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Plato's Phaedrus - Selections - Comments

Translator R. Hackforth. In classical times this dialog was also called "On Love" and was classified as an "ethical" dialog (Diog. L. iii, 58).

Beh, the solution to my self-riddling on this page is painfully simple: concepts (i.e. rules for using words) set the limits to phenomena; concepts say what the phenomena are -- not vice versa.

Anyone not perplexed by the logic of "the name of a phenomenon", can skip to the selections from the Phaedrus as well as comments about the dialog as such, or to the outline of this page.

Logic riddle arising from the Phaedrus

This page has been rewritten several times over the years, and it is not quite right. One possible solution to my quandary may be that the use of one type of proposition is ambiguous by nature (essence), or, in other words, that a single proposition may have more than one use in the language at the same time. As if I had forgotten this distinction: same sign, different meanings [uses in the language] -- and different ways of looking (CV p. 61) at and different interests (PI § 108) in a same single phenomenon. (But the topic is perplexing to me.)

"Name of a phenomenon"

When I first read this dialog years ago, a trouble arose; if there were elves, then the word 'elf' would be the name of an object, but there aren't, so it isn't. Nor is the word 'elf' the name an "abstract object", i.e. a ghost (PI § 36). An elf's only existence is as a concept -- i.e. as rules for using a word, namely 'elf' -- in our language.

Fine so far maybe, but Plato's Phaedrus talks about love, and then what of the word 'love' -- because isn't that -- not the name of a physical object (as if there were some other kind!) -- but the name of a phenomenon? The answer, that I did not see until later, is, Very well then, it is the "name of a phenomenon" -- only remember that a phenomenon is not an object!

A phenomenon, whether love or thought or sorrow, is not an "abstract object" (whatever that is when it's at home, where it is nothing, air).

In other words, we can't use the word 'phenomenon' to smuggle back in the notion that words are names and the meaning of a name is the object the name stands for, whether that object is tangible or "abstract", i.e. ghostly, by a slight of hand (PI § 308). The conjuring trick is the introduction of nebulosity, of the picture: a billowing cloud is what an abstract object looks like, an object you cannot see or touch or hear -- in other words, a ghost.

The word 'ghost' is not a noun substantive, i.e. it is not a name; it is not the name of an object or any sort. Its only reality is that the word 'ghost' has a use in our language, in fairy tales. (The following combination of words is an example of word magic: 'an imperceptible but real object'.)

A metaphysical picture versus a logic of language

"An abstract term names an abstract object." That idea belongs to metaphysics, i.e. it is speculation based on the presumption that one can "guess" at the meaning of an abstract term ("name of an abstraction"), although one cannot know it (if knowing = being able to tell others what one knows, which is the Socratic test of knowing in philosophy).

Contrast that with logic-philosophy's definition of 'meaning', in which an "abstract term" names a concept, i.e. a convention for using a word in the language, a convention (rule) that is public and therefore knowable, in contrast to a "meaning" that is hidden and unknowable. (Contrast guessing at the "meaning" with describing "the use of a word in the language".)

Unlike metaphysics, logic is able to make an objective distinction (in contrast to an unobjective "whatever seems to make sense" distinction) between sense and nonsense (i.e. between language with meaning and language without meaning), without which philosophy is mere babble of words.

Metaphysics' view of language meaning has stood in the way of our understanding what gives words meaning in our language since the beginning, but it needs to end. There is no home for "abstract objects" in philosophy. Recognizing that is the beginning of clarity = the end of "feeling surrounded by vagueness and confusion".

The discussion of Plato's Phaedrus follows: words about whose meaning we are at variance, and the illusions created by the written word.

Introduction

Background - Context - Preliminary

The distinction between sense and nonsense is called, in my jargon, 'the logic of language' -- (although that expression itself is from the Preface to Wittgenstein's TLP) -- and that is the point of view of my comments about this dialog, namely to preserve that distinction. In the Phaedrus Plato, apart from giving a picture of the philosophical or Socratic way of life, makes a distinction between words about whose meaning we agree and words about whose meaning we are "at variance" (263a-b). That distinction -- and what, in my view, is mistaken in Plato's account of it -- is what interests me in this dialog (and thus there are no comments about the phenomenon of love). (But I have also included Plato's discussion of wisdom and the written word.)

Are "words about whose meaning we are at variance" the names of things whose nature is not clear to us? (These disputed words would be the names of "abstractions". Plato's picture of Forms: 'love' as the name of an abstract object, the common nature of all love as an abstract object. In this picture it does not matter than 'love' names phenomena rather than perceptible objects.)

If there were no little word 'if'  (Wenn das Wörtchen 'wenn' nicht wär)

If in philosophy we define words, not objects (Philosophy is not one of the sciences; it does not make empirical hypotheses about what things are), and if in philosophy we define words, not abstractions ("abstract objects", the figments of metaphysics, pictured lying on "the other side of the sky"), then what can philosophy make clear about the variance Plato points out -- if not the meaning of words? If not for the little word 'if'. In logic we define words not things -- but in philosophy?

"Philosophical investigations -- conceptual investigations" (Z § 458); we are investigating, not a phenomenon, but a concept, and therefore the use of a word (PI § 383). Indeed, by the word 'concept' I shall mean 'rules for using a word', nothing else.

[The context of the two paragraphs above is logic and metaphysics, but that is not all I think philosophy is. And philosophy's view of Socratic, as well as of Platonic ethics, is very different, according to my account. As in the next paragraph.]

