[Help] Third Man Argument

Fulgrim

United States560 Posts

January 04 2011 23:55 GMT

In my IB Philosophy class we are having debates between different philosophers throughout history. I'm supposed to represent Aristotle in an upcoming debate vs. Plato, and one of the issues we have to debate is that of the 3rd man argument. The third man argument is a criticism of Plato's theory of forms, and I really need to get a handle on what it is if I want to do well in the debates. I've found some explanations on it, but I'm completely lost and can't understand it and was hoping some local TL philosophers might be able to shed some new light on it. Thanks!

3rd Man argument:
http://www.philosophyprofessor.com/philosophies/third-man-argument.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_man_argument

bITt.mAN

Switzerland3689 Posts

January 05 2011 00:45 GMT

Is this IB Philosophy or IB Theory of Knowledge? (I know some people would call the second by the first for clarity's sake)

drag_

England425 Posts

January 05 2011 00:47 GMT

I haven't studied this in any depth to be able to give you a solid explanation, but I find the Stanford Philosophy Encyclopedia to be a much better source than wikipedia, so you might try reading this: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-parmenides/#ThiManArg132

Fulgrim

United States560 Posts

January 05 2011 01:02 GMT

It is IB philosophy, I take mostly IB classes with some AP so i'm not a full diploma candidate.

Thanks drag, i'm reading over this, and it clears up some issues. Maybe its the example that's giving me trouble though. Why does there have to be a form for a plurality of objects? Am I way far off in even that previous question from what they actually mean?

hp.Shell

United States2527 Posts

January 05 2011 01:14 GMT

This is some pretty thick reading, but it's also interesting. I will continue reading this later tonight and see if I can come up with anything tomorrow afternoon.

Grebliv

Iceland800 Posts

January 05 2011 01:15 GMT

F1 is describes (a b c) as large and by doing so (since every form of F-ness is itself F) it falls into the bracket with them = (a b c F1)

now you have a new largeness to explain (a b c F1) and since "No form partakes of itself" (F1 is a part of the F2 group so it can't be the same thing) you'll have to make up a new form of largeness, F2; which then falls into a new bracket (a b c F1 F2). You can do this forever.

the problem is then that the uniqueness kicks in, there's only supposed to be one type of F but the statements about it's properties contradict themselves. All the statements about the theory of forms have a hard time coexisting.

Don't really remember this stuff and was never too hot at it (looked at the wiki a bunch). the wiki however and the stanford thing after the namedropping stuff should cover it.

Iranon

United States983 Posts

January 05 2011 01:26 GMT

I'm not going to really add my thoughts, since I was just going to link to what the above poster already linked too, and I'm a mathematician, not a philosopher. But I do want to say holy hell does this reek of naive set theory. Yes, this is a serious logical flaw, assuming that we're meant to take all those axioms about the forms as axioms.

Non-identity is basically the same as regularity in set theory -- no set is (identical to) a member of itself. This is to prevent exactly this sort of infinite descending chains of membership that would otherwise pop up. Self-predication is sort of the same thing, but backwards. Huh? Not sure why this is a reasonable thing to posit. Seems very fishy with regularity afoot. One-over-many, oh lord, now we've got real problems, this is unrestricted comprehension -- for all properties P, there exists a set of all elements x for which P(x) is true. This pretty much just gives you Russell's paradox, and that's why unrestricted comprehension is not part of mathematics, restricted comprehension is. BAM, inconsistencies. By Oneness, all the forms are distinct things, so they should all be characterized by some property. What's that property they have in common? Why, being a form, of course. Formness, I guess. Okay, then there should be a Formness form. That's a form too, and immediately gives you the whole "third man" problem all over again, as well as Russell's paradox if there's a form for "non-formness". Blahhhhh.

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