Posted on August 29, 2022.

Philosophy Notes, Part 8

At the conclusion of Part 7 of Philosophy Notes, I promised to give some examples of philosophical problems that can be “made to disappear” (Wittgenstein) by showing the fly (the philosopher) the way out of the fly bottle, that is, by showing that what is presented as a problem is not a problem at all.  My hope is that a few frustrated philosophers who are reading this blog can also be shown the way out of their own fly bottle.

Let’s start by going far back in time to Plato’s answer to the question “How is it possible for one and the same person to be angry at himself for giving in to an appetite that he wants to suppress?” Plato’s example is the character Leontius who is walking past the execution grounds outside the walls of Athens. Leontius does not want to look at the bodies lying on the ground but at the last moment he gives in and rushes over to get a better view of them. Later, he is angry at himself for having done this. He did not want to look at the bodies, but the appetite to do so overtook him. Plato asks, “How is this possible?” (Republic, 439 - 441)

Plato’s answer is the theory of tripartite parts of the soul (436). If we think of the soul as having three parts (appetite, passion and reason), then we begin to understand how a person can be angry at himself. One part of his soul (the passionate part) is angry about what another part of his soul (the appetitive part) has led him to do. Problem solved.

But the problem is not solved. The tripartite theory of the soul does not take Plato out of the fly bottle. It keeps him in the bottle because the next question is: “What is it that directs each part of the soul to go to war against another part?” Don’t the parts require souls to do this?

This is called the Homunculus Problem). Each part of the soul is itself a type of person, an invisible person (a homunculus) residing in the soul. It battles with other parts of the soul for domination. As Professor Julia Annas explains it, if each part of the soul is itself a kind of person, then wouldn’t these sub-persons also have souls with parts, and so on, ad infinitum? (Annas, 442; Houlgate, 8.5.2) Trapped in the fly bottle, again.

But there is a way out of the bottle. The way that Plato got trapped is found in the question itself. Suppose I eat too much birthday cake and later regret it. I tell this to my wife. She responds by saying, “Well, it was your birthday after all. If you are worried about putting on a few pounds, eat less tomorrow.” Having not read Plato’s Republic, she does not raise questions about the logical impossibility of giving in to an appetite and later regretting it. She understands what I mean when I say, “I regret having eaten five slices of birthday cake yesterday. I couldn’t stop myself.”

Plato created a problem by assuming that cases like mine must be like a situation in which a person is standing in one spot and waving her arms up and down. She is both moving and not moving at the same time. Plato asks, “How is this possible? How can one and the same person be moving and not moving at the same time?” The easy and obvious answer is, “Her body has parts. One part of her body is stationary (her trunk) and the other part (her arms) are moving.”

If we replace the key words in the previous question with the words “want to eat more cake” and “not want to eat more cake,” then we get the new question “How can one and the same person want to eat more cake and not want to eat more cake at the same time?” The easy and obvious answer is, “He loves to eat cake but he does not want to gain weight by eating more cake.”

But Plato does not accept the easy answer. Instead, he proposes the tripartite theory mentioned above: “I have a soul and the soul has parts. The part that wants to eat cake is called ‘appetite,’ (the appetitive part )and the part that does not want to eat the cake is called ‘reason’ (the rational part).

In other words, Plato wants an answer that corresponds to his answer to the earlier question about how one person’s body can be stationary and moving (not stationary) at the same time. If the explanation is that the body has parts some of which move and others which don’t move, then the same explanation can be used to show how a person can want and not want to eat cake.

It is all pure invention. It makes sense to say that the human body has parts (arms, legs, trunk, head, feet). These are things we can observe. But it makes no sense to use the human body as a model for creating the concept of an unobservable thing called “soul” and then breaking it down into invisible parts, each of which has a soul that presumably performs tasks assigned to the part.

Plato and those who follow him are still stuck in the fly bottle. Plato’s theory of the tripartite soul solves the problem of how a person can both want and not want the same thing at the same time but the theory is subject to the homunculus problem described above.

The way out of the fly bottle is to not get in the bottle. Don’t try to solve a problem that does not exist. When we asked the question, “How can one and the same person want to eat more cake and not want to eat more cake at the same time?” the easy and obvious answer was, “He loves to eat cake but he does not want to gain more weight by eating more cake.” This presents no problem at all. There is no logical conflict between “loving to eat cake” and “not wanting to gain more weight by eating more cake.”

There is no need to create a philosophical theory to answer a question that can be easily answered. Nothing is to be gained and a lot is lost by adopting Plato’s theory of the tripartite soul. The question “How is it possible for one and the same person (Leontius) to be angry at himself for giving in to an appetite that he wants to suppress?” does not lead to a problem that needs to be solved. The easy and obvious answer is “Leontius likes looking at the executed dead bodies but he hates and is angry with himself when he does so – he does not want to the kind of person who enjoys such things.” Like the birthday cake example, this presents no problem. There is no logical conflict between “liking to look at the dead bodies,” and “hating or being angry at oneself for enjoying such things.”

If there is no conflict, then there is no problem that needs to be solved. There is no need for the fly (the philosopher) to enter the fly bottle.

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Annas, Julia. 1981. An Introduction to Plato’s Republic. Oxford, Clarendon Press.

Houlgate, Laurence. 2016. Understanding Plato: The Smart Student’s Guide to the Socratic Dialogues and the Republic. Amazon Kindle.

Plato. ca. 375 BCE. Republic.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical Investigations.