ISSN 1393-614X Minerva - An Internet Journal of
Philosophy Vol. 9 2005.
____________________________________________________
THE LOGIC OF IMMORTALITY: PLATO'S PHAEDO AND THE ARGUMENT FROM AFFINITYAndrew M. Bailey |
Abstract
It is tempting for contemporary
students of philosophy to read classical authors with a jaundiced eye. Under
this critical framework, apparent discrepancies or rational wrinkles are
pounced upon as logical fallacies and instances of unsophisticated and
lackluster argumentation. This judgment is easy, but far too hasty on several
counts. As Alfred Freddoso notes:
…without the sort
of systematic study that we are not generally trained for either linguistically
or philosophically, we contemporary … philosophers are not in a position even
to understand, much less to criticize intelligently, most of the work of…
classical metaphysicians. For in order to grasp what these authors are saying,
we must immerse ourselves in their works and, at least initially, humbly submit
ourselves to their tutelage; but this is a project that most of us have neither
the expertise nor the time nor the inclination to undertake (Freddoso 1998, p.124).
This paper is an attempt to take up
part of Freddoso’s challenge with regard to one Platonic dialogue, Phaedo.
One easy reading of what I shall call the Argument from Affinity in Phaedo
labels the line of reasoning a patent textbook fallacy. This reading is
mistaken, or so I hope to show. Plato deserves a more nuanced reading, and this
paper is an attempt to give it. More specifically, I shall here argue that the
circular form of the Argument from Affinity in Plato’s Phaedo is an image
of the structure of the afterlife as understood by the character of Socrates.
I will proceed by first outlining
the basic project of Phaedo, showing the broader context of the Argument
from Affinity. Second, I will offer two competing formulations of the Argument
from Affinity, and suggest various textual clues in support of both. The more
plausible of these formulations will turn out to be circular in nature. Instead
of merely leaving the matter there, however, I will then show how this broad
circularity is consistent with a general Platonic framework and is best seen as
intentional. That the Argument from Affinity begs the question (is circular)
suggests, in fact, that it is a logical image of one central theme in the
dialogue: the cyclical and circular nature of life and death.
Phaedo contains, “in a setting where
literary brilliance and perception match the pathos of the situation described,
a lengthy exposition of what have been called ‘the twin pillars of Platonism’…”
(Robinson 1995, p.21) Here, the character of Socrates and, indirectly, the
author, embark on an expansive project, to argue for immortality.1 Faced with his own
imminent death, Socrates attempts to persuade his friends that his soul will
live on past the execution of its body. In this way, he deflates the despair of
his friends with hope in the afterlife:
I want to make my
argument before you, my judges, as to why I think that a man who has truly spent
his life in philosophy is probably right to be of good cheer in the face of
death and to be very hopeful that after death he will attain the greatest
blessings yonder. (Plato 1997b, 63e-64a)
A variety of arguments are marshaled
to ground this hope. The first of these is the Argument from Opposites (Plato
1997b, 70c-72d). Socrates here reasons that all things that come to be come to
be from their opposites. Just as the larger comes from the smaller and the
stronger from the weaker, so also, he concludes, does the living come from the
dead. If the premises of this argument are correct, of course, it also follows
that the dead come from the living. The resulting conclusion is not merely
immortality—it is an endless cycle of reincarnation. This point will recur
elsewhere in the dialogue.
Next, Socrates presents the
Argument from Recollection to establish the pre-existence of the soul (Plato
1997b, 72e-77a). Given the mind’s knowledge of some things “themselves” (the
example he uses is the Equal Itself), the soul must have, at one time, existed
prior to its bodily incarnation. There is no other plausible explanation of its
knowledge of the Forms. Socrates here seems to rely upon an argument made in an
earlier dialogue, the Meno; the argument suggests that learning really
just is recollection, the remembrance of knowledge had prior to birth:
… if the truth
about reality is always in our soul, the soul would be immortal so that you
should always confidently try to seek out and recollect what you do not know at
present—that is, that you do not recollect? (Plato 1997a, 86b)
But this move is clearly not
sufficient. That the soul pre-exists the body does not imply that it will live
on after the body’s death. What I call the Argument from Affinity comes immediately
after Socrates and Cebes recognize this deficiency. It functions, then, as the
“second half of the proof” (Plato 1997b, 77c) in Socrates’ cumulative case for
the immortality of the soul, to show that the soul will continue to live
after bodily death.