Plato says that men are at variance about "the greatest and highest truths" (Statesman 285d-286b), such as "what virtue is" and "what the good for man is". And so, in this dialog too, the discussion concerns "no small matter, but how to live" (Republic 352d), but in this instance, as in the Euthyphro (6d-7d), with how to know which variant is the truth.

Outline of this page ...

Introduction (continued) - The Phenomenon of Love

There is a phenomenon (various phenomena) named 'love', although it is not so clear how to explain that word's meaning to anyone; how to teach someone to use the word 'love' is not easy to say (One possibility may be "play-acted definitions"; another is "definition by related concepts").

In the Phaedrus Plato does not investigate that word's meaning (the discussion that follows notwithstanding). And to say, as Plato does, that we make assertions about the nature of love and disagree about what that nature is -- may be very different from saying that we are "at variance" about the meaning of the word 'love'.

Maybe we could say that we "define the phenomenon" of love when we describe the way we normally use the word 'love'. But that is very different from stating a thesis about "what love really is", which is what Plato does, or tries to do, in this dialog.

Unless they are seen against the background of the connection Wittgenstein made between grammar and sense and nonsense (BB p. 65), my comments may not be understood. Because there are many meanings of the word 'meaning' different from the one Wittgenstein selected for his philosophical investigations.

In Plato's Phaedrus, 'meaning' = 'the nature of the thing named', and therefore Plato can say that people disagree about "the meaning of love". Although it is possible to be interested in meaning from a variety of points of view (PI § 108), I will not follow Plato in using the word 'meaning' his way -- because that would obliterate the very distinctions we need if we are not to misunderstand the logic of our language in the just way that Plato does.

Three classes of words

Nevertheless to ask for a "real definition" of love (which is Aristotle's equivalent to Plato's sense of 'meaning') is different from asking for "a real definition of time" or for "a real definition of God" -- because in the latter two cases there are only definitions of words (ink marks on paper, spoken sounds) and not "definitions of phenomena" -- because the words 'time' and 'God' do not name phenomena (That is not their role in our language).

Further, although the word 'thinking' is the name of a variety of phenomena, the word 'mind' is not a name (either of an object or place or of a phenomenon). There are, then, three categories or classes of words noted here so far (Plato only recognizes two). Those classes are: (1) names of objects (e.g. 'book', 'cow'); (2) names of phenomena (e.g. 'love', 'thinking'); and (3) non-names (e.g. 'mind', 'time'). The ways we are "at variance" are different in cases (2) and (3), because there are no "real definitions" in case (3).

It would be clearer, I think, if we did not speak of definitions of things, but only of definitions of words. In philosophy -- or at least in logic of language -- we define words, not "things" (Recall the definition of the word 'noun' as "name of a person, place or thing" -- but anything and everything is a member of the class 'thing'; the same is the case with the word 'phenomenon'). A logic of language is a tool for understanding: we invent tools for the work we want to do, Wittgenstein's revision of the conceptual tool 'grammar', for example, and we also exclude tools that would make a muddle of our work. (Although we can't very well exclude such ubiquitous words as 'thing' and 'phenomenon' from our investigations, we should be wary of them: they cover up a multitude of differences.)

Distinction between a phenomenon and a concept

We are not analyzing a phenomenon but a concept, and therefore the use of a word. (cf. PI § 383)

But why? There are two parts to this: (1) logic of language is conceptual investigation (Z § 458); that is its remit (I do not think that is the limit of philosophy (for there is also ethics), but I do think it is the limit of logic and metaphysics). And further, (2) in this particular case it is also a question of what interests me: Plato may well be interested in the phenomenon of love (PI § 108: "it is possible to be interested in a phenomenon in a variety of ways") -- and indeed classical scholars gave Plato's Phaedrus the title "On Love". I, however, am not.

What you cannot talk about is "the phenomenon of geometric points", because 'point' is not the name of anything, not even of a collection of rules for that word's use (i.e. grammar describes the use -- i.e. meaning -- of a word in the language, but the grammar [i.e. description] itself is not the meaning of the word). [Defining self-control ('self-control')]

The setting of the dialog: trees and open country

229a - SOCRATES: Let us turn off here and walk along the Ilissus; then we can sit down in any quiet spot you choose.

PHAEDRUS: It's convenient, isn't it, that I chance to be barefoot; you of course always are so. There will be no trouble in wading in the stream ... 227a-d - On the instructions of our common friend Acumenus I take my walks on the open roads; he tells me that is more invigorating than walking in the colonnades.

SOCRATES: Yes, he's right in saying so.... However, I'm so eager to hear about [your morning's discussion concerning love] that I vow I won't leave you even if you extend your walk as far a Megara, up to the walls and back again as recommended by Herodicus. 230d - I'm a lover of learning, and trees and open country won't teach me anything, whereas men in the town do. Yet you seem to have discovered a recipe for getting me out [into the countryside]. 236e - a lover of discourse.

"... trees and open country won't teach me anything". This is because trees can't be engaged in dialectic, nor can open country (What is amoral cannot teach man morality), and it is morality -- or, 'ethics' in Greek (In Plato's words: "we are discussing no small matter, but how to live") -- that Socrates wants to learn. (The historical Socrates, according to Aristotle, concerned himself only with logic -- i.e. dialectic, definition -- and ethics.)

