Plato and the Third Man Argument

[Anonymous No.23059504]

Why can't forms be self-predicated again? Seems like an obvious solution.

[Anonymous No.23059564]

>>23059504
I really don't know. It just feels like sidestepping the problem. Isn't self predication circular or another form of infinite regress? Perhaps the answer lies in Timeus, but why do you think the academy became a skeptic school?

[Anonymous No.23059657]

>>23059564
Here's the issue. Saying that red participates in the form of redness doesn't say anything substantially new. All it does is indicate that the quality, red, can be thought of as a class of quality and a category of thought, the form of redness. And if we say that the form of redness participates in the form of form of redness, we are not adding any new information. Our analysis of the statement is complete, and adding more "forms of forms" is essentially a redundancy, since it is a reference to the idea of a form itself. Even if we talked about "form of form of... form of redness" to infinity, everything beyond the immediate "form of redness" is a reference to the fact that we are relating a relation to itself, which is already present when we started the infinite regress, so the infinite regress simplifies and cancels itself out.

It reminds me of Peirce's continuous predicate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_predicate

[Anonymous No.23059665]

>>23059657
Ok, so the third man problem is just redundancy and so not a problem?

[Anonymous No.23059687]

>>23059665
I don't want to trivialize either the problem or the solution by calling it a redundancy. Here's another example for clarity. To describe what I am doing to you right now, I could say that "I am relating to you by the means of relation of relation of relation ... of relation of speech." I could just say "I am relating to you by the means of relation of speech", or "I am relating to you by the means of speech", or even "I am speaking to you." That's all a form is, a means of exploring not only how how concepts relate to things-in-the-world (which relate to each other), but how its even possible for relations to exist in themselves as an intrinsic part of thought.
>“Then,” said Socrates, “see if you agree with me in the next step. I think that if anything is beautiful besides absolute beauty it is beautiful for no other reason than because it partakes of absolute beauty; and this applies to everything.

[Anonymous No.23059697]

>>23059665
I don't want to trivialize either the problem or the solution by calling it a redundancy. Redundancies exist for a reason, so we have to dispel them with a reason. Here's another example for clarity. To describe what I am doing to you right now, I could say that "I am relating to you by the means of relation of relation of relation ... of relation of speech." I could just say "I am relating to you by the means of relation of speech", or "I am relating to you by the means of speech", or even "I am speaking to you." That's all a form is, the vehicle for explaining how concepts relate to things-in-the-world (which of course relate to each other), but how relations and thought exist coextensively with each other.
>“Then,” said Socrates, “see if you agree with me in the next step. I think that if anything is beautiful besides absolute beauty it is beautiful for no other reason than because it partakes of absolute beauty; and this applies to everything.