The "Forms" and the "Third Man"



1. Why the "Forms"?
a. Background. The "forms" ("ideas", eide; singular=eidos) appear in Plato in several contexts and are characterized in several ways. In some dialogues where they appear, such as the Republic, there is a fairly elaborate account of them; in others there is just a mention or brief description (Euthyphro, Phaedo). Sometimes the Socrates character acts as though he thinks (or wants people to think he thinks) that the "forms" exist; other times he asks about whether a certain "form" exists, or whether we should take it that they exist in general. There is no clear answer to the question of what the importance of "forms" was in what was taught in Plato's Academy. Apparently there was quite a bit of discussion on the topic of "forms", so it seems that Plato did feel there was something about them that it was important to investigate. Whether Plato held a "Doctrine (or Theory) of Forms", and what if anything he finally decided they were, are not at all evident. We can say, based on the fact that Aristotle reports that "the forms" were discussed a lot in Plato's school, as well as the fact that there was some interest in Plato on the part of Pythagoreans of his time (eide have much in common with Pythagorean numbers, and this was noticed), that the forms posed problems or were involved in problems that Plato was interested in. After Plato's death, his nephew Speusippus took over as head of the Academy, and Speusippus and his students focused a great deal of attention on the "forms". Speusippus seems to have been convinced of the viability of the "forms".


b. What is a "form"? Generally, a "form" can be characterized as that which all things of a certain kind have in common that makes them things of that kind, and which these things do not have in common with things that are not of that kind. (see e.g. Euthyphro 5d and 6d; but again, there are a variety of different descriptions of "forms" in Plato, and it may not be the case that all are compatible with each other.) For example, if there is a Form of Largeness (or Form of the Large, or Large Itself, or Form Large), it would be that which all large things have in common that makes them large. This Form of Largeness/Form of the Large/Large Itself would be something that is not shared by non-large things: small things, for example, and things that have no size, would not share it.

It may be objected here that "large" is or can be a relative term (a "large" cat is not as large as even a "small" elephant, e.g.); that there is or may be a subjective element in our judgments as to whether a thing is large; that whether a thing is large may be ambiguous or not sharply defined (we may not be able to pinpoint where the line between "medium" and "large" should fall). These are important issues, but the fact that these objections can be made does not affect the viability of the notion of "forms". Whatever it is that we might think is large, all the things we think are large must get that description for a reason. That is, we call certain things "large" in virtue of something about them, and it is this something, this meaning, that the eidos Large refers to or addresses or is.

Sometimes a character in Plato suggests that there are forms not only of things like good, just, large, equal (or goodness, justice, etc.), but also of things like human, horse, and so on; after all, ‘human' names a class or a kind of thing just as much as ‘equal' does. In this case, it would be said that the Form Human is that which all humans have in common that makes them human, and that non-human things don't have.


c. Why the "forms"?

---(1) We say that there are kinds of individual things, or that individual things fall into classes, or that they can be classified. In virtue of what, though, do we say that there are kinds of things, or even that two things are similar?

------(a) If there is nothing that is common to all things that are said to be of a particular kind, or if classifying them as belonging to one kind is arbitrary or random or randomly changeable, then we have no way of communicating the meanings of the kinds, or the qualities of the things, to each other. We have no way of telling whether a new thing that we encounter is a member of any familiar kind; we have indeed no way of characterizing it.

------(b) Thus in order to communicate and to try to make sense of our environment, we take it that things have recognizable similarities, and that although the things themselves may change, there are stable meanings. A thing that is hot may cease to be hot, but what it is to be hot, we say, does not change. And we can characterize things according to whatever stably-meant features they appear to exhibit or "have". What it is to be hot is in some sense that which makes hot things hot, and it is that which all hot things are supposed to have in common. The Form "Hot" would be something that would have this function.

---(2) The other reason for proposing Forms has to do with this function of explanation. We try to explain things in terms of what makes them be as they are, and "as a thing is" includes characteristics that are supposed to be shared (or at least recognizable, so that the meaning or identification of a characteristic used in an explanation is something we're aware of independently of our awareness of a particular thing). We can't explain anything, given our normal modes of explanation, if we don't know the meanings or natures or identities of characteristics.*

We also can't explain anything if we do not take it that the characteristics we say we're aware of, or conceive of, exist "in" things. That is, for an explanation to be taken to be an explanation, we must take it that what we say that things are like is in fact what they are like.

"Forms" are supposed to fulfill both of these requirements: they are supposed to be stable recognizable features of the universe; and they are supposed to be entities that are both "in" our awareness and "in" things (and what we are aware of is supposed to be exactly what is in the things).


2. The "Third Man"
There is some debate over exactly what Aristotle is referring to as the "Third Man" problem. (In some of the secondary literature, it's said that Aristotle is offering "the Third Man Argument" against the "forms", though it's not clear that he thinks that what he's offering is fatal to all claims about "forms"; and it may be that Plato's school recognized that there was a problem and tried to address it.) What he seems to be considering is this:

--According to the claims about "forms" that A. associates with Plato and the Academy, all things of a particular kind - men, for example - will have some aspect in common (they are all men).

