evan l. burge - the ideas as aitiai in the phaedo

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The Ideas as A i t i a i in the Phaedo

E V A N L. B U R G E

1. The context of the discussion

THE arguments for the soul's immortality in the first two-thirds

of the Phaedo have a certain persuasive force, but even to the inter

locutors they are less than fully convincing. Even if Socrates’belief in immortality were true it would still fall short of knowledge:

If a m an does not know that the soul is immortal, and cann ot give an

account of this, it is fitting for him to be afraid unless he is a fool. (95 d)

The third and final argument presumably is intended to 'give anaccount’ that will make the soul's survival a matter of knowledge

in the strict sense. After a long pause to indicate both the difficulty

and the importance of what is to come, Socrates announces that the

final argument demands a full explanation (aitia) of generation and

destruction, and so introduces at 96 a the discussion of aitia.

This discussion begins with the well-known ‘autobiographicalfragment.’ We hear how Socrates began by looking for the kinds of

explanations sought by those Presocratics who were interested

primarily in physics and medicine. Failing to find satisfactory answers

and bewildered by what he took to be logically puzzling features of

accounts of this type, he abandoned this method of enquiry and was

then attracted by the promise of teleological explanation offeredby Anaxagoras' postulation of intelligence as the aitia of everything.

Anaxagoras did not fulfil the promise in the further exposition of

his system, but for Socrates1 teleological explanation remained themost desirable kind. In default of this he had worked out a second-best alternative, a ‘second voyage’2 in which the ideas function asaitiai.

1 For the purpose of this paper, I pay no attention to the ‘Socratic Problem'but refer to Socrates and Plato interchangeably.

2 The meaning of deut eros p lous (99 d, cf. Philebus 19 c) has been much disputed.

Many feel that in the 'general context’ of Plato’s writings the search for a tele

ologicalaitia

canno t have been abandoned here: so, I. M. Crombie, A n E x am in a-

tion of Plate's Doctrines Vol. 2 (London, 1963), p. 161, and Thomas Gould,

Platonic Love (London, 1963), p. 77. But since the text explicitly says that



The concept of aitia is related to that of personal responsibility.3Though in practice its use is far wider than the etymological meaning

might suggest, the model of deliberate human action was never likely

to be far from the mind of the Greek philosopher setting out to

analyse it. In part at least this explains Socrates' preference for the

purposive kind of explanation that would constitute the ‘first voyage’.

In the passage beginning at % a aitia is several times4 glossed or

replaced by an expression involving dia (‘onaccount of') and an ac

cusative. As in Aristotle,6 to give an aitia of a state of affairs or an

event is to answer the question ‘on account of what?' about it. Beingthus at least as wide in its application as the English word ‘why?'

the word is considerably broader in scope than its standard, but

seriously misleading, translation 'cause'.6 As general words covering

Socrates has resorted to the ‘second best course’ because he has failed to find

the teleological aitia, and because there is not a word about teleology in thewhole discussion of the ‘simple-minded aitia’, the common interpretation seems

clearly wrong. So, P. Shorey, What Plato Said (Chicago, 1933), p. 534, N. Murphy

The Interpretation of Plato's Republic, (Oxford, 1951), p. 146, and most recently

G. Vlastos, ‘Reasons and Causes in the Phaedo’, Philos. Review 78 (1969), p.

297 note 15.3 Atrtoc is the Greek for ‘responsible* and its neuter, t6 atnov ‘the thing respon

sible', is often used as a synonym for cthia, e.g. at 99 b.

4 Phaedo 96 a 9-10, c 7, c 8; 97 a 1, b 4, b 5.

5 e.g. Physics 198 b 5 ff.6 Cf. G. E. L. Owen, ‘Aristotle on the Snares of Ontology,’ in New Essays onPlato and Aristotle ed. R. Bambrough (New York, 1965), p. 82: ‘When Aristotleintroduces “ousia" in the sense of the essence or definable nature of a thing,

and then says that ousia is, in the words of the Oxford translation, "the cause

of each thing’s being" (ai t ia tou eivai ekas t on. Metaphysics H 1043 a 2 -3 ; cf.

