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Dr. Suzanne Obdrzalek on Plato’s Spatial Soul: Rethinking Mind-Body Dualism
17 Plays3 months ago
In this episode, we’re joined by Dr. Suzanne Obdrzalek to discuss her fascinating interpretation of Plato’s Phaedo. Dr. Obdrzalek argues that Plato attributes spatial characteristics to the soul—such as location, extension, and the ability to causally interact with the body. We also delve into broader implications of this view, including how it sheds light on Plato’s eschatology and challenges contemporary assumptions about dualism.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Dionysus Circle Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Dionysus Circle Podcast. I'm Dr. Sam Bennett, your host. On this podcast, we explore the wisdom of the Eastern Christian Fathers and the philosophical ideas that influence them, engaging with the works of thinkers like Plato and Aristotle.
Introducing Suzanne Abdur-Jalek and Platonic Dualism
00:00:13
Speaker
Today, we're delighted to welcome Suzanne Abdur-Jalek, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. In this episode, we explore her latest article, Platonic Dualism Reconsidered, where she revisits the concept of mind-body dualism in Plato's works, particularly The Fado.
00:00:29
Speaker
Our discussion spans intriguing topics such as reincarnation, the possibility of the soul having spatial characteristics, and how Plato's approach might differ from modern conceptions of the soul. A special thanks to Peter Anthony Taney for allowing us to feature his beautiful rendition of the Hymn of the Father's Love Begotten from his album Sea Dreams. God bless and I hope you enjoy the podcast.
Suzanne's Philosophical Journey
00:00:59
Speaker
So thanks so much for joining us today. Oh, thanks for having me. To start it off, could you just tell us a little bit about he yourself, kind of curious how you know you became interested in philosophy and then more particular, how you became engaged in Play-Doh.
00:01:11
Speaker
Yeah I think, actually I'm wondering if all your guests have some kind of backstory because i I wonder if it's kind of similar for many people but I think I just was destined to go into
Plato's Relevance Today and Alternatives to Modern Views
00:01:21
Speaker
philosophy. Like I didn't really know what it was in high school but I was kind of thinking about those topics and then when I got into college and I found a philosophy course that seemed like what I wanted to do. um And then ancient philosophy was kind of happenstance. So I was an undergraduate at Stanford and I kind of happened to get to know this professor, he's now deceased, Julius Moravchik, who decided we should do a tutorial on Plato. And I think I didn't actually um have a lot of interest in history of philosophy at the time, because and like I was kind of ignorant, and I thought, oh,
00:01:53
Speaker
these are long dead views, real philosophies, you know, cutting edge and new stuff. And it was only when I started studying Plato that A, I realized how much work there is to be done and kind of how much open space there is to develop interpretations and engage with him. But also for me, how valuable he is as an alternative to contemporary approaches. So yeah, I guess I fell in love with Plato my junior year and then have been kind of focusing on him ever since.
Historical vs. Contemporary Philosophical Questions
00:02:20
Speaker
That's cool. So you you consider him a viable like living philosophy in certain respects. I'm not saying like necessarily you subscribe to everything, but the way you just described it sounds like to some degree you consider him a viable.
00:02:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, some parts of some of his views. um And I think certainly like one thing I find attractive about history of philosophy is just exiting kind of current ways of thinking and seeing that maybe there's more variability about how you could consider your certain issues and also about which issues you could consider central.
00:02:52
Speaker
So say, for example, something way outside of the topic of this article, but say if you only read contemporary ethics, you probably wouldn't think that, I don't know, assimilation to God or even the pursuit pursuit of happiness are central ethical topics. But of course, those were central in antiquity. So it kind of gives you this new orientation where you could think, oh, we could be asking other
Exploring Plato's 'The Fado' and Soul's Spatial Attributes
00:03:12
Speaker
questions. And they're plot and and and I assume that also implies that they're plausible enough that they really have to be seriously considered, you know. so because Because sometimes people will talk about, you know, um some ancient text gives you an alternative, but it's like, if if it's actually, if they consider it implausible, then it's like, well, that's of historical interest. But yeah anyway, so, but the way you kind of described, I think, at least suggest there's some degree of.
00:03:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, some, some parts of Plato's. So for example, tripartite psychology, I think it's pretty plausible and people who work on moral psychology should think about that. um Say, in I mean, assimilation to God as an ethical norm. I'm not a theist. So for me, that's like a little bit out there. But I think it's still worth thinking about, perhaps.
00:03:59
Speaker
um But anyway, the topic of the paper, mind body dualism, I don't think the view is fully defensible. But I also think that when we nowadays think about dualism, we consider an overly restricted range of alternatives. Right. Yeah, your your paper is dealing basically with mind body dualism is dealing with philosophy of mind in the context of Plato's Fado. I don't know, maybe before we get dive into your like thesis and paper itself, is there anything you want to say about ah the phato itself, maybe some key plot points that for your your work,
Debate on Soul's Spatial Nature and Reincarnation
00:04:35
Speaker
something like that. Anyway, yeah.
00:04:36
Speaker
Well, you're you're doing a series of podcasts on the feto, right? So your listeners... We are indeed, yes. Probably have some familiarity with the feto. I apologize if this kind of overlaps with what they already know, but it's the dialogue in which Plato um gives a story about Socrates' death and the main... I mean, in antiquity, actually, people often called it on the soul. So it's the main topic ends up being the soul and um his followers are asking him why he doesn't fear death. And then he gives a series of arguments for the immortality of the soul, which are also intended to be a kind of response to their concerns about the fear of death and also an injunction to philosophize, right? Where philosophizing is a way of purifying your soul so that you're guaranteed a good afterlife. um So, of course, I mean, that's the kind of dramatic topic of the dialogue.
