Evan L. Burge - The Ideas as Aitiai in the Phaedo
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The Ideas as A i t i a i in the Phaedo
E V A N L. B U R G E
1. The context of the discussion
THE arguments for the soul's immortality in the first two-thirds
of the Phaedo have a certain persuasive force, but even to the inter
locutors they are less than fully convincing. Even if Socrates’belief in immortality were true it would still fall short of knowledge:
If a m an does not know that the soul is immortal, and cann ot give an
account of this, it is fitting for him to be afraid unless he is a fool. (95 d)
The third and final argument presumably is intended to 'give anaccount’ that will make the soul's survival a matter of knowledge
in the strict sense. After a long pause to indicate both the difficulty
and the importance of what is to come, Socrates announces that the
final argument demands a full explanation (aitia) of generation and
destruction, and so introduces at 96 a the discussion of aitia.
This discussion begins with the well-known ‘autobiographicalfragment.’ We hear how Socrates began by looking for the kinds of
explanations sought by those Presocratics who were interested
primarily in physics and medicine. Failing to find satisfactory answers
and bewildered by what he took to be logically puzzling features of
accounts of this type, he abandoned this method of enquiry and was
then attracted by the promise of teleological explanation offeredby Anaxagoras' postulation of intelligence as the aitia of everything.
Anaxagoras did not fulfil the promise in the further exposition of
his system, but for Socrates1 teleological explanation remained themost desirable kind. In default of this he had worked out a second-best alternative, a ‘second voyage’2 in which the ideas function asaitiai.
1 For the purpose of this paper, I pay no attention to the ‘Socratic Problem'but refer to Socrates and Plato interchangeably.
2 The meaning of deut eros p lous (99 d, cf. Philebus 19 c) has been much disputed.
Many feel that in the 'general context’ of Plato’s writings the search for a tele
ologicalaitia
canno t have been abandoned here: so, I. M. Crombie, A n E x am in a-
tion of Plate's Doctrines Vol. 2 (London, 1963), p. 161, and Thomas Gould,
Platonic Love (London, 1963), p. 77. But since the text explicitly says that
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The concept of aitia is related to that of personal responsibility.3Though in practice its use is far wider than the etymological meaning
might suggest, the model of deliberate human action was never likely
to be far from the mind of the Greek philosopher setting out to
analyse it. In part at least this explains Socrates' preference for the
purposive kind of explanation that would constitute the ‘first voyage’.
In the passage beginning at % a aitia is several times4 glossed or
replaced by an expression involving dia (‘onaccount of') and an ac
cusative. As in Aristotle,6 to give an aitia of a state of affairs or an
event is to answer the question ‘on account of what?' about it. Beingthus at least as wide in its application as the English word ‘why?'
the word is considerably broader in scope than its standard, but
seriously misleading, translation 'cause'.6 As general words covering
Socrates has resorted to the ‘second best course’ because he has failed to find
the teleological aitia, and because there is not a word about teleology in thewhole discussion of the ‘simple-minded aitia’, the common interpretation seems
clearly wrong. So, P. Shorey, What Plato Said (Chicago, 1933), p. 534, N. Murphy
The Interpretation of Plato's Republic, (Oxford, 1951), p. 146, and most recently
G. Vlastos, ‘Reasons and Causes in the Phaedo’, Philos. Review 78 (1969), p.
297 note 15.3 Atrtoc is the Greek for ‘responsible* and its neuter, t6 atnov ‘the thing respon
sible', is often used as a synonym for cthia, e.g. at 99 b.
4 Phaedo 96 a 9-10, c 7, c 8; 97 a 1, b 4, b 5.
5 e.g. Physics 198 b 5 ff.6 Cf. G. E. L. Owen, ‘Aristotle on the Snares of Ontology,’ in New Essays onPlato and Aristotle ed. R. Bambrough (New York, 1965), p. 82: ‘When Aristotleintroduces “ousia" in the sense of the essence or definable nature of a thing,
and then says that ousia is, in the words of the Oxford translation, "the cause
of each thing’s being" (ai t ia tou eivai ekas t on. Metaphysics H 1043 a 2 -3 ; cf.