De Anima B 415 b 12-13), he ... means just that the definition of “ice” goes toexplain what it is for our particular ice-patch to be inexistence. (To explain,

not to cause: is it too late to complain of 'cause” as thetranslation of a i t ia ? ) . '

Aristotle’s use of aitia here is very close to what Plato is getting at with hisdoctrine that the ideas are aitiai. Owen's strictures on those who misread

Aristotle by importing alien notions of causality apply to many commentators

on Phaedo 99 ff. Thus R. Hackforth, Plato’s Phaedo (Cambridge, 1955), p. 131,takes P lato to task for expecting to find a cause of ten ’s being greater than eight,

and is still under the influence of this kind of misunderstanding on p. 145when he remarks: 'It is not easy to see how Plato could have answered the

point [made by Aristotle, de Gen. et Corr. 335 b] about intermittent operation of the Forms in terms of the Phaedo doctrine' (italics mine). R. S. Bluck, Plato's Phaedo (London, 1955), p. 160 ff., makes things even more difficult by speaking

of 4Form -causes ’.



answers to English 'why' questions, 'reason' and ‘explanation’ seem

fairly satisfactory equivalents for aitia.There is, however, one point at which these equivalents fail. It is

this. According to one widely accepted analysis, to give an explanation of circumstances S is to mention other circumstances C and general

laws or principles P such that C and P jointly entail S. Now in the

schema

C.P—>S

the variables are propositional variables.7 Sometimes, but not always,

an aitia, is likewise expressed by a whole sentence or clause. In our

passage there is no clear expression of an aitia by a clause until 98 a :

For I should never have thought that, when he was declaring that things

were set in order by intelligence, he would offer any other aitia for them

than that it was best for them to be as they were.

In many other expressions, however, of candidates for being reckoned

aitiai, the t i (what?) of the assumed question dia t i ; (because of what?)

corresponds not to a proposition but to an object or entity of some

kind. Even where a rejected form of explanation is expressed pro-

positionally as a general law, it is hard not to feel that what answers

to the aitia is the hot and the cold rather than the whole clause in whichthey are named:

Is it whenever the hot and the cold produce putrefaction, as some used to

claim, that living creatures are bom? (96 b)

It is this respect of its syntactical behaviour9 in which aitia is more

7 In practice the explanans C.P. is often abbreviated to a single proposition

(e.g. ‘because Dad told me to' or ‘because metals expand on being heated')

but it remains true that reasons and explanations are expressed propositionally.8 Other exam ples occur in 98 c and 9 8 e. Le ss straightforward examp les can

be found where Sta governs an articular infinitive (96 c 8 ) or an abstract noun

formed from a ve rb (97a 1, a 7), both of which construction s can b e readilly

explicated as stylistic variants of propositional expressions.

9 Sim ilarly A ristotle in his famous an alysis of four senses of 'wh y?' in Phys ics B

(194 b 1 6 ff.) tends to identify a i t ia i with things: the bronze (of the statue),

the relation of 2 : 1 and in general number (of the octave), the father (of the

child), health (of walking). This is despite the fact that at least the ‘final cause’

would norm ally be expressed propositionally (‘W hy is he walking?' - ‘In order

to be he alth y.’ 194 b 34) and Aristotle himself identifies the formal cause

with the statement of the essence a t 194 b 27. In this case, however, it maybe that the logos in question would be expressed in the form of e.g. ‘rational

animal' and still appear as a naming rather than as a propositional expression.



akin to the English 'cause'.10

I suggest that in Phaedo 96 ff. Plato, while fully alive to the widerange of possible senses of the word aitia (so that he can implicitly

complain that most of the Presocratics had been unduly restrictive

in their quest for aitiai), is none the less predisposed by his most

frequent syntactical usages to regard a request for an aitia as a request

for giving an explanation by naming some entity.

On the other hand, his critics have been so bemused by the stock

translation cause that they have accused Plato of making the ideas

into 'efficient causes’ in the very passage where he is concerned

to show that there are important forms of explanation that have

nothing to do with causal agency.

3. Criteria for being an 'aitia'

Some of the criteria that an entity must meet to qualify as an aitia for Plato can be inferred from the discussion of the phrase ‘taller

by a head’ at 100 e 8-101 b 3. Although the understanding of the

dative as 'causal' rather than as expressing ‘measure of difference’

in this phrase is curious, there seems no reason to doubt that the

philosophical criticisms made in the passage are intended seriously.Socrates argues as follows:

(а) Those who are willing to say someone is taller by a head are

equally willing to say that he is also shorter by a head than some

third person. But if the head explains both tallness and shortness

we are faced with a contradiction (enantios logos 101 a ) : that the samething should be the aitia of country predicates.

