalizza e soggettivizza (ascrivendole a più individui) queste relazioni di dipendenza metafisica, e così facendo le rende in qualche modo accessibili anche a un non filosofo (come dovrebbe essere il fruitore del discorso verisimile). Nel caso della descrizione delle operazioni dell'intelletto sembra effettivamente di assistere a una proliferazione di entità che dovrebbe rendere più agevole la comprensione di nessi teorici quanto mai ardui. Platone dichiara più volte che le due cause fondamentali da cui dipende il cosmo sono il ν ο υ ς e Γ ά ν ά γ κ η , oppure la causa necessaria ( ά ν α γ κ α ί ο ν ) e quella divina (θείον). 3 9 E in effetti, quando l'esigenza di spiegare la struttura intrinseca della realtà in divenire lo costringe ad aggiungere alla causalità intelligente e divina un secondo tipo di causa, Timeo si serve di un genere misterioso e difficile da descrivere, quello dello spazio (χώρα), da lui assunto come l'ambito causale al quale vanno ricondotte le operazioni della necessità. Con ciò egli ribadisce che i soggetti causali chiamati a spiegare la generazione e la natura del cosmo sono due: l'intelligenza e la necessità. Il principio necessitante viene introdotto come un terzo genere ( γ έ ν ο ς τρίτον), accanto a ciò che è sempre (comprensivo del complesso delle cause intelligenti) e a ciò che diviene (il cosmo generato). Questo terzo genere presenta però numerosi aspetti, ai quali corrispondono differenti nomi. Esso è ricettacolo universale ( π α ν δ ε χ έ ς : 51 A), ricettacolo di ogni generazione ( ύ π ο δ ο χ ή π ά σ η ς γ ε ν έ σ ε ω ς : 49 A), nutrice (τιθήνη: 49 A e 52 D), madre (μήτηρ: 51 A), causa errante, materiale da improntare (έκμαγείον: 50 D), spazio (χώρα), luogo (ενδρα: 52 Β) della generazione, e altro ancora. Tutti questi nomi non si riferiscono però a entità metafisicamente distinte, ma a un solo e unico principio, di cui esprimono le differenti funzioni. Discorso analogo andrebbe fatto, a mio modo di vedere, anche per l'altra causa, quella divina e intelligente. Non esistono valide ragioni per considerare le figure „mitologiche" che Platone introduce quando espone l'attività generatrice della causa intelligente come espressione di soggetti metafisici differenti. Non esistono cioè ragioni consistenti per supporre, come ancora adesso molti lettori del Timeo tendono a fare, che il dio demiurgico sia un'entità

39 Ad esempio 47 E-48 A e 68 E-69 A. Sui due tipi di causa, divina e necessaria, importanti osservazioni in P. L. Donini, Il, Timeo ': unità del dialogo, verisimiglianza del discorso, cit., pp. 26-28.

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metafisicamente separata e indipendente dal vivente intelligibile, ossia dalla totalità unificata e attiva del mondo delle forme. Come la causa necessaria presenta molti aspetti, legati alla sua polifimzionalità, così anche la causa intelligente declina le sue funzioni in forma articolata, senza che tale articolazione comporti l'esistenza di una pluralità di soggetti metafisici. Divinità demiurgica, vivente intelligibile, intelletto non sono che nomi diversi indicanti la medesima entità metafisica, ossia la causa intelligibile e intelligente del mondo. Il ricorso a diverse figure non è che il prodotto della modalità discorsiva scelta da Timeo: il racconto mitico tende infatti, per esigenze didattiche, a individualizzare e sostantivare (assegnandole a soggetti diversi) le funzioni, determinando in questo modo una sorta di proliferazione di entità. La tesi che mi propongo di argomentare è dunque la seguente: l'insieme delle funzioni causali collegate all'intelligenza (nous) rinvia a un solo soggetto, che Platone chiama a volte essere (το òv), modello o vivente intelligibile (ζφον νοητόν), altre volte demiurgo o dio, altre volte ancora intelletto. Trattandosi di una tesi interpretativa ancora relativamente eccentrica rispetto agli indirizzi esegetici dominanti, sebbene essa sia stata proposta negli ultimi anni da autorevoli platonisti, vale la pena precisarla con maggiore accuratezza.40 In favore dell'assunto dell'identità tra modello intelligibile, vivente perfetto e demiurgo si possono portare argomenti sia di carattere filosofico generale sia di natura testuale. Cercherò di presentare gli uni e gli altri in forma sintetica, senza operare una vera e propria distinzione. Nel corso di queste riflessioni si è più volte accennato alla possibilità di considerare l'ontologia e la cosmologia del Timeo come la realizzazione del progetto causale delineato all'inizio dell' excursus autobiografico di Socrate contenuto nel Fedone. A tal proposito si è osservato che la causalità assegnata all'intelletto nel Fedone presentava tre aspetti fondamentali: quello efficiente, per cui la causa genera gli effetti da essa dipendenti; quello teleologico, per cui la causa agisce in vista di un fine; e quello assiologico, per cui Γ „in vista di cui" (cioè il fine) dell'azione causale è costituito dal bene (o dal meglio). Ciò significa che la causa reclamata da Platone deve essere efficiente e presentare un riferimento teleologico e assiologico (si deve trattare di una Ecause with a T-constituent).41 Nel Timeo l'entità che ingloba la componente assiologica è senza dubbio rappresentata da colui che ha prodotto o formato questo universo (τό π ά ν τόδε ó συνιστάς),

40 In favore dell'identità tra mondo delle idee (vivente intelligibile) e demiurgo (intelletto divino) si sono espressi negli ultimi anni i seguenti studiosi: M. Baltes, Γ έ γ ο ν ε ν , cit., p. 309 e 317-18; J. Dillon, The Riddle of the , Timaeus cit., pp. 31-33 e passim; J. Halfwassen, „Der Demiurg: seine Stellung in der Philosophie Piatons und seine Deutung im antiken Piatonismus", in A. Neschke Hentschke (ed.), Le , Tintée ' de Platon, cit., pp. 39-62, passim-, E. D. Perl, The Demiurge and the Forms, cit., passim·, M. Enders, „Piatons Theologie: der Gott, die Götter und das Gute", Perspektiven der Philosophie, 25 (1999), pp. 131-85 (spec. 158); F. Karfik, Die Beseelung des Kosmos, cit., pp. 127-38. Mi sia consentito rinviare anche a F. Ferrari, Separazione asimmetrica e causalità eidetica, cit., pp. 166-73. 41 Cioè di una causa efficiente fornita di un costituente teleologico: cfr. G. Fine, Forms as Causes, cit., p. 90 ss.

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ossia dal dio demiurgico: egli era buono e privo di invidia, e dunque desiderava che tutte le cose gli assomigliassero, ossia che fossero buone. Il richiamo alla bontà di dio occupa una posizione strategica, dal momento che rappresenta la causa principale della generazione del mondo.42 A questa entità si deve poi ricondurre anche la dimensione efficiente della causalità; egli è il demiurgo del cosmo, colui che ha ordinato in vista del meglio il sostrato preesistente, che ha imposto ordine e misura a una realtà che prima del suo intervento si muoveva in modo caotico e disordinato (πλημμελώς και ατάκτως), riuscendo così a ricondurla dal disordine all'ordine (εις τάξι,ν αύτό ήγαγεν έκ αταξίας), in base alla considerazione che questo fosse migliore (άμεινον) di quello, ossia sulla base di una valutazione di ordine assiologico.43 Il dio demiurgico non ingloba in sé solo la causalità finale e quella efficiente, ma anche quella paradigmatica, assunta nel Fedone dalle idee. L'affermazione secondo la quale il produttore dell'universo desidera che le cose siano simili a se stesso (παραπλήσια έαυτώ) allude infatti alla dimensione paradigmatica della sua presenza, in quanto egli sembra rappresentare il modello a cui il mondo sensibile dovrebbe assomigliare. Dunque al medesimo soggetto sembrano riconducibili in forma diretta o indiretta la causa efficiente, quella finale e quella paradigmatica. Dal momento che questo soggetto appartiene alla dimensione dell'intelletto, non solo perché possiede νοϋς, ma perché si identifica in tutto con il νούς, 44 si può effettivamente confermare che il programma delineato nel Fedone pare trovare realizzazione all'inizio del discorso cosmologico di Timeo. Siamo tuttavia nello spazio del racconto verosimile e un'interpretazione eccessivamente letterale delle affermazioni platoniche si presenta problematica. Infatti, dopo avere affermato che dio desidera che le cose assomiglino a lui, Timeo sostiene, a breve distanza, che ciò al quale l'universo sensibile deve assomigliare è il vivente intelligibile comprensivo di tutti i viventi intelligibili. Dunque, nell'ambito della medesima sequenza argomentativa Timeo sostiene che il modello dell'universo è il dio che l'ha costruito e il vivente intelligibile al quale esso assomiglia, un vivente dotato di anima e

42 Tim. 29 E-30 A. Sulla posizione strategica di questo principio e sul rapporto tra bene e demiurgo cfr. Ε. E. Benitez, „The Good or the Demiurge: Causation and the Unity of Good in Plato", Apeiron, 28 (1995), pp. 113-40. Importante anche lo studio di F. Fronterotta, „La divinité du bien et la bonté du dieu producteur (phytourgos/demiourgos)

chez Platon", in J. Laurent (ed.), Les dieux de

Platon, Paris 2003, pp. 53-76. 43 Tim. 30 A. Sulla natura del „disordine precosmico", ossia dello stato del tutto prima dell'intervento dell'intelligenza, cfr. G Vlastos, „The disorderly Motion in the Timaeus", ora in R. E. Allen (ed.), Studies in Plato 's Metaphysics, cit., pp. 379-99. 4 4 Cfr. E. D. Perl, The Demiurge and the Forms, cit., p. 83: „the Demiurge is not a being who has a mind, but rather is a mind, nous itself (Phil. 28 C-D, 30 D) [...] The Demiurge, the cause or explanation of the rationally structured world, is nous and nothing else".

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intelletto e comprensivo di tutte le sue parti, ossia di tutti i viventi intelligibili parziali (ζωον ν ο η τ ό ν και κ α τ ά π ά ν τ α τέλεον). 4 5 Se riconosciamo a Platone una sostanziale coerenza argomentativa e dunque accettiamo il presupposto ermeneutico che le due affermazioni non sono contraddittorie, dobbiamo inevitabilmente concludere che il demiurgo-fabbricatore e il vivente intelligibile-modello costituiscono la medesima entità metafisica. Del resto il vivente che funge da modello del mondo sensibile non solo possiede intelligenza (come la sua copia), ma, come si è osservato, è intelligenza (non potendo evidentemente caratterizzarsi in altro modo che come intelligenza). Inoltre costituisce un essere animato, ossia vivente (ζωον), e dunque attivo; la sua attività non può che identificarsi con la generazione ontologica del mondo. Ma il vivente intelligibile altro non è che il mondo delle idee considerato come totalità, e in particolare come totalità vivente e dinamica, ossia agente.46 Sembra dunque inevitabile concludere che, esattamente come nel caso del principio necessitante, anche nel caso del principio intelligente e divino, alla proliferazione di nomi e di figure mitologiche corrisponde un'unica entità metafisica, chiamata dio, demiurgo, vivente intelligibile, modello.47 Quando Timeo, all'inizio della seconda parte del suo discorso, si propone di spiegare la genesi ontologica dei corpi fenomenici, ossia il loro emergere dalla spazialità e dalla materialità, non accenna più al demiurgo (come ci si aspetterebbe se l'interpretazione tradizionale, fondata su una rigida applicazione della metafora artigianale, fosse esatta), ma si limita a chiamare in causa l'essere, ossia il mondo delle idee.48 Inoltre egli evita di servirsi della metafora artigianale (che è solo una delle tante metafore utilizzate da Platone), ma ricorre all'immagine di uno stampo che dà forma a un materiale molle (έκμαγείον) disposto a venire improntato. La nascita ontologica del mondo viene poi assimilata a un processo di generazione biologica in cui il ruolo della madre è svolto dalla χ ώ ρ α , ossia dal ricettacolo universale, quello del figlio dal cosmo, cioè da ciò che si genera, e quello del padre dal modello, vale a dire dal mondo delle idee (il vivente intelligibile).49 L'accenno al padre (πατήρ) richiama inevitabilmente la celebre affermazione di 28 C, in cui si diceva che è difficile trovare l'artefice e il padre di questo universo, e che solitamente gli interpreti riferiscono al demiurgo. All'inizio del suo lungo monologo

