(One more post for today. Tomorrow, if all goes well, I'll be standing on the summit of Mt. Washington and unable to post.)
Sam Rickless has posted a handout on the arguments of the Phaedo, which illustrates well the logical structure one would want to attribute to the Affinity Argument--three distinct considerations, each leading to the same crucial conclusion. And yet the text, it seems, does not allow us to construe it in this way:
Affinity Argument (78b-80d)
- Noncomposite things are indissoluble.
- Things that always remain the same in the same state are most likely noncomposite.
- Forms always remain the same in the same state.
- Sensible things never remain the same in the same state.
- Forms are invisible.
- Sensible things are visible.
- Invisible things always remain the same in the same state, and visible things never remain the same in the same state.(3,4,5,6)
- The soul is invisible.
- The soul is indissoluble.(1,2,7,8)
- When the soul investigates things that remain the same in the same state, it too remains the same in the same state.
- The soul investigates the Forms.
- The soul is indissoluble.(1,2,3,10,11)
- The nature of the divine is to rule and lead.
- The nature of the soul is to rule and lead (the body)
- If X is F and Y is F, then X resembles Y.
- The soul resembles the divine. (13,14,15)
- The divine is indissoluble.
- If X resembles Y and Y is G, then X is G.
- The soul is indissoluble.(16,17,18)
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