--This commonality is associated with a "form" in some way: depending on what version of the "forms" story you're using, the individual men will all have or share (Euthyphro), or imitate or strive for or resemble (Phaedo), or participate in or partake of - whatever that means (Republic), the "form" "Man". In most versions, the "form" is that in virtue of which each thing (each man) is the kind of thing it is (a man). (I'm capitalizing the first letter of ‘man' because that's how one usually sees it in English translations of discussions about "forms"; but Greek does not capitalize except for the first letter of a proper name.)

--What then is the relationship between the "form" and the thing that exhibits or participates in or imitates (or whatever) it? In the "participates in/partakes of" version and the "imitates/resembles/strives for" version, it seems that the "form" and the things are supposed to have something in common, or resemble each other. (It's not clear what the relationship is, and whether we can tell - which could be another problem - in the vaguer "has" version.)

--Thus it looks as if not only do all men have something in common [that makes them men], but also all men and the "form" "Man" have something in common [that makes them what they are?]. What is that something: a third "man"? (The individual man was the first in the example; the "form" "Man" was the second...)

The question then arises as to exactly what Aristotle takes the problem here to be. One possibility is that he finds an infinite regress here: that he thinks that in order to identify what the man, the "form" "Man", and that which ties them together have in common, you'd have to find a fourth thing, which you'd have to relate to the other three by means of a fifth thing, and so on. That might not be too terrible, except that the "forms" were offered in part as an explanation, a cause; and we can't tell if that's what they are if we can't follow them out to their foundation because they don't have one. Also, if the "forms" were supposed to be causes, and there is all of that other stuff (the third, fourth, fifth, etc. "men") involved, why are the "forms" in particular cited as causes?

Another possibility is that Aristotle thinks that these versions of the "forms" story do not solve a problem that they seem to have been designed to solve; at best, they merely move the problem. That is, the "forms" were supposed to be what accounted for a thing's being the kind of thing that it is, and for the resemblance between things that are supposed to be of the same kind. But that leaves the question of the relationships between a "form" and the things it is supposed to be the "form" "of", and the "form" itself doesn't explain that. Thus saying simply that there are "forms" does not account for the similarities between things, nor for why things are as they are.

Yet another possibility is that Aristotle is troubled by the fact that the things are called "men" and the "form" is called "Man" (and whatever may link them is also to be associated fundamentally with "man", or "man-ness", itself). What then is "man"? How does the term or notion or whatever is involved apply to both (or all three, etc.)?

Another problem that arises, though I don't know that Aristotle has it in mind at this point, is that "forms" don't tell you anything about what makes one thing one. And certainly being one is part of being a man.



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* People who have read Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations might object that when a group of things is called by one name, or when a group of things is said to be a group of things that are of one kind, it is not necessary that all of the things in the group have some single aspect or characteristic in common. They might instead, Wittgenstein proposed, be related as by "family resemblance". But this does not affect the viability of the notion of "form", nor does it eliminate the reasons that would make a notion like "form" seem necessary or desirable or plausible, nor does it solve the problems that result from the adoption of the notion of "forms" as explanatory. Here's why:
Wittgenstein's suggestion was that in a group of things that are said to be things of the same kind, or things that are related in some way, it isn't always the case that all the things in the group have some single aspect in common that is characteristic only of members of that group. An example he gives is members of a family: there may be no single characteristic that all members of a family share, that is characteristic only or mainly of members of that family (let's forget DNA testing here since it's not always available). Yet, it may be possible just by looking at people to determine who is a member of that family and who is not. Let's take a group of 4 sons, A, B, C, and D. (They're in the Witness Protection Program so I can't give their real names, OK?) A and B (but not C or D) might have the same hair type and be of similar height; B and C might have the same build which is not that of A or D; C and D (but not A or B) might have similar noses and mouths; D and A might have similar eyes and voices which B and C don't share; A and C might have similar hands; B and D might have the same shape face; etc. Thus A, B, C, and D might be said on meeting them to belong to the same group (sons of a certain family), without all of them sharing a single perceivable characteristic. (If you've ever seen a picture of any four of the Marx Brothers together, you've seen an example of this.)

Another example of Wittgenstein's is games: all games have rules, but so do many non-game things (parliamentary meetings, restaurant dining, wars); games usually involve winning or losing (but not always, if you count children's "let's pretend" as a game), but so do other things (wars, lotteries, elections). Wittgenstein felt that there was no one thing that all games had in common that non-games did not.

But there still remains the problem of what makes a game a game, and what games have or are or do that non-games don't have or are not or don't do. And this would be something that "forms" could be called in to explain. Even if you said that there might be a complex of inter-related characteristics that are involved, still you would need to show what it is that makes each thing that is called a game a game, and what it is that ties all of these things and all of these aspects together. Otherwise, it seems, you are in danger of saying that what counts as a "game" is determined arbitrarily and without reasons, in which case it is not clear that ‘game' has a meaning, or that the term can be used to explain anything or to convey meaning in descriptions. H.S. Thayer has proposed that one might reasonably think of "eidos" as "meaning" - not just linguistic meaning, but also meaning as in "meaningfulness" or "what something means in your life" (I am paraphrasing him here).


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