45 Tim. 30 C-31 B. Sul principio di completezza cfr. R.D. Parry, The Intelligible World-Animal, cit., p. 23 ss. e F. Ferrari, Causa paradigmatica e causa e causa efficiente, cit. pp. 88-91. 46 Scrive in proposito M. Enders, Piatons Theologie, cit., p. 159: „Dieses eine und einzige Paradeigma kann daher nichts anderes als der die Gesamtheit der Ideen umfassende Ideenkosmos als ganzer sein. Folglich ist der göttliche Weltordner des Timaios mit dem Ideenkosmos als dem Vorbild fur die Einheit, Ordnung und grösstmögliche Vollkommenheit der Welt identisch". 47 Cfr. J. Dillon, The Riddle of the Timaeus, cit., p. 33: „The Demiurge, as active principle, seems here to have been collapsed back into the realm of Intellect as a whole". 48 Tim. 47 E-52 D. Sull'assenza del demiurgo da questa sezione cfr. J. Halfwassen, Der Demiurg: seine Stellung in der Philosophie Piatons und seine Deutung im antiken Piatonismus, cit., p. 40. 49 Tim. 50 C-D. Su questo passo mi permetto di rinviare ai miei due saggi Causa paradigmatica causa efficiente, cit., pp. 86-7 e Separazione asimmetrica e causalità eidetica, cit., p. 172.

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Timeo aveva assimilato la causa del cosmo al padre (al quale aveva poi attribuito anche la qualifica metaforica di artefice, dunque di demiurgo); nel corso della seconda descrizione della genesi del mondo (quella più completa, dal momento che comporta anche l'introduzione del terzo genere, ossia del ricettacolo universale), egli, nell'ambito di una nuova metafora (quella della nascita di un essere vivente) assegna il ruolo di padre all'essere intelligibile, ossia al mondo delle idee. La conclusione che sembra di dovere inevitabilmente ricavare dal confronto tra queste affermazioni - fermo restando l'applicazione del principio di carità (nella forma della coerenza) - è dunque che padre, artefice e modello non sono che differenti denominazioni appartenenti alla medesima entità: il vivente intelligibile che agisce generando ontologicamente il cosmo sensibile.

8. L'identità tra demiurgo e vivente intelligibile L'applicazione rigida della metafora artigianale all'ontologia del Timeo non tiene conto, come si è visto, della natura mitica dell'esposizione dell'origine dell'universo. Essa prende alla lettera l'introduzione di una serie di figure che sono funzionali alla assunzione della metafora, ma non corrispondono a entità metafisiche autonome e separate dal punto di vista della loro individualità. In favore dell'identità tra vivente intelligibile, ossia mondo delle idee, e demiurgo si possono comunque portare ulteriori argomenti in aggiunta a quelli fin qui menzionati. Il demiurgo, vale a dire dio, viene definito da Platone la migliore della cause (ó δ' άριστος των αιτίων), migliore dunque anche delle idee (che sono pur sempre cause), e addirittura il migliore degli intelligibili che sono sempre (των νοητών άεί τε όντων ó άριστος), e perciò migliore delle idee (che sono senz'altro intelligibili sempre essenti).50 Ma come può il demiurgo essere superiore alle idee, le quali sono per Platone l'espressione suprema della realtà? L'unica risposta a questo interrogativo che sia consistente e insieme rispettosa dei principi filosofici del platonismo viene suggerita da Timeo.51 Egli indica infatti esplicitamente il parametro in riferimento al quale un'entità è superiore a un'altra; si tratta del principio di completezza, ossia dalla regola che stabilisce che la totalità è superiore alle parti che la compongono. Il demiurgo può essere considerato superiore alle idee solo perché rappresenta la totalità delle stesse, in quanto ciò che esiste nella forma della totalità onnicomprensiva (τέΛεον ο παντελές) è superiore e precedente ontologicamente alle sue parti. Il dio demiurgico non è dunque diverso dal vivente intelligibile che comprende in sé tutti i viventi intelligibili; come

50 Tim. 29 A e 37 A. Per un'analisi più dettagliata di questi testi cfr. ancora F. Ferrari, Separazione asimmetrica e causalità eidetica, cit., pp. 170-72. 51 Assumo che l'eventuale identificazione tra il demiurgo del Timeo e l'idea del bene della Repubblica (che è in qualche modo superiore alle altre idee), avanzata da più di un platonico nell'antichità, si presenta, prima facie, problematica. A favore di tale identificazione si è espresso recentemente S. Lavecchia, Una via che conduce al divino, cit., p. 217; riserve esprime invece F. Fronterotta, La divinité du bien et la bonté du dieu producteur, cit. p. 61 nota 15 ss.

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questo vivente, il demiurgo è un'entità in possesso dell'intelligenza, anzi egli si identifica con l'intelligenza. Il fatto è che l'intelletto non è ontologicamente separato dal suo contenuto: il νους si presenta nella descrizione mitica di Timeo nella forma del vivente in sé, in quanto è modello del cosmo (causa paradigmatica), e nella forma del demiurgo, in quanto è principio attivo e dinamico (causa efficiente). Del resto, per Platone l'anima, ossia il dinamismo produttivo, e l'intelletto, vale a dire la razionalità ordinatrice, appartengono a ciò che assolutamente è (το π α ν τ ε λ έ ς öv), come si legge in una celebre affermazione del Sofista.52 A proposito del compattamento in un'unica entità metafisica della causa efficiente (demiurgo) e di quella paradigmatica (vivente intelligibile) si deve infine osservare che esso viene in qualche modo presupposto proprio nell'ultima proposizione del dialogo. Qui Timeo definisce il cosmo un vivente visibile che abbraccia le realtà visibili (ζωον ό ρ α τ ό ν τ ά ό ρ α τ ά περιέχον), e aggiunge che esso è εικών τοϋ ν ο η τ ο ύ θεός αισθητός, μέγιστος και άριστος κάΛΛιστός τε κ α ι τελεώτατος, ossia dio sensibile che è copia di quello intelligibile, ed è grandissimo e ottimo, massimamente bello e completo.53 Sia che il passo significhi che il cosmo è immagine del dio intelligibile (ossia presumibilmente del demiurgo), sia che significhi che è immagine del mondo intelligibile (cioè del vivente intelligibile che esso imita), risulta evidente che il modello incorpora in se stesso tanto la dimensione eidetica che quella propriamente divina. A ciò si aggiunga che la lectio νοητού presenta in alcuni codici (e in Stobeo) la variante ποιητού, che è quasi certamente non geniuna, ma che dimostra quanto un lettore antico di questo passo trovasse del tutto naturale intendere che il cosmo è copia di colui che lo ha fatto, ossia del demiurgo (il quale, essendo identico al vivente intelligibile, del cosmo è anche modello).54 Anche da quest'ultimo passo emerge l'importanza del principio di intelligibilità olistico (il cosmo è una totalità comprensiva di tutte le sue parti), in base al quale ogni elemento del sistema acquista senso nell'ottica della totalità della compagine alla quale appartiene. Ogni idea appartenente al vivente intelligibile è intrecciata alle altre e acquista la propria funzione e identità solo in questa interrelazione con la totalità del cosmo di cui fa parte. Il nous è insieme produzione e intelligenza di questa relazione; mentre l'anima, di cui l'essere intelligibile è dotato, rappresenta invece la capacità di trasmettere questo ordine al mondo sensibile. Il complesso dei parametri causali stabiliti nel Fedone trova dunque nel Timeo la sua realizzazione: la causa della generazione del mondo è rappresentata da un cosmo intelligibile, vivente, animato e attivo, in una parola da un'intelligenza (nous), che incorpora in sé sia la dimensione efficiente (anassagorea) sia quella paradigmatica (propriamente platonica).

52 Soph. 248 E-249 A. 53 Tim. 92 C. Cfr. su questo passo F. Karfik, Die Beseelung des Kosmos, cit., p. 127 ss. 54 Si tratta dunque, come è stato acutamente osservato, di une faute intelligente·, cfr. A. Diès, Autour de Platon, Paris 1972, p. 550, con discussione in E. D. Perl, The Demiurge and the Forms, cit., p. 89.

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9. Individuo e cosmo Il complesso quadro teorico qui ricostruito richiede alcune considerazioni conclusive. Il platonismo si conferma senza dubbio come una filosofia che riconosce la presenza dell' intelligenza al di fuori della regione della coscienza soggettiva. Neil'intelligibilità del mondo si manifesta l'opera dell'intelligenza; si tratta di un'intelligenza superiore a quella umana, ma alla quale l'intelligenza umana ha in qualche modo parte, essendo l'intelletto individuale (inteso come funzione suprema della parte razionale dell'anima) derivato dal mondo intelligibile. Questo motivo viene richiamato da Timeo in forma mitica nella parte conclusiva del suo monologo. A proposito dell'anima razionale egli dice: Riguardo a quella specie di anima che è in noi dominate (περί του κυριωτάτου), bisogna considerare che la divinità l'ha attribuita a ciascuno come un demone (δαίμονα), e si tratta precisamente, diciamo noi in modo del tutto esatto, di ciò che risiede nella parte superiore del nostro corpo e che ci solleva da terra verso ciò che gli è affine nel cielo (προς δέ την έν ο ύ ρ α ν φ σ υ γ γ έ ν ε ι α ν ) , giacché noi non siamo piante terrestri ma celesti.55 La parte razionale dell'anima costituisce dunque un „dono divino", un demone che collega l'uomo al mondo intelligibile e lo trasforma in un essere celeste e divino. La presenza nella composizione psicosomatica dell'uomo di una parte appartenente al mondo intelligibile rende possibile il riconoscimento dell'ordine intelligibile del mondo: l'anima, o meglio la sua funzione suprema, l'intelletto, riconosce la presenza di un'intelligibilità prodotta, essa stessa, dall'intelletto. La parte superiore dell'anima individuale, ciò che Plotino chiamerà l'intelletto dell' anima (νους της ψυχής), risulta ontologicamente affine (συγγενής) al mondo delle idee, ossia al vivente intelligibile, come Platone afferma in alcuni passaggi strategici dei dialoghi.56 Questa affinità garantisce la possibilità stessa della conoscenza, sia del mondo delle idee, sia del suo riflesso mimetico nel cosmo sensibile. La stessa concezione della conoscenza come reminiscenza (άνάμνησις) si serve del presupposto mitico di un contatto originario tra l'anima e il mondo delle idee (descritto, ad esempio, nell'esposizione del viaggio metacosmico delle anime a seguito degli dèi nel mito della biga alata contenuto nel Fedro)·, si tratta di una sorta di ipotesi supplementare (Zu-

55 Tim. 90 A. Su questo passo mi permetto di rinviare a F. Ferrari, „World's Order and Soul's Order: The Timaeus and the De-socratisation of Socrates' Ethics", in M. Migliori - L. M. Napolitano Valditara (eds.), Plato Ethicus. Philosophy is Life, Proceedings of the International Colloquium Piacenza (Italy) 2003, Sankt Augustin 2004, pp. 121-32 (spec. 126-27). 56 II principio dell'affinità tra l'anima razionale e il mondo dell'essere, ossia delle idee, viene affermato anche in Phaed. 79 D e Resp. X 611 E. Sul tema della syngeneia cfr. F. Aronadio, Procedure e verità in Platone (.Menone' ,Cratilo' .Repubblica'), Napoli 2002, pp. 221-33 e 237-44. Sulle modalità esegetiche che consentono a Plotino di considerare la propria concezione dell'anima non discesa come un'interpretazione dei passi platonici sopra menzionati è fondamentale T. A. Szlezák, Platon und Aristoteles in der Nuslehre Plotins, Basel-Stuttgart 1979, pp. 167-205.