"I only know my own ignorance"

235c - SOCRATES: ... I am of course well aware that it can't be anything originating in my own mind, for I know [only] my own ignorance ... [cf. Diog. L. ii, 32]

Plato in his philosophy often suggests answers to philosophical questions whereas the historical Socrates, according to Plato's Apology (although not Xenophon's Memorabilia), had only questions. But Plato shows that he nonetheless wants to connect the Socrates of the Phaedrus, who is a literary character, to the historical Socrates, because he sometimes has Socrates say that he must have heard the answer from someone else (cf. Theaetetus 201c-d), although he can never remember from whom.

Socrates says that with respect to wisdom he knows no more than his own ignorance (Phaedrus 235c), but that if we do not seek wisdom then our lives are not worth living (Apology 23b, 38a). Following the Delphic precept "Know thyself", Socrates says that he seeks to learn what kind of creature he is (Phaedrus 230a), because if he knows that he will know what the specific excellence proper to man is, and therefore how he should live the life that is the good for man.

Socrates is stopped by his inner voice

242b-c - SOCRATES: At the moment when I was about to cross the river, dear friend, there came to me my familiar divine sign -- which always checks when on the point of doing something or other -- and all at once I seem to hear a voice, forbidding me to leave the spot until I had made atonement for some offense to heaven. Now, you must know, I am a seer -- not a very good one, it's true, but, like a poor scholar, good enough for my own purposes -- hence I understand already well enough what my offense was.

Socrates' "divine sign" or Daemon (daimon) is alluded to in his indictment.

260a - SOCRATES: "Not to be lightly rejected" [Iliad, 2.361], Phaedrus, is any word of the wise. Perhaps they are right; one has to see.

A proverb has long survived because it accords with human experience. But on the other hand, time is not proof against folly (e.g. the persistence of the misunderstood grammar of 'geometric point'), and what the Fool tells King Lear may be applied to all mankind: "You should not have grown old before you grew wise." And, therefore, Plato says: you have to look and see: even the time-honored must stand up to the test of reason (cf. Republic 339a, 332b-c).

Words about whose Meanings we Disagree ("Abstract terms")

The following is related to the search for "a standard of judgment" in the Euthyphro (6d-7d) -- i.e. for an object of comparison that is objective and universally accepted, as e.g. in the case of length and of weight. We are not "at variance" with one another about the meaning of words where we can employ standards of measurement to resolve any dispute about what length anything is or how much it weighs.

Another type of standard is shown by some "concrete terms" such as 'clay' (Theaetetus 147a-c), the common nature (essence) of which is defined for us and serves as the standard for saying whether or not anything is to be called 'clay'. (And a rose by any other name is a rose, but is love regardless of whether it is called 'love' or not love? In Plato's view it must be; it must be that there is an essence of love, as there is an essence of clay.)

But for many "abstract terms" it seems there is no standard of measurement, and without that standard, we are at variance about the meaning of those terms. And so Plato asks how are we to determine what the truth is? For it cannot be acceptable to philosophy -- which seeks the truth -- that the meanings of those terms is simply a matter of whatever seems or doesn't seem correct to someone or other (PI § 258).

Human beings have opinions about what love is, about what justice and the good are, but Plato does not want opinions, but knowledge, and without that knowledge "we might get angry and be enemies to one another" (Euthyphro 7d).

Words about whose meaning we are "at variance"

263a-b - SOCRATES: Well now, is not the following assertion obviously true -- that are some words about which we all agree, and others about which we are at variance?

PHAEDRUS: I think I grasp your meaning but you might make it still plainer.

SOCRATES: When someone utters the word 'iron' or 'silver' we all have the same object before our minds, haven't we?

PHAEDRUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: But what about the words 'just' and 'good'? Don't we diverge, and dispute not only with one another but with our own selves?

PHAEDRUS: Yes indeed.

SOCRATES: So in some cases we agree and in others we don't.

PHAEDRUS: Quite so.

SOCRATES: Now in which of the cases are we more apt to be mislead, and in which is rhetoric more effective?

PHAEDRUS: Plainly in the case where we fluctuate.

SOCRATES: Then the intending student of the art of rhetoric ought, in the first place, to make a systematic division of words, and get hold of some mark distinguishing the two kinds of words, those namely in the use of which the multitude are bound to fluctuate, and those in which they are not.

Two and a half millennia ago, Plato identified the most puzzling question in logic -- namely, What is the meaning of a word? But because Plato presumed that 'word' = 'name', he was never able to give an account of how we actually use the words of our language, most of which are not names.

Are the words 'justice' and 'goodness' names (Plato regards it as obvious that they are (Phaedo 65d)) -- i.e. are they used in our language as names of objects? And now we must say what we mean by the word 'object' -- i.e. whether it is useful to the philosophical understanding to designate by the word 'object' anything other than things like iron and silver -- i.e. things we can see or touch or hear?

Or should logic-philosophy also call abstractions (such as 'justice' and 'goodness') names of objects? This is the attendant picture: "abstract objects" = "invisible objects" (spirits, ghosts of meaning). That is at best a metaphysical theory of language meaning (cf. the "theory of abstraction") -- but from the viewpoint of what I am calling "Wittgenstein's logic of language", it is only a false account of the grammar = logic of our language.

Metaphysical solutions to questions of logic are not solutions

Recognizing a problem is one thing, but offering a metaphysical solution to it another. Asking what is the meaning of a common name and noting the absence of a common nature is one thing. But to explain this absence as Plato does with his "theory of Forms" (invisible, existing "apart from sensible things", common natures) is another.

Plato's picture of Forms stands in the way of seeing how we actually use common names. Rather than showing the truth, it blocks the way to our seeking and therefore also to finding it. (Of course that is the danger when any philosophy becomes an exclusive way of looking at things.)

