"Partaking Of The Intelligible" : Plato's Timaeus & Unwritten Doctrine

Metaphysics & Epistemology
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While I invite this discussion of Timaeus — and Plato’s unwritten doctrine — to go where it wants to go, I’d like start by looking into this beautiful and suggestive passage.

In our former discussion I distinguished two kinds of being—the unchanging or invisible, and the visible or changing. But now a third kind is required, which I shall call the receptacle or nurse of generation. There is a difficulty in arriving at an exact notion of this third kind, because the four elements themselves are of inexact natures and easily pass into one another, and are too transient to be detained by any one name; wherefore we are compelled to speak of water or fire, not as substances, but as qualities. They may be compared to images made of gold, which are continually assuming new forms. Somebody asks what they are; if you do not know, the safest answer is to reply that they are gold. In like manner there is a universal nature out of which all things are made, and which is like none of them; but they enter into and pass out of her, and are made after patterns of the true in a wonderful and inexplicable manner. The containing principle may be likened to a mother, the source or spring to a father, the intermediate nature to a child; and we may also remark that the matter which receives every variety of form must be formless, like the inodorous liquids which are prepared to receive scents, or the smooth and soft materials on which figures are impressed. In the same way space or matter is neither earth nor fire nor air nor water, but an invisible and formless being which receives all things, and in an incomprehensible manner partakes of the intelligible.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1572/1572-h/1572-h.htm

As may be painfully obvious by now, I am “obsessed” with the relationship between “quality” and “form.” Here, to me anyway, the “father” plays the role of “form” and the mother the role of “quality.” I insist on “quality” because these days “matter” is strongly associated not with quality but with mathematical form. The matter of physics is not intended here.

Indeed,

the matter which receives every variety of form must be formless

Mother, matter, matrix. “Formless.” I take this to be a synonym of “ineffable.” We can only say “too much.” And yet philosophy is “a thrust against the limits of language.”

I interpret this, bringing my own present concerns to the text as anyone must, in terms of objects in the world as the “child” of the mother and father, of the dyad and the one, of nonbeing and being. So this passage, for me, connects to the unwritten doctrine.

How does “matter” (quality) “partake of the intelligible” ? I don’t present this as an empirical question. Rather, what is a good explication or unfolding of this vague expression ?

How should we understand “quality” or “matter” here ? My leaning is toward the “quality” of “the object as perceived.” The redness and shape and smell and emotional “impact” of the present rose.

How should we understand “form” ? My leaning is toward “the categorical.” The rose is a rose. But even the unity of the singular rose is a unity of “aspects.” We see the same rose, through different pairs of eyes, at different times. We can “intend” ( discuss, remember ) that particular rose in its perceptual absence.

But what do others make of this passage ?

Here’s Wiki’s sketch of “the unwritten doctrine” that I find relevant to the passage above:

The One and the Indefinite Dyad are the ultimate ground of everything because the realm of Plato’s Forms and the totality of reality derive from their interaction. The whole manifold of sensory phenomena rests in the end on only two factors. Form issues from the One, which is the productive factor; the formless Indefinite Dyad serves as the substrate for the activity of the One. Without such a substrate, the One could produce nothing. All Being rests upon the action of the One upon the Indefinite Dyad. This action sets limits to the formless, gives it Form and particularity, and is therefore also the principle of individuation that brings separate entities into existence. A mixture of both principles underlies all Being.

I suggest that chora is the dyad.

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I don’t know which translation you’re referring to, but I will note that the Horan translation of the Timaeus can be found here. (Notice the .pdf download.)

I will hazard a guess that this is the forerunner to the later ‘doctrine of prime matter’ by Aristotle, although I will stand corrected by anyone who knows better.

But I will take some time to read and absorb the text before commenting further.

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Thanks ! I added a link to my quoted source.

Do as you see fit, but I am hoping that others will “enter the issue” personally. Plato’s authorial intention would therefore be interesting because it is the “best” approach to this issue. I mean that I hope others will “risk” their own current best guess on this issue, in the light of the text. So not a debate about history, though the history is of course relevant. But a dive into the issue itself as ever-present, as fresh for us as it was for Plato.