00:05:23
Speaker
um for me, what's of interest, and there are a lot of obviously topics you could engage with in the feto, but for me, what's of interest um is the presentation of the soul and its relation to the body, which comes up in the course of arguments for the immortality of the soul. Yeah, so basically, it's like, your article is super fascinating. Basically, you notice that there are certain passages in the feto, where Plato is talking about the soul, and he seems to suggests that either the soul has spatial characteristics or maybe even to some ears, it'll sound like he's suggesting the soul is a material thing, not immaterial, not incorporeal, as ah most people would think. So, yeah, how about we start there? Can you kind of just describe um some passages in in the phato that have a sort of
00:06:19
Speaker
surprising suggestion that the soul is kind almost spatial or maybe even material. Yeah. He makes a number of claims um to the effect that the soul enters the body at birth, exits it at death, proceeds to Hades that would sound on the face of it like the soul engages in locomotion.
00:06:36
Speaker
And then there are also claims about the soul um maybe potentially constricting away from the body or becoming entwined with the body or a soul that's impure at death, having some part of the body still attached to it. That sounds like the soul is capable of ah contact with the body, potentially has to have some kind of spatial extension for it to be able to interact with the body in this way. um So if you look at commentaries in these passages, a lot of them will say things like,
00:07:05
Speaker
He can't mean that because if the soul has these attributes, it must be corporeal. He doesn't think the soul is corporeal, so those claims are purely metaphorical. And what I try to argue in the article is that the reasoning that if it has these attributes, it's corporeal, the soul's incorporeal, so he can't mean that, relies on a false conception of what it is to be corporeal. So basically, starting with Descartes, we have this conception of the body as of what has spatial attributes in um and in opposition to the soul, which is something that doesn't have spatial attributes. um But the claim I try to make in the article is that this just isn't how Plato distinguished the corporeal from the incorporeal. So the upshot is that the soul can have spatial attributes while still being incorporeal.
Contemporary Dualism and Plato's Influence
00:07:53
Speaker
Okay, awesome. Yeah, so okay, let's just maybe we can unpack that real quick for everyone a little just a little bit. um So, all right, so
00:08:01
Speaker
You know, when you talk about a soul, of course, everyone is going to immediately think something incorporeal, something non-bodily. So that's why, you know, if someone is a sort of strict naturalist, ah you presume that they are going to deny the existence of a soul because the soul seems to be an immaterial, non-bodily thing. Okay.
00:08:25
Speaker
Now, I'll stop you there just for one second as a kind of interesting side note. So earlier when I talked about kind of why I like the history of philosophy, because it opens up these conceptual horizons, you know, of course, in antiquity, that's not a going assumption. So that's right. yeah was but Yeah, because it's kind of like the animation. Anyway, yeah, you you get into that. So, you know, the Stoics, for instance, thought that the soul is material.
00:08:46
Speaker
Right. So, I mean, I think, again, this is a kind of Christian assumption that when we think about the soul, we necessarily think of something immaterial. But if you look at the Greeks, when Plato argues that the soul is immaterial, he's actually taking a somewhat controversial position. So there's a whole range of positions really on whether or not the soul is material. But if you wanted to find a unifying theme about what a soul is in antiquity, it would really be what what you said, what brings about life. Yeah, absolutely. yeah The animation of the body, kind of finding a way to distinguish what is living from the non-living it would seem to be you hinge on the soul okay perfect from contemporary years you know we think of the soul it's got to be immaterial and then it actually is the case as in your article you argue that you know uh plato does think that the soul is not material like you said he disagrees with the stokes okay however what's surprise is you're claiming that even though
00:09:41
Speaker
Plato thinks it's immaterial. He also thinks that the soul has various properties, which we might be inclined to connect with the corporeal. For example, having a location, being extended, moving through space, ah capable of causally interacting with the body. um and And some other things, it becoming weighty. Anyway, so anyway, so it's ah it's basically like, you know, we know that Plato holds that the soul is immaterial, that it's non bodily or something.
00:10:12
Speaker
And yet he's also making claims about it that seem to put it into the material side. And you're disagreeing with the commentators. Most commentators are saying, look, when when he suggests that the soul is extended, anything like that, that has to be a metaphor. And
Plato's Evolving Use of 'Soma'
00:10:27
Speaker
you're trying to say, no, it's not a metaphor. And so, yeah, maybe.
00:10:33
Speaker
you want Do you want to mention ah talk a little bit more about like the post-Cartesian thing? You're you're saying yeah there's a lens that we're bringing to Plato. Yeah. It also comes, actually, if you look at some commentaries, also a lot of commentators, I think less so recently, but maybe like mid-20th century commentators, also as in he can't be serious about reincarnation because that's not a serious view, right? Yeah. I think there's this tendency to bring kind of a Christian, more modern perspective to Plato and then is assume that what doesn't agree with that can't be serious and of course that's really bad, a really bad approach to the history of philosophy. On the topic of um body though, right, so there's this assumption that body's defined by extension so if he's serious about the soul having extension then he must be treating the soul as a body but he clearly holds that it's not a body so he can't be serious about that
00:11:27
Speaker
um I think the important thing to realize is that the same Greek, the word for body is going to be soma, that the meaning of soma was kind of subject to philosophical development. So um there's a scholar called Gabor Betag, and he has an unpublished paper um on Plato's kind of development of the sense of soma, where he says, look,
00:11:50
Speaker
Significantly prior to Plato, it was primarily used for corpses, and then it becomes used for the human body. And it's only with Plato that he starts to actually give it, um soma give it the wider range of meanings, not merely to be the human body, but he'll talk, say, in the Timaeus about um Earth, air, fire, and water being bodies or any kind of extended um material object you'd call a body. But that's a new use of the term soma, right? So if he's kind of coining this new philosophical sense of soma, we have to look at how he characterizes it. We can't just assume, oh, he clearly has the same definition of body as Descartes. um
00:12:26
Speaker
So part of my project was to look at um every use he makes of the term soma. So there's about 950 and, sorry, um see what kinds of things he gives us examples of somata of bodies and how he defines soma in general. um So I don't think there's very strong evidence that he defines soma in terms of spatiality. So he tends to emphasize other features like being perishable, being composed of earth, air, fire, and water, um being divisible, being perceptible. So when you recognize that, then it doesn't seem to me that there's a problem in saying that the soul has spatial attributes, and also it's something incorporeal. Good. OK, great. Yeah, and and we'll we'll definitely get in yeah into that topic of yeah how Plato
00:13:15
Speaker
um might be understanding precisely what the body is, what are the kind of terms that he typically uses to describe the um the bodily context or realm, I guess you'd say.
