The Central Question of Philosophy: Plato, Aristotle, and Whether the Way We Know Is the Way Things Are

Orientation #

He opens “apropos of this”: Aristotle, in the passage under discussion, “touches upon the central question of philosophy,” and he pauses to state that question before reading the text. He says the definition of eternity “we’ll look at later on in the course after we look at the definition of time.” Verified sources place this class at handout “The First Statement and King of Statements (Commentary on First Statement)”, p. 3, and DHB Vol I, p. 103. The previous class worked through Physics II on nature and previewed the relation of natural philosophy to mathematics; the next introduces the pre-Socratic fragments and Thales.

The class, in order #

1. Stating the central question (“the central question of philosophy”) #

Point: the “central” question is so called by analogy with the centre of a circle, where all the radii meet: it brings together everything the philosopher talks about with his end.

• The end of the philosopher: truth. What he talks about can be summed in two phrases: the way things are and the way we know. Natural philosophy is mainly about the way natural things are; political philosophy, political things; wisdom, “in some way the way all things are”; logic, the way we know (defining, reasoning). Here the emphasis is on the way things are, though we have said something about the way we know natural things.
• The question that joins the three: “Does truth require that the way we know be the way things are?”
• Two possible answers, yes or no (joke: “fellow students… they’re buzzing their heads”).

2. Plato yes, Aristotle no; why “yes” is attractive (“Berkquist is standing”) #

Point: this is another basic dichotomy, like the one already met between Aristotle and Descartes (Aristotle: the confused is more known and more certain to us; Descartes: certitude identified with clarity and distinctness).

• Plato answers yes, Aristotle no. Later thinkers rarely ask the question explicitly but have an implicit answer; probably more of the famous names side with Plato.
• Why yes seems right: we all have a confused but basic notion that truth is the agreement (harmony, conformity) of the mind with things. Example: think now that Berquist is standing — true; that he is sitting, or not standing — false; that he is not sitting — true. The mind seems in harmony with what is “out here.” So at first sight truth requires that the way we know be the way things are.
• Those who answer yes reach very different final conclusions “because of the other premises that they add.”

3. Plato and the Pythagoreans: a mathematical world (“there must truly exist spheres and cubes”) #

Point: with two added premises, “yes” forces a separately existing mathematical world.

• Background as he tells it: after Socrates’ death Plato left Athens in disgust, travelled to southern Italy, the Pythagorean seat; the Timaeus is put in the mouth of Timaeus, a Pythagorean, with Socrates listening; in the School of Athens Aristotle carries the Nicomachean Ethics, Plato the Timaeus. Heisenberg says reading the Timaeus (in Greek, on a roof in Munich during the revolutions after “the second — first World War,” his self-correction) inspired him to look for mathematical symmetry in atomic physics.
• Argument:
  1. Truth requires that the way we know be the way things are (the “yes”).
  2. In geometry and the science of numbers we have truth (it is so certain).
  3. In geometry we know sphere and cube in separation from the natural, sensible world, from all sensible matter (Plato sees this as Aristotle does).
  • Conclusion: “as a night the day,” spheres and cubes must truly exist outside the mind in separation from the ice cube, plastic cube, glass ball, snowball, rubber ball — a mathematical world in addition to the sensible world. “A very strange conclusion” — but note it shares premises 2 and 3 with Aristotle and differs only on the answer to the question.

4. Plato and Socrates: the world of forms (“the world of forms”) #

Point: the same “yes” plus the Socratic premise about definition yields the forms.

• Socrates (Phaedo and other dialogues) shows the way to truth is through definition; definition is the foundation of reasoned-out knowledge, as in Euclid. Example: “no odd number is even” is seen from the definitions (odd: not divisible into equal parts; even: divisible into two equal parts).
• In a definition you define the universal, not the singular: “man is an animal with reason” contains no Socrates, Berquist or Plato. So by definition we know the universal in separation from singulars; add “yes” and truth in definition, and the universal must exist outside the mind in separation from singulars.
• “World of ideas” is a mistranslation: Greek eidos is best rendered “forms.”
• Result: a three-deck universe — sensible world (known through the senses, but hard to know because always changing), mathematical world, world of forms.
• Student: so he thought these had a concrete existence? Answer: yes, outside the mind in separation, though not detectable by sense. This gives Plato a different way of knowing: not from the senses upward (Aristotle) but turning the soul around, away from the material world toward the mathematical and then the immaterial — which is why Plato interested the church fathers (mortifying the flesh, the dark night of the soul, receiving directly from God rather than through the senses).

5. Aristotle’s text: no falsehood in separating (“no falsity in knowing in separation”) #

Point: apart from his metaphysical arguments against the two worlds, Aristotle sees a basic difficulty in answering yes, and the passage read here is one aspect of it.