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satzannahme) che garantisce la possibilità stessa della conoscenza: quest'ultima viene intesa come un evento collocato nel passato ontologico dell'anima, dunque qualcosa che c'è stato e ci potrà nuovamente essere.57 All'uomo è infatti concessa la possibilità di conoscere la realtà (sia quella eidetica sia quella fisica che riflette l'ordine intelligibile), in quanto egli non è estraneo all'intelligibilità presente in questa realtà, essendo l'intelletto della sua anima affine a quello che ha organizzato il mondo (intelligibile e sensibile). Un'ipotesi come questa, che postula un'affinità originaria tra soggetto (anima razionale) e oggetto (essere intelligibile), può considerarsi un vero e proprio antidoto (φάρμακον) contro i rischi di una deriva scettica, in qualche modo sempre latenti in ogni epistemologia. Della potenzialità eversiva di questi rischi Platone si dimostra perfettamente consapevole: se il sapere delle idee non fosse accessibile all'uomo (magari a causa di un'eterogenità non mediabile tra anima ed essere), verrebbe minato dalle fondamenta l'intero suo programma filosofico. Proprio per questa ragione sembra essersi dotato di una sorta di φ ά ρ μ α κ ο ν in grado di neutralizzare la carica dirompente dello scetticismo. La concezione della syngeneia non costituisce ovviamente la risposta definitiva all'aporia della conoscenza, ma ad essa fornisce una sorta di condizione generale di risolubilità in quanto stabilisce la sostanziale non eterogenità tra conoscente e conosciuto, ossia tra anima e mondo delle idee. Si tratta di un presupposto che va nella direzione della tesi sostenuta dall'autore della VII Lettera, per il quale il passaggio (διαγωγή) attraverso tutte le determinazioni (nome, definizione, immagine, conoscenza, opinione vera e intelletto) „può con fatica (μόγις) far nascere in chi è dotato naturalmente di buona natura la conoscenza di ciò che è naturalmente di buona natura (έπιστήμην ένέτεκεν εύ π ε φ υ κ ό τ ο ς εύ πεφυκότι)". 5 8 Come si vede, l'affinità ontologica tra il soggetto conoscente e l'oggetto conosciuto rende possibile (o comunque non impossibile in linea di principio) l'evento epistemico, ossia il sapere delle idee (e della razionalità da esse prodotta). Insomma, come Timeo dichiara al termine del suo lungo monologo, noi non siamo piante terrestri, bensì celesti, e come tali possiamo conoscere l'intelligibilità del mondo.59

57 Sulla concezione della syngeneia Kohärenz, cit., pp. 142-43.

come Zusatzannahme

cfr. J. Szaif, Platon über Wahrheit und

58 Epis t. VII 343 E. Sulla syngeneia come antidoto antiscettico rinvio a un mio saggio dal titolo „L'anamnesis del passato tra storia e ontologia: il mito platonico come pharmakon contro utopismo e scetticismo" in M. Migliori - L. M. Napolitano Valditara - A. Fermani (a cura), Interiorità e anima. La psyche in Platone, Milano 2007, pp. 73-88. 59 Ringrazio Werner Beierwaltes, Jure Zovko, Francesco Fronterotta e Jean Narbonne per avermi indotto, con le loro osservazioni e critiche, a precisare meglio le tesi esposte in questo saggio.

2. PLATONISM AND THE ETHICAL NATURE OF INTELLIGENCE

JURE ZOVKO

Irony and the Care of the Soul in Plato's Early Dialogues

A German Platonist, Barbara Zehnpfennig, opens her commentary 1 on Hitler's Mein Kampf by quoting extensively from Callicle's speech in the Gorgias: „we mould the best and strongest among us, taking them from youth up, like lions, and tame them by spells and incantations over them, until we enslave them, telling them they ought to have equal shares, and that this is the fine and the just. But I think that if a man is born with a strong enough nature, he will shake off and smash and escape all this. He will trample on all our writings, charms, incantations, all the rules contrary to nature. He rises up and shows himself master, this slave of ours, and there the justice of nature suddenly bursts into light" (Gorg. 483e- 484b). Zehnpfennig justifiably points out that totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century, such as racism, Nazism, and communism, to which Popper compares ,Plato's closed society', did not arise through a study of Plato's ethical or political writings, but „as a response to the loss of transcendence" inherent in the Idea of the Good, that is, through a denial of, and opposition to, the noble and the humane that Plato unflinchingly stands for in his writings.2 The primary aim of my paper is to demonstrate that it is especially today, in the age of all-pervading ethical relativism and scepticism vis-à-vis the issue of the grounding of universal moral norms, when the utilitarian outlook services the flow of global capital, that the Socratic question of how to achieve a good and happy life (eu zen; eu prattein) may serve as a paradigm for reorientation. Though the early Platonic dialogues will be the focus of my reflections, it is not my intention to separate Socratic teaching from Plato's ethics or political philosophy. Wolfgang Wieland plausibly argued that attempts to uncover as authentic a Socratic legacy as possible should not issue in a sharp and strict differentiation between Socratic and Platonic teaching, „for this Socratic legacy will always be visible to us only as a legacy of which Plato has already taken possession and already subjected to his own formative

1 2

Cf. Barbara Zehnpfennig, Hitlers Mein Kampf. Eine Interpretation (München: Fink 2000). Cf. Β. Zehnpfennig, Platon zur Einßihrung (Hamburg: Junius, 1997), 99f. Cf. also: R. Bambrough, ed. Plato, Popper and Politics. Views and Controversies (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press 1976); R. B. Levinson, In Defence of Plato, (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1953); H. Erbse, „Piatons Politeia und die modernen Antiplatoniker", Gymnasium 83 (1976) 169-171; G Vlastos, „The Theory of Social Justice", in: Studies in Greek Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1995), vol. II, 69-103.

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will." Hence the attempt to isolate such a legacy through a method of subtraction, by leaving out of consideration all the additions that long tradition has passed on as genuine Platonic teaching, would fail to deliver anything worthwhile.3 However, should we aim to reconstruct, by a close reading of the early aporeticelenctic dialogues, the philosophy of the historical Socrates, we should, according to Heinrich Meier, seek neither a metaphysics - whether a dogmatic or sceptical one - nor logic, nor ethics in it. In fact, Socrates' reflections need to be viewed as aimed at building a personal moral identity, where the goal of his elenchus, which Maier characterises as „das sittliche elenchein", was both to awaken people's awareness of their own moral blindness and to induce a „longing for moral clarity" („das Sehnen nach sittlicher Klarheit") 4 Gregory Vlastos, the most consistent advocate of the segregation of the philosophical legacy of Socrates within the Corpus Platonicum, made similar claims. He is strongly convinced that the historical Socrates was primarily an ironist and a moral philosopher who opposed the dogmatic attitudes of his interlocutors and laid a primary emphasis on his own „ignorance". In contrast to the inherited image of Socrates as a poet of immortality, Vlastos tries to demonstrate that the historical Socrates was actually a sceptic, and an agnostic with respect to the belief in afterlife: „For Socratese [earlier dialogues] our soul is our self... The queries, ,1s the soul material or immaterial, mortal or immortal? Will it be annihilated when the body rots?' are never on his elenctic agenda ... both options - total annihilation or survival in Hades - are left open." 5 Socrates identified the human soul with the individual personality (Apol. 36c; Crii. 47e; Gorg. 486e), whilst his elenctic disputes about moral values were focused primarily on the key question of practical philosophy: how to achieve a good and virtuous life?6 Vlastos contrasts the historical Socrates of early Platonic dialogues with a Platonic Socrates of the so-called ,dialogues on ideas' who, serving as the mouthpiece for Plato's philosophy, presents to the reader a systematically developed moral theory, puts forward proofs for the immortality of soul, and argues as a grand metaphysician and epistemologist, or philosopher of science, language, religion, arts and education: „The whole encyclopaedia of philosophical science is his domain."7 Vlastos is certainly on the right track in assigning to Socratic elenchus an educational and reflective significance with regard to to the process of discovery of moral values in a specific situation: „In my lecture I maintained ... that while the elenchus was adver-

3

4 5 6 7

Wolfgang Wieland, „Das sokratische Erbe: Laches", in: Theo Kobusch and Burkhard Mojsisch (eds.), Platon: seine Dialoge in der Sicht neuer Forschungen (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1996) 5-24; 7. Heinrich Maier, Sokrates: sein Werk und seine geschichtliche Stellung (Tübingen, 1913; Nachdruck, Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1964), 294. Cf. G Vlastos, Socrates. Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991 ), 55. Ibid. G Vlastos, „Socrates", Proceedings of the British Academy, 74 (1988) 89-111; a quote in W. J. Prior (ed.), Socrates. Critical Assessments (London: Routledge, 1996), 139. Cf. also Vlastos, Socrates. Ironist and Moral Philosopher.

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sative, pervasively negative in form, its aim was strongly positive: to discover and defend true moral doctrine." 8 1 propose, moreover, that Vlastos's view should be supplemented by the claim that the ability to engage in elenchus is premised on a certain orderliness of the soul, an ability to master yearnings and affections, as emphasised in the Gorgias. In the early Platonic dialogues, Socrates resolutely advocates a sceptical view, to the effect that knowledge of the presuppositions which ensure a good and happy life lies beyond his intellectual capacities and grasp. By his consistent protestations of ignorance regarding subjects which, according to Kant's estimate, by their very nature lie beyond the limits and possibilities of human understanding, Socrates in fact aims to undermine unsupported claims to knowledge, i. e. claims which have not passed a thorough scrutinizing in reasoned argument, but are based rather on the opinion of the majority, who merely assume, rather than understand, things which definitely elude their powers of understanding. In his disputations with the arrogant sophists, pansophoi who offer ,for sale' their alleged omniscience, Socrates' ,ignorance' acquires a characteristic ironic dimension. In order to counteract the sophists' faith in their own omniscience, Socrates adopts the role of an ignorant partner in the discussion and, by an ingenious method of questioning, gradually forces them away from their starting positions, bringing them eventually face to face with the perplexities and apodas produced by their own assumptions. As Hermann Gundert has shown, one of the key attributes of the early, aporetic dialogues resulting from this approach consists in the fact that the intensity of Socrates' irony increases in proportion to the degree of mistaken self-confidence displayed by his interlocutors: „the lower the position the partners occupy in the Cave, the more elenctic, ironic, and paradoxical the dialogues."9 In the Gorgias, Socrates' aversion toward the Sophists is particularly evident, made palpable by his emphatic claim that it is in the Sophists' rhetorical demagogy that one should seek the source both of the evils and disorders of Athenian democracy and of the decay of the civic ethos. Maier holds, furthermore, that the Gorgias manifests a specific cognitive turn in Plato's work: here, philosophy no longer presents itself in the guise of Socratic moral dialectics, but rather as a science of the knowledge of the truth: „Sie ist vielmehr Wissenschaft, die sich um die Wahrheitserkenntnis, um wirkliches Wissen müht und die Welt der Meinung, des Scheins, der täuschenden Überredung verachtet."10 However, the fact that Socrates continues to play a lead role in the dialectical elenchus attests to the unbroken attachment of the pupil, who considers himself a follower and a successor of his master's teaching, to his teacher. In putting on the mask of ignorance in the dialogues, Socrates makes use of irony with an exceptional finesse. There are a number of passages in which irony takes the classical form of dissimulation, a figure which Plato skillfully applies. As such, it does 8 Vlastos, Sokrates. Ironist and Moral Philosopher, 14. 9 H. Gundert, Dialog und Dialektik. Zur Struktur des platonischen 1971), 8. 10 Maier, SocratesUïff.

