Surprising Thesis Research Articles

Participation and Predication in the Sophist 251-260

While a great deal of progress has been made in recent years in bringing to light philosophical sense of Sophist one problem, or cluster of problems, has resisted analysis.' problem is that Plato seems to use a particular form of sentence ambiguously; fact that he does so seems to reveal a fundamental confusion on Plato's part. It will be easier for me to describe problem as well as my strategy in attempting to solve it, if I first introduce some terminology. In Sophist, particularly 251-260, Plato frequently appeals to fact that one Form participates in another Form to explain or justify other claims.2 For example, Change is, because it partakes of Being (256A 1) and Motion is different because it partakes of Different (256B2-3). I will call those sentences which are either explicitly or implicitly justified by an appeal to participation Further, we find throughout dialogues sentences of form the (is) . where the F is (1) an abstract noun with or without definite article or (2) definite article followed by a common noun, mass term, adjective or participle.3 Some such sentences can be paraphrased without loss of sense as the Form, (is) .... , while vast majority of them cannot. Beauty is eternal can be so paraphrased. The sophist is a wage earner cannot. I will call those sentences which can be so paraphrased Form-predications. Now it is argued that Plato uses sentences of form the (is) .. sometimes to express a Form-predication and sometimes to say something about nature of or perhaps about nature of particular F's. fact Plato vacillates between these two types of predication not only obscures whatever philosophical point he may be making but also shows that Plato was confused about nature of Forms. I think, however, that there is a plausible reading of Sophist which shows Plato to be in no way confused as to meaning of such sentences. None of first-order sentences of Sophist, I will argue, are Formpredications. After arguing that text forces this conclusion on us (Part I), I will try to make conclusion plausible (Part II) by describing a type of predication, different from Form-predication, in terms of which all of first-order sentences of Sophist can be consistently understood. A consequence of my interpretation is rather surprising thesis that no-

Are Conclusive Proofs Irrelevant to Religion?

ARE CONCLUSIVE PROOFS IRRELEVANT TO RELIGION? FOR CENTURIES the proofs for God's existence have been debated and their role in religious belie£-systems assessed. There have been those who claim that the proofs are conclusive, those who claim that they are invalid , and those who claim that they are valid but inconclusive . There have been disputes, furthermore, as to whether the logical base for religious belie£ systems should be sought in proofs and evidence rather than in "self-authenticating" religious experiences and acceptance o£ religious authority. But no one, until recently, ever contended that even if the proofs were conclusive it would be irrelevant to religious believers. People have thought that religion must be undergirded by proof, aan be undergirded by proof, and need not be undergirded by proof, but not that proof would be irrelevant. Now o£ course there are many senses in which a proof could be relevant to religious believers. The Vatican Council affirmed that i£ people denied that God could be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason they would be anathema. Thus it could have made quite serious practical differences to a believer whether he accepted the proofs or not. As philosophers we are not concerned with this sort of practical difference but with philosophical ones, and the question to be explored is: Is there something philosophically at stake for believers in this question o£ the proofs for the existence o£ God? I want to contend that Steven M. Cahn is utterly wrongheaded in his claim that religious believers have no real interest in philosophical proofs for the existence of God.1 I am assuming that this 1 Steven M. Cahn, " The Irrelevance to Religion of Philosophic Proofs for the Existence of God," The American Philosophical Quarterly (April, 1969), pp. 170-72. Further citations will be given by page number in the text. Cahn has 727 7~8 FRANK B. DILLEY is not a statistical claim to be settled by polls but rather a philosophical claim. Cahn makes no effort to produce questionnaire results from a proper sample of believers nor shall I. To examine this question, in the context of Cahn's contention , it is fortunately not necessary to resolve the question of the validity of the proofs. In an effort to dismiss them once for all, Cahn is willing to assume that the proofs are valid, for the sake of the argument. " Suppose we assume, contrary to what most philosophers, I among them, believe, that all of these proofs are valid. Let us grant the necessary existence (whatever that might mean) of the most perfect conceivable Being, a Being who is ali-good and is the designer and creator of the universe. What implications can be drawn from this fact which would be of relevance to human life? In other words, what difference would it make in men's lives if God existed?" (p. 170) In support of his surprising thesis that religious believers are right in ignoring the proofs, he gives two chief arguments, that religious believers make their decisions as to what beliefs to hold and what practices to follow on the basis of "self-validating " personal experiences which render the proofs unnecessary , and that the success of the proofs would not enable a newly converted unbeliever to know what beliefs and practices to choose. He therefore contends that the proofs are relevant for neither the believer nor the unbeliever. In examining his contention about the relevancy of proofs I propose to look at what religious belief systems say about this problem, an approach Cahn does not seem to care to use. In this connection it should be noted that his sources are curious, for he cites not one person who would be taken by anyone to be a normal religious believer. He cites Antony Flew, Wallace Matson, C. B. Martin, and Mordecai Kaplan, but not John reprinted this essay in his Philosophy of Religion (Harper & Row, 1970), and it can also be found in Philosophy in the Age of Crisis, ed. Eleanor Kuykendall (Harper & Row, 1970) and God, Man, and Rdigion: Readings in the Philosophy of Rdigion, ed. by Keith Yandell (McGraw-Hill, 1973). ARE CONCLUSIVE PROOFS IRRELEVANT...

Our Ontological Commitment to Universals

In the writings of Willard Quine, one finds an intense concern with ontological questions and, in particular, the question Are there universals? Quine, at one time, favored a negative answer to the question,2 but for reasons shall sketch he came reluctantly to believe that Platonists had been right after all. Although Quine never to my knowledge fully presented an explicit argument for accepting Platonism (Platonism being used here and throughout this paper to denote the doctrine that affirms There are universals or Universals exist), it is easy enough to reconstruct the reasoning that led to his acceptance of Platonism. Since Quine's reasoning involves the notion of ontological commitment, should like to present a very rough explication of the notion before beginning my detailed examination. Let us start with some examples of commitment. One can commit oneself to doing certain things by saying (in appropriate circumstances of course) You can count on my help or I shall be available. Obviously, one can also commit oneself to accepting as true certain teachings, doctrines and principles by accepting a religion. For example, someone who accepts Catholicism thereby commits himself to accepting as true certain pronouncements made by the pope. Now analogously, Quine holds that saying certain things can commit one to affirming or accepting certain ontological assertions, and that accepting a theory can also commit one to accepting a whole ontology-hardly a surprising thesis.