De Anima B 415 b 12-13), he ... means just that the definition of “ice” goes toexplain what it is for our particular ice-patch to be inexistence. (To explain,
not to cause: is it too late to complain of 'cause” as thetranslation of a i t ia ? ) . '
Aristotle’s use of aitia here is very close to what Plato is getting at with hisdoctrine that the ideas are aitiai. Owen's strictures on those who misread
Aristotle by importing alien notions of causality apply to many commentators
on Phaedo 99 ff. Thus R. Hackforth, Plato’s Phaedo (Cambridge, 1955), p. 131,takes P lato to task for expecting to find a cause of ten ’s being greater than eight,
and is still under the influence of this kind of misunderstanding on p. 145when he remarks: 'It is not easy to see how Plato could have answered the
point [made by Aristotle, de Gen. et Corr. 335 b] about intermittent operation of the Forms in terms of the Phaedo doctrine' (italics mine). R. S. Bluck, Plato's Phaedo (London, 1955), p. 160 ff., makes things even more difficult by speaking
of 4Form -causes ’.
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answers to English 'why' questions, 'reason' and ‘explanation’ seem
fairly satisfactory equivalents for aitia.There is, however, one point at which these equivalents fail. It is
this. According to one widely accepted analysis, to give an explanation of circumstances S is to mention other circumstances C and general
laws or principles P such that C and P jointly entail S. Now in the
schema
C.P—>S
the variables are propositional variables.7 Sometimes, but not always,
an aitia, is likewise expressed by a whole sentence or clause. In our
passage there is no clear expression of an aitia by a clause until 98 a :
For I should never have thought that, when he was declaring that things
were set in order by intelligence, he would offer any other aitia for them
than that it was best for them to be as they were.
In many other expressions, however, of candidates for being reckoned
aitiai, the t i (what?) of the assumed question dia t i ; (because of what?)
corresponds not to a proposition but to an object or entity of some
kind. Even where a rejected form of explanation is expressed pro-
positionally as a general law, it is hard not to feel that what answers
to the aitia is the hot and the cold rather than the whole clause in whichthey are named:
Is it whenever the hot and the cold produce putrefaction, as some used to
claim, that living creatures are bom? (96 b)
It is this respect of its syntactical behaviour9 in which aitia is more
7 In practice the explanans C.P. is often abbreviated to a single proposition
(e.g. ‘because Dad told me to' or ‘because metals expand on being heated')
but it remains true that reasons and explanations are expressed propositionally.8 Other exam ples occur in 98 c and 9 8 e. Le ss straightforward examp les can
be found where Sta governs an articular infinitive (96 c 8 ) or an abstract noun
formed from a ve rb (97a 1, a 7), both of which construction s can b e readilly
explicated as stylistic variants of propositional expressions.
9 Sim ilarly A ristotle in his famous an alysis of four senses of 'wh y?' in Phys ics B
(194 b 1 6 ff.) tends to identify a i t ia i with things: the bronze (of the statue),
the relation of 2 : 1 and in general number (of the octave), the father (of the
child), health (of walking). This is despite the fact that at least the ‘final cause’
would norm ally be expressed propositionally (‘W hy is he walking?' - ‘In order
to be he alth y.’ 194 b 34) and Aristotle himself identifies the formal cause
with the statement of the essence a t 194 b 27. In this case, however, it maybe that the logos in question would be expressed in the form of e.g. ‘rational
animal' and still appear as a naming rather than as a propositional expression.
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akin to the English 'cause'.10
I suggest that in Phaedo 96 ff. Plato, while fully alive to the widerange of possible senses of the word aitia (so that he can implicitly
complain that most of the Presocratics had been unduly restrictive
in their quest for aitiai), is none the less predisposed by his most
frequent syntactical usages to regard a request for an aitia as a request
for giving an explanation by naming some entity.
On the other hand, his critics have been so bemused by the stock
translation cause that they have accused Plato of making the ideas
into 'efficient causes’ in the very passage where he is concerned
to show that there are important forms of explanation that have
nothing to do with causal agency.
3. Criteria for being an 'aitia'
Some of the criteria that an entity must meet to qualify as an aitia for Plato can be inferred from the discussion of the phrase ‘taller
by a head’ at 100 e 8-101 b 3. Although the understanding of the
dative as 'causal' rather than as expressing ‘measure of difference’
in this phrase is curious, there seems no reason to doubt that the
philosophical criticisms made in the passage are intended seriously.Socrates argues as follows:
(а) Those who are willing to say someone is taller by a head are
equally willing to say that he is also shorter by a head than some
third person. But if the head explains both tallness and shortness
we are faced with a contradiction (enantios logos 101 a ) : that the samething should be the aitia of country predicates.