Put prosaically, the Argument from
Affinity goes something like the following. All of reality is divided into two
realms. As Timaeus does, let us call these Being and Becoming (Plato
1997d, 28a-b). This is not to suggest that the terms are univocally related to
Socrates’ conceptual framework in Phaedo. They will provide, however, a
convenient means of understanding the metaphysics and logic of immortality.
Being is marked by immutability, permanence, eternality, unity, divinity,
intelligibility, and the like, while Becoming is fraught with constant change,
mutability, plurality, and death. Being is the realm of Plato’s
heaven—of the Forms, Becoming, the home of sensory experience and material
objects. The human soul has important features in common with entities in the
realm of Being; “… the soul is most like the divine, deathless, intelligible,
uniform, indissoluble, always the same as itself…” (Plato 1997b, 80b) and hence
is best seen as itself being in Being—a stone’s throw away from the conclusion
that the soul is immortal. The most important claim here is that “…the soul more
resembles the invisible, unchanging, and eternal forms than it does the
visible, changing, and perishable objects that we perceive in this world”
(Bostock 1999, p.422). The soul belongs, somehow, in one category and
not the other.
I shall now examine the argument in
greater detail, with an eye for its structure. My goal in this section shall be
to understand the form of the argument and what inferences it may rely upon.
The Argument from Affinity could be understood in at least two broad ways.
While both will turn out to cohere with the text, the first, which I shall call
‘A,’ is logically invalid, while the other, ‘B,’ is not.
Formulation A of the Argument from
Affinity could be seen as proceeding thusly:
A1. Everything in Being has feature F.
A2. Socrates’ soul (or souls
in general) has feature F.
A3. Therefore, Socrates’
soul (or souls in general) is in Being.2
Note
that while the argument may be generalized souls full stop, the text indicates
most clearly that it is about one soul in particular. A1 first looks at a class
of things (those that are in the realm of Being) and notes that they
necessarily have some feature in common—invisibility, indivisibility, or a
“divine nature.” A2 notes that Socrates soul, or all human souls also have this
feature. Does it follow, then, that Socrates’ soul is properly thought of as
Being rather than Becoming? Certainly not. In fact, the inference of A3,
regardless of its truth, is invalid. That is, it commits a compositional
fallacy (or affirms the consequent). Just because Socrates’ soul has a feature
which other objects in Being happen to also have does not imply that Socrates’ soul
is itself in Being. To make the inference of A3 valid, premise A1 must be
strengthened. One means toward this end is to posit:
A1`. An object x has F if and only if x is in Being.3
That
is to say, having some feature F is both a necessary and sufficient condition
of membership in Being. A1 could handily save argument A from charges of
logical invalidity. If true, it, with A2 implies A3, which in turn gets
Socrates his conclusion, that the soul is immortal. But is there any reason to
believe this strengthened premise? Suppose F stands here for invisibility—is
invisibility a necessary and sufficient condition for some object to be
properly thought of as ‘being in Being?’ Not in the mind of this author—and it
seems that decisive counter-examples will not be difficult to find. Consider a
particular that is not physical—a mental event, for example. A mental event is
not visible (or even physical) on the accounts of dualism most favorable to the
Platonic project. It is not, however, anywhere close to the unchanging Forms
found in Being. Mental events are mutable by definition. Their nature is to be
transitory, to change, to come and to go. I shall consider later the
ramifications of supposing other features such as indivisibility to be
necessary and sufficient conditions of membership in the realm of Being.
Argument A, as I have construed it,
is radically implausible. It is either logically invalid or subject to (what I
take to be) decisive refutation. We may be tempted to leave the project here,
but I suggest that charity demands we examine the argument anew, looking for a
form that is perhaps less difficult to swallow. Let us call this reimagination
of the argument ‘B.’
Under
this reading of the Argument from Affinity, Socrates presents his listeners
with an exhaustive disjunction—the terms he uses are ‘invisible’ and ‘visible.’