Dialogs (Amsterdam: Grüner,

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not pose a special problem to the reader, who can easily discern the implicit content or true meaning of a thought behind its reverse - the explicit statement of the outward utterance. For instance, in the Euthydemus, Socrates responds to the Sophists Euthydemus and Dionisodorus, who claim for themselves an ability to teach virtue to anyone in the fastest and most efficient way, that due to their magnificent finding, he will have to address them in the fiiture as ,gods' (Euthyd. 273d f.). Clearly, Euthydemus and Dionisodorus are not gods; implicitly, however, the ability they claim for themselves, as well as the goal of their instruction: to instill virtue as quickly and efficiently as possible, are affirmed as something which must, if it existed, be deemed divine. Not infrequently, the irony applied by Socrates contains a strong dose of wit and humour, as is the case with Socrates' question in Hippia Major, whether the present Sophists may have surpassed the „ancient wise men"? When Hippia starts ranking the ancient wise men according to their earnings, Socrates seizes the opportunity for a clever play on words which is at once a riddle: „This, Hippia, is indeed a nice and strong proof of wisdom, both of your own and of our men of today, in which they surpassed the ancient ones" (282e f.). Obviously, this remark aims to refute the proposed claims - and to confound those whose wit is so limited as to allow them to think that wisdom might be measurable by material gain. However, there are more subtle cases, where Socrates skillfully plays on the ambiguity of words to produce in retrospect in the expression of his characteristic irony a dexterously camouflaged statement concerning intellectually and philosophically demanding issues. One great example may be found in the Gorgias (490e - 491b), when Socrates, responding to Callicles' objection that he keeps „repeating the same" (aei tauta), says: „not only the same, but also concerning the same things." Callicles reads the expression aei tauta as meaning a useless and persistent repetition of the tale of cobblers, cooks, and physicians, whereas Socrates responds to his cynical note through an ironical finesse: „For you say I'm always saying the same thing, and you blame me for it, but on the contrary I accuse you of never saying the same about the same things" (Gorg. 191b). Callicles is unable to recognize either the ambiguity of „always the same" (aei tauta), or the ultimate intention of Socrates' remark that one needs to postulate unchanging entities to be able to recognize i. e. cognize the empirical ,things', that is, to attribute pertinent characteristics to certain actions, and most importantly, to adhere consistently to certain moral principles that remain the same (aei tauta) throughout our moral conduct. Here, Plato expects the reader to recognize in Socrates joust with a vulgar adept of the Sophists an embryonic stage in the conception of Ideas. A heated discussion with Callicles on the question of how to achieve a happy life reminds us, in the meantime, that Socrates' interlocutors are dead serious in the undiluted brutality of their convictions; in their warning to the master of irony that he should not be jesting with them, we get a taste of their intolerance and of their own brand of cleverness. Following Socrates' proposal, in his refutation of Polus, of some of his own fundamental ethical attitudes (such as: ,noone does wrong willingly,' ,it is much worse to inflict injustice than to suffer it,' ,a happy life can be achieved only through fulfilment of justice'), Callicles demands:

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„Tell me, Socrates, are we to suppose you're in earnest now, or joking? For if you're in earnest, and all these things you say are really true, then wouldn't the life of us men be upside down? And don't we apparently do everything that's the opposite of what we should do?" (Gorg. 481b, c). Here, one sees the pernicious attempt by the Sophist to turn the knife of Socrates' wit on the wielder, and to undermine Socratic ethical attitudes by interpreting these also as a mere irony of the author, possessing a significance actually opposed to their intended meaning. Similar considerations apply to the Hippia Minor. In the Hippia Minor, Socrates opens his elenchus with an ironic argument from ignorance (amathia), at the same time calling on the „marvellous Good" (thaumasion agathon) that motivates him to investigate unceasingly, to pose questions and thank everyone who can provide him with a satisfactory answer (372c). In his own ignorance, Socrates claims that it seems to him that those who deceive people and willingly inflict injustice on them (hekontes adikountes) are more successful than those who do so unwillingly. However, at times it seems to him that the contrary claim is also true, so he finds himself perplexed and ignorant, without a clear view. Therefore he asks Hippia to free his soul of such an assault (katebole). Assistance to his soul implies release of his soul from the terrible illness of ,ignorance', as well as adequate assessment of the proposed claim that those who do wrong willingly (hamartanontes hekontes) are both better and more successful than those who do wrong unwillingly and in ignorance. In an ironic manner Socrates begs Hippia not to engage in disquisitions that he, Socrates, is unable to follow, but to draw on his entire knowledge and respond to his queries.11 Hippia replies that, as usual, he, Socrates, introduces perplexities into conversation and his objections go beyond the boundaries of polite manners. Socrates' apology consists in an ironic remark that he has not been doing this willingly; otherwise, according to the very words by Hippia, he himself would be intelligent and competent, too. The next stages of the discussion demonstrate that Hippia is unable to refute the thesis that it is more ethical to wrong willingly than unwillingly, as he was at the start of the dialogue unable to defend the validity of the assertion that the true differs from the untrue. The examples supplied: of a bowman missing his target deliberately, and of a doctor harming his patient willingly, that are supposed to show that, due to the two's expertise and abilities (dynatos ti poiein), they somehow rank higher than those who miss their targets accidentally or harm their patients mistakenly, should serve Socrates as a premise of the argument that „a good man does injustice willingly, and a bad one does it unwillingly" (376b). The background to such an absurd assertion is formed by the familiar Socratic position in ethics, that „virtue is knowledge" and „nobody does wrong willingly" or ,knowingly', whilst it is through his irony, or via negationis, that Socrates indicates to the arrogant sophist a direction in which a proper answer should be

11 Socrates acts similarly in the course of his dialogue with Protagoras (Prot. 334d f.).

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sought.12 Such more demanding ironic play of course requires from the reader a kind of reflection that goes far beyond a mere recognition of the contrary content intended by an explicit utterance. The case of a young and arrogant Athenian priest Euthyphro in the dialogue with the same title provides another telling example: Euthyphro encounters Socrates, who has already been indicted for impiety, in front of the courthouse, and explains to him why he has brought a case against his own father to the court, namely, because of his father's co-responsibility for the murder of a slave. On this, Socrates comments ironically: „Heavens above! It's certainly beyond the mass to know the right course, Euthyphro. I mean, I really don't think it's an action to be taken by the man in the street, but only by somebody already far advanced along the path of wisdom" {Eut. 4a-b) Euthyphro fails to recognize Socrates' ironic signal which aims to draw attention to the extraordinary character of one's indictment against one's own father,13 but takes this utterance literally and points out that he, Euthyphro, would not be worth a penny if he was like the majority of people who do not understand the divinity's attitude to the pious and the impious. Socrates masterfully continues his ironic play by stating that it would be best for him to become Euthyphro's pupil, because it is only then that he will be clear about the thing he has been trying to make clear all his life, and Meletus's indictment against Socrates for impiety (graphe asebeias) will become pointless as the responsibility for the crime would shift to the person more familiar with the subject around which the indictment revolves. Socratic ironic play takes place within the range defined by , belief' (doxa) and ,knowledge' (episteme). Within this range, Socrates has occupied the more advanced position of ironic ignorance; by persistently emphasizing on his wish to learn something, he never ceases to ask questions that will make his interlocutors run out of further answers. At the very moment when an acceptable definition of piety, such as is the case in the Euthyphro, or justice, as in the first book of the Republic, is within their grasp, Socrates' interlocutors fail to recognize that an elenctic treatment of the accurate definition takes them away from their original goal of posing the ,,ti estil" question. Hans von Armin rightly claims that the definition of piety as „ episteme hyperetike theois eis to beltious poiein tas ton atithropon psychos ", i. e. knowledge as a reverence of gods, the aim of which is to better the human souls14 is fully accurate. Similarly, in his Lectures on Ethics, Ernst Tugendhat claims that the European tradition has not seen a better definition of justice than Plato's from the First Book of the Republic: dikaion esti to proshekon hekasto apodidonai, which he renders as „gerecht ist eine Handlung, wenn sie jedem das gibt, was er verdient".15 It is also of some significance that the secondary

12 W. K. C. Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophie (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press 1975), vol. Ill, 442-449; W. Boder, Die sokratische Ironie (Amsterdam: Grüner, 1973), 89. 13 E. Heitsch claims that, according to the Athenian law of the day, Euthyphro had no authority to sue his own father, as he was not kin to the deceased slave; cf. Ernst Heitsch, Platon und die Anfänge seines dialektischen Philosophierens (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 155. 14 Cf. Η. v. Armin, Platos Jugenddialoge (Leipzig: Teubner, 1914), 149. 15 E. Tugendhat, Vorlesungen über Ethik (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1993), 367.

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definition is usually considered as incomplete and open-ended, and also as a sound basis for the triggering of elenchus. Socrates' interlocutors find themselves in a similar position: instead of recognising the right answer, they usually place blame on Socrates' unorthodox way of posing questions. Actually, it is the questions that represent one of Socrates' favourite ways of playing the game of irony with his interlocutors. One of the most controversial issues of Plato's aporetic dialogues is how to connect Socrates' ironic admission of his own ignorance with the resolute demand for concern for the good life (eu zen). This is the central question of practical philosophy: how to achieve a good and happy life, how to take care of the soul as an individual personality? In the Apology, we find a crystallisation of Socrates' ethical position, according to which it is necessary to „convince young and old alike that they need not concern themselves anxiously for the body and possessions, but first and foremost for the soul, that they should become as good as possible" (Apol. 30a-b). Socrates' ethical imperative to care for one's own soul can be understood in a modern sense as care for one's own personality (ca. Apol 28b, 36c; Krit. 47e; Gorg. 486e). Human beings are not, in fact, what they by nature should be; rather, they approach their true nature by education and create or recreate their own true characteristics in a long and complex process of formation. Every individual who rises from his given factual state to the life of the spirit or mind must take the path of formation by which he learns to recognize the existing material basis of the cultural heritage which determines him and in which he is already rooted in a particular way. His process of growth and education is at once a process of personal maturation in which existing cultural and humanist traditions, as well as institutionalised norms are reexamined and critically judged. Plato's thematisation of concern and cultivation of the soul (epimeleia psyches) as presented in the early dialogues, and which attains in Plato's later philosophy a special aura of sanctity and nobility, has had an extensive Wirkungsgeschichte and reception. Care of one's soul, as one of the central topoi in Western European metaphysics, is transformed in Kant's philosophy into the philosophical care for the cultivation of one's own identity, or rather the collective identity of humanity as a whole, and becomes in the descriptive psychology of Wilhelm Dilthey the basis for the justification of the specific task of the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften). The fundamental motif of Socrates' philosophizing: how to become as good and honourable a person as possible (36c 5), recurs in all the aporetic dialogs. Socrates reflected intensively on this question and fervently discussed with his partners in the dialogues the genuine values of human existence, emphasising that the „unexamined life" was not worth living (Apol. 38a). Nevertheless, to know exactly what conditions guarantee a good and happy life, surpasses his ability. The key difficulty implied by the effort to achieve the good life is how the individual is to achieve phronesis or insight into the good itself which enables him to achieve the good for him. The examination of self and knowledge of oneself prescribed by the Delphic oracle „Gnothi sauton" necessarily implies the concern for the constitution of one's own personality, the realisation of one's own true arete, the good in relation to one's self. It is telling that Socrates, for example, in the Criton (47a) asserts that with respect to the question of