And that is a trouble with metaphysics, that its pictures stand in the way of the truth. It replaces the facts before our eyes with a fanciful picture of its own creation (Drury, DW p. 100).

Is this "Plato's theory of meaning", that "We are not taught the meanings of words -- Our soul recollects them from before it was entombed in our body"? Is that Plato's "logic of language" -- i.e. is it a way to distinguish sense from nonsense in an objective way -- indeed, in any way at all? (That his notion of pre-existent Forms fails to make that distinction may be, and so it may also not be, Plato's own view in Parmenides 135b-c.) Plato does not have a logic of language, but his work only suggests the following misleading picture of our language's grammar.

"Words are names, and the meaning of a name is the object the name stands for, if not a visible object, then an invisible one." (Cf. PI § 1)

The historical Socrates did, on the other hand, according to my account, have a logic of language.

Agreement and Variance

Plato asks for "a systematic division of words", for "some distinguishing mark" between these two classes of words. Wittgenstein makes -- or tries to make -- that division on the basis of how words are defined (how their meaning is explained); to that type of word alone which is defined ostensively -- i.e. by pointing -- he restricts the title 'name of object'. Thus the following "division" or distinction between name-of-object-words and non-name-of-object-words.

For a large class of cases -- though not for all -- in which we employ the word 'meaning' it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.

And the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer. (PI § 43)

I have written an account of Wittgenstein's logic of language, of his identification of logic with grammar (in his jargon), that describes the elements that were the foundation of Wittgenstein's thinking in logic-philosophy. That account is concise but it is not short, because the meaning of language is deeply perplexing to all of us: language contains the same traps for everyone when we try to understand its meaning; we follow the same false grammatical analogies: e.g. because there are words like 'mind' and 'desk' and 'time' and 'love' that look as if they all functioned the same way (CV p. 15) -- namely as names of objects -- but "objects" that are, in our usual confused and confusing rhetoric, either concrete or abstract, tangible or intangible, visible or invisible.

Are there real definitions of non-name-of-object words?

The idea that in philosophy there are "real definitions" of non-name-of-object words -- does it mistake the connection between grammatical rules and sense and nonsense? That is, are all such words defined only by rules (conventions), hypotheses being logically impossible (because if a word does not name anything, then it is not possible to have a theory about what the thing it names is)?

Is the category 'non-name-of-object word' ambiguous? For example is 'philosophy' one such word? But Wittgenstein has theories about the nature of philosophy, and yet 'philosophy' is not the name of an object (although the noun 'philosophy' may suggest a nebulous spirit to us (PI § 36)) -- e.g. philosophy books are not philosophy. The word 'philosophy' is the name of a subject (e.g. the study of logic, ethics, and metaphysics). Philosophy is not an object -- but it is also not a non-object -- i.e. we have to reject "the grammar that tries to force itself on us here" (ibid. § 304). Which grammatical category should we place the word 'philosophy' in then?

My account of the logic of this language is poor in categories. The present categories -- basically, 'object', 'non-object' -- are not adequate.

"To begin at the beginning, 'abstraction' may mean 'abstract object' or 'abstract term'. An abstract term is a word: what gives that word meaning? Is it an object the word names, an "abstract object", or a rule for using the word? What is an abstract object when it's at home? There are the examples of Frege's geometric objects and Plato's Forms ("catness"), figments conjured up by the imagination."

The noun 'philosophy' might be defined this way: Philosophy is the activity of philosophizing, and there is a history of philosophizing's results as well. And so the word 'philosophy' is the name of something -- but not of something like 'water' and 'cat' are. Water and cats can be touched and heard and seen, but philosophy cannot. Nonetheless philosophy is not a figment.

Figments conjured up by words

So maybe the categories needed are 'abstractions that are figments' and 'abstractions that are not figments'. About the latter it is possible to make hypotheses, but not about the first. For figments there are only rules for using words: there can be an hypothesis about what Plato meant by his term 'Form', but not about what Forms really are -- because that is the same question. (Note that figments are not nonsense -- they are not undefined combinations of words.)

My thinking is quite unclear here. But the following, which I wrote earlier, needs in some way to be revised.

"It seems that the principal subject-matter of philosophy is abstractions. But what does that mean and how can it be? If 'abstraction' = 'non-name word', then about what would philosophy invent hypotheses -- a word? Philosophy can only describe the use of the word in the language."

If someone asks how Socrates defines the sign -- i.e. the purely physical part of a word (e.g. spoken sounds, ink marks on paper) in contrast to its use in the language -- 'knowledge' then we can describe the criterion Socrates sets for saying that someone 'knows' or 'does not know' something: To 'know' is to 'be able to give an account of what one claims to know to others' (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1). Thus if someone can defend his account against refutation by cross-questioning, we say that person 'knows' what he claims to know.

But if someone asks, "What does Socrates think knowledge is?" and he is not asking about which standard Socrates set for saying that anyone knows something in philosophy, then what would that person be asking about? It is not possible to have a theory about "what knowledge really is", only to describe how we use the word 'know' (in which case we would have to point out that Socrates sense of 'know', like Wittgenstein's sense of 'meaning', is not the only sense of that word).

If someone asks "what God is", he is trying to treat the word 'God' as if it were the name of something (following a false analogy, based on the picture that all nouns are names of things). But we don't use the word 'God' to name anything, as is shown by the question, In what way would the world be different "if God did not exist"? The word 'God' is an idea-word or notion-word or concept-word or "abstraction", not a name-of-object word. -- What would it mean to say that someone had a theory about the nature of a particular idea? We define idea-words, not idea-things (whatever an "idea-thing" is when it's at home).