Soul's Nature and Implications for Dualism
00:13:26
Speaker
Okay, good. So um at this point, maybe um we could kind of dive into more passages or maybe yeah a few claims, which, you know, prima facie at least suggest that the soul is spatial. um So the first one that you touch on is that Plato kind of famously defines death as the separation of the soul from the body. So, um you know, yeah, I mean, I guess, yeah, let's maybe just kind of unpack that one for us. ah I guess, obviously, that's going to suggest
00:14:05
Speaker
um locomotion because generally, you know, if I separate the wheat from the chaff, I'm putting the wheat in one location, the chaff in another location. So the idea that the soul is separating from the body at death, that suggests a movement in location anyway yeah so maybe just kind of unpack that i do for yeah i mean so i think then kind of natural and obvious reading of the claim that death is the separation of the soul from the body would be one of locomotion that that's how death occurs the soul exits the body
00:14:36
Speaker
um So, you know, you could give it some other reading where you'd say no separation just means it ceases to characterize it or something like that. um But he, you know, gives a lot of details that suggest a spatial account. So he talks about the soul proceeding to Hades. um Is it, I mean, I would tend to think that Plato does have some kind of commitment to Hades as a location, perhaps not exactly in the traditional terms, but it seems like that's a location souls go to. um Also, the treatment of reincarnation is going to suggest that, you know, my soul, perhaps after I die, is going to become the soul of a donkey. That would seem to require that my soul exit my body and enter the body of a donkey. um So again, it's hard to understand reincarnation without some kind of locomotion. Right. Yeah. So it's interesting to think about, like, you know, on the one hand, the issue of like, what's the prima facie reading of something?
00:15:30
Speaker
And on the other hand, you know, is there anything else that he's committed to where it's just like, it almost seems like he's required e to hold, um, that the whole soul has some kind of spatial existence. Um, I mean, it seems like maybe the animation of the body, I actually, I found it interesting. Like, um, I was reading in, uh, I think it's a book on substance dualism, uh, written by JP Moreland and in someone else, ah Brandon Riccobao, I think. But he was saying that actually most samsas duels do think that um an immaterial mind or soul is located, located in the body. It's just that they would definitely reject the extension dimension, I think. Anyway, but um yeah, so do you want to comment on that, like the idea that like, look, here's a claim of Plato's words like,
00:16:28
Speaker
it seems like you really need the soul to be extended. In the Fido, I would say the other claim that demands that is going to be these claims about the ways in which the body renders the soul impure.
00:16:42
Speaker
Um, so it sounds like the claim there is if the soul interacts too much with the body, it becomes kind of some part of the body becomes attached to it. And then so far as it becomes this kind of tightly intertwined composite with something corporeal, it's impure, it's unlike the forms, it's condemned to embodiment, the philosopher should try to avoid this. So her soul is pure and can eventually in the final myth, he talks about the possibility of attaining a fully incorporeal existence. Um,
00:17:11
Speaker
So that would seem to demand um that the soul have some sort of spatial attributes. And then in the Fido, he doesn't give an account of ah soul-body interaction, but the account in the Timaeus seems to be in terms of contact between the body and the soul. That's how they interact. And that would be hard to understand if the body if sorry if the soul didn't have um some kind of spatial extension. Right, right. OK, good. So yeah, so so we've dealt with yeah the first type of passage is defining ah the way he defines death, the separation of the body from the soul. um And then, yeah, we're kind of already getting into the second type of passage which is deals with the flow being attached to the body. so you know pla Plato kind of famously draws a contrast here between philosophers and ordinary people where the philosopher is actually what kind of distinguishes them at the end of the day. i don't know how to
00:18:08
Speaker
Exactly put, it it's like follows from their philosophical activity, I guess they end up being less entangled, less unified with their body. Yeah. Can you expand expand on that a little bit for us? Yeah. So, um, he makes a variety of claims that really the, and I mean, this is supposed to be the big upshot, I think of the Fido, right? Is when you learn about the immortality of the soul and also about the afterlife, it's a kind of injunction to engage in the philosophical life.
00:18:35
Speaker
Why? Because that's going to enable a kind of purification from the body so that you can escape reincarnation, so that you can engage in a fully incorporeal existence, and so you can live with the forms and fully grasp the forms, right? So it's setting up the prospect of this um really fulfilling intellectual existence. And be unafraid of death like Socrates is. Yeah, but if you live the life of a philosopher, right? And the way in which he
Soul's Flexibility Between Realms
00:19:01
Speaker
cashes out purity and impurity sounds like um on a literal reading that what he's saying is that souls are impure when um he'll talk about them departing at death with something corporeal attached to them and virtue of which they are attracted back into a corporeal existence. Whereas the philosopher soul kind of detaches itself from the corporeal and hence is
00:19:23
Speaker
purified of the corporeal more like the forms and hence able to fully comprehend them. um So it sounds like the claim is that the soul could either but become enmeshed with the body or be fully purified of the body. That seems to demand that this will have some kind of spatial existence. Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting with these things because it's like When can we find, a where do we find a claim where it's like, okay, look, that just requires a spatial soul, right? Because it's interesting how, so like I'm just thinking about the example of reincarnation.
00:19:56
Speaker
ah So yeah, the idea is, you know, after we die for Plato, it's like some people get to have this sort of bliss of contemplating the forms in platonic heaven, whereas others end up going back into another body.
