Plato's Republic, Dyad, 523-524

[Anonymous No.22945004]

What exactly is going on in Plato's Republic, 523-524, when Socrates is talking about the "three fingers"? There is an emphasis on things that are "big and small", and the supposed contradiction between the two. Also immediately after, when Socrates references when something is perceived as hard and soft, or light and heavy. All these examples have something in common, and it's supposed to be motivation for the forms, but it never gets off the ground for me.

The examples are confusing to me because I don't think we ever perceive *some-thing* as BOTH hard and soft, light and heavy, big and small, etc., at exactly the same time. And if we do perceive contrarities at the same time, it's usually in a way that's equivocating and not exact. For example, leather can be perceived as "soft and hard" in a way due to the delicate texture of its finish and the firmness of the hide, but it would be an equivocation to say that it is both soft and hard, as we would be referring to two different aspects of the leather's quality.

So, where's the contradiction here? What what Plato trying to get across? I have a feeling this is a key link toward understanding Plato's "The One and the Indeterminate/Indefinite Dyad/Aoristas Duas/etc." doctrines. I've also heard this is a setup for Aristotle's understanding of substance, in which only through substance can contrarities exist. But even then, Aristotle says that contrarities happen through changes in space and time (e.g. a cup of tea gets hot, and then later it cools down), so they are never simultaneously existing as is claimed in Socrates's thought experiment.

[Anonymous No.22945332]

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[Anonymous No.22945381]

A skyscraper partakes of the Form of Bigness, and an ant partakes of the Form of smallness, right? But Godzilla thinks that skyscrapers are small and thus partake of the Form of Smallness, and gnats think that ants are big and thus partake in the Form of Bigness! Oh no, the metaphysics is now dependent upon our epistemology and is thus entirely subjective because sensory data just compares relative things!

This is why Plato toys with mind-independent Pythagorean ideas of morphogenesis. However, he also humors the idea of "super-forms", the Dyads, as an alternative. The problem with this is that a Form is singular and totally one, so it can't actually have a binary (this is also why Aristotle thought that vaginas were unnatural). Many modern interpreters of Plato think that he was, at times, daring us to remove restrictions on the Forms (such as letting them contain multiplicity or allowing them to selfpartake).

[Anonymous No.22946347]

>>22945381
So, at least that makes sense for the "big and small" part. It doesn't even need to be an intersubjectivity thing, since three fingers example seems to cover the relativity part (e.g. the index finger participates in both smallness and largeness depending on which finger you compare it with). But the soft vs. hard, light vs. heavy, etc. examples seem more opaque, since they seem to involve contrarities perceived simultaneously and have much less room for subjectivity (if any at all).
>This is why Plato toys with mind-independent Pythagorean ideas of morphogenesis. However, he also humors the idea of "super-forms", the Dyads, as an alternative. The problem with this is that a Form is singular and totally one, so it can't actually have a binary (this is also why Aristotle thought that vaginas were unnatural). Many modern interpreters of Plato think that he was, at times, daring us to remove restrictions on the Forms (such as letting them contain multiplicity or allowing them to selfpartake).
Could you expand more on this paragraph if you have the time? Every sentence is interesting yet opaque enough to deserve further explanation.

[Anonymous No.22947060]

>>22945004
>The examples are confusing to me because I don't think we ever perceive *some-thing* as BOTH hard and soft, light and heavy, big and small, etc., at exactly the same time.
It's this: that a brick is both light compared to an elephant yet heavy compared to a feather. It is at the same time both light and heavy. And the sense perception telling us about heaviness or lightness, or softness and hardness, is the same sense in either case. There isn't one sense for soft and another for hard; it's one sense reporting both. >>22946347
I'm not that guy, but basically the forms don't make sense if a thing can partake of 2 completely opposite forms like small and big at the same time. So a lot of the early works up to Republic are wrestling with this problem and trying to figure out how to resolve it, either by contending that the thing doesn't have both, or that the thing actually can have both but some other previous restriction is wrong. Are small and big not separate forms? Are they separate but somehow only one is active at a time? Or are they both separate and active at the same time but some other form is added in to make some kind of permuted form? Is the form of smallness itself small? Etc, just a lot of details to nail down. Plato himself didn't know what was true, though he later starts to settle on some things in Parmenedes and others.

I'd recommend Meinwald's "Plato" as a supplementary read.

[Anonymous No.22947694]

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[Anonymous No.22948640]

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