Suppose someone wanted to use the word 'define' to mean 'state an hypothesis about the cause or nature of something', which is one meaning of 'define' that Aristotle states as he gives the example of the word 'thunder' defined both verbally and hypothetically. -- Is it clear in all cases, even in all cases of names-of-object words (as 'thunder' is), what 'define' might mean?

[In] considering anything ... what do you regard as essential to it ...? Suppose the question to be "What is this desk?" and consider which of the two following answers appeals to you as the most immediately relevant: (a) wood, (b) something to put books and papers on. The two answers ... are not contradictory. They are of different kinds. And the immediate and instinctive choice of one rather than the other shows one to be by temperament inclined to materialism or to teleology. (W.K.C. Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers (1950), p. 20-21)

In what Guthrie has written there is the obliteration of the distinction between verbal and real definitions (Z § 458). "... something to put books and papers on" belongs to a verbal definition of the word 'desk', whereas saying that the desk is made of wood, if it were the case that all desks were made of wood -- but how could that be the case unless it were the case because of a verbal definition ("something made of wood to put books and papers on")? -- would belong to a real definition, if there were a "real definition of desk", which there isn't.

The word 'desk' would be meaningless to a rabbit if a rabbit could talk, because desks have no place in the rabbit way of life. There is a difference between asking why some man has made an object and, as it were, why God has made one; a real definition must answer the latter question. Therefore there is no "real definition of desk".

Guthrie's remark shows just why Wittgenstein's logic of language is a Gestalt shift in our understanding of language and its role in philosophical thinking.

Guthrie speaks of "replies to what Aristotle called the eternal question: What is the reality?" (p. 20). But the questions Guthrie asks are different questions: What is the meaning of the word 'desk'? versus (perhaps) What is the material from which the object designated -- i.e. pointed to -- by the word 'desk' is made? That is a difference in logic, not in temperament.

"Real Definitions of Concepts"

Are there "real definitions of concepts"? That is a fundamental question in logic of language -- but only if we say what we mean by 'concept' in this context. Because as far as I can see, normally by the word 'concept' we mean 'rules for using a word'. But what would 'real definition of rules for using a word' mean, an hypothesis about what those rules are? Is it an hypothesis that by the word 'simile' we mean 'a comparison using the words 'like' or 'as' '? It is a fact about the rule for using of the word 'simile' in our language, but it is in nowise hidden -- and therefore why classify that proposition as an hypothesis? Is it an hypothesis that 'volleyball' is the name of a game? Is it an hypothesis that we define the word 'fire' by pointing to examples of fires? Are there reasonable grounds for doubting every statement of fact? (That is a grammatical not an empirical question.)

Real definitions are not given for words (i.e. 'signs' meaning 'physical objects') but only for "the things words are the names of". The false picture of language meaning: (1) that all words are names of things, (2) that the meaning of a name is the thing the name stands for, and (3) that therefore wherever there is a word there can also be a theory about the thing the word stands for.

Unsuitable forms of expression

Rather than 'abstraction' it is far clearer to use the expression non-name word, if it is far clearer, which it's no longer clear to me if it is. If it is clearer, then the only way out of that cage of self-imprisonment is to set the misleading form of expression aside (PI § 339). The word 'abstraction' or 'abstract object' is of no use to philosophy except to suggest a confusing picture of our language's grammar, if that is what it does. But is to set that word aside to dodge a philosophical problem? What philosophical problem? There is no philosophical problem here -- only unclarity about the meaning of the word 'abstraction'.

Because a false picture of how our language works is what the picture suggested by the expression 'abstract object' would be: the picture of an invisible something: A ghost is conjured up by our imagination as if the words 'abstract object' cast a magic spell. From which follows the unavoidable question: What is the abstract thing when it's at home, the mind e.g.?

The issue here is far deeper than simply: "The philosopher says: Look at things this way!" (CV p. 61). Because the notion of real definitions of concepts or real definitions of non-name-words [non-name-nouns or non-naming-nouns] has been since its beginning a -- or even the -- root of confusion [muddled thinking] in philosophy. A word is simply sounds or ink marks and the question is what gives those sounds or marks meaning? And are those who say there are "real definitions of abstract objects" able to answer that question by making an objective distinction between sense and nonsense? What someone is inclined or disinclined to say, impressionistic definitions do not.

Words about whose meaning we are at variance. Often times an abstract substantive, the word 'justice' for example. What would it mean to say that one had a theory about the meaning of a non-name-of-object word? (The noun 'justice' suggests what the words 'just man' do not: namely an elusive "something"; whereas 'just man' only suggests a way of life we can describe. In this context, justice, holiness, courage -- the difficulty is not that we do not know what those things are: the difficulty is that they are not things.)

Does "What is love?" ask for an hypothesis or for a rule of grammar? When Wittgenstein writes that "Love is not a feeling" (Z § 504) -- i.e. that 'love' is not a sensation-word (like 'pain') but a disposition-word (like 'mourning') -- he is not stating an hypothesis about "what love is", but giving an account of how we use the word 'love'.

But when Wittgenstein says that philosophy is a battle against being mystified by language (PI § 109), that is not a rule of grammar, but an hypothesis about "what philosophy is".

Do the words 'philosophy' and 'love' name abstractions, and thus it is possible to have both verbal and real definitions of those words? Once again foundering on the word 'abstraction'. And so the distinction between figment and non-figment words seems clearer.