00:20:13
Speaker
And, you know, what, I don't know what, maybe that's a bee or maybe it's a wolf, um but yeah, you you go back into another body potentially. Okay. So what I think is interesting is that it seems like one, you know, thing about the more metaphorical interpretation of these passages is that you can, it would seem sufficient to explain the reentry by appealing to psychological qualities. In other words,
00:20:40
Speaker
it it's It doesn't sound crazy to say, um well, the reason, you know, so-and-so went into another body instead of going to the Platonic Forest music is because he doesn't care about them. And so what he's interested in, what his desire is and within his soul
Perception and Soul's Spatial Attributes in 'Timaeus'
00:20:58
Speaker
more so pertains to the corporeal. And so it's like that it doesn't seem like, oh, I don't really see how that's going to work unless you bring in something about the soul having become weighty or impure. So anyway, I do see how see where I'm going with that point.
00:21:17
Speaker
Anyway, just a comment, really. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's some specific claims in the Fido that I think are really hard to make sense of on this kind of metaphorical reading. um So for instance, there's a claim that, you know, for the soul to be able to know the forms, it has to be um pure and hence like the forms. And I don't know how to make sense of that, except in terms of it has to be you know, not attached to something material. That's the way in which it resembles the forms. So if you take purity to mean something like disinterest in the body, that's just not a point of resemblance a soul could have to forms.
00:21:51
Speaker
But I take it your question anyway isn't it about, specific like, so I think there are specific lines that kind of demand this more literal reading. And I think your question anyway is about more of the big picture. Like, couldn't in general, he kind of account for the kinds of things he wants to account for without having a soul that literally is spatial, etc. Right. And you could give an account of reincarnation where you could say, look, you have this um soul that lacks any kind of spatial attributes, and why does it animate, you know, this human and then later on this donkey, um because it has causal power over this human and then later it has causal power over the donkey or something like that. Right. um So, he you know, he could, I think right you could cash out a view that would make sense, um where, you know, it's not that it literally goes inside it, that's just some metaphorical language he's using. And what he really means is that it has causal power over it or something like that.
00:22:44
Speaker
um But I do think there's a philosophical cost, right? So the philosophical cost with that view is one that um Jaiguan Kim kind of famously developed in the mid 20th century, which he calls the pairing problem, which is the problem of
Ethical and Metaphysical Implications of Spatial Soul Theory
00:22:57
Speaker
explaining, okay, but in virtue of what does the soul have power, causal power over that particular body?
00:23:03
Speaker
right So Kim's answer is, well, the most plausible answer is, um well, he doesn't go for souls. right So it would be that a given mind has causal power of our body because it's spatially located there. So I guess what I'd say is, you know there's an advantage to taking Plato seriously when he says the soul is in the body, which is that he can help himself to that kind of account. right Like, why is this soul now animating the donkey? Because it's inside it.
00:23:27
Speaker
Yes. yeah um So I think there are certain benefits to the view where the soul has spatial attributes for Plato. Yeah, right. So yeah so the example of the pairing problem, it you know it seems plausible that potentially you just cannot solve the pairing problem without a spatial soul. Whereas, yeah, let's say you're really committed to reincarnation. You're not necessarily going to be moved into a spatial theory.
00:23:53
Speaker
Anyway, just as you said, okay, good. um So yeah, I guess the third type of passage. So we've talked about the first type of passage, death being defined as separation of the soul from the body. Second type has to do with you know passages dealing with the soul being attached to the body. And then the third type, it just has to do with reincarnation. um and you know And yeah, he he ends up describing describing certain souls as being more weighty or heavy.
00:24:23
Speaker
Um, so yeah, maybe talk about that. I mean, so do you think that's that he's literally saying that some souls? Way more, uh than others is that that would be your You know, it's a tricky thing because I'm taking Plato literally with a lot of claims he makes. um And then you've got to kind of decide where you're going to draw the line. So do I think his view is that the soul itself in itself literally develops weight? um I don't think there's strong evidence for that. um Now there's an article by Thomas Johansson where he defends that claim. So you know maybe if your listeners are interested in that, they could look up that article. um
00:24:59
Speaker
But I think if you look at the passages where he talks about the soul as becoming weighty or visible, the most plausible reading is that it has something corporeal attached to it, and in virtue of its being a composite with that kind of corporeal accretion, it's weighty and visible. But if it were divested of that corporeal accretion, it wouldn't be weighty or visible. So it has those qualities through this other thing that becomes part of it.
00:25:21
Speaker
So like we have these these key passages that suggest spatial soul, potentially an extended so soul, and ah almost a quasi-materialistic soul. And that's now let's think about the interpretation interpretation of it more exactly. um Like you said, you know you disagree with the sort of mainstream line on this, which is a metaphorical interpretation. And so let's talk about, you know What errors are they making? and And you talk about like the first error that the mainstream interpretation seems to make concerns their concept of the body. So I don't know if you want to, you you mentioned like a few people, Bostock, Gallup, Cackforth. um I don't know if you want to kind of go through each of, I mean, like, so for example, Bostock. So he says the soul cannot be extended throughout the body in Plato. Why does he say that?
00:26:16
Speaker
because if it were extended through the body, then it would have to be made of stuff. He's thinking extension implies being made of stuff. And he's thinking, okay, woke to be made of stuff needs to be material. But of course, Plato doesn't think the soul is is material. So we we have to deny extension. So anyway, what would you think about that line right there?