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how to achieve the good life, one need not take into account the opinion of the majority, but first and foremost that of those individuals who are reasonable and insightful (phronimoi). In the concrete example of whether it is imperative to attempt to escape from prison, or to accept the sentence of death, Socrates shows that it is imperative that he decide himself on the basis of prudent and reasonable reflection: „Because not only now, but always I adhered to the arguments which have shown themselves under reasoned reflection to be the best" (46b). The mere fact that human beings possess phronesis, is thus the condition, but not the sufficient cause, for achieving a happy and satisfying life. Moreover, Socrates' „logizomai" presupposes the application of a permanent moral reflection and analysis to one's own life's choices. Socrates' demand that one examine one's life is in fact a call to return to oneself, to make an accounting, and discover the standards by which one lives, the meaning of one's actions and the real basis for one's habitual manner of living. In this connection in the Laches Nicias, an army general, makes an attempt to present Socrates' philosophical profile to Lysimachus: „You seem not to know that whenever anyone comes face to face with Socrates and has a conversation with him, what invariably happens is that, although they may have started on a completely different subject at first, Socrates will keep heading him off as they're talking until he has him trapped into giving an account of his present life-style, and of the way he has spent his life in the past." {Laches, 187 esq.) Spiritual goods (aretai) that an individual is in possession of, such as prudence, intelligence, determination, magnanimity, justice, manifest themselves fully only if they are led by an „activity of wisdom" (phronesis). Accordingly, a German Piatonist, Görgemanns, renders Plato's term phronesis accurately as „Vernunftätigkeit".16 It is a responsible thinking, ranging from a judgement of a specific situation to the key question of how to achieve a good and happy life. In connection with this, the Gorgias has it thus: „For remember, the things we are disputing over are not at all trivial, but they are practically the things which it is finest to know, and most shameful not to know; for the sum of them is to come to know or not to know who is happy (eudaimon) and who is not." (Gorg. 472 cd) And it is precisely the human soul which enables a man to reason correctly and make the best and most reasoned decision within a given context to achieve a given goal: a personal satisfaction and eudaimonia. Phronimon einai in Socratic dialogues implies, as H. Maier said, a „Zustand des sittlichen Wachgewordenseins" (Crii. 44d), i. e. a responsible care of one's own personality in order to live one's life in accordance with the true values as well as with the highest moral standard. All good in the human being is

16 H. Görgemanns, Platon (Heidelberg: Winter, 1994), 126.

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determined by the degree to which phronesis stamps and steers the soul as one's personality (cf. Meno 88e sq.). In the Symposium, Plato, with a special concern for detail, analyses Socrates's gift of practical wisdom (phronesis), which plays an especially prominent part in the creation of one's own personality, but at the same time reflects on the life of community as a whole: „But the greatest and most beautiful kind of practical wisdom by far is that concerned with the right ordering of cities and households, for which the name is temperance and justice" (Symp. 209a). The aporetic conclusion of Plato's dialogues is generally attributed to Socrates's perplexity about the issues he is pondering over, because he, as T. Irwin claims, has not crystallised his ideas on them. T. Irwin,17 like the majority of analytical interpreters, fails to recognize, however, that in Plato it is the process of reflection itself which takes the form of a dialogue, that is, that for Plato the dialogue does not represent a mere literary framework, but that it actually involves a process of gradual recognition, including the formation and crystallisation of ideas concerning central philosophical questions, the most fundamental of which is the question of how to achieve a good and happy life. Paul Friedländer rightly notes that, as to this fundamental question, there is not a major difference in opinion between Socrates and Plato: „As a typical mark of a Socratic conversation is to conclude with ignorance, so a typical mark of a Platonic dialogue is to halt before the ultimate, the inexpressible ... Plato has throughout looked at Socrates, the dialogue maker and the dialectician, as a symbol of both reality and the inexpressibility of the structure he is accustomed to call simply ,the Good'." 18 In this respect, Plato's dialogues do not represent an exposition of a philosophical system, or a doctrine, as clearly recognized by the Jena romanticists F. Schlegel and F. Schleiermacher, but something like the open-ended form of thinking known in the Romantic under the heading ymphilosophein". In a fundamental manner, Platonic dialogue involves us in a process of practical reasoning, where each specific situation is considered in the light of moral values, contributing thus to the ongoing moral constitution of one's own personality. The fact that a dialogue ends without a definite answer to our questions supplies in itself stimulation for further reasoning and reflection. As Wieland points out, it is only at the end of the dialogue that one clearly sees all the difficulties one has to confront whilst pondering some of the fundamental themes of philosophy. The reader, in attempting to interpret a philosophical text „sub ratione veritatis" and creatively, will not find comfort in a mere reconstruction of the content of his reflections, but will necessarily find himself faced with the decision to commit himself to extend and widen the scope of his arguments as the range of cognitive reflection should require.

17 Cf. T. Irwin, Plato 's Moral Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 236. 18 Paul Friedländer, Platon, Bd. I, Seinswahrheit und Lebenswirklichkeit, 3. durchges. und erw. Aufl. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1964) 181.

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The Socratic notion of philosophising, with its primary concern for the care of one's own personality (epimeleia heautou), may thus serve as an appropriate and relevant point of departure for the revision of certain modern views on personality, as well as for cultivation of a responsible attitude both towards one's own self and towards existence. The process of critical examination of values and assumptions embodied by the Socratic elenchus, in which, as Socrates would have it, a person needs to persist to the end in order to achieve a good and happy life, is especially relevant in an age where the prevailing attitude toward the possibility of a universal foundation for morals is one of scepticism. Socrates' views regarding the cultivation of ones's own personality nevertheless present an ever-renewed challenge to anyone taking reflection on morals and their role in the realisation of happiness seriously. Like British ethicist Bernard Williams, he or she will find in the perpetual Socratic search for answers and solutions to ethical questions a suitable model for a perfectly modern concept of morality: „Philosophy, in asking how Socrates' question might be answered, determines its own place in answering it. It is not a circle but a progression. Philosophy starts from the question that, on any view of it, it can and should ask, about the chances we have of finding out how best to live."19

19 Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy 1985), 4.

(Cambridge Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press,

DANIEL KOLAK

Stepping into the Same Rivers Consciousness, Personal Identity, and the Metaphysical Foundations for Global Ethics

Consciousness, which through immediate awareness of our own existence connects us directly to ourselves, separates us absolutely from each other. I know me the way I could never, even in principle, know you. This, what we might think of as the cogito incognito - „I think, therefore I am not you" - is the fundamental presupposition of what I have called closed individualism: the commonly accepted, received view according to which „your" I and „my" I are numerically distinct individuals separated from each other and everybody else in the universe by absolutely uncrossable metaphysical boundaries, i. e., that personal identity is closed under known laws of individuation and identification. Individuality bought through alienation - the ultimate Faustian bargain. This view is false, the bargain unnecessary. Derived from a naïve metaphysical denial of the significance of the subject in the construction of what ordinarily we simply and naively call „objective reality" and a sophisticated psychological denial of the subject as rightful logical heir (and metaphysical bearer) of personal identity, closed individualism separates us not only from each other but keeps us in the dark about ourselves. The result: a pathological obsession with authority through which social, religious, political and racial identifications (objectifications of the subject) masquerade as (separate) personal identities. I offer a better view: open individualism. Contrary to everything common sense tells us about who and what we are, there exists but one conscious being who is everyone: I am you, we are all the same person. Based on an enlightened view of the subject as the pure Platonic form of consciousness and the numerical identity of the active intellect in all sentient beings, open individualism is the latest installment in our age-old Socratic battle against authority. Understanding that consciousness is not what separates us but what we all have in common undermines all authority, even our own. The derivation of the forbidden proposition, I am you, from the ancient Greek imperative, gnothi sauton, unmasks personal separatism as a delusion by which we dominate each other because we cannot dominate ourselves. The logic of identity forbids it. The question: how can anyone nowadays (other than, say, an old school idealist or new age mystic) take such an esoteric view of the mind seriously, given the results of physical science? In other words, what strange kind universe would we have to live in that one and the same numerically identical consciousness could be distributed across all of space and time, running simultaneously in each and every brain? The answer: this one! Hidden among all those results in quantum physics and neurology is that open

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individualism is not just conceptually possible from a philosophical point of view but from the standpoint of both contemporary quantum mechanics and neuroscience necessary. The reason: both the „outer" cosmos - the universe - and the „inner" cosmos the brain - require the view of consciousness open individualism provides. The result: hard-nosed scientists who wouldn't follow the hook-nosed philosopher out of Plato's cave are finally starting to see the light.1 First of all, the cogito incognito between us holds no less so within us: the existential gap between „you" and „me" at time t holds just as well, possibly even more so, between „me" at time tnov/ and „me" at time t.7 years, a startling insight noticed by Heraclitus (you cannot step into the same river twice), Buddha (you cannot step into the same river twice), and nailed down by Hume (you cannot step into the same river twice).2 That is, the metaphysical gap between „you" and „me" at time t - between „us" - any way you choose to render it - in space, time, matter, memories, control, etc. - renders an equal or greater metaphysical gap between me at time /now and me at time ί.η no I is numerically identical to any other. Second, bridge the gap between „me" at time inow and „me" at time ί.η years - between „me (now)" and „me (then)" - any way one chooses to construct it - doing so establishes an equal or greater metaphysical bridge between „me" and „you": every / is numerically identical to every other. Put it all together, what do you get? Derek Parfit: If some unity is less deep, so is the corresponding disunity. The fact that we live different lives is the fact that we are not the same person. If the fact of personal identity is less deep, so is the fact of non-identity. There are not two different facts here, one of which is less deep ... while the other remains as deep. There is merely one fact, and this fact's denial. The separateness of persons is the denial that we are all the same person. If the fact of personal identity is less deep, so is this fact's denial? I take but one small step further (for all mankind) to argue that personal identity

1

The distinction between „closed" vs. „open" relations has a history in the philosophical literature; obvious parallels can be drawn with the related recent moves in epistemology that show why knowledge is not closed under known laws of implication. Traditionally, if I know that ρ entails q, and I know that ρ, I should therefore it seems also know that q: suppose I know that if I am in Zagreb then I am not in Dubrovnik, and I know that I am in Zagreb, I should therefore know that I am not in Dubrovnik. Substitute „brain in a vat in New Jersey" for Dubrovnik and you see why Nozick and others have realized such closure is not possible in epistemology and, as I argue, neither in metaphysics.

2

I say possibly even more so because, arguably, I can have better, closer „direct" access to your experience at this moment in relation to my experience at this moment (in so far as we could compare our experiences, influence each other's thoughts, feelings and actions, and so on) than I can have at the present moment to my experience of seven years ago (influence over and access to which at present I have virtually none). Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, Oxford University Press 1984, p. 339.

