Transcript Parmenides b510 BCE?

The
Eleatics:
Parmenides
&
Parmenides fl 495 BCE?
• Confronts the
paradoxes that
follow from
Heraclitus and
Pythagoreans.
• Resolves these in a
poem by appealing
to reason.
What Paradoxes?
•
Heraclitus
• Reality is both
one (the logos)
and many
• “The way up
and the way
down are one
and the same.”
•
Pythagoreans
• Reality is made
of geometrical
points/units
• Separated by
the void
• Reality is dual:
Table of Opposites
“The steeds that carry me
took me as far as my heart could desire,
when once they had brought me
and set me on the renowned way
of the goddess . . .
Come, O youth, . . .
It is no ill chance, but right and justice,
that has sent you forth to travel this way. .
. Meet it that you should learn all things.”
Come now, and I will tell you
. . . The only way of inquiry that can be
thought of,
the one way,
that it is and cannot not-be,
is the path of Persuasion
for it attends upon Truth;
the other,
that it is-not and need must not-be,
that I tell you
is a path altogether unthinkable.
There are only
two ways of inquiry
“The one way”
“the other”
This is the path of reason (logos). The way of “seeming, Becoming
or appearances
“Either it is or it is not. It cannot
not be. Therefore, it is.”
Parmenides applies purely
deductive reasoning which he
argues exposes
contradictions in the physics
of previous philosophers.
This is the path of empirical
evidence, or knowledge based
on sense experiences. It is
grounded in a system of
oppositions and has led to
contradictions, which
Parmenides seems to find
incoherent.
What is, is what can be thought of
It is uncreated
imperishable
entire
immovable
without end
all alike
indivisible
round,
like a ball
What is he talking
about?
Is he talking about:
language--how we can
speak of things?
The ultimate “stuff” of
existence?
Reality itself?
What is “it”?
Is it material stuff?
Is it the stuff of
ideas?
Is it thought?
What has Parmenides done?
• He has firmly distinguished
truth from mere opinion.
• He has denigrated sense.
• And established reason as
authoritative.
• Reason (logos) is divine.
• Parmenides’ student
and famous for his 4
“paradoxes of motion”
• They seem to offer
rational proof that all
things are one
• and that our
perceptions of
motion/change are
illusory.
Zeno of Elea
Achilles and
the Tortoise
“If there is motion, there will be
something which has traversed an
infinite series of distances in a finite
time.”
The arrow paradox
At each moment the arrow
occupies a place equal to itself.
And, if it occupies a place equal to
itself, it must be at rest.
If it is at rest, then it is not in motion.
What is the point of Zeno’s
arguments?
• If space is a unit, it can be divided.
• Each newly divided part is a new
unit, which can itself be divided.
• In order to move anywhere, one must
cross infinite units in a finite amount
of time.
• This is impossible.
• Therefore, movement is an illusion.
What’s Zeno’s point?
• Is he attacking the Heraclitean notion that
all is in flux and constant motion
(becoming vs being)?
• Is he attacking the logical possibility of
plurality? (If there is being, it is one.)
• Is he attacking the Pythagorean assumption
of the point as a discreet entity separated
by the void (by referring to the infinite
divisibility of points as units)?
We don’t
know for
certain.
But we do know that for
the Greeks “an infinite
series” was thought to be
incoherent, irrational.
And it took until the 17th
century & the discovery of
the calculus (Newton and
Leibnitz) which provided
proof that infinite
geometric series CAN
converge.
New Problems:
What are there standards
for right thinking?
How do we distinguish truth
and opinion?
Is the reality of our senses
really real or an illusion?
For never shall this
be proved,
that all things that are not, are.
But do hold your thoughts back from
this way of inquiry,
nor let custom born of much
experience,
force you to wander along this road
your aimless eye, your echoing ear
or your tongue;
but do judge by reason
the strife-encompassed proof that I
have spoken.