00:26:42
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, those are big assumptions, right? That, um,
Substance Dualism and Spatial Soul Theory
00:26:45
Speaker
how did the reasoning go? Like, if it's extended, it's made of stuff. If it's made of stuff, it's material, right? So I talk about this later in the article, but it's clear that Plato would reject, I mean, I think both of those assumptions, but the assumption that whatever is made of, I mean, I don't know what he means by stuff, but, yes you know,
00:27:00
Speaker
On a plausible understanding of the claim that whatever is made of stuff is material, Plato clearly rejects that because in the Timaeus he says soul is made of portions. He uses the term scoops, you know, of being sameness and difference, but it's immaterial. I mean, i I don't know, I haven't thought as much about the claim that whatever is extended is made of stuff. I suppose that depends on what you mean by stuff. Maybe that one's unproblematic. In any event, some of the other commentators also make claims like look, if it were interwoven with the body, it would be extended. If it's extended, it's material, so that can't be meant literally. um So the going assumption seems to be that anything that is spatially located, that has extension, that is made of some stuff, that engages in locomotion, is necessarily material. Plato thinks this holds immaterial, so when he seems to make those claims, he can't be serious. Yeah, I mean, I'm surprised by the the spatial one, because like I said, I feel like um
00:27:58
Speaker
ah I mean, according to Moreland, you know, yeah most substance doings would endorse the spatial, but I think, yeah, the extension dimension, um especially something like we get in the time as that you're going to talk about in a second, that would be very that would be more controversial in a contemporary setting.
00:28:19
Speaker
I think if you look at maybe mid to late 20th century philosophers of mind opposing dualism, um some thinking like people like Chagwon Kim or the Churchlands, um they tend to assume that the dualist necessarily holds that the soul lacks spatial attributes. And I think they're getting this from Descartes.
00:28:36
Speaker
And they're just not attuned to the wide variety of positions that dualism could encompass, including 20th century and 20th, well, I think they're writing before the 21st century, but let's say 20th century dualists who, as you say, do treat the soul as having some spatial attributes, at least perhaps location, but not extension.
00:28:55
Speaker
But even if, you know, you look back historically, you know, for instance, Locke seems to have said that the soul has location, right? So, you know, it's, it's um they're pinning it on one person who's kind of come to be the representative of dualism, namely Descartes. So you kind of make some interesting points where like, in general, it's like, when it comes to the soul versus the body and Plato and the phaedo It's almost like the body sometimes seems to share an incorporeal qualities, the soul incorporeal one. So again, this is just kind of emphasizing that we need to be more careful with our assumptions about what characterizes each. Um, I don't know if you want to talk about that. Um, I mean, another issue, you know, is what sense would, should we call Plato a substance duelist if, if he's
Intellect vs. Soul in Plato's Philosophy
00:29:48
Speaker
unlike Descartes. Anyway, so maybe just a couple of ideas. Yeah.
00:29:50
Speaker
So let's start with the first topic. So, you know, how sharp is the soul body division in the fetal anyway? So he does say things that make it seem murky. So, I mean, I think the most interesting and I find problematic claim is claims in the feed and it sound like he's saying that the body is capable of cognitive states, right? So there are several passages where he'll talk about the soul, you know, opposing the body's desires or the soul opposing the body's beliefs. And that could suggest a kind of view where you know, um the soul and the body both share the ability for cognition. um You know, I'm a little torn on those passages. I'm kind of inclined to follow. I think you had David Ebrian on your podcast earlier, is that right?
00:30:33
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm kind of inclined to follow his reading and some other scholars on those passages to say, where he says, look, what that really means is that the body gives rise to desires or beliefs that are possessed by the soul. um But in any event, um you know then there's also these other passages that suggest that the soul has a kind of capacity to assimilate to the corporeal as well. um So there are the passages we talked about that make it sound as though the soul can become visible or become heavy.
00:31:02
Speaker
I parse those as saying the soul becomes those in virtue of having something corporeal attached to it. But of course, this requires so like a significant amount of overlap between the body and soul. right It's not just that they're both um substances that exist in time, but I'm claiming they both exist in space and in time. And that explains why the soul can have something bodily attached to it. And then as a result, the composite has these other features of being visible, heavy, et cetera.
00:31:29
Speaker
More broadly, I guess I'm really interested also in the affinity argument. So the affinity argument, if you look, oh, so for your listeners, maybe who aren't as familiar with it, that's one of the arguments for the immortality of the soul that claims that why is the soul immortal? Because it has an affinity, a kind of similarity to the forms, and the forms are immortal, therefore the soul's immortal.
00:31:50
Speaker
And the argument proceeds in stages. But in one of them, he makes the case. And it's kind of a it's a peculiar move if his goal is to show that the soul is like the forms. Because actually, in this stage, he says, well, actually, it shares attributes with both the forms and the body in the sense that it could assimilate to either. So he says, when the soul contemplates forms, it becomes
Flexibility of Soul in Dualism
00:32:09
Speaker
changeless like the forms. The upshot of this is supposed to be it kind of has some features in common with the form since it's um immortal.
00:32:16
Speaker
But then he goes on to say when it um focuses on sense perception and investigates through the body, it becomes changeable like the body. um So one thing you see that's interesting there is that the soul has this kind of flexibility. It can really assimilate to the intelligible realm or the corporeal realm. And Socrates' view is, you know, you should watch out and make sure that it assimilates to the intelligible realm so it can exist with forms and contemplate, etc., as opposed to being condemned to reincarnation, punishment of the afterlife, et cetera. Yeah, that's super interesting. I mean, so I was just thinking, you know, when you talk about it being flexible and dynamic, it's almost like, you you know, in one instance, it seems to be fully manifesting immateriality. In another instance, it seems to be material. It almost makes you think, well, maybe the soul is neither material nor immaterial, but I don't know how that
00:33:11
Speaker
works logically, I don't know. I don't think of it. Anyway. You can think of Neoplatonists, right? um So like Plotinus Proclus, they use language like it's ontologically intermediate, it's amphibious, it's flexible, and I think that's right for Plato. um Now, I think he also thinks there's one direction it ought to go in, like even if it can assimilate to both realms, it ought to assimilate to the intelligible realm. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the reason why I feel like logically tricky is because once you say it's indeterminate, it's like, oh,
00:33:40
Speaker
Can a material thing be indeterminate? It almost means it's like the very fact of its flexibility almost. ends up putting it back into the immaterial. Anyway, that's why I like kind of get, but yeah, I appreciate you bringing up those those kind of beautiful. Well, just to follow up on that, I mean, it's ontological status is really murky, right? So if we think about the Timaeus, right, he starts by making it again, like for his late period, this is the clearest distinction you get between forms and sense particulars. Then he says, Oh, aha, there's this third thing, the receptacle.