(б) A head is a small thing and it is surely absurd for a small thing

to be the aitia of a large thing’s being large.

Both arguments reveal the difficulties that arise when the idiomswhereby things are regarded as explanatory principles are accepted

uncritically. But rather than discuss here the implausibility of the

criteria implicit in this discussion I content myself with trying to statethem:

I Nothing can be the aitia of another thing's being qualified by

10 It is worth noting also that when we ascribe causality to an object x we do

not usually make x responsible for another object y but rather for an event

or state of affairs expressed in a statem ent. ‘Why is y F?’ we ask. - ‘Because ofx .’ That is, x is the cause of Fy (y's being F, where F is a predicate) and not of y

simply.



contrary predicates (at different times or even in different

relations).

II Anything that is the aitia of something's having a certain pro

perty cannot itself have the opposite property.

What may be in Plato’s mind are such examples as that fire, being

hot, cannot cool us (be the aitia of the cold in us) nor snow warm us.

It is tempting to state the second criterion in the stronger form:

I I I Anything that is the aitia of a thing's having a certain property

must itself have that property.

Even though it is not difficult to bring counter-examples against

I I 1 from Plato's own writings, and it is clear that the match which

causes an explosion does not itself have to be deafening, destructive

and dangerous, I I 1 seems plausible when we have the examples of

fire and snow in mind. Indeed Aristotle (An. Post. 72 a 29) states the

theorem more strongly yet:

Fo r th at which causes an a ttribute to app ly (di d uparkei) to a sub ject

always possesses that attribute to a still greater degree (mallon) e.g. that

which causes us to love something is itself still more loved.

Some such view as this may be a factor in the notorious 'self

predication' of the ideas in so far as they are considered aitiai (100 b ff).

What can be safely asserted is that the ideas in their character as

aitiai are entities that meet the stringent requirements just stated.

4. The 'simple-minded' account of ‘aitia '

Although Plato does not always keep the latter two distinct in his

terminology, we must first distinguish between phenomenal individuals

(x, y,), characters that they have (F, G), and ideas that have the same

names as the characters (O, T).11 Plato distinguishes the first fromthe other two explicitly at 103 b 6-7, and implies a difference between

the latter two in the preceding line be enumerating ‘the (sc. opposite)

in us' and ‘the (opposite) in nature'.12 A fundamental difference

11 Cf. R. G. Turnbull, ‘Aristotle’s Debt to the "Natural Philosophy" of the

Phaedo,’ Phil. Quart. 8 (1958), esp. 131-134. In what follows I use the symbol F

indiscriminately to stand for both a character and the corresponding predicate

by which an individual is characterized.

u G. Vlastos, ‘Reasons and Causes' (note 2, above), p. 300 note 27, cites also

Parm. 130 b, and rejects P. Shorey’s contention (The Unity of Plato’s Thought [Chicago, 1904], note 283) that ‘there are really only two things: the idea and

the particular affected by the "presence” of . . . the idea.'



between a character and an idea is that the former may be considered

to have departed or perished (102 e) on the approach of its opposite -something unthinkable for an eternal, unchanging idea.13

The ‘second voyage’ gives a general schema for answering questions

of the form ‘Why is x F?'. The answer is ‘Because x participates in O.’

This - whether the idea or the fact of participation is not made clear -

is called the aitia (100 c).14 The phrase used twice to express the schema

B y (or in virtue of) the beautiful the beautiful things are beautiful.’

(too kaloo ta k a la k a la .)

Using the distinction made above we see that the three different

occurrences of ‘beautiful’ in this formula refer respectively to the

idea, the phenomena] individuals, and the inherent character:

‘In virtue of O, x is F.'

This symbolization makes evident that the statement of the 'simple-

minded' aitia is not a pure tautology: an ontological commitment

had been made before the solution was given and is implicit in the

schema offered.

What is the relation between explanans (1) and explanandum (2)

in the schema:Because (1) x participates in O,

(2) x is F ?