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Very good. I found crib about my remark on the relationship of the ‘Chora’ (the ‘receptacle or nurse of generation’ in the above) and Aristotle’s ‘prima materia’ which I guessed might be related. ‘Chora and Prime Matter are related as concepts of a formless substratum necessary for physical reality, but they differ in philosophical detail and emphasis. Chora is Plato’s metaphysical “space” or receptacle for becoming, while Prime Matter is Aristotle’s indeterminate material potentiality underlying all change. Aristotle’s concept may be historically inspired by Plato’s, but they are not identical.’

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The “place of becoming” then. Interesting that “matrix” derives from womb/mother. The womb is very much a place of becoming.

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I found myself absorbed in Findlay’s book on Plato last year only to realize that he was also the translator of my favorite version of Husserl’s Ideas.

Plato applying his genius to the Socratic dialectic turned it into an ontology: generic meanings, whether in moral discourse or elsewhere, were not only real presences in the world through their many species and instances, and known and enjoyed in these, but had a more absolute being than those species and instances, and in fact conferred on the latter all the real being that they possessed. They were, moreover, not merely apprehended through their species and instances, which were often only poor illustrations of them, but rather gave their species and instances all the intelligibility of which they were capable. To generic natures or meanings Plato gave the new name of Eide or Ideas, and they were held to be neither general names on men’s tongues, nor general thoughts in men’s minds, but the only entities that could without qualification be said to be, and which were further, in some sense, supremely causative, since their instances only were what they were by exemplifying them, while they were what they were without regard to an exemplifications or instances. While essentially able to have instances, they did not need to have any, and in fact never had instances that perfectly exemplified or embodied them.

source

Call me a Platonist ! At least that bolded part speaks strongly to me. Weirdly (?) I got “here” via Derrida and then Saussure.

Not general thoughts. I agree, for that separates “ideas” from the world they “articulate.” Not unless “thoughts” are “thoughtsound” as in Saussure. The numeral is a numeral in the first place “through” the number. Or the number is rather “through” the numeral as its “sense” or worldly significance. The “father” does not “exist.” Nor does the “mother.” Only the child. The child “suggests” its father and mother.

the only entities that could without qualification be said to be , and which were further, in some sense, supremely causative, since their instances only were what they were by exemplifying them

Not temporally scientifically causative, as if first there were ideas that then “created” instantiations. The rose is there in its sensory “ineffable” but also in and through its “rose-ness.” This is “too primary” for explanation, so Plato is a “phenomenologist.”

This part is more of a chew:

While essentially able to have instances, they did not need to have any, and in fact never had instances that perfectly exemplified or embodied them.

Does he/Plato mean no current empirical instances ? That makes sense to me. But is the idea “apart from” all possible instantiations at once ? This I can’t make sense of. The idea is something like this possibility of instantiation itself. The idea is fundamentally “futural” or “open.” So is existence or (the presence of ) world-from-POV.

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More from Findlay:

There are many further respects in which Eide had to differ ontologically from their instances: they had all to be essentially non-sensuous, however much present in, and required by their sensuous instances. The qualities of the senses varied from occasion to occasion and from person to person, but had to have a foundation in pure proportions and numbers which only the pure mind could compass non-sensuously. The Eide, further, are essentially unchangeable, and out of time altogether, whereas their instances are part of the perpetual flux of instantial being, and are constantly coming into being and passing away, or being replaced by the instantiation of some other Eidos.

“Essentially non-sensuous.” Bite the object like a false coin, you will not taste its essence. The “categoricity” is “there” in the rose as rose. Could I categorize it without the help of its redness or scent ? Perhaps not. But is the category itself sensuous ? That’s a thorny issue. But the category unifies the sensuous. The particular rose has its own category-of-one as that particular rose. Category-of-one ? Not really, for to me the idea of that particular rose unifies ( or “is” the unity of ) its “perceptual manifestations” over time and between perceivers. (But also memories of that particular rose, and so on.)