• Text read (his rendering): the mathematician “separates from the natural world, for they are separated in thought from motion, and it makes no difference, nor does a falsehood come to be in those separating.” Then on the forms: “it escapes those doing this in speaking of forms, for they separate natural things” — the universal man, the universal dog itself — but man in his very definition requires matter, so must in reality be singular; such things are “less separated” than mathematical things.
• Thomas’s way in (as he exemplifies it): things accidentally joined. The student knows Berquist as philosopher, leaving out grandfather; the nurse at the hospital knows him as grandfather, knowing nothing of philosopher. Neither is mistaken; each knowledge is incomplete, “not the same thing as being mistaken.” Mistake would be saying “this philosopher is not a grandfather” or “this grandfather is not a philosopher.” Knowable in separation, though not existing in separation.
• Same with cube: the shape is knowable without wood, plastic or ice; falsity only if I say the shape exists outside my mind in no matter.
• Same with universal and singular: comparing many men I separate out what is common (two-footed, “supposedly rational” animals), leaving aside individual differences; more generally, dog, cat, horse — separate out “animal, a living body with sensation,” leaving aside the specific differences. Not that animal exists without them, but it is knowable without them.
• The rule: no falsity in understanding in separation things that do not exist in separation, if they are knowable one independently of the other; the falsity comes when you say that because we know them in separation, they exist in separation. “The error comes in when you answer yes to this question.”

6. After Plato: Ockham, Kant, Hegel, Marx; the sugar (“the sweetness of the sugar”) #

Point: “yes” plus different premises produces opposite errors — strange worlds, or no knowledge at all.

• William of Ockham (14th c.): answers yes, but agrees with Aristotle that universals do not exist apart from singulars — only singulars are out there; all science knows the universal in separation; so we know nothing. “This spread to the universities… people went to the universities to learn nothing.”
• Two families: those convinced they know something conclude the way things are must match (Plato, Hegel); those who see the two are not the same conclude we know nothing (Ockham, Kant: the thing in itself, the noumena, unknown). Marx: the only things we know are the things we make; “we’re the beginning, the end of all we’ve made.”
• Sugar, white and sweet: the tongue knows the sweetness without the whiteness — incomplete, not false; the eye knows the whiteness without the sweetness — incomplete, not false. Falsity would be to say the sweetness really exists without colour because taste knows it so, or the sugar is white without sweetness because sight knows it so — that is “saying the way we know is the way things are.”

7. Second aspect: knowing in a different order (“I know you before your parents”) #

Point: not treated explicitly in the text, but a second way the way we know differs from the way things are — order.

• “I know you before your parents,” and them before your grandparents; in reality the order is the reverse. Not false; false only to conclude that because I knew you first you came first.
• Applied to cause and effect: in reality the cause gives rise to the effect; in our knowledge, usually effect before cause. The mind is not false in this. Sherlock Holmes to Watson: “I am going to have to reason backwards” — from effect to cause. “Who done it”: you know the effect and find the cause. God knows himself primarily and is the first cause; we know the effect first and reason back.

8. Rationalists: order in ideas = order in things; pantheism (“the order in ideas and the order in things”) #

Point: answering yes with confidence that we know yields Spinoza’s and Hegel’s conclusions.

• Descartes almost anticipates it; Spinoza (Ethica more geometrico demonstrata) says the order in ideas and the order in things is the same — the rationalist premise plus “yes.”
• Hegel, “the most full blown rationalist”: since we know the confused before the distinct, the most confused notion — the being said of all things — must correspond to the beginning of reality; he explicitly identifies it with the one who says “I am who am.” Thomas in the Summa Contra Gentiles devotes a whole chapter to showing the being said of all is not the being which is God. “Isn’t that an outrageous conclusion?” In Hegel’s system being passes over to non-being, having no determination, and then becoming — yet this most indistinct notion is identified with God.
• This is the pantheism running through German thought (de Tocqueville’s remark); the Enchiridion Symbolorum through the 19th century keeps correcting German professors, even Catholic ones, for pantheism; aspects of it in Kuhn in the 20th c. and even Karl Rahner.
• The other family, who see something is wrong but implicitly answer yes and say we know nothing: Kant, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Frege.
• Aristotle “stands like the lone admiral”: “It’s what we say about things that has to agree with them.” Understanding in separation what can be understood in separation, or knowing in the contrary order, is not false; the mistake is inferring existence in separation or in that order.
• He dramatises the two wrong sides on the parents example: one says “you must truly have come before your parents, strange as it may seem”; the other says “as long as I’m knowing you before your parents, I know neither you nor your parents.”

9. The cogito and memory (“I think, therefore I am”) #

Point: two more small cases of order.

• Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” (not original — in St Augustine too): thinking comes before being in the knowing, being before thinking in reality. Not false: if something is thinking it must be. False only to say thinking is in reality before being.
• Memory: meeting an old high-school buddy, the past is present again in memory. No falsity in remembering the past now; the fallacy would be to think, because I remember the past now, that the past is now.