13 Th is is no t to deny (comp are D . K ey t, Phronesis 8 [1963], 169) that Plato

often uses the terms eidos and idea to refer to both the 'immanent character’

and the ‘transcendent Form' (see W. J. Verdenius, ‘Notes on Plato's Phaedo', M m m osyn e 11 [1958], 232-233), but only to claim that it is helpful to make a

distinction, sanctioned by P lato himself bu t not always observed in his terminol

ogy. For the discussion of Plato I myself should like to see something like the

following terminology adopted: character for a quality exhibited by a phenom

enal particular, and idea for a supra-sensible exemplar. Form is best reserved

for Aristotelian conte xts.

14 Plato also uses ‘makes’ (poiei 100 d 5) in this connection. As we have already

seen, however, there is no need for us to assume that the ideas have suddenly

been activated into efficient causes, any more than ‘makes’ is used to express

efficiency in the English sentences:

W ha t makes it impossible is th a t I cannot be in Princeton and Canberra

at the same time.

W ha t m akes this figure a square is tha t i t has four equal sides perpendicular

to each other.

Contrast F. M. Cornford, Plato and Parmenides (London, 1939), pp. 77-78.

and see Vlastos’ comments, 'Reasons and Causes’ (note 2, above), pp. 307-308,

note 46.



It must be a non-symmetrical relationship in view of the ontological

commitment of (1). A somewhat similar relationship occurs betweentwo propositions in Euthyphro 10 b-c. Here the rejection of the de

finition of piety as ‘what all the gods love' turns on Socrates' allowing

the statement 'Because x is loved ( f i l e i t a i ) x is loved ( fil oum e n on e s t i n ) ’

but not the converse, even though ‘is-loved’ and 'is loved' would or

dinarily be taken as synonyms, in Greek as in English. The explanatory

propositions of both the Phaedo and the Euthyphro appear at first sight

to be tautologies but this is ruled out in their context.15 In both

cases the explanans is to be construed as telling us a fact, physical ormetaphysical, that is our warrant for asserting a predicate of a subject.

While the ontological commitment of the ‘simple-minded' account

that begins the second voyage shows, then, that it is to be understood

as a ‘synthetic' doctrine, it would seem that its ‘safety' comes from

considering it as at the same time logically true. We can see the plau

sibility of this by beginning with a logically true proposition such as:

(i) Being an equilateral rectangle makes this figure a square.

In the material mode favored by Plato, this might appear as:

(ii) This is a square in virtue of equilateral-rectangularity

or, since ‘equilateral-rectangularity’ is another name for 'squareness',

as: (iii) This is a square in virtue of squareness.This last may not be very informative, but it is at least safe in that

it can give rise to no seeming contradiction (enantios logos 101 a 6)like that arising when the same aitia produces opposite ‘effects'.

Moreover, in a context of Socratic definition the way is open to ex

press more fully and informatively the essence of squareness. Platothus hopes to have produced a synthetic doctrine that can be known

with certainty to be true a priori.

15 Contrast P. Shorey, What Plato Said (note 2, above), p. 179: 'Plato is appa

rently aware that this in modern terms is only a tautological logic, or ... a

consistent and systematic substitution of the logical reason for all other sorts

of cause;’ and C. C. W. Taylor, 'Forms as Causes in the Phaedo,' Mind 78

(1969), 45-49: ‘One could as well say that “x is 9 because x is 9 ” states a neces

sary and sufficient condition for being 9 ' (p. 47). Taylor reaches this conclusion

by discounting the Platonic ontology as soon as he has mentioned it. He writes

a little earlier, ' “x is 9 through sharing in the O" which we interpret as "x is 9

through sharing 9 -ness.' ” and presumably he means by 9 -ness a ‘common quality ,’

the inherent character rather than the transcendent idea.



This attempt to have it both ways16 can be diagnosed, from a

modern point of view, as a failure to make a clear distinction betweenanalytic and synthetic propositions. Nevertheless, there are signs in

the Phaedo that Plato is taking the all-important first halting steps

towards this distinction. One of his criticisms of his predecessors is

that their kinds of aitia were based on changes of physical relations17

as if this were the only way to answer the question 'Why?'. While

the main burden of his critique is directed against their lack of teleo

logy, Plato also makes the criticism that their procedures would

be entirely unsuitable when the proposition to be explained was a

logical truth, such as that 1 + 1 = 2 (96 e 8 ff.).