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is not closed under any possible borders of individuation. Therefore, contrary to popular belief ... I am not writing this sentence to you. Daniel Kolak, in his groundbreaking work, I Am You: the Metaphysical Foundations for Global Ethics,4 has advanced complex and interesting arguments for just such a claim.5 I won't repeat those arguments here. Garrett Thomson summarizes my method succinctly: Kolak's defense of the claim that there is only one person ... is to argue that the borders between humans do not count as definitive boundaries between people. The idea is that there are factors that apparently exclude the possibility that there is only one person. These are borders that we take to define separate persons. Kolak argues that these borders are not sufficient to deny open individualism .... In Kolak's work, the need for the concept of person arises primarily because of the first personal perspective nature of self-consciousness (Kolak 2004, pp. 413423). If I ask , What am I?' none of the impersonal, non-token reflexive borders between you and me seem to provide the required essentialist answer to my question. None amount to a boundary .... identity cannot be constituted by any of the qualities that would necessarily exclude me from being those individuals. Therefore, I am not essentially a male from England. Similarly, Kolak is not essentially a man from Croatia (Kolak 2004, p. 521).6 In his latest book, I Am a Strange Loop J in a section entitled „Am I No One Else or Am I Everyone Else," distinguished scientist and author Douglas Hofstadter discusses my thesis ... that all individuals are therefore one and the same person! There is only one person. This extreme view ... has its modern proponents, such as philosopher Daniel Kolak in his recent book I Am You} Variations on this heretical theme have been voiced periodically throughout the ages, from the Upanishads in the Far East, Averroes in the Middle East (along with his European counterparts, the „Integral Aristotelians,"), Giordano Bruno in the Middle Ages, down to Josiah Royce in the North East (and West). But now leading scientists have come to the same inexorable conclusion, among them some of the most important figures in quantum mechanics, such as Erwin Schrödinger:

4 5 6 7 8

I Am You: The Metaphysical Foundations for Global Ethics, Springer 2004. Troy Catterson, „Changing the subject: on the subject of subjectivity," Synthese (2008) 162: 385404, p. 386. Garrett Thomson, „Counting subjects," Synthese (2008) 162:373-384, p. 374. Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop, New York: Basic Books 2007. Hofstadter 2007, p. 271.

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Inconceivable as it seems to ordinary reason, you - and all other conscious beings as such - are all in all. Hence this life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance.9 Freeman Dyson, another giant of contemporary physics, who took over Einstein's office at the Princeton Institute of Advanced Study, puts it most bluntly: There is only one of us. We are all the same person. I am you and I am Winston Churchill and Hitler and Gandhi and everybody. There is no problem of injustice because your sufferings are also mine. There will be no problem of war as soon as you understand that in killing me you are only killing yourself.10 Quantum physicists are well equipped for thinking in ways inconceivable to ordinary reason not because their thinking is undisciplined but because their mathematically enhanced thinking is informed by their extraordinarily rigorous discipline. Consider how Douglas Hofstadter's explanation renders the requisite metaphysical situation: The idea of a soul distributed over many brains brought to my mind an image from solid-state physics, the field in which I did my doctoral work. A solid is a crystal, meaning a periodic lattice of atoms in space, like the trees in an orchard but in three dimensions instead of two. In some solids (those that do not conduct electricity), the electrons „hovering" around each atomic nucleus are so tightly bound that they never stray far from that nucleus ... . In metals, by contrast, which are excellent conductors the electrons are not timid stay-at-homes stuck to one tree, but boldly float around the entire lattice. This is why metals conduct so well. Actually, the proper image of an electron in a metal is ... of an intensity pattern distributed over the entire crystal at once - in some places more intense, in other places less so, and changing over time .... Electrons in metals, in short, are anything but tightly bound dots; they are floating patterns without any home at all... . If we map each tree (or nucleus) in the crystal lattice onto a particular human brain, then in the tight-binding model (which corresponds to [the standard received view]), each brain would possess a unique soul, ... By contrast, if we think of a metal, then the cloud is spread out across the whole lattice - which is to say, shared equally among all the trees (or nuclei). No tree is privileged. In this image, then, which is close to Daniel Kolak's view in I Am You, each human soul floats among all human brains, and its identity is determined not by its location but by the undulating global pattern it forms .... This peculiar and surreal tale, launched in solid-state physics ... gives as clear a picture as I can paint of how a human soul is spread among brains.11

9 Schrödinger, What is Life? Cambridge 1964, pp. 21-22. 10 Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, New York: Harper and Row, 1979, p. 17. 11 Hofstadter 2007, p. 373-374.

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That one soul could be spread across space and time among brains seems impossible until you learn that the way one soul is already spread across space and time within brains provides the necessary and sufficient conditions for open individualism. Jay Lombard, a leading neuroscientist and Chief of Neurology at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital, explains: Daniel Kolak's theory of synchronic consciousness, according to which the entire range of dissociative phenomena, from pathologies such as MPD and schizophrenia to normal dream states, are best explained in terms of consciousness becoming simultaneously identified as many selves, has revolutionary therapeutic implications for neurology and psychiatry ... . Kolak's derivation of psychiatrically relevant aspects of his theory - a neurological rendition of a Kantian transcendental argument - can be given a straightforward neurological, and therefore open to scientific scrutiny, interpretation that would then more easily lend itself to the clinical setting in which these perplexing phenomena, along with their purveyors, must live and cope . . . . The key, then, to understanding Kolak's philosophical view of consciousness is to not first misunderstand it from a neurological point of view. Several key dynamic physical processes required for normal brain development and function are integral for the metaphysical underpinnings of Kolak's view of consciousness, self and identity. These include the processes of neuronal generalization and specialization, the integration and binding of divergent systems, and ultimately the coordination of what Kolak correctly classifies as the whole-whole relation, i. e., the mapping of the phenomenological space-time manifold realized on the surface of the brain onto and into itself, the mathematics of which Kolak models via „(Stone-Cech) compactification of the subject (the entire manifold) into the subject-in-itself in relation to which objects are individuated and identified in perspectival space and time from the first person point of view, simultaneously denoted and expressed by the firstperson indexical, /." In other words, the entire brain as it were (or its phenomenology) must in some clear computational way enter its own phenomenological manifold in order to have location within its virtual rendition of reality by which interaction with the environment [is possible]... . the brain, in Kolak's view, does not so much exist in the universe as generate the entire multidimensional universe within which I, the subject, a multiply entangled synchronic consciousness, exist, having many disjoint (Hausdorff separated) experiences simultaneously. Multiple streams of conscious and self-conscious activity must run on the surface of the brain concurrently, in parallel, identified as many selves. This, he argues in my view persuasively, is the best explanation of how and why the brain manages to do what otherwise from both a phenomenological and neurological point of view would be virtually impossible, namely, realize itself as a conscious being in what, ordinarily, for lack of a better word, we call „reality."12

12 Lombard, „Synchronic consciousness from a neurological point of view: the philosophical foundations for neuroethics," Synthese (2008) 162:3, pp. 439-442.

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This, the first (neurological) salvo (the second will be cosmologicaΓ) requires unpacking, only some of which we can accomplish here, yet offers a comprehensive picture of how a neurologist understands that what goes on inside the brain - the universe within - namely, synchronic consciousness, is from the standpoint of neurology a necessary condition for the experience of one unified (continuous) manifold of space time. In Lombard's view, What Kolak wants us to acknowledge to our selves is what we cannot see, namely, that the ,other people' in our experience are ourselves. What makes this plausible from the standpoint of the neurological basis of our experience, in my view, are the three fundamentally related physiological processes of neuronal generalization and specialization, the integration and binding of divergent systems, and ultimately the coordination of whole-whole relation through which the brain is able to generate representations of others that exist, as such, within and through the very system that renders them. The puzzling fact of coordination among representations is in Kolak's view and in mine no less, and no more, mysterious than the coordination of linguistic structures within language, where the requisite degree of synchronic entanglement is achieved not by some sort of complex cognitive or qualia cables, virtual or otherwise, linking our minds across space, or with easy access to the common space manifold as envisioned by those still trapped by the commonsense simplicity of classical Newtonian physics, but by an innate grammar and syntax inherent in the brain's myriad neurological and logical structures.13 Lombard's point is that What thus .animates' the other people in our experience, no less so than the object relations within the phenomenological manifold is, first and foremost, us, our own consciousness. That is what Kolak means when he argues that I've never really had ,direct' contact with even my wife or kids, as such, but only with my own (brain's) virtual representational reconstructions of my wife and kids imbibed with my own consciousness projected into the representations that I see and interact with when I am with them. Which of course is not to say that I am in control of their actions or their minds in any way; on the contrary, Kolak's point is that just the opposite is going on within my own mind: just as the brain is hardwired to (re)construct a phenomenological representation of a chair if and when I enter a room and there is a chair present, which I can in no way alter simply by willing it, my brain is likewise hard-wired to (re)construct my wife and kids that I can also in no way alter simply by consciously willing it. Consciousness in this way bifurcates not only into subject and object but furthermore and more importantly into subject and subject, separated by phenomenological border controls,

13 Lombard, op cit., p. 442-443.

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,The Fact of Exclusive Conjoinment.' The degree to which we understand these key dynamical physical processes and their integration is the degree to which we can explain on a neurological basis the process of bifurcation or even greater degrees of fragmentation of consciousness, both in pathological (dissociative) and non-disease states of mind. The problem is that there are neuroanatomical pathways which exert phenomenological borders, blindsighting us, as it were, and preventing the ability of the brain to have an accurate and full picture of itself that it can then render as such to itself, the subject.14 The complexity of the neural architectures involved is beyond the scope of this paper.15 The point is that to explain what is going on in the brain from a phenomenological point of view requires first that we come to terms with what is required for proper brain function from a neurological point of view: The difficult point here is how they - the ,other people' in my experience - are represented to me, the subject in relation to which they are individuated and identified in perspectival space and time from the first person point of view, not just as object but, also, as subject in relation to which I am (to ,them *) likewise individuated and identified in (their) perspectival space and time (from ,their') first person point of view. Kolak's answer - and, given the limitations imposed on our experience by our neurology - in my view the best and only answer, is synchronic entanglement. I feel the presence of ,their' consciousness, their subjectivity, when I interact with my representations of them, which makes life so thoroughly visceral, while ,they' (the representations of others in my brain) feel likewise: consciousness (the subject) experiences itself identified as self and as other, such that we feel our own as each other's conscious presence. At least we NT's (the acronym coined by autistic adults for us, which stands for ,neurologically typical') do; many neurologists who work with autistic children, myself included, are convinced that part of what is going on in autistic (and to a lesser degree Aspergere) brains is that they do not ,feel the subjective presence of others' in this way but, rather, see others as others really appear in their brains: representations, objects without a subject there behind those representations looking at, thinking about - in a word, experiencing - them ... . What Kolak posits of our phenomenologies is in fact mirrored in a fundamental way by the fact that the brain itself is neurologically heterogeneous at multiple levels of its organization, a view supported both by evolutionary and neurodevelopmental perspectives. In a developing nervous system, pluripotent stem cells can theoretically give rise to all of the cells of the developing brain. These stem cells proliferate and their progeny undergo a process of progressive lineage restriction until they reach a stage of terminal differentiation. The mechanisms that govern

14 Ibid, p. 443. 15 For a comprehensive view, see my Cognitive Science, London: Routledge 2006.

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the changes in cellular identity, from its primitive origin, which possesses broad developmental potential, into a highly complex well-differentiated, and specialized unit, is one of the great as yet unsolved mysteries of stem cell biology. One of the missing pieces has been that no computational/mathematical model has been forthcoming; perhaps Kolak's compactificatgion topology will turn out to have more than just a philosophical explanatory function, provided that we can further decode the way in which mathematical functions and logical circuitry allowing adversely unified phenomenological manifold to emerge are parsed at the molecular level.16 To sum up: good neurological reasoning amplified by clinical experience suggests not only that open individualism is true of the universe within - that synchronic consciousness is up and running presently in the brain - but that without it consciousness as we know it would be, and is, impossible: this is Lombard's essential point, which both his and my studies support.17 In a nutshell: without synchronic consciousness the brain becomes autistic. Before I illustrate this startling claim in a bit more detail, let us briefly turn to the second salvo of our task at hand, alluded to by Lombard as one the „great as yet unsolved mysteries" above with regard to the possibility of my computational/mathematical model doing the trick, which requires our seeing how what inside the brain the universe within - mirrors what goes on outside the brain - the universe without. Just as synchronic consciousness explains the (myriad unseen) strange goings on inside the brain - the universe within - and illustrates how the / must exist simultaneously identified as multiple selves within the small scale (neurological) space time manifold (continuum), so open individualism, which from the standpoint of quantum cosmology is a necessary condition for the existence of one unified space time continuum, explains the (myriad seen) goings on outside the brain - the universe without and illustrates how the I must exist simultaneously identified as multiple selves within the large scale (cosmological) space time manifold (continuum). This is because open individualism is from the standpoint of quantum cosmology a necessary condition for the existence of one unified (continuous) manifold of space time. Erwin Schrödinger explains: The reason why our sentient, percipient and thinking ego is met nowhere within our scientific world picture can easily be indicated in seven words: because it is itself that world picture. It is identical with the whole and therefore cannot be contained in it as a part of it. But, of course, here we knock against the arithmetical paradox; there appears to be a great multitude of these conscious egos, the world however is only one. This comes from the fashion in which the world16 Lombard, op. cit., p. 444. 17 My work with GSR (Galvanic Skin Response) tests shows clearly that autistic and to a lesser degree Asperger brains show a markedly different (no salience) response to eye contact with others (parents, friends, researchers) in comparison to NT's (neurologically typical brains).

