Argumentum Ad Phaedo

[LeMeerkat]

I decided to re-read my dusty old Plato which was sitting on my bookshelf, beginning with Phaedo, and thought it would be good to start a discussion on the arguments used.
Phaedo pg 12 (in my edition)

Socrates: Are not all things which have opposites generated out of their opposites? I mean, such things as good and evil, just and unjust - and there are innumerable other opposites which are generated out of opposites; I mean to say, for example, that anything which becomes greater must become greater after being less.

Cebes: True.

Socrates: And that which becomes less must have been once greater and then become less.

Cebes: Yes

Socrates: And the weaker is generated from the stronger, and the swifter from the slow.

Cebes: Very true.

Socrates: And the worst is from the better and more the just is from the more unjust?

Cebes: Of course.

Socrates: And is this true of all opposites? and are we convinced that all of them are generated out of opposites?

Cebes: Yes

Socrates: And in this universal opposition of all things, are there not also two intermediate processes which are ever going on, from one to the other, and back again; where there is a greater and a less there is also an intermediated process of increase and diminution and that which grows is said to wax, and that which decays to wane.
[Skipped a paragraph]

Socrates: They are all generated out of one another, and there is a passing process from one to the other?

Cebes: Very true.

Socrates: Is there not an opposite of life, as sleeping is the opposite of waking?

Cebes: Death.

Socrates: and these then are generated. if they are opposites, from one another and have their two intermediate processes also?

Cebes: Of course.

Socrates: Now, I will analyze one of the two pairs of opposites which I have mentioned to you, and also its intermediate processes, and you shall analyze the other to me. The state of sleep is opposed to the state of waking, sleeping; and the process of generation is in the one case falling asleep, and in the other, waking up. Are you agreed about that?

Cebes: Quite agreed.

Socrates: Then, suppose that you analyze life and death to me in the same manner. Is death not opposed to life?

Cebes: Yes

Socrates: What is generated from life?

Cebes: Death

Socrates: and what from death?

Cebes: I can only answer, life.

Socrates: Then the living, whether things or persons, Cebes, are generated from the dead?

Cebes: That is clear, he replied.

This argument is logically sound. But Socrates applies it fallaciously:

Socrates: Then the inference is that our souls are in the world below?

Cebes: That is true.

Socrates: and one of the true processes or generations is visible, for surely the act of dying is visible?

Cebes: Surely.

Socrates: and may not the other be inferred as the complement of nature, who is not to be supposed to go on one leg only? And if not, a corresponding process of generation in death must also be assigned to her?

Cebes: Certainly.

Socrates: And what is that process?

Cebes: Revival.

Socrates: And revival, if there be such a thing, is the birth of the dead into the world of the living?

Cebes: Quite true.

Socrates: Then here is a new way in which we arrive at the inference that the living come from the dead, just as the dead come from the living; and if this is true, then the souls of the dead must be in some place out of which they come again. And this, as I think, has been satisfactorily proved.

It has not been satisfactorily proved. It is fallacious: The fact that the living die and the dead come to life does not prove the existence of souls nor an afterlife.
Thoughts?

 

[Fictionarious]

It seems Socrates and his contemporaries are making the mistake of not considering the mind/personality (what they referred to as a soul, unless I'm mistaken) as a part of life. For if every life must wane to death, and a soul is a portion of a life, then the soul must necessarily wane to death. So excluding the possibility of it's "waiting" anywhere in one particular place to return again. One might as well conclude that the hungers of those living are the hungers of the long dead returned to foreign bodies.

He makes this mistake passingly, with the comment "nature... not supposed to go on one leg only."
Why not choose the head for an analogy? Or the heart? Or some other organ more suitable as the throne of the soul than the leg? Animals have but one of each of those, and so reality may, until proved otherwise, possess only one facet - the visible, or as we in the modern age might put it, the perceivable.

 

[mandangalo18]

It seems this is the old square of opposition: denying one proposition affirms the contradictory opposite.
The square has problems with propositions where the subject has not been shown to exist, I think the second part demonstrates that difficulty.
I had never read that one before, it's kind of cool to see how a big part of classical logic started.

 

[Demojen]

I disagree entirely, that everything has a polar opposite.
But then, I disagree that this universe is based on a dichotomy too, so it's no surprise I'd disagree with Socrates.

 

[jrparri]

I disagree entirely, that everything has a polar opposite.
But then, I disagree that this universe is based on a dichotomy too, so it's no surprise I'd disagree with Socrates.

Seconded.

 

[borrofburi]

Socrates: Are not all things which have opposites generated out of their opposites? I mean, such things as good and evil, just and unjust - and there are innumerable other opposites which are generated out of opposites; I mean to say, for example, that anything which becomes greater must become greater after being less.

No. For instance "electrically neutral" is the opposite of "electrically charge", and yet it would be false to say that we couldn't have electrical charge without neutrons. Socrates argument only works for relative quantities; while it is true to say that you can't have cold without hot because they are relative terms, it is not true to say that 27 kelvin only exists because of some opposite we define it by.