Following the convention established in argument A and Timaeus, let us
call these Being and Becoming. Argument B, then, begins with the premise that
everything belongs to one of these two general ontological categories. Socrates
asks,
Do you want to
assume two kinds of existences, the visible and invisible? Let us assume this. And
the invisible always remains the same, whereas the visible never does? Let us
assume that too. (Plato 1997b, 79a)
We
may understand this more formally as the following claim:
B1. Everything is in Being or is in Becoming.
Making
a hidden premise in argument A explicit, let us add the notion that to be in
Being is to be immortal:
B2. Everything that is in Being is immortal.
Where
Argument A and B differ, however, is in the next premise. It seems to me to
best understand Socrates’ point as a denial of one disjunct in B1 with regards
to a particular thing or class of things. If Socrates can give evidence that
the soul does not belong in Becoming, he has prima facie evidence that
the soul in fact belongs in Being. An example may be helpful—if I can
demonstrate that every crow must be either black or white, and I furthermore
demonstrate that some crow (call him Jim) is not black, I have
constructed a valid deduction to the conclusion that Jim is in fact white.
Following this form, Socrates’ premise is that the soul somehow does not belong
in Becoming:
B3. Socrates’ soul (or souls in general) is not in Becoming.
What
validly follows from these three premises is the following:
B4. Therefore, Socrates’ soul (or souls in general)
is in Being
B5. Therefore, Socrates’ soul (or souls in general) is immortal.4
This formulation of the argument,
unlike our first pass at argument A, is valid—its conclusion follows deductively
from its premises. This argument, furthermore, seems faithful to Socrates’
exchange with Cebes excepting for one point: Socrates and Cebes always discuss
their premises of their argument in terms of probability and likelihood (Plato
1997b, 78b). The current formulation of argument B does not. This will not pose
any threat to my current purposes for two reasons. First, argument B could
easily be amended to accommodate probability—by simply appending “it is probable
that…” before the claim made by each premise or conclusion. The internal structure
or form of the argument and the inferences it relies upon remain the same.
Second, to be fair to Plato and his character of Socrates, I will neither offer
nor consider any criticism of argument B that depends upon the argument being
categorical rather than probabilistic.
Since the conclusions of
argument B are entailed by the premises, it is valid. If one has good reason to
believe B1, B2, and B3, one has good reason to affirm B4 and B5—and Socrates
will have succeeded in his task of arguing for immortality. The real question,
then, is the truth of the premises; the success of argument B must revolve
around an evaluation of each premise’s strength or reasonability.
B1 merely claims an exhaustive
disjunction, one side of which every object must fall. Upon reflection, it
seems that B1 is consistent with the metaphysical framework discussed in
Phaedo and in other Platonic dialogues (Plato 1997b, 102a-103b and Plato
1997c, 475-476d). This counts as evidence in its favor. Socrates would seem to
be “in his rights” to rely on a premise such as this, given that he has
elsewhere argued extensively in its favor, or in favor of its supporting
philosophical framework.5
B2 is equally innocuous. At least
three grounds suggest its truth. First, immortality could simply flow from the
definition of ‘Being.’ To be in Being just is to have features such as
immutability, impassibility, purity, and the like—immortality certainly “fits
in with the crowd,” so to speak. Second, B2 follows as a consequence from a
Parminidean argument which apparently had some influence on Plato’s thought,
that what is cannot not be, so a thing having Being cannot cease to be—that is,
die (Kirk, Raven, and Schofield 1983, p.239ff). Finally, inductive evidence
could be rallied in favor of B2 from various examples of entities which are in
Being. That every (or at least most) examples of things in Being have
immutability is prima facie evidence in favor of B2. This route is precisely
the one Socrates follows, when he asks, “… can the Equal itself, the Beautiful
itself, each thing in itself, the real, ever be affected by any change
whatever?”
When a valid argument has as
controversial conclusions as B4 and B5 and opening premises as innocuous as B1
and B2, it seems obviously the case that the other premise is doing the lion’s
share of the logical work. This suspicion will be confirmed in light of the
following claim I shall argue for: B3 begs the question at hand. Before explicating
why this is the case, I shall consider the evidence in favor of B3 and what it
is to beg the question.