The "presumption of abstracted meaning"

Whence the word 'abstraction'? From the "theory of abstraction" (or maybe, if it is found in Aristotle, the "presumption of abstraction" -- that we form general ideas is taken as granted, that we "abstract" the common nature found in all the particular things bearing a common name) -- i.e. the word is a metaphysical term smuggled into ordinary language, where it does a lot of mischief -- in the present case by standing in the way (ibid. § 339) of making the meaning of the expression 'name of a phenomenon' clear.

Is what Plato says about "variance" in the Phaedrus nonsense? Only if it is presented as a dispute about the meaning of the word 'love' -- as if that were what we were at variance about. For example, it does not belong to the definition of the word 'love' whether the effect of being loved is beneficial or harmful to the person loved. That would belong to an hypothesis about the phenomenon of love.

Question: When Wittgenstein writes that philosophical investigations are conceptual rather than factual investigations (Z § 458) -- is he stating a rule of grammar, or an hypothesis about what philosophy really is (an hypothesis about what philosophical investigations really are)? The question is whether Wittgenstein's statement can be false, and whether if it is true rather than false, then it is false to say that by the word 'philosophy' we mean, as we historically have meant, "the love of wisdom in logic, ethics, and/or metaphysics".

Is 'love' the name of "a certain definite entity" -- is its "meaning" the Form of Love?

263c-e - SOCRATES: Well then, shall we reckon 'love' as one of the disputed terms, or as one of the other sort?

PHAEDRUS: As a disputed term, surely. Otherwise can you suppose it would have been possible for you to say of it what you said just now, namely that it is harmful both to the beloved and the lover, and then to turn around and say that it is really the greatest of goods?

SOCRATES: An excellent point. But now tell me this ... Did I define 'love' at the beginning of my speech?... Did Lysias at the beginning of his discourse on love [which Phaedrus had heard that morning] compel us to conceive of it as a certain definite entity, with a meaning he had himself decided upon? And did he proceed to bring all his subsequent remarks, from first to last, into line with that meaning?

A child, when confronted with a new word, as if by instinct, asks, "What's that?" -- always with the assumption that the "that" is some type of object, some thing (which can be a ghost, anything you please, but must be some sort of object). Wittgenstein: "Nominalists make the mistake of treating all words as names, and so of not really describing their use" (PI § 383).

But is the word 'love' then not a name, the name of a phenomenon or phenomena? We must distinguish between and between, because there may be more than one type of name. If we say the word 'name', don't we ordinarily think of such things as Fluffy the cat? One points and shoots, as it were: that is ostensive definition ('King's College is on fire').

But there are other names that are not so simply defined -- namely, the names of phenomena like 'thinking' and 'love'. In the case of 'thinking', we call lots of "things" by the name 'thinking', but it is not too difficult to say what they are (to enumerate them), e.g. "operating with signs" (BB p. 6, 15-16; cf. Theaetetus 189e-190a): talking to oneself, writing a philosophical investigation, making a mathematical calculation; but also wordlessly measuring a length of cloth or hunting a rabbit on the lawn; and so on and so on.

Note that grammatical accounts are not concerned with mental states or "occult processes". They are concerned only with describing what is public about phenomena (PI § 125); -- and note that they only describe what we find when we look: they do not set requirements that language must conform to (e.g. the Platonic requirement that the meaning of a common name must be a common nature).

Like any other aspect of our life -- Cf. the many points of view from which the duck-rabbit phenomenon might be investigated (psychological, physiological, logical) -- love can be looked at from many points of view, from an ethical point of view as well as a logic-of-language point of view, and surely the ethical point of view would belong to any Socratic investigation of love. But before we can discuss the nature of the phenomenon of love, as Plato does, we must first define the word 'love' (the phenomena of that word's use in our language), for how else shall we know what we are talking about? Logic precedes metaphysics, and when the philosopher does not respect this order, the result is the conceptual confusion found in the first book of Plato's Republic ('justice') and in the Charmides ('temperance').

What very general categories, then, may we identify? Some words are (1) names that are defined by "pointing to the bearer of the name" (as is the case with 'cow' and 'river'); and (2) some words are not names at all (e.g. 'mind', 'geometric point', 'concept', as well as the obvious examples of 'this' and 'the') but have entirely different uses in our language; and (3) other words are names of phenomena, and these are not defined by simple ostensive definitions, although some may be defined by play-acting. The words 'love' and 'thinking' belong to the third category.

Why are romantic, brotherly, and maternal love in the same category of phenomena? Do they share a defining common nature? No, but neither do board, card, and ball games, and yet they too are in a single category. So it appears that the absence of a common nature is what makes a concept fluid -- i.e. its borders not sharply defined. (But is that the cause of our being at variance?)

The illusion of wisdom created by the written word

274c-275b - SOCRATES: [There is a story that the Egyptian god Theuth, who invented the art of writing, said to the then king of Egypt] "Here, O king, is a branch of learning that will make the people of Egypt wiser and improve their memories; my discovery provides a recipe for memory and wisdom." But the king answered and said, "[You] have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder.

"And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows."

Here, as everywhere in Socratic philosophy, a criterion is needed for saying whether someone knows something or is merely "filled with the conceit" of knowing something (Sophist 229c-230d) -- i.e. thinks he is wise when he is not (fancies he knows what he does not know) (Apology 29a). And I know of no higher standard in philosophy than that set by Socrates: If anyone knows anything he can give an account of what he knows to others (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1; cf. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §§ 210, 208). If I am able to describe what I have learned by reading, making clear any obscurities in the original text, then it may be that I understand somewhat what the author of that text has understood.

