PLATO’S EXPLANATORY PREDICATION A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Saul Gordon Rosenthal January 2011 © 2011 Saul Gordon Rosenthal All rights reserved PLATO’S EXPLANATORY PREDICATION Saul Gordon Rosenthal, Ph. D. Cornell University 2011 One of the most classic puzzles in Plato’s metaphysics is how to interpret his apparently self-predicational language. Plato seems committed, at least in his middle dialogues, to the view that for all forms, the form of F “is F”. For instance, he seems to say that the form of largeness itself “is large”, and to generalize this claim to all forms. Commentators have struggled to find an interpretation of such claims that is consistent with Plato’s text and that attributes to Plato a view with some plausibility. One aim of this dissertation is to show that we have good reason to doubt all of the most influential interpretations offered by commentators. The views discussed include Narrow Self-Predication, the Tautologous Identity view, two Non- Tautologous Identity views, the Pauline Predication view, Broad Self-Predication, and a view distinguishing different kinds of predication. It is doubtful whether any of these interpretations correctly captures Plato’s self-predicational commitments. Another aim of the dissertation is to argue that the textual evidence most often thought to commit Plato to the Self-Predication Assumption (SP), that for all forms, the form of F is itself an F thing, is insufficient to establish such a commitment. One chapter focuses on Plato’s repeated discussion of the resemblance between form and participant. Other chapters present new interpretations of key arguments: the argument in the Phaedo distinguishing the form of equality from “sensible equals” and the famous Third Man Argument in the Parmenides. On a correct interpretation of these passages, they do not express a commitment to SP. Finally, this dissertation defends a new interpretation of Plato’s apparently self-predicational language called the Explanatory Predication view (EP). According to EP, Plato rejects SP and, when he suggests that for all forms, the form of F “is F”, he only means to emphasize the explanatory role of forms. In such contexts, he uses the predicate ‘F’ as shorthand to refer to the property of being F-explaining rather than to the property of being F. EP ought to be favored over other views because it is consistent with the textual evidence and avoids any highly counterintuitive consequences. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Saul Gordon Rosenthal was an undergraduate at Wesleyan University, where his interest in philosophy was first sparked in an Introduction to Philosophy class for non-majors. He went on to major in philosophy and wrote an Honors thesis on Plato, which received High Honors and the Wise Prize for best departmental thesis. He received honors studying both Greek and Latin at the Latin/Greek Institute in New York City. Saul was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, where he received a Masters in philosophy after completing a thesis on Plato’s Timaeus. He became a doctoral student in the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University in order to pursue his interests in Plato’s metaphysics and Greek philosophy in general. Saul is currently a Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. iii “But are you happy with it?” —Stuart A. Rosenthal iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS By far, deciding whom to acknowledge first is the easiest task of this whole dissertation process. I would like to express my deep gratitude to Gail Fine, the supervisor of my dissertation and Chair of my Committee, without whom this dissertation simply would not have been possible. I cannot overstate how greatly my thought about Plato and about philosophy in general has been benefitted by Gail Fine’s unending support and guidance. I would also like to thank the other members of my Committee, Terry Irwin and Tad Brennan. I am very thankful for Terry Irwin’s many probing questions and comments, which often helped me to see Plato’s texts in a new light and to reevaluate and improve my understanding of them. And my thanks to Tad Brennan, for being unbelievably generous with his time and for his constant words of encouragement and enthusiasm. He repeatedly helped me to feel that I was doing something in this dissertation that might be kalon kagathon. I owe so much to the many teachers I have worked with during my training in philosophy, and I am certain I will fail to mention every person who deserves mentioning. I would especially like to thank Mary Hannah Jones, my advisor at Wesleyan University and first teacher of Greek philosophy, and Amber Carpenter, my tutor at King’s College London where I studied abroad for a semester as an undergraduate. I also want to express my thanks to the faculty and graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin, especially Alexander Mourelatos and Paul Woodruff, who both supervised my Masters thesis, and also Stephen White and R. J. Hankinson. And special thanks goes to Richard Sorabji, with whom I worked while in Austin, for expressing great excitement about my work and for being kind enough to v cite me in one of his books. I am also appreciative of the fruitful discussions I had with Paolo Crivelli and with Chris Shields, while doing graduate study at Oxford University. I also want to thank Hardy Hansen, Alan Fishbone, Collomia Charles, Colin King, and the other dedicated teachers at the Latin/Greek Institute, for their infectious love of Greek and Latin. Beyond those in my dissertation Committee, other members of the Sage School of Philosophy are deserving of acknowledgement. I would especially like to thank Andrew Chignell, Karen Bennett, Scott MacDonald, and Tamar Gendler. And I want to thank all of the graduate students of the Sage School, for helping to make the department such a supportive environment. I am especially thankful to Kristen Inglis and Scott O’Connor, for many helpful hours of philosophical discussion, and to Jacob Klein, for his generosity and invaluable guidance throughout the dissertation process. For their friendship and for teaching me so much over the years, I would also like to thank Alice Phillips, Flora Lee, Sydney Penner, Andrew Alwood, Vincent Baltazar, Patrick Mayer, and Nate Jezzi, among others. Of course, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my mother and father. Among so many other things, my mother, Susan Rosenthal, has been the source of endless support and love, and has taught me the importance of dedication to one’s work and the value of family. And my father, Stuart Rosenthal, has instilled in me a desire to strive for excellence and a high standard with which to judge my work. I am also thankful to my sister, Stephanie Rosenthal, for her love and encouragement, and for being the only member of my immediate family to truly understand a word of my work in philosophy. Special thanks goes to my cat Moxie, for his companionship during countless late nights of work. His constant rubbing against my ankles as I worked, and the vi comic relief of his sprawling himself across my papers and books, were essential to the completion of this dissertation. Most of all, I would like to thank my editor and partner in life, Wendy Rosenthal. This dissertation would have been impossible without her standing by me for these many years, offering her love, making me laugh uncontrollably, urging me to forge onward, and reading and rereading my esoteric and potentially boring papers. It seems to me, at least, impossible for anyone to be as supportive as she has been, and to sacrifice so much with such ease and love. She deserves a great deal of credit for the work contained herein. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch................................................................................................iii Dedication...............................................................................................................iv Acknowledgements .................................................................................................v Table of Contents .................................................................................................viii Introduction .............................................................................................................1 Chapter One: The Rejection of Narrow Self-Predication........................................9 Section I: Introduction....................................................................................9 Section II: What is NSP? ................................................................................9 Section III: Rejecting NSP: “The form of F is not opposite-F”...................13 Section IV: Rejecting NSP: In some cases, the form of F cannot be F ........19 Chapter Two: Immanent Characters and the B-Requirement ...............................26 Section I: Introduction..................................................................................26 Section II: The F-nesses-in-us......................................................................28 Section III: A Requirement on Adequate Interpretations.............................41 Section IV: Applying the Requirement .........................................................47 Chapter Three: Explanatory Predication ...............................................................61 Section I: Introduction..................................................................................61