00:34:11
Speaker
And at no point does he say where soul exists among these three things, right? And it's clearly not a sense in particular. It's not a form. It's not the receptacle. So where does it belong? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So the murky status of the soul. Yeah, it's
Interpreting Plato's Dualism and Spatial Soul Theory
00:34:23
Speaker
fascinating. um But you would still say, though, that despite the murkiness, Plato is unquestionably a substance duelist. So, yeah, do you want to unpack that claim of yours?
00:34:36
Speaker
In making that claim, maybe I should start by clarifying what I mean by a substance dualist. So you know he doesn't like when we nowadays, when we talk about substance dualist, I think we mean something like, um I should clarify. I think you might mistakenly think that it imparts maybe some kind of Aristotelian conception of substance um in the category sense, like a substance is, I don't know, what bears qualities. So there's two kinds of substance, soul and body, et cetera.
00:35:04
Speaker
And I just don't think Plato has that metaphysics operative in his phil philosophy. So he's not a substance dualist in that sense. But if you actually look at like discussions of substance dualism, I don't think they actually hinge that much on a certain conception of substance. Rather, I think the core idea is just the body is fundamentally different from the soul and the soul can exist apart from the body.
00:35:25
Speaker
um And I think he's committed to both of those claims. So even if in the field you get this kind of flexibility of the soul and the capacity to assimilate to the intelligible or the corporeal, he also says one part of us is soul and one part of us is body. And here's how you go about separating the soul from the body. And what you should aspire to is a life in which the soul is fully and permanently detached from the body. So that sounds to me like a commitment to the view that there are different kinds of things and can exist separately from one another. Right, right.
00:35:52
Speaker
Yeah, i'm I'm with you on that. i That you know you don't want to get too bogged down by the terminological issue, you know whether the person uses substance or not. Yeah. um And I mean, in just to you know hint you know you know point out the significance of the extension point right isn for for Descartes, as I understand it, you know yeah if we're trying to figure out you know what's the difference in the nature of of ah of the soul or the mind from the body. It is the fact that the mind is
00:36:30
Speaker
ah not extended and therefore, I think also for him, you know indivisible, it cannot be divided. um so Anyway, that that's where he's that's the specific way he's distinguishing the nature of the body and the soul. how That's how he's separating up this distinction of nature. But the point is that ah there are other potential ways to distinguish them. Yeah, exactly. That's right. Perfect. Then you kind of bring up some, like kind of I guess you could say, like proof texts or whatever for, you know, Plato being a substance duelist. You know, you say, you know, one of them is like one part of us, his body, one part soul. You know, I mean, I was just thinking like, you know, what just devil's advocate, like, what do you, what would you say to someone who's like, well, maybe what are you saying there? How to put this, you know,
00:37:26
Speaker
what if he's saying that one part of us is this bodily form in in the sense of like the body of a human and then the other part is the soul but are we sure that he's setting up a distinction between on the one hand we have a part that's a bodily nature versus another part that's a ah non-bodily nature. Anyway, do you kind of get what I'm saying here. Well, you can have two parts. like My arm has i mean has many parts, but you could divide into like the you know upper arm and the forearm, right? So think that you know they're not distinct substances in the kind of way they want for me. Yes, they don't have a different nature. Exactly. yeah Exactly. Right. um right So i mean it's not enough for him just to be saying that. but He has to give some ways in which they're fundamentally different from one another. um
00:38:18
Speaker
I think in the Fido, you get that in the affinity argument, right? So the claim is that the soul has a kind of affinity to the forms and to the invisible realm, whereas the body has a kind of affinity to the visible realm. So I think for him, that's a pretty fundamental dividing point. And that explains why even if the body is mortal, the soul is immortal. Right. And then once you add on top of that the fact that he ends up arguing the affinity argument that they are capable of existing separately. I mean, once you say that they can exist separately. Well, that's not quite enough. Oh, you're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. Good, good. So yeah, so more fundamental than is setting up the. Yeah, different signature. OK, good. So assumptions tools needs to set up an opposition of soul and body.
00:39:06
Speaker
um If it's not going to be in terms of location and extension, what is the opposition going to reside in? um You know, one point that you make is perceptibility. Maybe we can talk about that because that seems like a kind of a crucial platonic kind of quality right there. Yeah. Yeah. You see that in the Fido and then again, he makes that claim really clearly in the Timaeus that the soul is imperceptible, body is perceptible. So the body being perceptible, that in top,
00:39:37
Speaker
suggests, yeah, being basically you can interact with it through your senses. Yeah. Uh, touch, it can be grasped, um, with like tactile, uh, visual.
Critiques and Ethical Ramifications
00:39:50
Speaker
Um, and then whereas the invisible is going to be only accessible to the intellect. Yeah. What about someone who just says, well, look, I mean, how exactly is something going to be invisible if it's extended. I mean, once something's extended, isn't it necessarily now subject ah to to visibility? Maybe not our visibility, maybe we aren't we aren't powerful enough, but some kind of visibility once something is extended. What would you to say?
00:40:23
Speaker
I think ah Gabriela Corona has an article where she argues that I mean her view is actually the soul is visible so you could kind of try and exploit in the affinity argument there's this little bit where Socrates says the soul is invisible and then um his interlocutor is kind of hedging on it and they say something like well invisible to man at least right so that could kind of go with your view that like you know maybe it could be visible to some other sort of um being with better perceptual organs. But i I mean, for what it's worth, I reject that reading. I think it's really clear that he's saying that it is not perceptible. So, I mean, I think this is kind of a problem for his views. You're pointing to something interesting there. um So, I mean, you know, what are different ways he could have to, I mean, I guess
00:41:07
Speaker
maybe one line of response would be just to push back on why does spatiality necessarily imply perceptibility, right? So he might say, well, look, some spatial things are perceptible and some are imperceptible, and the soul is the kind of spatial thing that's imperceptible. But, you know, if you said, well, okay, but why don't you give me your account of perceptibility, which then explains why the soul, you know, lacks perceptibility.