At 102 b 8 a curious objection is made to the sentence ‘Simmias

surpasses (i.e. is taller than) Socrates.' Socrates claims that the sen

tence wrongly implies that Simmias surpasses Socrates in virtue of

his own nature rather than of his incidental height. It would seem

that Plato has a predilection for construing sentences as if they all

expressed necessary propositions and complainsthat there is something

wrong with those that do not. The passage does evince an awareness

of the difference between the status of a necessary statement like

‘Simmias is Simmias’ and that of a contingent statement such as

‘Simmias is 5 ft. 8 in. tall.1W hat is not made clear is the difference

between different kinds of necessity, in particular the difference

between logical and physical necessity. A given proposition, e.g.

that metal bars expand on being heated, may be both physically

necessary and logically contingent. Ignoring this distinction and the

epistemic considerations that go with it, Plato assimilates all

necessity to logical necessity which is to be understood by purely

a priori reasoning. As examples of necessary truths he gives (103 d ff.)

‘Snow is cold.' 'Fire is ho t.' ‘Three is odd.'

16 Fo r the similarly ambiguous logical stat us of ‘the S ocra tic-P laton ic-A risto

telian essential definition’ see R. Hare, ‘Plato and the Mathematicians' in

New Essays on Plato and Aristotle ed. R. Bambrough (New York, 1965), pp.

32-33.

17 Note the implicit criticism of such words, taken to express a physical (rather

tha n a logical) relatio n o f addition, su btra ctio n e tc ., as Ttpotry^vtjTai (96 d),

skisis; (97 a), apag etai and (97 b), and especially Pla to's insistence

on the distinction between a physical conjunction ( t 6 rrpooeivai, 96 e ; £jrXr4claoav

AXXtjXois, 97 a) of two ob jec ts and the logical tr ut h th a t 1 + 1 — 2.



apply to inanimate subject-matter, and (from Plato’s point of view)

this interpretation attributes too great a degree of substantialityto sensible phenomena, such as sticks and stones, that are other

than soul. In Plato’s view such things are simply bundles of attributes

held together by law-like regularities21 in view of their instantiation

of ideas which have definite and unchanging relations to one another.

What the passage (74 d-75 b) does suggest, relevant to our enquiry,

is this. To say something is F is to make a statement free from meta

physical presuppositions. To say that x participates in O is to say

more, in that a certain theory is being used to make explicit the

ontological structure which makes true linguistic predication possible.

And this structure involves the notion that the characters that

phenomena exhibit are in some sense (which it is not my task to

elucidate here) deficient in comparison with the paradigm ideas.

A full account of why x is F must include consideration of how to

be F falls short of being O. Such complications are irrelevant to Plato's

purpose in establishing the immortality of soul and are not developed

here. Similarly, questions of efficiency are ignored as irrelevant.

To ascribe efficient causation to a supposed striving of sensibles

is as perverse as to interpret the ideas as efficient causes with Aristotle

in D eGen. etCorr. 335 b: the question is simply not raised at this point.

5. The 'cleverer' account of ‘aitia

Granted that Plato is not offering the ideas as a superior kind of

physical agent, it remains true that his discussion in the Phaedo is

not unrelated to what we might call causation. That it is intended

to be so related is shown by the introduction to the whole discussion

where we are promised an account of ‘the explanation of generation

and destruction' (95 e), and by the fact that three of the examplesgiven in the 'cleverer' (komfote ran 105 c) account of aitia are concerned

with causal sequences, namely Fire-Heat, Snow-Cold, and Fever-

Sickness. But as we have seen, and as his whole program of trying

to establish a m atter of fact about the soul - its immortality - by

21This view is consonant with Phaedo account of the ‘cleverer a i t ia ’ . and also,

I believe, with the Timaeus accout of secondary causation and the so-called

‘errant cause.' See P. Shorey, What Plato Said, p. 616 ad Tim. 47 e and G. R.

Morrow, ‘Necessity and Persuasion in Plato's Timaeus ’ in Studies in Plato's M et aphysic s ed. R. E. Allen (London, 1965), pp. 421-437, esp. 427-431.



deduction from logical truths makes clear, Plato assimilates causal

necessity to logical necessity. Thus the predicate 'hot' is supposed tobe essential to its subject fire in the same way as 'odd' is essential to

the number three. This undifferentiated necessary relation is ex

pressed by the picturesque talk of the impossibility of admitting

opposite predicates without either perishing or retiring.

