Plato's beard
{{short description|Example of a paradoxical argument}}
{{Confusing|date=August 2023}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2020}}
In metaphysics, Plato's beard is a paradoxical argument dubbed by Willard Van Orman Quine in his 1948 paper "On What There Is". The phrase came to be identified as the philosophy of understanding something based on what does not exist.{{Cite book|title=American Phoenix: John Quincy and Louisa Adams, the War of 1812, and the Exile that Saved American Independence|last=Cook|first=Jane|publisher=Thomas Nelson|year=2013|isbn=9781595555410|location=Nashville|pages=[https://archive.org/details/americanphoenixj0000cook/page/186 186]|url=https://archive.org/details/americanphoenixj0000cook/page/186}}
Doctrine
Quine defined Plato's beard – and his reason for naming it so – in the following words:
This is the old Platonic riddle of nonbeing. Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato's beard; historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam's razor.W. V. O. Quine, "On What There Is", The Review of Metaphysics 2(5), 1948.
The argument has been favored by prominent philosophers including Bertrand Russell, A. J. Ayer and C. J. F. Williams.{{cite book |last=Vallicella |first=William F. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=39-nB4lHdf0C&pg=PA112 |title=A Paradigm Theory of Existence: Onto-Theology Vindicated |publisher=Springer |year=2002 |isbn=978-1-4020-0887-0 |page=112}} Declaring that not p (¬p) cannot exist, one may be forced to abandon truisms such as negation and modus tollens. There are also variations to Quine's original, which included its application both to singular and general terms.{{Cite book|title=Mental Symbols: A Defence of the Classical Theory of Mind|last=Novak|first=Peter|publisher=Springer Science+Business Media B.V.|year=2012|isbn=9789401063746|location=New York|page=40}} Quine initially applied the doctrine to singular terms only before expanding it so that it covers general terms as well.
Karl Popper stated the inverse. "Only if Plato's beard is sufficiently tough, and tangled by many entities, can it be worth our while to use Ockham's razor."{{cite book
| last = Popper
| first = Karl
| authorlink = Karl Popper
| title = Objective Knowledge
| publisher = Clarendon Press
| date = 1972
| url =https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/at/popper.htm
}} Russell's theory of "singular descriptions", which clearly show "how we might meaningfully use seeming names without supposing that there be the entities allegedly named", is supposed to "detangle" Plato's beard.{{Cite book|title=Existence as a Real Property: The Ontology of Meinongianism|last=Berto|first=Francesco|publisher=Springer|year=2013|isbn=9789400742062|location=Dordrecht|page=28}}{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JYBUCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT627|title=An Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mathematics: A Reader|last1=Marcus|first1=Russell|last2=McEvoy|first2=Mark|date=11 February 2016|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|isbn=9781472529480|language=en}}
See also
- {{annotated link|Antigonish (poem)}}
- {{annotated link|Empty name}}
- {{annotated link|Extensional and intensional definitions}}
- {{annotated link|Meinong's jungle}}
- {{annotated link|Noneism}}
- {{annotated link|Ostensive definition}}
References
{{Reflist}}
Further reading
- {{cite journal|last=Durrant|first=Michael|year=1998|title=Plato's Quinean Beard: Did Plato ever grow it?|journal=Philosophy|volume=73|issue=1|pages=113–121|issn=0031-8191|doi=10.1017/S003181919700003X|s2cid=170709036 }}
- {{cite book|year=2004|title=The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy | isbn=978-1405191128 | doi=10.1111/b.9781405106795.2004.x|editor1-last=Bunnin|editor1-first=Nicholas|editor2-last=Yu|editor2-first=Jiyuan}}
External links
- {{wikisource-inline|On What There Is}}
{{Paradoxes}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Plato's Beard}}