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concept produces itself. The several domains of ,private' consciousness partly overlap. The region common to all where they overlap is the construct of the ,real world around us.' With all that an uncomfortable feeling remains, prompting such questions as: Is my world really the same as yours? Is there one real world to be distinguished from its pictured introjected by way of perception into every one of us? And if so, are these picture like unto the real world or is the latter, the world ,in itself,' perhaps very different from the one we perceive .... Such questions ... lead to antinomies springing from the the arithmetical paradox', the many conscious egos from whose mental experiences the one world is concocted. The solution of this paradox of numbers ... are two ways out of the number paradox, both appearing rather lunatic ... one way out is the multiplication of the world in Leibniz's fearful doctrine of monads: every monad to be a world by itself, no communication between them; the monad ,has no windows,' it is ,incommunicado.' ... I think there are few to whom this suggestion appeals, nay who would consider it as a mitigation at all of the numerical antinomy. There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds or consciousness. Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth there is only one mind... .to Western thought this doctrine has little appeal, it is unpalatable, it is dubbed fantastic, unscientific. Well, so it is because our science - Greek science - is based on objectification, whereby it has cut itself off from an adequate understanding of the Subject of Cognizance, of the mind. But I do believe that this is precisely the point where our present way of thinking does need to be amended.18 „The arithmetical paradox" to which Schrödinger refers is that given what we know about the representational nature of the phenomenology running in (on the surface of) our brains, such that the I exists, necessarily, not on the outside looking out (your eyes are not windows!) but on the inside looking in, we would on a standard received (closed individualist) view each exist in our own closed world (subjective, perspectival manifolds), such that the number of worlds is not „one universe" but potentially „infinite," disjoint (Hausdorf separated) universes (e. g. Leibnizian monads). Until the advent of quantum mechanics, neuroscience, second order cybernetics, constructivism, etc., this emendation of our thinking was but virtually unattainable except in the metaphysical systems as envisioned by the likes of Leibniz, Spinoza, and Kant, As Thomson readily notes: There are a few important similarities between Kolak and Kant. One is this: the notion of empirical or phenomenal self is incomplete on its own, even if we add to that idea the impersonally or behaviorally characterized idea of self-consciousness. Another is that the following point is implicit in both authors: a theory of personal identity has two parts; that which concerns the empirical or

18 Erwin Schrödinger, Mind and Matter, Cambridge University Press 1967, p. 129-130.

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phenomenal self and that which concerns the transcendental subject.... Kant and Kolak are interested directly more in the transcendental subject rather than the identity of the empirical self.... Indeed, an important part of his argument is to insist that it is more correct to use the term ,person' to refer to the transcendental or noumenal subject than to the empirical or phenomenal self (Kolak 2004, p. 414) ... . Kolak's open individualism implies that we are subject to a deep transcendental illusion about the nature of the subject: we identify ourselves, i. e. the noumenal subject-in-itself, with the phenomenal self, and thereby are oblivious to the one behind and within the many (Kolak 2004, p. 407); Kolak's notion of the noumenal subject is both immanent and transcendental to the phenomenal world because the subject can be identified with the phenomenal world. We mistake the phenomenal for the noumenal. In this way of expressing the point, Kolak adopts the Kantian language of transcendental idealism.19 What Thomson doesn't acknowledge is that one man's transcendental idealism may be another's state of the art science, as Lombard in no uncertain terms contends: Few neurologists and cognitive neuroscientists today have the sort of metaphysical qualms with representationalist/phenomenalistic aspects of conscious experience that many contemporary philosophers seem intent on avoiding with some variant of what can only be called extremely naïve realism limited no less by an obsessive observance of ordinary language expressions than by compulsive avoidance of mathematical and empirical terminology. Thus Kolak seems more in vogue with current trends in neurology than with contemporary philosophy.20 Indeed, we have reason to believe that - just as without synchronic consciousness we would all be autistic, schizophrenic, etc. - through quantum mechanics and mathematical modeling built upon the work of Schrödinger, without the unity of all subjects there would be no one universe, no unity in space and time - no single (universal) continuum as such. In other words, what seems from the standpoint of ordinary common sense so obviously not to be the case - that there exists one person who is everyone - is not just possible but from the standpoint of quantum cosmology necessary; take open individualism out of the equation and you get not one universe (continuum) but a Leibnitzian myriad of disconnected windowless monads. The philosophical mathematics behind this extraordinary result is further implicated by arguments which I can only sketch here showing the mereological symmetries between the large scale (cosmologicaI) structure of space time onto which the universe (Being) renders itself into existence (Becoming) and the small scale (neurological) structure of space

19 Thomson, op. cit., pp. 381-382. 20 Jay Lombard, op. cit., p. 441.

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time onto which the human brain rendering that universe onto us in (phenomenological) experience renders itself into consciousness,21 Once we integrate (model) what it is about the large scale (cosmological) structure of space time that makes the (unified) universe as we know it possible and what it is about the small scale (neurological) structure of space time that makes (unified) experience as we know it possible, as for instance using a strong (full) version of Kantian transcendental idealism upgraded in the language of science and mathematics, we can then explain what it is about the universe and the brain that makes open individualism not merely possible but, from the standpoint of contemporary quantum mechanics and neuroscience necessary. Namely, that the large scale (cosmological) structure of space time in which the universe is realized must be topologically isomorphic to the actual small scale (neurological) structure of space time as realized in the brain, else our experience of the large scale structure space and time (the universe) rendered within (modeled) in the small scale (neurological) structure of space and time (in the brain) would be rendered logically impossible (geometrically unrenderable). In other words, the brain, to put it metaphorically, acts as a neurological mirror reflecting the mathematical mirror in which the universe, in turn, reflects its reflections synchronically, a mereological feat accomplished not through infinite parallel universes (the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics) but through infinite synchronic consciousness. This is because in the inner (phenomenological) universe it is not just possible that what seems so obviously not to be the case - that we are all the same person - it must, necessarily, be the case. To put it mathematically: while the large scale (cosmological) structure of space time in which the universe renders itself into existence as one (Parmenidean) reality renders the existence of one subject who is everyone - open individualism - as necessary from the standpoint of contemporary quantum cosmology (else you end up with a chaotic Heraclitan myriad of windowless Leibnizian epistemologically disconnected and metaphysically incommensurable monads), the small scale (neurological) structure of space time in which the universe renders itself into experience (through the inner workings of the brain) renders open individualism necessary from the standpoint of contemporary neurology (else you end up with autistim, schizophrenia, etc.). What makes this unified synchronic synchronicity possible is that both the large scale structure of space time (the universe) and the small scale structure of space time (the brain) render themselves into actuality in the same universal space, namely what I call the Platonic-Gödel strange loop universe topologies (P-G SLUTs) without boundaries (the Hawking „No Boundary Condition" spliced to Feynman's „Sum Over Histories"), the compactification of which results in the subject-in-itself in relation to which objects are individuated and identified from the first person point of view, what ordinarily we simply and naively call consciousness.

21 I use „into" and „onto" in their technical mathematical sense, in the context of a function / from two sets, U and M. An „onto" or surjective function /takes (represents, maps, transforms) domain U onto M in so far as it completely covers M: all of M is in the range o f / such that for each and every point jy in M, there is a point χ in A such that/*) = y . Think of a sheet (manifold) that completely covers a mattress.

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To give full justice to the mathematical details of this universal mathematical space would require more time and space than I have in this paper, but I will with the reader's indulgence render the model as best I can with the minimum but sufficient amount of mathematics and phenomenology in an attempt to show, on the one hand, that at the very least we are engaged here not with merely speculative analytic philosophy and the analysis of language but in serious metaphysics22 and, on the other, that serious metaphysics is an activity for which mathematics and the physical sciences are eminently suited. My efforts are by no means to present a complete theory in itself but to recapitulate some of its most cogent ideas from the perspective of contemporary science and show where I think the most fruitful avenues of present and future research lie. I am fully aware that to put any of this in a nutshell - or, I should say (Taub-)NUTshell23 - may be perceived by some as hopelessly inadequate in light of the mathematical physics, and by others condemned for too many words and not enough proof. In eithwer case, we find ourselves at the interface of an existential fulcrum on the precipice of an abyss where all our languages and even our laws, logical and otherwise, end in naked singularities. I do not intend this merely as a clever turn of phrase. Until recently it was generally accepted that the singularities arising in solutions to Einstein's field equations were necessarily clothed, that is, hidden from any and all observers (phenomenologically inaccessible) due to their being hidden (spatiotemporally removed) within event horizons, uncrossable boundaries in spacetime. This has been called the „Cosmic Censorship Hypothesis." The possibility of the existence of naked, or unclothed, singularities was regarded by most as absolutely impossible. Today this is no longer the case and there are a number of prominent physicists, including Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking, who now regard the universe to be just that, namely, a naked (observable, i. e., phenomenologically accessible in space time) singularity. Hence the underside of the above qualms: while many philosophers - curators to the most wonderful philosophies hung safely unused in exotic galleries closed to the public tactfully remain closed individualists, i. e., serious thinkers trapped inside the serious darkness of Plato's cave, hushed into silence by the constraints of ordinary language, 22 As Paul Bloomfield notes, „Leibniz was not, for example, arguing that it is possibly true that we are monads; rather he was arguing that this is actually true. He was not suggesting that God could have created the world in which we are monads but in fact did not create that world. Insofar as Berkeley denied the claims of ,the metaphysicians,' he was ipso facto doing metaphysics himself and he was not arguing that it is possibly true that there is no matter (or that this possibility is logically consistent with what we actually observe), but was instead arguing that there is not matter in the actual world. Hume, also fond of using "metaphysics" pejoratively, was nevertheless a serious metaphysician: he did not argue that it was possible that he had no self but that he actually had no self. ... Serious metaphysicians take their subject matter to be the metaphysics of the actual world and the class or set of worlds which are possible given the stipulation that the actual world is actual; their discussions are always grounded in, or indexed to, what is real, what is actual, and not in what is merely logically possible or what fails to logically contradict what we know." Paul Bloomfield, „Let's be realistic about serious metaphysics," Synthese (2005) 144:6990, pp. 70-71. 23 Discussed below.