Some characters, Plato explains, are of such a nature that if any

thing possesses them that thing is compelled (anagka^ei 104d2) to

participate in another idea as well - Plato says ‘an opposite of some

thing’, having his eye fixed on the opposition of life and death which

is his real concern. Thus,if anything is snow it must be cold (which is the opposite of hot)

and it cannot admit the hot and still be snow.

This necessity is explained in terms of relations (entailment22 or

incompatibility) among the ideas in which the sensible particulars

share. This is the basis of Plato’s ‘cleverer' extension of his ‘safe but

simple-minded’ account of explanation.

‘Why is the boy sick?' The safe, but not very illuminating, answer

is that he is sick because he has sickness in him. The clever answer

is that he is sick because he has fever23 in him. For there is a relation

of entailment between the idea of fever and that of sickness, so that

whatever participates in the former participates also in the latter.

Plato does not allow a non-necessary statement to serve as an explanation. ‘The snow melted because it was May’ would not be satis

factory unless there were a necessary connection between the ideas

of heat and May. Symbolically the developed doctrine of why x is Fmay be represented as follows:

Because (1) x has G in it (or x is affected by y which has G in it)and (2) G corresponds to T (or is the ‘image’ of T)

(3) x participates in T (by the ‘safe' aitia).(4) T ‘entails’ O(5) x participates also in O

(6) Fx

22 The use of a term m odem logic such as 'entailm ent' is misleading if applied

uncritically to the embryonic form of the notion as found in Plato. Strictly,

entailment is a relation between propositions not things, even elevated things

like ideas. Plato, however, uses relations between things to explicate logical

relations. See R. M. Hare, Plato and the Mathematicians in New Essays on Plato and Aristotle, ed. R . Bambrough (New York , 1965), pp. 23-24.23 Pla to follows the general Hipp ocratic traditio n in making fever an aetiolo gical

factor in disease and not. as in modem medicine, a symptom of it.



Of these steps (1) is known (in so far as it can be) by sense-experience.

But it is not sense-experience which enables us to pick out fire as the

cause of heat in x. There are many possible candidates for the role

of aitia given by sense-experience: the choice of the right one, according

to Plato, is a matter of intellectual insight. Suppose x is water heated

in a kettle over a fire. Then so far as immediate sense-impressions

are concerned being in a kettle might be a sufficient condition for being

hot. The important step is (4): the entailment between two ideas.

It is this which gives the element of necessity implicit in the concept

of 'cause'. How is insight into the natures and inter-relations of the

ideas to be achieved? Presumably by anamnesis, that is, by being

reminded of some innate knowledge by sensible experience.

6. Conclusion

Plato's theory accounts well for such necessary connections as that

between the length of a pendulum (l ) and the period of its swing

27z/l/g. Knowledge of this law is indeed independent of sense-ex

perience, since the formula can be derived by deduction from the

propositions that the bob is moving periodically along a very small

arc of a circle and that it is moving under the influence of the earth's

gravitational field. And, as Plato would be quick to point out, ex

perimental measurements on physical pendulums will not conform

exactly to this formula, but will do so more and more as the physical

pendulum approximates to the theoretically perfect one with a bob

of point mass and a weightless inextensible string.

But what about the case he actually gives us: that it is of the nature

of fire to heat? Surely there can be no doubt that this is known empiri

cally? Do we not know that it is the fire, not the kettle, that makes

the water hot by simply observing what happens when we forget to

light the fire? To this it can be answered:

(1) Plato's account of aitia is not dependent upon any theory of

how we might come to know the entailments, incompatibilities, and

other relations among the ideas. In this section of the Phaedo he does

not say how these might be known: so far as the account of aitia goes, even observation might serve as evidence for the existence of

these relations. On the other hand it would be strange if the doctrines

of the earlier sections of the dialogue were no longer supposed to apply.

(2) I f there is to be knowledge (in the strict sense) of causal relations

this will depend on more than empirical observation. For, as Humepointed out, observation can assure us - to leave aside the difficulties



of induction - only of constant conjunctions but not of the additional

element of necessity intrinsic to causation. Among other things, Plato'stheory of ideas makes clear that judgments of causation, like ethical

judgments, must be founded on more than sense-experience if a claim

to indubitable knowledge is to be made good.

Australian National University

evan l. burge - the ideas as aitiai in the phaedo

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