(б) A head is a small thing and it is surely absurd for a small thing
to be the aitia of a large thing’s being large.
Both arguments reveal the difficulties that arise when the idiomswhereby things are regarded as explanatory principles are accepted
uncritically. But rather than discuss here the implausibility of the
criteria implicit in this discussion I content myself with trying to statethem:
I Nothing can be the aitia of another thing's being qualified by
10 It is worth noting also that when we ascribe causality to an object x we do
not usually make x responsible for another object y but rather for an event
or state of affairs expressed in a statem ent. ‘Why is y F?’ we ask. - ‘Because ofx .’ That is, x is the cause of Fy (y's being F, where F is a predicate) and not of y
simply.
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contrary predicates (at different times or even in different
relations).
II Anything that is the aitia of something's having a certain pro
perty cannot itself have the opposite property.
What may be in Plato’s mind are such examples as that fire, being
hot, cannot cool us (be the aitia of the cold in us) nor snow warm us.
It is tempting to state the second criterion in the stronger form:
I I I Anything that is the aitia of a thing's having a certain property
must itself have that property.
Even though it is not difficult to bring counter-examples against
I I 1 from Plato's own writings, and it is clear that the match which
causes an explosion does not itself have to be deafening, destructive
and dangerous, I I 1 seems plausible when we have the examples of
fire and snow in mind. Indeed Aristotle (An. Post. 72 a 29) states the
theorem more strongly yet:
Fo r th at which causes an a ttribute to app ly (di d uparkei) to a sub ject
always possesses that attribute to a still greater degree (mallon) e.g. that
which causes us to love something is itself still more loved.
Some such view as this may be a factor in the notorious 'self
predication' of the ideas in so far as they are considered aitiai (100 b ff).
What can be safely asserted is that the ideas in their character as
aitiai are entities that meet the stringent requirements just stated.
4. The 'simple-minded' account of ‘aitia '
Although Plato does not always keep the latter two distinct in his
terminology, we must first distinguish between phenomenal individuals
(x, y,), characters that they have (F, G), and ideas that have the same
names as the characters (O, T).11 Plato distinguishes the first fromthe other two explicitly at 103 b 6-7, and implies a difference between
the latter two in the preceding line be enumerating ‘the (sc. opposite)
in us' and ‘the (opposite) in nature'.12 A fundamental difference
11 Cf. R. G. Turnbull, ‘Aristotle’s Debt to the "Natural Philosophy" of the
Phaedo,’ Phil. Quart. 8 (1958), esp. 131-134. In what follows I use the symbol F
indiscriminately to stand for both a character and the corresponding predicate
by which an individual is characterized.
u G. Vlastos, ‘Reasons and Causes' (note 2, above), p. 300 note 27, cites also
Parm. 130 b, and rejects P. Shorey’s contention (The Unity of Plato’s Thought [Chicago, 1904], note 283) that ‘there are really only two things: the idea and
the particular affected by the "presence” of . . . the idea.'
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between a character and an idea is that the former may be considered
to have departed or perished (102 e) on the approach of its opposite -something unthinkable for an eternal, unchanging idea.13
The ‘second voyage’ gives a general schema for answering questions
of the form ‘Why is x F?'. The answer is ‘Because x participates in O.’
This - whether the idea or the fact of participation is not made clear -
is called the aitia (100 c).14 The phrase used twice to express the schema
B y (or in virtue of) the beautiful the beautiful things are beautiful.’
(too kaloo ta k a la k a la .)
Using the distinction made above we see that the three different
occurrences of ‘beautiful’ in this formula refer respectively to the
idea, the phenomena] individuals, and the inherent character:
‘In virtue of O, x is F.'
This symbolization makes evident that the statement of the 'simple-
minded' aitia is not a pure tautology: an ontological commitment
had been made before the solution was given and is implicit in the
schema offered.
What is the relation between explanans (1) and explanandum (2)
in the schema:Because (1) x participates in O,
(2) x is F ?
