S
Sciborg_S_Patel
Plato’s Affinity Argument
Also, a bit from Nagel's The Last Word:
"Reason, if there is such a thing, can serve as a court of appeal not only against the received opinions and habits of our community but also against the peculiarities of our personal perspective. It is something each individual can find within himself, but at the same time it has universal authority. Reason provides, mysteriously, a way of distancing oneself from common opinion and received practices that is not a mere elevation of individuality--not a determination to express one's idiosyncratic self rather than go along with everyone else. Whoever appeals to reason purports to discover a source of authority within himself that is not merely personal, or societal, but universal--and that should also persuade others who are willing to listen to it.
If this description sounds Cartesian or even Platonic, that is no accident: The topic may be ancient and well-worn, but it is fully alive today, partly because of the prevalence of various forms of what I (but not, usually, its proponents) would call skepticism about reason, either in general or in some of its instances. A vulgar version of this skepticism is epidemic in the weaker regions of our culture, but it receives some serious philosophical support as well. I am prompted to this inquiry partly by the ambient climate of irrationalism but also by not really knowing what more to say after irrationalism has been rejected as incoherent--for there is a real problem about how such a thing as reason is possible.
How is it possible that creatures like ourselves, supplied with the contingent capacities of a biological species whose very existence appears to be radically accidental, should have access to universally valid methods of objective thought?"
In fact, as Michael Pakaluk has pointed out, the affinity argument is not an “argument from analogy” at all, but rather “an argument about the nature of things.” Plato is not saying: “The soul is like the Forms in one way, so there is some significant probability that it is like them in this other way too.” Rather, he is saying something like: “The soul of its nature is X. But as we know from the example of the Forms, which are also X, things that are X are imperishable. So the soul is imperishable.”
What is X? As Lloyd Gerson suggests in his book Knowing Persons: A Study of Plato, what Plato seems to be emphasizing here is that the soul, like the Forms, is immaterial (p. 86). What the argument is (arguably) saying, then, is that whereas the senses pass away just as the things they know pass away, because both are material, the soul by contrast must be as imperishable as the things it knows – namely the Forms – because like the Forms, it is immaterial. In other words, it is, on this interpretation, the immaterial nature of the Forms that makes them imperishable, so that something that shares that nature – as (the argument claims) the soul does – must be equally imperishable. Notice, again, that this is not a probabilistic argument from analogy, but, in effect, an attempt at a proof.
Also, a bit from Nagel's The Last Word:
"Reason, if there is such a thing, can serve as a court of appeal not only against the received opinions and habits of our community but also against the peculiarities of our personal perspective. It is something each individual can find within himself, but at the same time it has universal authority. Reason provides, mysteriously, a way of distancing oneself from common opinion and received practices that is not a mere elevation of individuality--not a determination to express one's idiosyncratic self rather than go along with everyone else. Whoever appeals to reason purports to discover a source of authority within himself that is not merely personal, or societal, but universal--and that should also persuade others who are willing to listen to it.
If this description sounds Cartesian or even Platonic, that is no accident: The topic may be ancient and well-worn, but it is fully alive today, partly because of the prevalence of various forms of what I (but not, usually, its proponents) would call skepticism about reason, either in general or in some of its instances. A vulgar version of this skepticism is epidemic in the weaker regions of our culture, but it receives some serious philosophical support as well. I am prompted to this inquiry partly by the ambient climate of irrationalism but also by not really knowing what more to say after irrationalism has been rejected as incoherent--for there is a real problem about how such a thing as reason is possible.
How is it possible that creatures like ourselves, supplied with the contingent capacities of a biological species whose very existence appears to be radically accidental, should have access to universally valid methods of objective thought?"