Plato's myth about the Egyptian god Theuth is not the common story of the origin of writing in Greece:

And if thy native country was Phoenicia,
What need to slight thee? came not Cadmus thence,
Who gave to Greece her books and art of writing?
(verse by Zenodotus the Stoic about Zeno of Citium, Diog. L. vii, 30)

The Phoenician Cadmus was believed to have brought writing to the ancient Greek city of Thebes. Hesiod's Work and Days [circa 700 B.C.] speaks of "the land of Cadmus at seven-gated Thebes" (tr. Evelyn-White). See also Herodotus [c. 485-425], History v, 58: "These Phoenicians who came with Cadmus ... brought to Greece, when they settled in it, various matters of learning and, very notably, the alphabet, which in my opinion had not been known to the Greeks before" (tr. Grene).

275c-d - SOCRATES: ... anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who takes it over from him, on the supposition that such writing will provide something reliable and permanent, much be exceedingly simple-minded; he must really be ignorant of [the Egyptian king's] utterance, if he images that written words can do anything more than remind one who knows that which the writing is concerned with.

Wittgenstein: whatever an insight has cost the philosopher, it will cost you too (cf. CV p. 13), which is one reason why philosophy cannot be easy. But it is not true that written words can do more than remind us of our own thoughts (Why would Plato say that? Although Wittgenstein says somewhat the same in the Preface to the TLP, he says the contrary in the Preface to the Philosophical Investigations) -- the words of others can put new thoughts into our heads, either their author's own thoughts, or thoughts of our own invention that the obscurity of the text may suggest to us.

[The] system of government and administration [of Egypt's early dynasties] could not operate without a method of writing, which we find in use both in elaborate hieroglyphics and in the rapid cursive hand of the accounting scribe. It already possessed not only phonetic signs representing a whole syllable or groups of consonants but also the alphabetic signs, each of which stood for one consonant; true alphabetic letters having thus been discovered in Egypt two thousand five hundred years before their use by any other people. Had the Egyptian been less a creature of habit, he might have discarded his syllabic signs 3,500 years before Christ, and have written with an alphabet of twenty-four letters.... That the writing of Egypt spread to Phoenicia and furnished the classic world with an alphabet, is in a measure due to this convenient writing material [namely, papyrus], as well as to the method of writing upon it with ink. (Breasted, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest (1905/08), iii, v))

But the history of philosophy is written history

... we are obliged to draw our meagre knowledge of [the] first three centuries [of the Memphite supremacy of the early thirteen century B.C.] almost entirely from material documents, the monuments which it has left us. In some degree such a task is like attempting to reconstruct a history of Athens in the age of Pericles, based entirely upon the temples, the sculptures, vases, and other material remains surviving from his time. While the multifold life which was then unfolding in Athens involved a mental endowment and condition of state and society which Egypt, even at her best, never knew, it must not be forgotten that, tremendous as is the impression which we receive from the monuments of the Old Kingdom, they are but the skeleton upon which we might put flesh, and endue the whole with life, if but the chief literary monuments of the time had survived. (Breasted, vi)

The history of philosophy is a history in words. Mistakes may be made in judging whether a document is historiography or fable (myth of origin, nation-building chronology), but not whether or not it is philosophy. (It's true though that Plato is not here to defend his words against being misunderstood.)

The written word cannot defend itself

275c-e - SOCRATES: ... that's the strange thing about writing, which makes it truly analogous to painting. The painter's products stand before us as though they were alive, but if you question them, they maintain a most majestic silence. It is the same with written words; they seem to talk to you as though they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say, from a desire to be instructed, they go on telling you just the same thing forever. [Cf. Protagoras 329a]

And once a thing is put in writing, the composition, whatever it may be, drifts all the place, getting into the hands not only of those who understand it, but equally of those who have no business with it; it doesn't know how to address the right people, and not address the wrong. And when it is ill-treated and unfairly abused it always needs its parent to come to its help, being unable to defend or help itself.

"... of those who have no business with it." And so Wittgenstein says that he is writing for a few friends scattered around the world (CV p. 6). But Plato has already said this.

276a-b - SOCRATES: But now tell me, is there another sort of discourse, that is brother to the written speech, but of unquestioned legitimacy? Can we see how it originates, and how much better and more effective it is than the other?

PHAEDRUS: What sort of discourse have you now in mind, and what is its origin?

SOCRATES: The sort that goes together with knowledge, and is written in the soul of the hearer, that can defend itself, and knows to whom it should speak and to whom it should say nothing.

PHAEDRUS: You mean no dead discourse, but the living speech, the original of which the written discourse may fairly be called a kind of image.

Here Plato commends dialectic -- i.e. Socrates' method of face to face question and answer, resulting in either agreement or refutation -- as the best way to philosophize, because when cross-questioned we must demonstrate that we know what we think we know (and should not think we know if we do not, Apology 21d). There is also this, that whereas when writing we can make unchallenged assertions, face to face, if we proceed step by step, an able questioner will expose any unclarity in meaning, faultiness in logic, or falseness in our assertions.

Thus in dialectic, words not only can -- but must -- be defended by their speaker (Phaedrus 277a). (But writing can also be a preparation for dialectic; face to face discourse may be better if we have already put our own thoughts to the test, to defend or refute them.)