13 Th is is no t to deny (comp are D . K ey t, Phronesis 8 [1963], 169) that Plato
often uses the terms eidos and idea to refer to both the 'immanent character’
and the ‘transcendent Form' (see W. J. Verdenius, ‘Notes on Plato's Phaedo', M m m osyn e 11 [1958], 232-233), but only to claim that it is helpful to make a
distinction, sanctioned by P lato himself bu t not always observed in his terminol
ogy. For the discussion of Plato I myself should like to see something like the
following terminology adopted: character for a quality exhibited by a phenom
enal particular, and idea for a supra-sensible exemplar. Form is best reserved
for Aristotelian conte xts.
14 Plato also uses ‘makes’ (poiei 100 d 5) in this connection. As we have already
seen, however, there is no need for us to assume that the ideas have suddenly
been activated into efficient causes, any more than ‘makes’ is used to express
efficiency in the English sentences:
W ha t makes it impossible is th a t I cannot be in Princeton and Canberra
at the same time.
W ha t m akes this figure a square is tha t i t has four equal sides perpendicular
to each other.
Contrast F. M. Cornford, Plato and Parmenides (London, 1939), pp. 77-78.
and see Vlastos’ comments, 'Reasons and Causes’ (note 2, above), pp. 307-308,
note 46.
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It must be a non-symmetrical relationship in view of the ontological
commitment of (1). A somewhat similar relationship occurs betweentwo propositions in Euthyphro 10 b-c. Here the rejection of the de
finition of piety as ‘what all the gods love' turns on Socrates' allowing
the statement 'Because x is loved ( f i l e i t a i ) x is loved ( fil oum e n on e s t i n ) ’
but not the converse, even though ‘is-loved’ and 'is loved' would or
dinarily be taken as synonyms, in Greek as in English. The explanatory
propositions of both the Phaedo and the Euthyphro appear at first sight
to be tautologies but this is ruled out in their context.15 In both
cases the explanans is to be construed as telling us a fact, physical ormetaphysical, that is our warrant for asserting a predicate of a subject.
While the ontological commitment of the ‘simple-minded' account
that begins the second voyage shows, then, that it is to be understood
as a ‘synthetic' doctrine, it would seem that its ‘safety' comes from
considering it as at the same time logically true. We can see the plau
sibility of this by beginning with a logically true proposition such as:
(i) Being an equilateral rectangle makes this figure a square.
In the material mode favored by Plato, this might appear as:
(ii) This is a square in virtue of equilateral-rectangularity
or, since ‘equilateral-rectangularity’ is another name for 'squareness',
as: (iii) This is a square in virtue of squareness.This last may not be very informative, but it is at least safe in that
it can give rise to no seeming contradiction (enantios logos 101 a 6)like that arising when the same aitia produces opposite ‘effects'.
Moreover, in a context of Socratic definition the way is open to ex
press more fully and informatively the essence of squareness. Platothus hopes to have produced a synthetic doctrine that can be known
with certainty to be true a priori.
15 Contrast P. Shorey, What Plato Said (note 2, above), p. 179: 'Plato is appa
rently aware that this in modern terms is only a tautological logic, or ... a
consistent and systematic substitution of the logical reason for all other sorts
of cause;’ and C. C. W. Taylor, 'Forms as Causes in the Phaedo,' Mind 78
(1969), 45-49: ‘One could as well say that “x is 9 because x is 9 ” states a neces
sary and sufficient condition for being 9 ' (p. 47). Taylor reaches this conclusion
by discounting the Platonic ontology as soon as he has mentioned it. He writes
a little earlier, ' “x is 9 through sharing in the O" which we interpret as "x is 9
through sharing 9 -ness.' ” and presumably he means by 9 -ness a ‘common quality ,’
the inherent character rather than the transcendent idea.
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This attempt to have it both ways16 can be diagnosed, from a
modern point of view, as a failure to make a clear distinction betweenanalytic and synthetic propositions. Nevertheless, there are signs in
the Phaedo that Plato is taking the all-important first halting steps
towards this distinction. One of his criticisms of his predecessors is
that their kinds of aitia were based on changes of physical relations17
as if this were the only way to answer the question 'Why?'. While
the main burden of his critique is directed against their lack of teleo
logy, Plato also makes the criticism that their procedures would
be entirely unsuitable when the proposition to be explained was a
logical truth, such as that 1 + 1 = 2 (96 e 8 ff.).
