Are there Forms?

The following is a philosophy essay I reeled off in the 30 minutes before deadline....I know, that's distinctly poor time-management. As a result it is essentially a map of an evolving thought in my mind rather than a structured essay. Hopefully it is of interest to someone:

What then are Plato’s Forms (Eidos)? This is far from being an easy question. The Forms are the constituents of a ‘higher’ realm, an unchanging and eternal world of intelligible ‘definitions’ of which our world of ‘Becoming’ is a pale, material, and crude reflection. Objects in this world ‘participate’ in the Forms and it is by virtue of this relation that we come to recognise them as ‘horse’ or ‘man’ etc
Forms exist, not as higher concepts outside of our immediate world, but as common concepts within this world of becoming, of flux. The concept of a separate world populated by immutable objects of cognition is incoherent and superfluous.
In using the same predicate for different things, we do not see in objects some higher thing of which they are only pale reflections; what is actually happening is that an object, for example a chair, is being ascribed to a certain linguistic or conceptual class within the mind of the observer, independent of the chair and derivative of the learning process of the brain from childhood. An object may be called a ‘chair’ if it resembles that which has come to be known as a chair, not through some recollection of perfection, but by virtue of the very fact of the knowledge of the diversity of experience of objects. Labels in themselves are imperfection, not reflections of perfection in which objects participate; for they reflect the inability of man to experience without the classification and requirement of reference to prior understanding or conception. The metaphysics of Plato’s Forms is an attempt to make intelligible the mode of understanding, something which differs in every person.
The true Forms, if that is what we should call them+, are therefore linguistic. In a way similar to the language games of the later Wittgenstein similar predication does not imply commonality in that which is referred to in anything other than accidental qualities, which are then crudely formed into classes by the brain. We call things by the same name simply because they are similar enough for convenient pigeonholing, not because they are instantiations or some higher Form. Nothing is truly similar, except in interpretation, and this itself differs within and between languages.
For example, we take three sentences in three languages:
a) The book is red b) Le livre est rouge, and c) Das Buch ist rot.
Plato’s conception here would be that all three sentences are referring to objects which participate in the Form ‘Book’ and ‘Red’; they in some way, however crudely, are reflecting the eternal and immutable perfection in the higher realm. However, on closer inspection this is problematic.
Firstly, and this may seems a strange question, what is the language of the Forms?
Is it the Form of the Book, or the Die Form des Buches? This highlights a problem for Plato. How are we to understand language in his metaphysical framework? Is there a Form of Language, or a Form of French, English, German, Chinese? Or perhaps there is no Form conforming to language at all; perhaps language is simple the referential system by which the world of becoming is understood, necessary but undesirable compared to the perfection of apprehension of the transcendent Forms. Does language in fact inhibit ascension to the Forms for Plato? This is a good question, for language can be construed as very much a product or association of the body, of the physical rather than the mental, and as such a problem for the philosopher wanting to purify him or herself in order to reach the forms. The crux of the matter is this: is man capable of conception outside of language? That is to say, is all we are capable of thinking that which can be framed in language? If the answer is no, then language must be part of the conception of Forms; if yes, then it is likely that it is this non-linguistic reflection of which Plato would think most highly. I would argue that conception outside of language for modern man is inconceivable. One may detect a certain circularity in that sentence, as well as objecting that emotions are very often non-linguistic, more feelings than concepts. That is to say, one may argue that to speak of conception (not, I emphasise, perception), of the framing of concepts, in the terms of that in which we do the framing is unhelpful. This is, however, the very point we are making. That is all we can do with language, we cannot escape it. To think requires a language of thought. We are talking here in ‘conception’ of labeling, taxonomy. That is what the Theory of Forms is really about; it is a metaphysics of the classification of knowledge with a glaring hole when it comes to the framework of reference: language.
Secondly, and related to our first point, in some languages there are different taxonomies.
In French for example, the GCSE student will (or should) know that there can be not just a livre, but a cahier as well. Here we see differing predicates. Does this mean, then, that there are two forms; one of Cahier and one of Livre, or do we simply have Book of which the two French nouns are simply distortions?
Thirdly, what is it that that the book has in common with the Form of the Book. Surely, in this case, it is necessary to posit a third book in which both the instantiation in this world and, necessarily, the instantiation of the Form of the book, participate. In other words, we find a regression in participation.
This is the Third Man argument, recounted in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Melling) as well as by Plato himself in Parmenides.
Quite simply, Forms are superfluous; if we apply Occam’s Razor (do not multiply entities unnecessarily) then we can see that the positing of another world of Forms is philosophically untenable for there is less than sufficient reason to do so. If we focus on the language and framework of conception and knowledge then we see that Plato’s confusion of knowledge of something and the object of knowledge (in other words, knowing that something versus the existence of an object of knowledge) is really a confusion about general classes in societal communication; a product of evolution.

Thus are Forms not self-existent in the Platonic sense, nor the population of some metaphysical ‘realm’; rather they are the linguistic classes of different people at different times in different places. Richard Dawkins spoke of memes and indeed they are still much spoken of today, as the all-pervasive concepts of our lives and cultures; as, one might say, the Forms of modern man and his cognition, not just of chairs, tables and colours, but of more abstract and abstruse things such as ‘art’, ‘mind’ and behaviour. Are these the forms by which we truly exist, reflecting not some higher world, but the world in which we are truly grounded and in which our existence truly becomes?

+ It is something I am very dubious of, for the capitalisation alone seems to imply some independent existence, an entity, rather than a commonality of conception and language use.

References
Melling, David, Understanding Plato, Oxford University Press, New York, 1987
Solomon, Robert, Introducing Philosophy, Oxford University Press, New York, 2005

© Alan Bowden, 2005