The written word (which serves both for memory and for refreshment in old age) and the discourse of the dialectician

276c-d - SOCRATES: [One who writes] with serious intent [writes words that can] speak in their own defense [and] present the truth adequately. [When he writes he collects] a store of refreshment both for his own memory, against the day "when age oblivious comes", and for all such as tread in his footsteps ... And when other men resort to other pastimes, regaling themselves with drinking parties and suchlike, he will doubtless prefer to indulge in the recreation I refer to.

276e-277a - SOCRATES: But far more excellent, I think, is the [discourse] which employs the art of dialectic. The dialectician selects a soul of the right type, and in it he plants and sows his words founded on knowledge, words which can defend both themselves and him who planted them ...

What is means 'to know a subject' (Plato)

Plato's following definition of 'knowing a subject' is: (1) being able to isolate your subject in a definition, (2) and then identify all its subclasses. See the method of definition by division in Plato's Sophist 218c ff. and Philebus 16d-17a. (My page about the branches of philosophy may be an instance, good or bad, of what Plato means.)

277b - [To] know the truth about the subject [you] speak or write about ... you must be able to isolate it in definition, and having so defined it you must next understand how to divide it into kinds, until you reach the limit of the division ...

266b - Whenever I deem another man able to discern an objective unity and plurality ... it is those that have this ability whom ... I call dialecticians.

These statements seem to place the Phaedrus very far away from Socrates' common nature definitions. What does Plato mean by 'definition' in 277b -- i.e. how does one "isolate" (mark the limits of) one's subject-matter? And what does 'objective' mean in 266b? (Can a Platonic Form be objective?)

270a - ... recognize the nature of wisdom and folly ...

I have already told many of these "stories" elsewhere in my pages, and although a twice-told story may be tiresome for the listener, the teller of the tale may benefit from the variations in its re-telling. For each time I retell a story, I tell it a bit differently, and this, I hope, reflects my better understanding -- or better realization of my lack of understanding -- of the story (cf. Phaedrus 276d). As it is, this page is still not right, although I have rewritten its Introduction and comments many times more than once. (The comparison of philosophy to Proteus.)

The distinction between the concepts 'phenomenon' and 'the use of a word' (A grammatical reminder)

Is 'name of a phenomenon' a category of language use, a "part of speech" in Wittgenstein's sense?

As a reminder (grammatical) (PI § 89) of the way out of my perplexity about our concept 'phenomena', for myself I have written a simple summary in words of one syllable. Which I am unlikely to remember the existence of.

"It seems true that time is unreal. Because if the word 'time' is not the name of anything, then how can time be real?" Many years ago I wrote that the word 'time' is not the name of an object. But it is also not the name of a phenomenon, although -- the meaning of the word 'phenomenon' is so nebulous, so opaque, that it makes that word rather useless as a tool for clarifying rather than obscuring: the concept 'phenomenon' is just as indefinite as the concepts 'thing' and 'object', because just as anything and everything is a thing, so too any and everything is also a phenomenon. The way natural language works is far more complicated than the too simple and false picture "The meaning of a word is what the word stands in for" suggests. (If you want to know the meaning of the word 'time', look for what are called 'measurements of time'.)

The question is whether the form of expression 'name of a phenomenon' is useful to understanding the way our language works (i.e. its logic). Because if it is not, then we should exclude that combination of words from our thinking in philosophy. If we say that 'love' and 'pain' and 'thinking' and 'thunder' are "names of phenomena", although those words are not the names of objects -- that form of expression seems to give us something (i.e. some "thing") nebulous to conjure with, to mystify ourselves with, which we would not have without that form of expression.

The expression 'phenomenon of thinking', for example, suggests that "what thinking is" is an ethereal process going on -- in the realm of metaphysics: invisible and cloud-like, gaseous like all "abstractions", "beyond the sky" -- i.e. what that expression does is to suggest useless pictures to our imagination, useless because they lead us away from how we actually use the word 'thinking' (They give us a false account of that word's grammar). They bring us no closer to knowing reality -- indeed, they float free of it.

We should be wary of obliterating the distinction we have carefully drawn between using words as names and the many other uses of words. The expression 'name of a phenomenon' is a path away from clarity and into "bewitchment" (PI § 109; Z § 690: "Our motto might be: "Let us not be bewitched" by language, for the fly not to be caught in the spider web of language (PI § 309), in preconceptions of how language works, its logic). And so we must maintain this as our standard: to distinguish only between names-of-object words and non-names-of-object words, which is a distinction we can make with clarity.

The only way in which logic could "define the name of a phenomena" (or, indeed, define the name of an object) would be by "setting limits" to its application: 'This we are going to call 'x', this not' (cf. Russell's "Theory of Descriptions", as in PI § 79). To thus set the limits of a concept is to state a verbal, not a real, definition, to make a more or less arbitrary rule of grammar. (There is sometimes reason to do this, or not.)

With respect to non-name words, there are no real definitions -- because there is no "thing" to form an hypothesis about. (We can give a true or false grammatical account of the ways we use the word 'mind', but we cannot have a theory about some thing named 'the mind'. Because there is no such thing -- and that is, of course, a grammatical, not an ontological, remark.)

The question is this: Why do we give definitions -- i.e. explanations of the meaning, descriptions of the use of language (words, phrases, sentences)? One reason is to prevent misunderstandings that would arise without that explanation (PI § 87). But what is Plato's purpose in seeking "a definition of love"? Is it because we don't know how to use the word 'love'? Why does the Apostle Paul define love ("Love forgives everything, it believes everything, it hopes for everything, it endures everything", etc)?

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