Is categorization “only inside the subject” ? Some will leap to this, but I reject such a putting of the lifeworld “inside” the “minds” of people who after all live in that same lifeworld. And those who put category or identity inside the subject then go on to project a “true reality” in the sense of an “external reality” in terms of this or that category. So one meaningfully-qualitative world from many points of view, by "means of " “ideas.”

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With regard to ideas, I’m not sure why a real named thing would make an appearance, re: a rose. In order to be a named thing something must have been on men’s tongues and minds, contradicting its standing as mere idea.

“…..Plato made use of the expression idea in such a way that we can readily see that he understood by it something that not only could never be borrowed from the senses, but that even goes far beyond the concepts of the understanding (with which Aristotle occupied himself), since nothing encountered in experience could ever be congruent to it. Ideas for him are archetypes of things themselves, and not, like the categories, merely the key to possible experiences. In his opinion they flowed from the highest reason, through which human reason partakes in them. (…) Plato noted very well that our power of cognition feels a far higher need than that of merely spelling out appearances according to a synthetic unity in order to be able to read them as experience, and that our reason naturally exalts itself to cognitions that go much too far for any object that experience can give ever to be congruent, but that nonetheless have their reality and are by no means merely figments of the brain….” (A313-14/B370-71)

Thread title notwithstanding, I feel warranted in supporting Plato’s notion of ideas with Kant, because you did the same with Findlay.

I guess I’m wondering if there is supposed to be a connection between partaking of the intelligible, and the function of ideas for it, and if there isn’t, why the jump from one to the other.

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Perhaps we aren’t understanding one another. The “idea” or “form” is something like the type that makes the token possible as token. The numeral is a numeral “through the number.” This is not offered as speculative but as explicative.

In less Platonic terms, Sellars discusses role semantics. Both three fingers held up and the sign “3” are numerals for “the number 3” because they play a sufficiently ) equivalent role in the world.

In mathematics, equivalence classes are common and important. For instance, the rational number optionally invoked by “[1/2]” is also invoked by “[2/4].” This bracket notation indicates that the object within in it is part of the class/set that “includes” all similar objects that are equivalent in the relevant way. For most calculations, it doesn’t matter if I use “1/2” or “16/32.”

Likewise many sounds from many larynxes at many times and places are “treated as equivalent” — as sayings of “hello” perhaps. The sounds themselves are different, even non-repeatable. But they are sayings of the enduring interpersonal object known as the word "hello. " Without this “categorical element” in “sensation/intuition,” no knowledge. But also no things in the world. No enduring things that are identifiable as “between us” “logically.”

I don’t mind. But in either case I wouldn’t call it support. As in I’m not interested in arguments from the authority of anyone. Not even Plato.

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More than perhaps, methinks, in that I don’t agree with the implication that idea and form are the same or interchangeable in any way.

Although from a strictly Platonic reference, perhaps they are, and became more distinct from each other later on philosophically.

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The limits of intelligibility are essential to the Timaeus. This is why he presents a “likely story” (ton eikota mython). One he insists is second to none.

Forms are fixed, unchangeable, and intelligible. It is for this reason that the whole cannot be understood in terms of Forms.

Timaeus identifies two kinds of cause, intelligence and necessity, nous and ananke. Necessity covers such things as physical processes, contingency, chance, motion, power, and the chora. What is by necessity is without nous or intellect. It is called the “wandering cause” (48a). It can act contrary to nous. The sensible world, the world of becoming, is neither regulated by intellect nor fully intelligible.

In addition to Forms and sensible things, Timaeus introduces a “third kind” (triton genos, 48e), the chora (χώρα).

The three kinds are:

" … that which comes to be, that in which it comes to be, and that from which what comes to be sprouts as something copied. And what’s more, it’s fitting to liken the receiver to a mother , the ‘from which’ to a father, and the nature between these to an offspring" (50d).

Like intelligible things, the chora always is. But unlike intelligible things, it is changeable. (52a) Unlike sensible things it does not perish. Befitting its indeterminacy, the chora does not yield to simple definition.

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I’m tempted to read “intelligible things” as just the things in the world. These things are “intelligible” or “speakable” as the “child” of the “father” and “mother.”