10. Boethius, eternity, and following Aristotle (“Lady Wisdom announces Aristotle”) #

Point: Boethius is the first great thinker he knows to follow Aristotle on this, forced to by divine eternity.

• In the Consolation of Philosophy Boethius calls himself a member of the Academy, and the first books reason somewhat Platonically. He is trying to understand how a just man was falsely imprisoned: evil, divine providence (the definition of providence comes from Boethius), God’s knowledge of the world.
• God’s knowledge is eternal, all at once, no past or future: past and future are present to God in the eternal now. In book V he works out the definition of eternity (Thomas’s definition in the Summa Theologiae is Boethius’s; Thomas spends time defending it — to be looked at after the definition of time).
• To understand this, one must see that the way God knows and the way things are are not the same: the future is present to him in his knowledge with no falsity. If truth required the way we know to be the way things are, this would be impossible.
• The work is a dialogue between Boethius in prison and Lady Wisdom (Sapientia, feminine), who argues him out of despair; in book V she announces Aristotle as her true follower — subtle, since Boethius must now follow Aristotle, not Plato. Thomas has the benefit of both Aristotle and Boethius.
• Asides: a commentary on the Consolation printed among Thomas’s works is not authentic Thomas but good (his brother Mark thought so; possibly by Thomas Anglicus, “Thomas the Englishman,” often confused with Aquinas) [ed.: one name in this passage is unclear in recording]. Much of the Consolation became proverbial in medieval philosophy. The first books treat false happiness first, as more known to us, then true happiness. He used to teach Boethius’s De Trinitate, on which Thomas commented; he does not seriously doubt the same man wrote the logical commentaries. Boethius is “the greatest mind in the church between Augustine and Thomas.”

His words #

• central question: by analogy with the centre of a circle where all radii meet; joins the way we know, the way things are, and the end (truth).
• the way we know / the way things are: the two things every philosopher talks about.
• truth: the agreement, harmony, conformity of the mind with things (our confused, basic notion).
• confused / distinct: Aristotle — the confused more known and more certain to us; Descartes — certitude as clarity and distinction.
• forms: his translation of eidos; “ideas” is a mistranslation.
• three-deck universe: sensible world, mathematical world, world of forms (Plato).
• incomplete vs. mistaken: knowing one thing without another is incomplete, not false.
• knowable in separation / existing in separation: the distinction on which Aristotle’s “no” turns.
• reason backwards: from effect to cause (Sherlock Holmes).
• the being said of all things: the most confused notion of the mind, which Hegel identifies with “I am who am.”
• noumena / thing in itself: Kant’s unknown.
• eternal now: past and future present to God’s knowledge.
• Sapientia / Lady Wisdom: the consoler in Boethius’s dialogue.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Physics (Natural Hearing) II, the passage on the mathematician separating from the natural world and on those who speak of forms (inferred: ch. 2); verified handout p. 3.
• Thomas Aquinas’s explanation of the same passage, via the accidentally joined (philosopher/grandfather), locus not stated.

Mentioned

• Plato, Timaeus; Phaedo; the Republic (“in public,” turning the soul around — inferred); Raphael’s School of Athens.
• Euclid, Elements (definitions as foundation) (inferred title).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics (arguments against the two worlds); Nicomachean Ethics (in the painting).
• Heisenberg on reading the Timaeus.
• Ockham; Kant; Hegel; Marx; Spinoza, Ethica more geometrico demonstrata; Sartre; Wittgenstein; Frege; Descartes; Augustine (the cogito).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, chapter on God not being the being said of all; Summa Theologiae, definition of eternity.
• de Tocqueville on German pantheism; Enchiridion Symbolorum; Kuhn; Karl Rahner.
• Sherlock Holmes (a story, reasoning backwards).
• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy (esp. book V); De Trinitate; the inauthentic commentary on the Consolation printed among Thomas’s works.

His questions #

• Does truth require that the way we know be the way things are? Two answers: Plato yes, Aristotle no; his own answer follows Aristotle.
• If you think Berquist is sitting now, are you thinking truly or falsely? Falsely; thinking he is standing and not sitting is true — the mind in harmony with things.
• In a definition, do you define the singular or the universal? Is Socrates in the definition of man? The universal; no individual is in it.
• Is the student or the nurse mistaken in knowing one of these without the other? No; incomplete, not mistaken — mistaken only in saying “this philosopher is not a grandfather.”
• Is my tongue false in knowing the sweetness of the sugar without its whiteness? No; falsity would be to say the sweetness exists without the colour.
• Am I false in knowing you before your parents? No; the falsity would be to say you therefore came before your parents.
• Is my mind false in knowing the effect before the cause? No; that is the usual order of our knowing, though contrary to the order of things.
• Is Descartes false in “I think, therefore I am,” thinking coming before being? No; false only if thinking is put before being in reality.
• Is there any falsity in the past being present to you in your memory? No; the fallacy is to think the past is now because I remember it now.