Socrates supplies his audience with
at least three lines of reasoning in support of B3: three reasons why the soul
is not at home in the sensible world of Becoming. First, he observes that the
soul is not divisible, while material things are composite (Plato 1997b, 78c).
Second, he claims that the soul is confused by the objects of this world, which
is supposed to be clear evidence that it does not belong here (Plato 1997b,
79c-e). Third, the nature of the soul is not to be ruled, but rather to rule
(Plato 1997b, 80a).
As it shall turn out, each of these
evidences only begs the question against Socrates’ dialectical opponent,
Euchecrates. To clarify what I mean by this, consider the following definition
of what it is to beg the question:
BQ: If one or more of argument Q’s premises’ plausibility depend upon the
plausibility of Q’s conclusion, then Q begs the question.
This captures, I think, the basic
intuitions on the matter.6
To put BQ in other words, if one must already find a conclusion plausible to
find the premises plausible, the argument has begged the question. To charge an
argument, then, with begging the question is not to charge it with invalidity
or false premises. Instead, the accusation is better seen as epistemic: an
argument for the immortality of the soul that begs the question can give no
independent justification for belief in the immortality of the soul. Consider
Plantinga’s notorious example of the principle at hand (Plantinga 1974, 217):
P1. Either God exists or 7+5=14
P2. It is not the case that 7+5=14
P3. Therefore, God exists
If one believed P3, one would likely
find P1 plausible. Evidence in support of the conclusion would imply the
premise. And yet, if one did not already believe P3, P1’s disjunction would
seem odd at best, and carry with it very little epistemic weight.
With this background work done, let
us now consider the strength of B3 and Socrates’ various proofs in its favor.
Could one have good evidence for believing B3 without prior commitment to B4 or
B5? We must remember the dialectical plot and literary context of this argument
in Phaedo; Socrates is attempting to persuade a group of agnostic
(undecided) listeners that his brand of substance dualism is to be preferred
over the emergentism of Euchecrates (Plato 1997b, 88b-c). Given the cultural
and philosophical context, Socrates’ audience would find the immortality of the
human soul more plausible than would, say, an audience of contemporary
naturalists.7 We must not
stretch this point too far, though, for his audience remains uncommitted to the
doctrine.
Would such an uninterested audience
find plausible the first claim, that the soul is indivisible? It’s difficult to
see how this could be the case. After all, if the listener is not already
committed to the immortality of the soul, its being divisible, material, or
corruptible in composition seems a live option. Absent any further argument
from Socrates, he has begged the question to assume this point. The best
grounds for believing the soul to be indivisible is that it is immortal—but
this is precisely the point in question.
The same analysis applies to the
second line of evidence for B3. One not already persuaded by the Platonic
framework of soul immortality and succession is likely to be confused by the
notion of abstract “things themselves” that Socrates is fond of referring to.
To an audience such as this (analogous to a contemporary empiricist), talk of
concrete particulars would be far more tangible and cogent than talk of
universals and Forms.
So also, the claim that the nature
of the soul is to not be ruled, but rather to rule, is equally suspect. If one
were not inclined to believe that the soul is an incorporeal, immortal
substance incapable of death, why would one believe that the soul is divine? In
fact, the dialectical alternative before the audience of Phaedo, Euchecrates’
proposal, suggests that exactly the opposite is the case, and that the body, in
fact, is the ruler, while the soul only emerges as a sort of supervening
harmony.
Whether Socrates’ audience is
agnostic or previously committed to Euchecrates’ emergentism, none of his three
proofs are likely to be persuasive. If one is persuaded by Socrates’
conclusion, the premises, of course, will seem plausible. But as we’ve seen,
these premises will likely seem dubious to any one not already committed to their
conclusion. The Argument from Affinity rests in tension, then, between a
logically invalid form (argument A) and a question-begging form (argument B).
Given space limitations, I cannot defend this claim in depth, but I suggest
that any reformulation of the Argument from Affinity is subject to this
tension.
If one were to map out the Argument
from Affinity as I have conceived it, the premises would depend upon the
conclusion, and the conclusion upon the premises, suggesting a broadly circular
form. To label the argument as circular is not to claim it is a useless or bad
argument, though. One need not be left with a dialectical stalemate just
because an argument turns out to be circular. This conclusion, in fact, will
turn out to have several substantive implications for interpreting the dialogue
as a whole. I suggest that there are at least three.
