From causes to Forms: The Phaedo and the foundations of Platonic metaphysics

Plato believed that Forms were causes. Why? Philosophers since Aristotle have contended that Forms cannot be causes in any legitimate sense, and have downplayed the Forms' alleged causal status in making sense of Platonic metaphysics. I show that Forms are causes in a distinctive, pre-Aristotelian sense, and that this sort of causality is fundamental to what Forms are. I begin with a new account of what a cause is for Plato, based on Phaedo 96-107: the cause of something's F-ness is that thing which has been added to it, such that it is now F - what I call the "ingredient cause" (e.g., the ingredient cause of this coffee's sweetness is the sweetener which was added to it). This would have been an intuitive model of causation for Plato, familiar from Anaxagoras and the Hippocratic writers. Furthermore, all of the Phaedo's peculiar causal principles can be derived from this definition (e.g., that a cause of F-ness cannot itself be un-F). Forms are explicitly identified as universal (ingredient) causes at Phaedo 100. I demonstrate that this is because, for Plato, universal causes are, fundamentally, what Forms are. First, I show that universal causes correspond to various "proto-Forms", e.g., Socratic definitions. Second, I show that the Phaedo is a series of hypothetical arguments, all starting from the assumption that there are universal causes, from which different canonical features of the Forms are derived, e.g., imperceptibility at 65, eternality and unchangingness at 78-80. This interpretation illuminates the Forms' most contentious features. Self-Predication - the thesis that each Form of F-ness "is F" - is a consequence of the Forms' being causes, since any ingredient cause of F-ness must itself be F. Furthermore, the Phaedo indicates that a cause of F-ness "is F" specifically in that the definition of F-ness is true of it. This interpretation also illuminates the semantic innovations made in the Parmenides, Sophist, and Aristotle's Categories. Separation - typically understood as the thesis that Forms are not "in" their participants - would seem to run afoul of my interpretation, since ingredient causes are "added to" things. In the Phaedo, however, to be separate is rather to be unqualifiedly what one is. Separate Forms are thus analogous to maximally determinable properties (e.g., 'is shaped', vis-Ă -vis 'is square'), and in this sense their separation can be seen to derive from their being universal causes.Ph.D.2017-06-30 00:00:0