(a) "There is a red chair." How would Plato explain this statement with the use of his theory of forms ? Examine. (10 marks) (b)…

(a) Plato and "There is a red chair"

For Plato the sensible chair belongs to the world of becoming, which lies between being and non-being. It is called a chair and red because it participates in (methexis), or imitates, the Form of Chair and the Form of Red. These Forms are eternal, unchanging, intelligible and independent of particular things, and the sentence is true only because the particular shares in them.

Thus the predicates "chair" and "red" name universals that one thing and many things share (one over many). We recognise them through recollection (anamnesis), since sensory objects yield only opinion (doxa) while the Forms are objects of knowledge (episteme).

Critically: Aristotle objects that separate Forms explain nothing, as the Forms are not in the things. The Third Man argument in the Parmenides shows that participation leads to regress. Whether there are Forms of artefacts and colours was also doubted.

(b) Aristotle: potentiality and actuality in the "wooden table"

Aristotle treats potentiality (dynamis) and actuality (energeia or entelecheia) as basic notions that cannot be defined by genus and difference. They are grasped by analogy and examples: as the builder is to one who can build, as the waking is to the sleeping (Metaphysics Θ 6).

In the wooden table, wood is the matter, a potential table; the actual table is wood that has taken the form of a table. The carpenter is the efficient cause and the table's use its final cause. Change is the passage from potentiality to actuality.

Actuality is prior to potentiality in definition, in time (a kind of actual thing produces it) and in substance. The relation is relative: wood is actual relative to the tree but potential relative to the table. Pure matter is pure potentiality, and God is pure actuality.

(c) Berkeley's theory of knowledge

In the first Dialogue Berkeley holds that sensible things are only those immediately perceived by the senses, and what we immediately perceive are ideas of sense. Locke's distinction of primary and secondary qualities fails, as extension and shape are as mind-dependent as colour and taste; abstract ideas of matter are impossible. Hence esse est percipi: to be is to be perceived (or to perceive, in the case of spirits).

Ideas of sense are vivid, orderly and involuntary, so they are caused by God, the infinite spirit; this explains why objects exist when unperceived by us. Spirits are known by notion and reflection.

Critically: Berkeley removes scepticism about an external world, but his reliance on God has been seen as an ad hoc support, and he risks solipsism.

(d) Locke on personal identity

In the Essay (II.xxvii) Locke distinguishes the identity of a substance, a man (same living organism) and a person. A person is "a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places". Personal identity lies in sameness of consciousness, extending backward to past actions through memory, and not in an immaterial soul or the same body.

"Person" is a forensic term: it concerns responsibility, reward and punishment. The prince-and-cobbler case shows the person goes with consciousness, not body.

Criticism: Butler said memory presupposes identity (circularity); Reid's brave officer case violates transitivity; forgetfulness and sleep break continuity; Hume reduced the self to a bundle.

(e) Hume's criticism of causation

Hume asks for the impression behind the idea of cause. Observation yields only contiguity, priority of the cause in time and constant conjunction; no impression of necessary connection is found in the objects. Causal inference is neither a demonstrative relation of ideas nor derived from observation; it rests on the assumption that the future will resemble the past, which cannot be proved without circularity (the problem of induction).

The idea of necessity arises from the mind's habit or custom, a felt determination after repeated conjunction. So Hume gives two definitions of cause: philosophical (constant conjunction) and natural (mental inference).

Critically: Kant answered by treating causality as an a priori category. Hume's view is a mitigated scepticism, as belief in causation is natural and unavoidable.