At 102 b 8 a curious objection is made to the sentence ‘Simmias
surpasses (i.e. is taller than) Socrates.' Socrates claims that the sen
tence wrongly implies that Simmias surpasses Socrates in virtue of
his own nature rather than of his incidental height. It would seem
that Plato has a predilection for construing sentences as if they all
expressed necessary propositions and complainsthat there is something
wrong with those that do not. The passage does evince an awareness
of the difference between the status of a necessary statement like
‘Simmias is Simmias’ and that of a contingent statement such as
‘Simmias is 5 ft. 8 in. tall.1W hat is not made clear is the difference
between different kinds of necessity, in particular the difference
between logical and physical necessity. A given proposition, e.g.
that metal bars expand on being heated, may be both physically
necessary and logically contingent. Ignoring this distinction and the
epistemic considerations that go with it, Plato assimilates all
necessity to logical necessity which is to be understood by purely
a priori reasoning. As examples of necessary truths he gives (103 d ff.)
‘Snow is cold.' 'Fire is ho t.' ‘Three is odd.'
16 Fo r the similarly ambiguous logical stat us of ‘the S ocra tic-P laton ic-A risto
telian essential definition’ see R. Hare, ‘Plato and the Mathematicians' in
New Essays on Plato and Aristotle ed. R. Bambrough (New York, 1965), pp.
32-33.
17 Note the implicit criticism of such words, taken to express a physical (rather
tha n a logical) relatio n o f addition, su btra ctio n e tc ., as Ttpotry^vtjTai (96 d),
skisis; (97 a), apag etai and (97 b), and especially Pla to's insistence
on the distinction between a physical conjunction ( t 6 rrpooeivai, 96 e ; £jrXr4claoav
AXXtjXois, 97 a) of two ob jec ts and the logical tr ut h th a t 1 + 1 — 2.
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apply to inanimate subject-matter, and (from Plato’s point of view)
this interpretation attributes too great a degree of substantialityto sensible phenomena, such as sticks and stones, that are other
than soul. In Plato’s view such things are simply bundles of attributes
held together by law-like regularities21 in view of their instantiation
of ideas which have definite and unchanging relations to one another.
What the passage (74 d-75 b) does suggest, relevant to our enquiry,
is this. To say something is F is to make a statement free from meta
physical presuppositions. To say that x participates in O is to say
more, in that a certain theory is being used to make explicit the
ontological structure which makes true linguistic predication possible.
And this structure involves the notion that the characters that
phenomena exhibit are in some sense (which it is not my task to
elucidate here) deficient in comparison with the paradigm ideas.
A full account of why x is F must include consideration of how to
be F falls short of being O. Such complications are irrelevant to Plato's
purpose in establishing the immortality of soul and are not developed
here. Similarly, questions of efficiency are ignored as irrelevant.
To ascribe efficient causation to a supposed striving of sensibles
is as perverse as to interpret the ideas as efficient causes with Aristotle
in D eGen. etCorr. 335 b: the question is simply not raised at this point.
5. The 'cleverer' account of ‘aitia
Granted that Plato is not offering the ideas as a superior kind of
physical agent, it remains true that his discussion in the Phaedo is
not unrelated to what we might call causation. That it is intended
to be so related is shown by the introduction to the whole discussion
where we are promised an account of ‘the explanation of generation
and destruction' (95 e), and by the fact that three of the examplesgiven in the 'cleverer' (komfote ran 105 c) account of aitia are concerned
with causal sequences, namely Fire-Heat, Snow-Cold, and Fever-
Sickness. But as we have seen, and as his whole program of trying
to establish a m atter of fact about the soul - its immortality - by
21This view is consonant with Phaedo account of the ‘cleverer a i t ia ’ . and also,
I believe, with the Timaeus accout of secondary causation and the so-called
‘errant cause.' See P. Shorey, What Plato Said, p. 616 ad Tim. 47 e and G. R.
Morrow, ‘Necessity and Persuasion in Plato's Timaeus ’ in Studies in Plato's M et aphysic s ed. R. E. Allen (London, 1965), pp. 421-437, esp. 427-431.
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deduction from logical truths makes clear, Plato assimilates causal
necessity to logical necessity. Thus the predicate 'hot' is supposed tobe essential to its subject fire in the same way as 'odd' is essential to
the number three. This undifferentiated necessary relation is ex
pressed by the picturesque talk of the impossibility of admitting
opposite predicates without either perishing or retiring.