00:41:30
Speaker
For this, you're going to have to go to the Timaeus. He just doesn't have an account in the field of how sense perception occurs. But the account of the Timaeus is um that the object affects our sense organs. So he thinks all these perceptible objects are made of earth, air, fire, and water, and they affect our sense or our body in various kinds of ways that causes emotion to be transmitted through the body to the soul. Right. So the account in general term seems to be that um It's through contact of different kinds, maybe between a visible ray or between some triangles that make something hot and the surface of your body, etc. But it's through some kind of contact and transmission of motion that things are perceptible.
00:42:15
Speaker
And that makes it kind of puzzling why in principle the soul couldn't do that. um So there's, I mean, there's no discussion in the Timaeus of like a situation where you have a soul that's outside of any particular body and why isn't that soul perceptible. um But if he's saying that in general souls are imperceptible, he ought to have some sort of account to give of that.
00:42:36
Speaker
Maybe one way you could try and bypass that would be to say that the soul in the Timaeus has two dimensions and not three dimensions, and maybe something two-dimensional isn't going to give rise to contact in that sort of way. But the cost there would be that his whole account of how soul-body interaction in the Timaeus works is in terms of contact.
00:42:56
Speaker
Like, how does, um you you know, some, I don't know, well, some perceptual experience get registered by my soul because it's transmitted through a series of motions in my body to my soul. And at some point, my body makes contact with my soul and transmits the motion. So it kind of seems like that would demand that the soul be capable of contact. And if it's capable of contact, why in principle is it not perceptible? I don't know. I think that's a problem. Okay, interesting. um Just backing up, I was just thinking maybe,
00:43:25
Speaker
I mean, this is actually, I guess this is kind of getting back to the contemporary dualism point, but it's possible for the soul to be located maybe in the sense of like, it's immaterial, it's ah it's kind of attached to the body, in the sense of like, it's been paired with it. Now, you bring up the jig on quin Kim problem of like, how does it get paired with it?
00:43:48
Speaker
But maybe it's paired with the body and therefore in that sense, it's spatially located because it's been it's like this is the body that it controls. So it's it's located in the body in the sense of this is the body it controls. But then it's not extended. So someone could reject the extension idea. Now, you were just mentioning, you know, when something's perceptible.
00:44:12
Speaker
Normal, you know, it seems like generally it's made up of, what was it, a fire or earth air, fire water for plato right yeah right yeah sorry yeah du yeah don't be afraid listeners ah but yeah earth air, water.
00:44:28
Speaker
now But we there's no suggestion. I mean, that would violate that would definitely violate the immateriality of soul right to say that it was made up of any of those. So we're going to have to have ah some kind of extension. If it is extended, it's going to have to be extended.
00:44:46
Speaker
I guess, what' sorry, what I'm trying to say is to be located doesn't require extension necessarily. You could just say, okay, that's there's a pairing. That's the body it's controlling. But if we are going to say it's extended, we definitely cannot say that it's made up of one of those four elements.
00:45:00
Speaker
No, I mean, that's right. So his view is, well, at least for rational soul in the temace, it's made up of um being seen as indifference. My view is that in earlier dialogues, he claims that it's made up of mental states. So it's made up of say, desires, beliefs, and so forth. um But you know, you make a good point that one on on this issue of imperceptibility, one strategy that dualists could have would be to say, oh, it just occupies a point in space.
00:45:29
Speaker
or perhaps even that it's two-dimensional. There's going to be some fundamental difference between that and body, which might explain why body's perceptible and soul's imperceptible. so i mean That view has attractions along those lines. I think the cost is explaining mind-body interaction. right and That's always taken as like the biggest so stu stumbling block for substance dualism.
00:45:50
Speaker
um And of course, Plato can address that if he says, oh, the body is fully spatial, just like sorry, the soul is fully spatial, just like the body, then it's kind of comprehensible how they interact. If he were to say, oh, no, it's it's only two dimensional, or it's only a point in space, then again, it becomes hard to and understand how that could interact with the body.
00:46:09
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So maybe we can touch on that. I mean, so basically, you know, one of the things you do is you say, hey, you you know, you lay out the spatial soul theory and then you identify a few benefits of the theory. Right. And so, uh, one you just touched on, it provides, uh, it seems like a nice explanation of the soul body interaction.
00:46:29
Speaker
um Another one is that it provides sort of explanation of the unity of the body and the soul, which is what we've already been talking about. And then a third benefit you mentioned is provides a nice explanation of Plato's eschatology.
00:46:45
Speaker
um In other words, stuff related to reincarnation, avoiding reincarnation. um We've touched on all those already, but I mean, do you want to kind of dive a little bit more into any of those, i highlighting anything we haven't really? I think we covered most of it, but let me just see. So it was soul-body unity. yeah I mean, I think you have a neat account if you say, here's why they're one thing, because the soul is inside the body, and soul-body causal interaction again.
00:47:12
Speaker
makes sense if not only if the soul is inside the body but as we were discussing if the soul has some kind of extension. and There's a passage I don't think I talk about it in the paper but that's really maybe I do that's really cool on this in the laws where he talks about how the soul of course he thinks of the sun as a kind of god and a living being so how does the soul of the sun cause it to move and he kind of surveys look there's only three possibilities Either it causes the sun to move by being inside it, just like our souls cause us to move, or it's outside of it and uses some kind of other body to push it, or it's outside of it and causes it to move with exceedingly wondrous powers. So the third option, which is kind of like what we talked about as the more minimalistic metaphorical reading, like the soul just has this causal power,
00:47:57
Speaker
um That's the one that he finds weird. And the one that he says is the same as how our souls cause our bodies to move is just by being inside it and kind of you know pushing it around. um So I think you get this nice solution to unity and to mind-body interaction.