First, the Argument from Affinity is
a logical image representing the psychic cycle. Just as a painting can resemble
a scene, so also, an argument’s form can resemble some phenomena. What
the resemblance relation amounts to, or even what it amounts to merely in the
Platonic corpus is no small question—and it is a question beyond the scope of
this paper—but the relation is certainly instanced in some artifacts, and among
these are some arguments.
This is precisely what I suggest may
be happening with the Argument from Affinity, when taken in its literary
context. Phaedo is a work, not just of philosophy, but of literature—it
is, after all, a dialogue. As such, it is replete with images.
The Myth of Tartarus is a literary
image of the afterlife, presenting a vivid picture of what is to happen to
souls after their separation from the body (Plato 1997b, 110c-112b). Every soul
is subject to a cycle of life, death, and reincarnation. After arguing
extensively towards this end, the Myth of Tartarus is presented, giving
Socrates’ listeners a mental depiction of what has been discussed. If Socrates
hopes to instill hope in his audience, this certainly seems a wise strategy. The
Platonic soul, after all, has both rational and non-rational parts, and
Socrates reaches out to these diverse parts and faculties by using both
rational (i.e., an argument) and non-rational (i.e., a myth or story)
means.
The Argument from Opposites, too,
may be an image of the cyclical psychology Socrates hopes to persuade his
listeners of. In its content, it is repetitive, with recurring premises. Its
substance mirrors the eternal oscillation of the soul from one body to the
next. Given that Phaedo is replete with images, and that repetition and
cycle are central themes of the text, it is reasonable to look for pieces and
parts of the whole which reflect these themes in form and not merely content.
This, I suggest, is one function of the Argument from Affinity in the dialogue,
as a circular and cyclical argument.
Second, I observe that circular
arguments dovetail with Plato’s pet metaphor (and accompanying experiential
theory) of knowledge—sight. A detailed defense of this claim is beyond the
scope of this paper, of course, but I outline the point in broad strokes. In
key passages through his corpus (most notably the image of The Cave in Republic
VII), Plato chooses to speak of knowledge as seeing. Knowledge is grounded in an
experience, much like sense perception is grounded in the process of seeing. To
know x just is to see or to “feel” that x is the case. Knowledge is what
happens when a cognitive faculty makes contact with some aspect of reality.
True knowledge, furthermore, is incorrigible because of its causal origin and
grounding in experience. I cannot but believe that the sun is bright when I
look at it; there is simply no other option. This suggests the beginnings of an
experiential analysis of knowledge such that a correct statement of the
necessary and sufficient conditions for ‘S knows that p’ will involve some
experience had by S.
Plato’s choice of dialogue as a
writing medium is uniquely experiential. Unlike a lecture or a plainer
philosophical essay, a dialogue draws its reader in through dramatic elements,
characters, plot (though often minimal), and movement. Sayre makes this point
quite well, so I shall quote him at length:
There are various
ways of describing this remarkable capacity of Plato’s dialogues to reward
one’s reading… On the most superficial level, the dialogue will contain a
series of less than clever opinions… On a more substantial level, the typical
dialogue will begin the engage the reader’s own serious thoughts about the
matter under discussion, perhaps leading him or her to think up alternative
responses to the mater dialectician’s questioning. Thus an experienced reader
of the first part of the Parmenides, for example, might be stimulated to
‘come to Plato’s assistance’ with more sophisticated responses to Parmenides’
arguments against the Forms… Then there is the level on which a person stands
to get an inkling of what Plato is getting at in the dialogue and begins to see
ramifications not articulated by individual characters… (Sayre 1995, 28)
Dialogues uniquely involve the
reader by offering them an experience. In this way, they can supply us, not
merely arguments for some conclusion, but can also help us to just
see that the conclusion is the case by showing it.8 The
use of myth and imagery in Phaedo is just such a device—it is one
additional tool of persuasion in the hand of a master philosopher. The Argument
from Affinity by being circular in discussing the afterlife shows
the reader the very thing Socrates is after. The circular argument functions as
an invitation to enter the cycle, by offering the reader or listener
experiential grounds of belief. This theme is consistent with a thread of
classical thought, running back to Pythagorus, in which circles symbolize just
the concept at hand.