Some characters, Plato explains, are of such a nature that if any
thing possesses them that thing is compelled (anagka^ei 104d2) to
participate in another idea as well - Plato says ‘an opposite of some
thing’, having his eye fixed on the opposition of life and death which
is his real concern. Thus,if anything is snow it must be cold (which is the opposite of hot)
and it cannot admit the hot and still be snow.
This necessity is explained in terms of relations (entailment22 or
incompatibility) among the ideas in which the sensible particulars
share. This is the basis of Plato’s ‘cleverer' extension of his ‘safe but
simple-minded’ account of explanation.
‘Why is the boy sick?' The safe, but not very illuminating, answer
is that he is sick because he has sickness in him. The clever answer
is that he is sick because he has fever23 in him. For there is a relation
of entailment between the idea of fever and that of sickness, so that
whatever participates in the former participates also in the latter.
Plato does not allow a non-necessary statement to serve as an explanation. ‘The snow melted because it was May’ would not be satis
factory unless there were a necessary connection between the ideas
of heat and May. Symbolically the developed doctrine of why x is Fmay be represented as follows:
Because (1) x has G in it (or x is affected by y which has G in it)and (2) G corresponds to T (or is the ‘image’ of T)
(3) x participates in T (by the ‘safe' aitia).(4) T ‘entails’ O(5) x participates also in O
(6) Fx
22 The use of a term m odem logic such as 'entailm ent' is misleading if applied
uncritically to the embryonic form of the notion as found in Plato. Strictly,
entailment is a relation between propositions not things, even elevated things
like ideas. Plato, however, uses relations between things to explicate logical
relations. See R. M. Hare, Plato and the Mathematicians in New Essays on Plato and Aristotle, ed. R . Bambrough (New York , 1965), pp. 23-24.23 Pla to follows the general Hipp ocratic traditio n in making fever an aetiolo gical
factor in disease and not. as in modem medicine, a symptom of it.
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Of these steps (1) is known (in so far as it can be) by sense-experience.
But it is not sense-experience which enables us to pick out fire as the
cause of heat in x. There are many possible candidates for the role
of aitia given by sense-experience: the choice of the right one, according
to Plato, is a matter of intellectual insight. Suppose x is water heated
in a kettle over a fire. Then so far as immediate sense-impressions
are concerned being in a kettle might be a sufficient condition for being
hot. The important step is (4): the entailment between two ideas.
It is this which gives the element of necessity implicit in the concept
of 'cause'. How is insight into the natures and inter-relations of the
ideas to be achieved? Presumably by anamnesis, that is, by being
reminded of some innate knowledge by sensible experience.
6. Conclusion
Plato's theory accounts well for such necessary connections as that
between the length of a pendulum (l ) and the period of its swing
27z/l/g. Knowledge of this law is indeed independent of sense-ex
perience, since the formula can be derived by deduction from the
propositions that the bob is moving periodically along a very small
arc of a circle and that it is moving under the influence of the earth's
gravitational field. And, as Plato would be quick to point out, ex
perimental measurements on physical pendulums will not conform
exactly to this formula, but will do so more and more as the physical
pendulum approximates to the theoretically perfect one with a bob
of point mass and a weightless inextensible string.
But what about the case he actually gives us: that it is of the nature
of fire to heat? Surely there can be no doubt that this is known empiri
cally? Do we not know that it is the fire, not the kettle, that makes
the water hot by simply observing what happens when we forget to
light the fire? To this it can be answered:
(1) Plato's account of aitia is not dependent upon any theory of
how we might come to know the entailments, incompatibilities, and
other relations among the ideas. In this section of the Phaedo he does
not say how these might be known: so far as the account of aitia goes, even observation might serve as evidence for the existence of
these relations. On the other hand it would be strange if the doctrines
of the earlier sections of the dialogue were no longer supposed to apply.
(2) I f there is to be knowledge (in the strict sense) of causal relations
this will depend on more than empirical observation. For, as Humepointed out, observation can assure us - to leave aside the difficulties
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of induction - only of constant conjunctions but not of the additional
element of necessity intrinsic to causation. Among other things, Plato'stheory of ideas makes clear that judgments of causation, like ethical
judgments, must be founded on more than sense-experience if a claim
to indubitable knowledge is to be made good.
Australian National University