00:48:13
Speaker
The stuff on eschatology is going to be more Plato-specific, right? So um you know many of us don't share his assumptions about the value of philosophy and its relation to the afterlife. um But it is interesting, because I was always kind of puzzled. Like, if you look in the literature, there's a big debate about how ascetic is Plato. um Does he claim in the Fido that you just should kind of reject the body altogether? Or could you engage with the body with a kind of um remove such that you don't get tricked by it?
00:48:42
Speaker
um And on none of these readings, I don't think ah there's a very robust account of exactly what's so bad about the body. So um David Ebree has a fantastic article, your earlier guest, on, um I think it's in our key frugation or philosophy about um Plato's asceticism, where he says, look, here's the problem with the body. If you engage with it, it's necessarily going to cause you to make cognitive errors, to think that what is corporeal or perceptible is fundamentally real, etc.
00:49:11
Speaker
But, you know, I mean, I really liked the article and I'm really persuaded by it in some ways, but part of me thinks, well, but couldn't you just read Plato and like learn his metaphysics and stop making that mistake, right? Like you think if you're a good philosopher, the body's not necessarily going to cause you to engage in these errors. So if you go for this facial soul theory, then you can kind of take seriously this stuff where he says, well, look, if you engage with the body, even if you're really smart and you know that it's not real, you're still going to have this kind of corporeal accretion that's going to make the soul fundamentally unlike the forms and incapable of eventually engaging in a fully incorporeal existence. good Yeah, that's that's super helpful. and Very interesting. Yeah, yeah. the Good. I mean, maybe one point I wanted to ask about, does Plato distinguish noose from soul? I know that, you know, that kind of comes up in Neopladeness. You're going to get a kind of
00:50:06
Speaker
distinction between the two, at least in Plotinus. um Anyway, yeah, the intellect noose is what's responsible for, or what is the proper subject for knowing the forms. And that's coming from the Republic. But I'm not sure if there is a distinction in Plato between the soul and the intellect. And the only reason I bring that up is because I'm wondering about whether we will regenerate the the same problem.
00:50:36
Speaker
of the soul-body interaction in terms of the intellect. if Because if there is a distinction between soul and intellect, and you might want to make one because it's like it might seem like, I don't know, maybe there's things like providing the unity of consciousness which only ah you know, an extended thing could ever do. I don't know. I mean, I don't know if that's plausible, but the point being, yeah, if we have a distinction between soul and intellect that we might just reintroduce the interaction of problems. So anyway, do you have any thoughts about like in Plato, distinct between intellect and soul, if there is one?
00:51:11
Speaker
um I'm inclined to think that he uses noose kind of interchangeably with the rational part of the soul. um You could have an alternate view. Steven, I haven't read it in a long time, but Steven Mann has this wonderful book, Plato on God as noose. And I believe his view there is that, but I could be wrong, it's been a long time, is that noose is something more like an intellectual virtue rather than an actual thing.
00:51:34
Speaker
um So you could have some kind of view where you would distinguish them, and there are probably passages that suggest as much, but I'm inclined to think that he often uses noose where it's clear that what he means is that it's part of this, like it's one of the parts of the soul, namely the rational part of the soul. um So that would avoid some of these worries you have where look if noose is sufficiently different from the soul, then aren't we back to kind of worrying about how soul-body interaction is going to work. I mean, I guess if you have, I mean, part of what might motivate a view like that would be something like if noose is to be the kind of thing that can contemplate forms, it should be really, really similar to them and really, really different from the body.
Conclusion and Suzanne's Future Work
00:52:10
Speaker
And that could kind of push you to wanting to treat it as not spatial at all. um So it could be more like the forms in one of those lines. I mean, I guess on a view like that, you could just say, and noose in that sense doesn't interact with the body. It's just a thing that's completely separate. um But I don't think in any event, that's the view you're getting in Plato.
00:52:28
Speaker
Um, in part because then he wouldn't have to be so worried about, um, the contamination of the body. Right. Um, it's ah because reason can engage with the body that the body can, you know, um, make it impure and mislead it and do all of these bad things to it. Yeah. Want to be sensitive to time here, you know, represent the spatial theory of the soul. You talk about, um, some errors that other interpret interpretations fall into. You provide some benefits of the spatial interpretation.
00:52:57
Speaker
um You also discuss, though, that, you know, hey, this spatial theory is incomplete. There are certain things that are not finished. You also identify ethical ramifications of the spatial theory. Is there anything there in terms of the incompleteness or ethical ramifications you want to touch on before we?
00:53:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think they already covered the ethical ramifications. I talked a little bit about the debate about how aesthetic he is. So I think the ethical upshot is just going to be, you know, it's precisely because the soul has this kind of overlap with the body that the body can pollute it and that you have to be very careful about the body and try and divorce the soul as much as possible from the body. um Incompleteness, I mean, for what it's worth, I think in the Fido, the account's incomplete. He doesn't give an account a full account of or really any account of how soul-body interaction works, but a lot of that's flushed out in the Timaeus. Now, I think there are some problems with the view. Like you pointed to a really substantial one, which is he seems committed to the view that the soul is imperceptible, but what are the grounds for its imperceptibility? So I think that's you know really problematic, and I'm not sure what solution there is that Plato could appeal to.
00:54:00
Speaker
um And of course, you know, if you say that the soul has these spatial attributes, it seems to lead to very natural questions like, okay, how big is it? He doesn't really, he doesn't tell us. So, um you know, there are questions that seem to arise from positing that it's spatial. Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Suzanne, coming on. It's absolutely a fascinating article. I, you know, highly recommend it to everyone to read. Oh, thank you. And yeah, I mean, maybe just to close out, you want to share what you're currently working on?
00:54:29
Speaker
Yeah, the article is part of a book project, so I'm hoping to wrap it up in the next year or two on platonic dualism. So the springboard is this idea that the soul has spatial attributes, but in the book, I look at topics like soul body unity, soul body interaction, what the soul is composed of, et cetera. Oh, fantastic. Okay, well, that's that's awesome, and we'll look forward to that. So thank you so much again. Of course, my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.