Third, the image of the Argument
from Affinity dovetails further with Socrates’ notion that to do philosophy is
to practice dying (Plato 1997b, 64a, 68a). Under his view, dying just is part
of an endless cycle of motion. Much of the work done in Phaedo reflects
this, by tying in eternal oscillation as a literary theme and philosophical
premise. The Argument from Affinity, too, does this in its form. To do
philosophy as we have done (i.e., to attempt to uncover an arguments form or
structure) is to gain a window into the afterlife and its circularity. By
undergoing an experience that structurally resembles that of the afterlife, we
are imprinted with a mental image of that afterlife. Interpreting the dialogue
in this way adds cohesion to its parts. With the notion that the afterlife is
circular in structure and that (at least one of) the arguments pursued in the
dialogue are circular in their structure, we can make further sense of
Socrates’ cryptic remarks about the relationship between philosophy and death.
This is a further point in favor of the interpretation I have argued for.
Whether Socrates’ (and, indirectly,
Plato’s) project is a success is a matter beyond the scope of this paper.
Nonetheless, the textual and philosophical analysis here justifies enhanced
respect for Plato as an author deserving of detailed attention. That the
dialogue maintains cohesion and continuity even under scrutiny is a virtue; and
this is a virtue we cannot observe without subjecting it to the very scrutiny
and analysis I have demonstrated. Adopting the interpretive framework I have
argued for can only increase our understanding and appreciation of the
dialogue. 9
REFERENCES
van
Inwagen, Peter. 1983. An Essay on Free Will. New York/Oxford: Clarendon
Press/Oxford University Press.
Young,
James. 2001. Art and Knowledge,
NOTES
1.
I
shall assume in this paper that the dialogue is about what it appears to be
about, viz., immortality. Readers interested in an alternative interpretation
may consult Bostock 1986.
2. With B standing for the predicate ‘being in Being,’ we
may render argument A formally as:
A1. ("x)(Bx É Fx) For every x
such that x has Being, x has feature F
A2. ($x)(Fx)
There exists some x (Socrates) such that x has feature F
A3. \ ($x)(Bx)
Therefore, there exists some x (Socrates) such that x has Being (A1, A2)
3. Formally rendered, that is:
A1`. ("x)(Fx «
Bx)
For every x, x has feature F iff x has Being
4. Argument B as I have envisioned it can be rendered
formally as follows:
B1. ("x)(Bx v Cx)
For every x, either (exclusive) x has Being or x has Becoming
B2. ("x)(Bx É Ix)
For every x such that x has Being, x is immortal
B3. ($x)(ØCx)
There exists some x (Socrates) such that x does not have Becoming.
B4. \ ($x)(Bx)
Therefore, there exists some x (Socrates) such that x has Being (B1, B3,
exclusive disjunction)
B5. \ ($x)(Ix)
Therefore, there exists some x (Socrates) such that x is immortal (B2, B4,
universal instantiation)
5.
One
interpretation of Zeno’s paradoxes also lends support to B1, by showing the
need for a set of conceptual categories that extends mere Being and not-Being
6. For one
enlightening (and amusing) take on begging the question and philosophers who
charge their opponents of doing so, see van Inwagen 1983: 18, 101-103.
7.
For detailed explication of what the cultural and philosophical
expectations vis-à-vis the soul might have been see Brammer 1987.
8.
For
an account of how representation, and, more broadly, art, might confer
epistemic justification, see Young 2000, esp. pp.94-103.
9.
I
am indebted to David Ciocchi, John Mark Reynolds, Nat Tabris, and a referee
from this journal for their contribution to the development of this paper. All
errors are, of course, my own.
Copyright © 2005 Minerva
All rights are reserved, but
fair and good faith use with full attribution may be made of this work for
educational or scholarly purposes.
Andrew Bailey is an undergraduate philosophy major and teaches
parlimentary debate at Biola University in La Mirada, California,
Return
to Minerva (Volume 9) Main Page
Go to Top of This Page