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some thinkers less serious and more conversant in the liberating mathematics and logic of quantum mechanics and neuroscience have come into the light of open individualism. The sign on the wall of Plato's Cave: „Let No One Ignorant of Mathematics Exit Here." The first step is to render mathematically what ordinarily we simply and naively call „experience," „the world" or „reality" - what Erwin Schrödinger, following Kant, calls „the manifold of goings-on," („Mannigfaltigkeit "), where by Mannigfaltigkeit (manifold) we mean the Kantian „totality of experience as it is presented in sense," identified not as internal phenomena of the mind (e. g. ideas, representations, thoughts, figments of the imagination, presentations, etc.) but, rather, as phenomena external to the mind24 (i. e., a world of objects). The brain, as Lombard explicates above, is required to generate (construct) a manifold of space time in which it then renders objects in relation to itself as a subject located inside that manifold. This it must do given that no absolute non-perspectival (i. e., „objective," „physical," etc.) space conceived of existing as such „out there" beyond the brain and independently of its biological functioning can in any way help the brain render this relative (reference-framed) perspectival (i. e., „subjective," „phenomenological," etc.) space in which you presently find yourself situated. Your brain, using means of computational mathematics that we are only beginning to decipher, generates a mind space, renders objects in that mind space, and projects you, the subject in relation to whom those objects are rendered from the first person point of view, as a „minded observer," into that mind space. Keep in mind (sic) that what the neurologist is painfully aware of, as a result of studying not Kant but structural neuroanatomy, is that absolutely no light whatsoever enters the brain, that what we might think of as the phenomenological/logical phenomenal-noumenal barrier is infinitely more uncrossable than the merely biological brain-blood barrier. There simply is no direct access of any sort between the phenomenological system rendered in (through) the biological system of the brain and the „physical space" (put in scare quotes because it is a space not of three dimensions, as Newton thought, nor four, as Einstein did, but at latest count - of eleven dimensions) of (e. g. eleven dimensional) things-in-themselves. This is not transcendental idealism but Neurology 101. Any scientific explanation of how the brain generates experience in space and time must take into account both the large scale (cosmological) structure of space time and the small scale (neurological) structure of space time. One may think that one insoluble problem is enough let us solve them one at a time! The irony is that the two problems are solvable only together. The space time in which experience unfolds as such is absolutely and irrevocably incommensurate with any space time existing as such beyond or outside the

24 This in my view is the spirit in which Wittgenstein meant that the world cannot be viewed from the outside: for that to take place you would have to be in a world outside the world in which case the „world" that you would be thus „viewing" would be not a world but an idea, or thought. In other words, the subject would in that case view the world as internal to the subject. Compare with Tractatus, 6.45: „To view the world sub specie aeterni is the view of it as a - bounded - whole. The feeling of the world as a bounded whole is the mystical feeling." Daniel Kolak, Wittgenstein's Tractatus, New York: McGraw Hill, p. 49.

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brain within which (on the surface of which) that (small scale structure) manifold is realized. In mathematical parlance, this means that your experience now and my experience now - no less so than my experience now and my experience seven years ago - are Hausdorff-separated infinite sets, without any points in common, unconnected geometrical manifolds, with some rather strange properties, the strangest and most incomprehensible of which is that any proper subsets(parts) of infinite sets contain the whole (e. g., any proper subset of the real line contains no fewer numbers than the entire real line). To put it in terms of the (small scale, ,neurological') structure of space time of experience, you, the I, exist at the now which is the pivotal center of your entire (inner) universe, nowhere present phenomenologically yet everywhere, a neurologically realized space time rendered mathematically as a singularity, a phenomenological black hole.25 In mathematics, singularity theory best deals with points where manifold structures existentially terminate (fail, are bounded, etc. - shades of Heidegger!). To grasp this intuitively, and to provide the motivation for Hofstadter's predilection (as well as mine) for loops, consider a simple loop of string or rubber band. Throw the string down onto the floor so that one part crosses over the other; imagine now that this entity (the string) has no absolute thickness (is one point thick, a true one dimensional continuum), and ask yourself what that crossover point, where the string crosses itself, is: two points that become one point? That „double single point" is the very simplest sort of singularity studied in mathematics. Another way is through projections, wherein «-dimensional (e. g., 4D) entities are rendered in n-1-dimensions (e. g. 3D).26 In physical models, singularities in the universe are necessarily hidden from any and all observers by the event horizon. Enter now the mereological symmetry between the large (cosmological) and small scale (neurological) structure of space time rendered in the mathematics of infinite sets. The subject (the „mind," i. e., the entire experiential manifold) and the subject-in-itself (the mind's I, the mind's perspective on its experience) must be rendered not as a partwhole relation but a whole-whole relation that preserves the necessary inside-outside tension (separation). Mathematics achieves this through discrete topologies with separation axioms, e. g. Hausdorff spaces, wherein the entire „field of consciousness," i. e., „the subject in toto," involves discrete manifolds („objects") separated and conjoined by differential equations among which and exclusively onto which the observer (the „subject-in-itself) is conjoined (via identification as). The task from a neurological point of view is to explain how inside the brain it is possible for consciousness (the 7) to, as it were, „flow," „move," etc., „through" the mind (the perspectival manifold of experience), through itself by „separating" itself from itself to the degree made necessary for the having of experience. This can be modeled in terms of the collapse (in the quantum 25 The breakdown of the rules of relativistic physics and quantum mechanics at the singularity points is phenomenologically analogous to the experience of human freedom enjoyed by consciousness, to the degree that it not bound by those laws as Kant in his own way so readily realized. 26 For instance, the simple mathematical inverse function y(x)=l/x if plotted against the real line degenerates (or explodes) into a singularity at x=0, becoming simultaneously (+°o, -co)!

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mechanical sense) or compactification (in the topological sense, e. g. Stone-Cech) of the whole (or absolute, in Schelling's or even Hegel's sense, or transcendental, in Husserl's or even better yet Brouwer's sense) subject into the immediate (in Schopenhauer's sense) residual (from the act of objectification, compactification, etc.) literally, subjectin-itself in relation to which phenomena, e. g. perceived objects (objectifications of the subject, i. e., the mediated, objectified, identifications of the subject qua objects of experience, i. e., „object intuitions") are individuated and identified in (perspectival, i. e., „subjective") space and time from the first person point of view, i. e., observed. The mathematics of compactifaction is expressible as follows. Iff, a continuous function from compact space X to Hausdorff space Y, is one-to-one, then it is a homeomorphisom oïXd.nàf{X). The identity map f . (Y,T) —> (7, L) is continuous, one-to-one, and onto. Because L=T, the topologly L is unique. If X is compact, the space Y is obtained by adjoining (adding) the point °° that is both open and closed. If Λ' is a locally compact Hausdorff space that is not compact, and Y = X u , such that X is dense in Y, then Y is the one-point compactification of X. This can be motivated using the sorts of insights Wittgenstein not only anticipated but managed to express in his day using the wellformed Tractarian formulas 5.62, 5.63, 5.64, and 5.641: This thought itself shows how much truth there is in solipsism. What the solipsist intends to say is absolutely correct. The problem is that the truth cannot speak but only shows itself. That the world is my world reveals itself in the fact that the boundary of language (the language that I alone understand) is the boundary of my world. (5.62) I am my world. (5.63) Here we can see that solipsism thoroughly thought out coincides with pure realism. The / in solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and there remains the reality coordinated with it. (5.64) Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can speak about the self in a nonpsychological way. The I occurs in philosophy through the fact that the „world is my world." The philosophical I is not the human being, not the human body, nor the human soul with which psychology deals. The philosophical self is the metaphysical subject, the boundary - nowhere in the world. (5.641) To which we can now add one of Stephen Hawking's well-formed formulas of quantum cosmology: The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary.27 Hawking's latest models are built with topologies involving what are commonly called Taub NUT Anti de-Sitter and Taub BOLT Anti de-Sitter spaces. The „NUT" is an acronym that stands for the Newman-Unti-Tamburino solution of the Einstein equa-

27 Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, New York: Bantam 1988

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tions, in which the tensor = 0 everywhere throughout the manifold, and thus includes closed timelike geodesies which, when originally proposed, were looked down upon by most physicists (as was Godei's fundamentally Platonic universe) for several reasons, not the least of which is that it includes many „unphysical" features that, even worse from the standpoint of classical dynamics, is unstable against matter as traditionally conceived; worst of all, from the standpoint of common sense, the subject could travel forward and backward in time, looping not only into her own timelines but into any and all others, which of course from the standpoint of open individualism is not a problem but a solution. Such compactification solutions allow the inclusion of perspectival orientations which remain unorientable in the Hawking universe without some additional global function, such as spin (wherein the entire universe is rotating, which Hawking now proposes as part of his solution). Generally, a compact space Fis a compactification of X if X is homeomorphic to a dense subspace of Y, and a one-point compactification of L is itself a generalization of the method of adding a point to a plane to make a sphere. Using Brouwer's fixed point theorem (that every m a p / : B" —» B" has a fixed point) in conjunction with the Borsuk-Ulan Theorem: i f / is a map from S 2 to 91 2 , then antipodal points w and - w exist in S 2 such that fiyv) = fi-w), and we define g : S 2 ^ 91 2 as a map by g(w) = fiyv) -fi-w), w e S>, it can be shown that g vanishes at some point of S\ such that the subject-in-itself, the „point of view" qua observer, compactifies into what can then be rendered from a mathematical point of view as a Stone space.28 Felix Klein's term nullteilig, though far less well defined, can also be put to good use here. Klein meant, literally, „having no real part," a term he used to reserve „imaginary" e. g. for curves specified by equations with complex numbers as coefficients. Thus the real circle Xi 2 +X2 2 +1=0, which has a real center at (0,0), contains no real points, which Klein termed nullteilig. Likewise, the (even less well defined) locution „virtual" can help, along with the original Platonic notion of „ideal." An intended model-theoretic interpretation of the I, the subject-in-itself, rendered in terms of nullteilig, becomes the virtual or ideal subject-in-itself, a counterpart to the concept of 28 By far the best and most complete work on Stone Spaces is Peter T. Johnstone, Stone Spaces, Cambridge University Press, 1992. The import of Brower's theorem in 2D can be grasped simply by taking two sheets of paper, crumpling one up and tossing it on top of the other; one of the crumpled up points will be directly on top of its lower, flat counterpart! In 3D, shake your orange juice bottle and when you're done one of the points will be exactly where it was before the shake! Even more tellingly, take a map of wherever you are (e. g. Croatia) and lay it on the floor; one of the points on that map of Croatia must be directly over one of the points in Croatia where it is lying. The strange loop necessity of these sorts of synchronic points is quite inconceivable until one sees the proofs. Likewise for the Borsuk-Ulan (also sometimes spelled Ulam) theorem, which applies no less to the microstructures of the brain as at the quantum level as to the global features of the Earth, so that for instance one can prove that at any moment on opposite sides of the Earth there must exist two antipodal points having the exact same barometric pressure, temperature, and so on. A number of other such synchronic point set topological structures are not merely essential features of the Platonic-Gödel Strange Loop Universe Topologies but present some of the most useful and practical theorems in both pure and applied mathematics.

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distributed (synchronic) consciousness, keeping in mind that that which is distributed and that over which it is distributed are equicardinal infinite set structures (be they both denumerable or non-denumerable) involving not a part-whole relation but the wholew h o l e relation alluded to above both by Schrödinger and Lombard. 2 9 The subject-initself is thus rendered as that aspect o f perspectival subjectivity that cannot be objectified and therefore remains, even after the act o f individuation and identification essentially subjective, i. e., the subject qua subject, the „subjective residue" o f individuation, identification and objectification. 3 0 Projective transformations o f a projective space o f η dimensions, S n because changing a simplex of reference is equivalent to a linear transformation between coordinates involving a non-singular matrix, allow numerically one and the same point to have a number o f different names in reference to whichever simplex of reference it is being referred. Yet it is the one-to-one mappings under non-singular matrices allowing projective transformations o f S„ into itself that are both one-to-one and onto that make possible changes o f coordinate system. There are even more „sophisticated" mappings expressible in terms of the product o f projective transformations, called perspectivities, where a product o f perspectivities is itself a projective transformation. But where the matrix is singular (of rank r