If the chora is the “qualitative continuum,” then it’s like a “space of quality” that is “articulated” into “intelligible things.” To grasp the thing as thing, as a one or a unity, is already to “articulate” it.

“Chora” is a sign that strangely points to what “exceeds” or “drips from” signs.

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Both my previous post and this one are taken from a topic I started in the old forum: Shaken to the Chora.

The intelligible things, according to the Timaeus, are the Forms.

The chora, to the extent it is understood, is grasped by:

“… some bastard reasoning with the aid of insensibility, hardly to be trusted, the very thing we look to when we dream and affirm that it’s somehow necessary for everything that is to be in some region [topos] and occupy some space [chora] and that what is neither on earth nor somewhere in heaven is nothing (52b-c).”

To be clear, it is not that the chora is posited as the result of bastard reasoning. It is the attempt to understand it that relies on bastard reasoning. We cannot understand the chora itself. We rely on images of space and place. In dreams we mistake images for their originals (Republic 476c), but the chora is not some thing with its own properties and identity. Reasoning about it cannot make use of the image/original distinction. It is indeterminate and something thought of only in terms of images.
The image of chora as mother and the father as that “from which” the offspring come raises the problem of paternity. Both the divine craftsman and the Forms have been identified as the father of what comes to be.

In this likely story the offspring are the sensible beings. Any inquiry into the beginning cannot start at the beginning. Timaeus’ likely story, like all such stories, is not to be trusted. It is imprecise and contradictory, just as he said it would be. It is the work of a human craftsman . The beginning remains inaccessible to us. Perhaps what Plato is suggesting is that the offspring of origin stories, including those found in Plato’s dialogues, are the result of bastard reasoning and illegitimate.

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Fooloso4’s post Shaken to the Chora on the archive site (for reference)

I’m interested in reading The Timeaus so will follow this thread and make the occasional comment.

One of which is the fairly obvious idea that the eidos (ideas) are grasped by reason. That is, to understand the form, idea or eidos of a particular is to see what it truly is, apart from or ‘underneath’ the accidental appearances it might have.

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In The Timaeus Plato deals with what is commonly known as the interaction problem of dualism. He already outlined a solution in earlier books, like The Republic, but here he attempts to put forth something more comprehensive.

The issue is that the form of any particular individual thing, is necessarily prior to the material existence of that thing, as the thing’s determinant, the cause of it being what it is. Being prior to material existence makes the forms, in principle, eternal. So the problem addressed by Plato is the question of how the eternal forms act in the world, in the process which produces particular individuals.

He sees the need for an intermediary between form and particular, and the intermediary is what is called matter. As a solution to the interaction problem, this can be seen as a development of his idea of the tripartite soul. In this concept, passion, or spirit is placed as the intermediary between mind and body. Now matter is proposed as the intermediary between the eternal forms and particular individuals.

The Greek word “chora” which some people are drawing attention to, is probably derived from Pythagorean cosmology. This cosmology recognized the cosmos as consisting of harmonic circular vibrations within the cosmic aether. The harmony is produced from the ratios between the sizes of the circular orbits which were believed to be in the same ratios as those of the common musical intervals.. The word “chorus” is also derived from chora.

So matter for Plato was not strictly spatial but spatial-temporal, following the Pythagorean cosmology. That is supposed to be the universal aspect of the particular individual, each one has a spatial-temporal presence, allowing for its own order or harmony, produced from the eternal forms. So for Plato space and time serve as the medium between the forms and the individuals, just like passion serves as the medium between the mind and the body in the tripartite soul.

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This makes sense to me. I’m tempted to read the unwritten doctrine as “there is only the fusion, only the meeting or medium.”

For me “matter” is readable as “quality” which is “ineffable” apart from its “articulation.” Likewise “pure form” is “nothing” without quality. This second point is initially less plausible, because we assume an “immaterial conceptuality” that lives in signs as “vessels.” The possibility of paraphrase suggests that the “idea itself” is apart from all possible paraphrases. Rather than their equivalence.

