Plato's Timaeus: Mass Terms, Sortal Terms, and Identity through Time in the Phenomenal World

References

• Nehamas , Alexander . 1973 . ‘Predication and Forms of Opposites in the . Phaedo,’ Review of Metaphysics , 26 : 57 – 85 . 461–91 and ‘Plato and the Imperfection of the Sensible World,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 12 (1975), 105–17. Henry Teloh. Types of Existence in Plato, read at the Western Division Meeting of the A.P.A. (April 1979). Henry Teloh, The Analysis of Being in Plato, read at the Tenth Annual University of Dayton Colloquium (February 1981). In contrast, Nicholas P. White sees Plato as having problems with the attribution of sortal terms, with their implicit assumptions about identity, to changing objects in Aristotle on Sameness and Oneness, Philosophical Review 80 (1971), 177–97 and ‘Origins of Aristotle's Essentialism,’ Review of Metaphysics 26 (1972–73)
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• Nehamas . 108 – 9 . Plato on the Imperfection of the Sensible World
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• 5 – 7 . Teloh, The Analysis of Being in Plato, 3, 5 and Types of Existence in Plato, 2
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• Teloh, The Analysis of Being in Plato, 12
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• Teloh, Types of Existence in Plato, 10
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• 1978 . The Journal of the History of Philosophy , 16 Both Robin Smith in Mass Terms and Generic Expressions, 141–53 and Thomas Rosenmeyer in ‘Plato and Mass Words,’ Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 88 (1957), 88–102 do discuss the relation between Plato's theory of forms and mass terms. However, their concerns differ from mine since they are primarily interested in showing that, at least for the early Plato, forms are something like stuffs and form-names can in many cases been seen as mass terms.
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• Solmsen , Frederich M. 1960 . Aristotle's System of the Physical World Ithaca , NY : Cornell University Press . Cornell Studies in Classical Philology 33, 66. Like Solmsen, 1 believe that for Plato the ‘genesis of an entity reveals its nature and the principles to which it owes its being.’ Any account of this genesis, including Timaeus', should explicitly or implicitly contain the principles of identity appropriate to the kinds of being whose genesis is being described.
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• 1975 . ‘Stuff and Things,’ . Synthese , 31 See, for example, Richard E. Grandy, 479–85 and Nicholas Griffin, Relative Identity (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1977). The material in this section draws heavily on Griffin's distinctions.
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• 1975 . ‘Plato and Talk of the World in Flux,’ . Harvard Studies in Classical Philology , 13 : 155 – 6 . This translation, with the exception of the last few lines, follows that of Donald J. Zeyl, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 129–30. The last few lines, as Zeyl himself grants (p. 141), can be read as ‘either (a) prohibiting the application of ‘this’ and the like to things that are qualified in some way., or (b) prohibiting the attribution of qualitative terms to the receptacle.’ I adopt the second reading in keeping with K.W. Mills, ‘Some Aspects of Plato's Theory of Forms: Timaeus 49c ff,’ Phronesis (1968)
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• See, for example, Zeyl.
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• Cratylus That one of the necessary conditions for the correct attribution of ‘this’ is persistence through time as the same individual is one of the assumptions underlying some arguments in the (439d-440b) and the Theaetetus (183a-b). Thus persistence through time is at least a minimal condition for the correct attribution of ‘this.’ If the Timaeus is read as claiming that in order to be a ‘this’ what is referred to must have eternal existence, then this maximal condition makes it incorrect to use ‘this’ to refer to anything which is not eternally what it is.
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• See, for example, Griffin, 58–75. The following discussion draws heavily on Griffin's.
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• See, for example, Zeyl.
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• Burnyeat , M. F. 1976 . ‘Plato on the Grammar of Perceiving,’ . The Classical Quarterly , 26 : 29 – 51 .
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• Timaeus Nothing said in the throws any light on the question of the criteria associated with the temporal continuity of the soul when soul' refers to the immortal, rational soul. (Just what the criteria are for Plato is widely disputed.) Nor does Plato raise the possibility that there could be an exchange of souls between two bodies so that a question might be raised concerning the identity of the composites whose souls have been exchanged.
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• Phaedo It may be that any attribution of a special status to sortals in any of Plato's dialogues is mistaken. Although Teloh and others place a heavy emphasis on Socrates' statements regarding the ‘being of Simmias,’ the logical subject referred to by ‘Simmias' in the passage may not be the whole living creature but the immortal soul presently using a particular body.’ Given the context of the Phaedo and Socrates' comments at the end of the dialogue in response to Crito's questions about ‘burying you,’ the logical subject could very well be the immortal soul and not the ‘whole human animal.’
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• Teloh, Types of Existence, 10
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