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It is a marriage, but matter (mother) is always marrying the son, or child of a previous marriage. So the father, the groom, is always half mother and father (which in turn is half mother and father).There is no pure father, because the lineage goes back into the mists of time.

What we see and know is all mother, held by mother, the presence of the father is, due to infinite marriages, infinitely watered down. But so potent, as to be always present. Present in the son, so the son is the fusion of father and mother, father and mother simultaneously. As such mother becomes father, father becomes mother and a son is born.

But if this lineage goes back into infinity, then it is actually only the son who is all we see and know, not mother. Because father is only present as son and mother is only known as son (while both father and mother are eternally present).

Apply this reasoning to every thought and every concept and you start to think in threes, rather than two’s (binary).

This can also be applied to the cross, father is the vertical, mother is the horizontal and the son is at the point where they cross.

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So this leaped out for me as a beautiful way of expressing it. I won’t pretend that I understood most of your post. But I would like to hear more.

From my POV, only the son is here. The father and mother are theoretical, toward an explication of “sense” itself.

This is bit like Christ On Cross as “the divine” that only lives, is only real or genuine or living, “down here” in the horror.

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Yes, only the son is here, seen and known, but the father and ,mother are here, too, in that the son is an amalgam (marriage) of the two, so they are more than theoretical. It’s a trinity, so there can’t be one without the other two, but only the son is in this world of experiences.
This idea runs through some religious and mythological traditions and is embedded in our cultural narrative, via Christianity.

This veers off into theology and mysticism, needless to say, as you suggest, the Christ on the cross symbolises the manifestation of the divine incarnate. Along with the idea of redemption, or the return to the divine. But can also been seen as a message about the consequences and vision, of incarnation.

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I don’t think matter is properly interpreted as quality. Generally, the qualities of a thing, which we perceive, are its form. Each quality is a formal aspect. Take a look at this passage from your op.

He says that what has been proposed by some, to be fundamental elements, water, fire, etc., are not fundamental substances at all, but are actually qualities because they may change from one to the other. He compares this changing to images made out of gold, the gold is melted down and takes a new form. If you don’t recognize the form which the gold has, the easiest thing to do, if you are asked what it is, is to say that it’s gold. Supposedly you know that it must be gold.

But the issue is, what is gold then. It’s really just a name which indicates that we know that the same underlying substance can pass from having one form to another., yet maintain some sort of identity as the same thing, even though its form has completely changed. The form is the qualities which the assumed underlying substance has at a given time, but the underlying substance itself cannot itself have changing qualities, or else we’d have to look for something further to be the true underlying substance. The base, or foundational “matter” is proposed so as to prevent an infinite regress which would render “nothing” as the foundation of the material world.

So, what is proposed here is a “universal nature”, the matter of all things. But the problem is that we cannot properly say “what” such a “matter” is, because to say what it is, is to describe its form. So Plato runs into problems trying to describe it, because describing it is inherently contradictory. So “universal nature” is actually to attribute a form to something which by definition cannot have a form itself, because that would make it what it is not. Now “universal nature” appears to be a universal quality, but this is exactly what it is not, because it has been determined that it cannot be a quality (form). Plato it seems, did not have the linguistic ability to discuss the reality of this “matter”.

Afterwards, Aristotle took up this issue, and managed to define “matter” using the concept of potential. There’s a difference between describing and defining, which allows us to define something as completely formless, having no nature whatsoever. Defining does not necessarily involve saying “what” the thing is, just like pointing to something doesn’t say what it is. So we can identify by defining, just like we can identify by pointing to something. The former is a conceptual object, the latter a material object.

So for Aristotle, the defined conceptual object is “prime matter”, or pure potential. And that is the concept which physicalists commonly use to explain the origins of the universe. But I will point out that Aristotle demonstrated with his so-called cosmological argument that prime matter is actually physically impossible, just like he showed that the proposed eternal circular motions of the planets are actually physically impossible. So prime matter is a concept which physicalists, and modern day Platonists (in the sense of Pythagorean idealists), employ because it facilitates their speculations. But it makes those speculations fundamentally unrealistic, according to the principles of Aristotle’s cosmological argument.