Apocryphal Arguments #3: Parmenides & The Way of Truth

This is the third post in a series I'm calling the Apocryphal Arguments series. The idea is to briefly outline, explain, and defend a simple philosophical argument that I think is plausible. It will be in the form of precise premises and conclusions in order to maximise legibility. I aim to post only novel, interesting, and even ridiculous-sounding arguments that might question fundamental sensibilities in order to maximise impact. If all goes to plan each post should be a fun ride.

I want to outline here an infamous argument, one that seems beyond merely apocryphal. It is an argument that also happens to be the oldest remaining sustained (and substantive) written argument in the tradition of western philosophy. (All other works are almost all lost before this period.)  It is also the first work of a philosopher that really drew me in, in a way that nothing had before. Thus, I have a particular affinity for it and the careful reader of my metaphysical works will see that its tendrils still reach their way into my thought to this day. Though one (regrettable) disclaimer I have is that it will be rather more obscure than my previous entries in this series. It just fits the bill so well that I couldn’t put it here as merely another post. Thus, if you are a new reader or not that interested in metaphysics, I recommend reading the previous entries in the series, which you can find here and here. You can also read my arguing along Parmenidean lines for a Being of absolute positivity here.

The argument is made by the presocratic philosopher Parmenides of Elea, in around 500B.C. While people do not respect the Eleatic challenge posed by Parmenides anymore, they really ought to. To my mind, the questions he raises ought to haunt philosophy in a way they may never have, other than during the period immediately following his own life (and to some extent up to Descartes, but in the intervening time the problem was taken to be solved, essentially). So it goes with the history of philosophy. Problems taken to be answered by subsequent systems are forgotten, and when those systems are superseded, the problems arise again, but it is forgotten that they must be answered. Of course, there are those who come to revisit these questions, but never for long enough. Anyway, I think this is the perfect argument for this series. It is so simple, and yet the consequences are so far-reaching. It makes all metaphysical posits illusory, it makes all claims to knowledge not just false, but contradictory, it threatens the possibility of logic, and denies the reality of everything we seem to be most acquainted with.

(One caveat I should emphasise is that this essay is nothing like Parmenides scholarship, nor will I be citing him. There are a few different takes on his views in the literature, and his own writings are very abstruse. The arguments I give below assume the ‘radical monist’ reading is true. Moreover, any arguments he did not actually make are what I think he should have argued, or simply my own additions to what I take to be the basic idea.)

Parmenides believed in a kind of radical monism, the view that there is one thing, Being, and that there are no distinctions or divisions within it. (I will use capital-b ‘Being’ to denote this Parmenidean universe.) Indeed, his monism is so stringent that even predicating it with a number (‘One’) would be an error as it implies there is such a thing as ‘Being’ and ‘One’, which is two things. Therefore, it is most accurate to say that Parmenides’ view is that “Being is” – and that’s it. He thought that Being could not come into being or be destroyed, he thought that it could not change, he thought that it is motionless, and finally that it is utterly homogenous. What made him come to such a strange conclusion?

Parmenides begins by pointing out that the subject of any given enquiry must either exist or not exist. This seems a rather banal point, but presumably, to investigate watermelons, there must be such a thing as watermelons. Thus, if the subject exists, the enquiry seems to be legitimate (and indeed something we seem to presuppose). However, suppose the subject does not exist. One might wonder what is being enquired into here. If something is being enquired into, it does exist, which contradicts our assumption that it does not. And if nothing is being enquired into, it cannot be an enquiry at all, because there is nothing to inquire into. This is the basic demand Parmenides makes of any metaphysical system, that it enquire into what is rather than what is not. I think this rules out three things.

First, it rules out something philosophers call negative existential statements. For example, take the statement: “Gandalf does not exist.” Any such statement denies that something exists. These statements are puzzling for the above reason: by denying the existence of something, that is, by saying that something is really nothing at all, we must always say it of something, which is not nothing. Of course, this generalises to all negative existential statements. Second, the idea of nothing itself or non-being itself, rather than the non-existence of something, in particular, contains the same paradox. To speak or think of nothing, it seems we must speak or think of something, which is not nothing. Third, it rules out something we might call constitutive negation. The idea here is that sometimes, what (seems to) make some being what it is, is that it is not something else. For example, it seems like I am what I am (at least partially) because I am not the rest of the world. This is puzzling too. What does it mean to not be something else? Take an ordinary positive property that I have, like having two legs or having green eyes. This seems to make perfect sense. Now take negative properties. What does it mean for my eyes not to be blue? It is certainly true that my eyes are not-blue if my eyes are green, but what makes it true? Some kind of not-blue in my eyes? Surely it is merely a lack of blue, not something over and above the green in my eyes, but a consequence of the properties being mutually exclusive. That is to say, “Rowan’s eyes are green” entails that “Rowan’s eyes are not-blue” because something cannot be both green and blue. But then, what is this lack? It cannot be nothing, because to talk about it, it must be something. But then, it is not a lack at all; it is something. But that something is the non-existence of something, which is contradictory. We are faced with the same paradox as above and are thus forced to rule out constitutive negation as well.

Therefore, negative existential statements, the idea of nothing or non-being itself, and constitutive negation are all both contradictory and unintelligible. They are contradictory because for non-being to be in any of these cases, it must simultaneously be and not-be. They are unintelligible because their contradictoriness means we cannot speak or think of them meaningfully because we cannot simultaneously posit both their existence and non-existence. As soon as we try to posit non-existence, existence sneaks in the back door. Of course, something seems to be going on in any of these cases, but it cannot be the truth. Therefore, all meaningful enquiries must presuppose that something is and cannot intelligibly invoke what is not. Every system must begin (and end) with one premise: Being is. Parmenides calls this ‘the way of truth.’ The way of truth seems, at a glance, to leave us a lot of room. It seems we can still use positive existential statements (such as ‘Gandalf exists’), speak of Being, and attribute to things positive properties. However, Parmenides thinks otherwise.

Parmenides embarks on a series of arguments that are supposed to show that the way of truth actually imposes considerable constraints on any metaphysics. The first thing he shows is that whatever is, must be uncreated and indestructible. The argument goes as follows. Suppose that some thing, A, came into being at some time t. We might ask two questions about A: where did it come from, and how did it come about? I begin with the where question.

If A only came into being at some time, then it must not have existed before that. It must have come from not existing. But it is impossible that it could come from not existing, because it would not be a being at all if it did not exist. Therefore, whatever is, cannot have come into being because otherwise it would have to both be and not-be before it came to be, which is impossible. By the same reasoning, we can show that nothing that is can ever be destroyed. If something that is, is destroyed, then we would say that it is not. But something cannot not be, because then non-being is. But non-being cannot be. Therefore, whatever is, cannot be destroyed. Onto the how question.

For A to come to be, there must either be some explanation for how it came to be or there is no such explanation. If there is no explanation, then A came from nothing. But A cannot have come from nothing, because nothing must exist for it to have come from. But nothing cannot exist. Therefore, A must have some explanation. It must have come from something. But for it to have come from something, it must be somehow already contained in that thing. This is because if one thing explains another thing’s coming-to-be, it must have already had its being in the original thing. This is because if its being was not in the original thing, then it must have not-been, which is impossible. Therefore, taken together, these arguments show that whatever is, cannot be created or destroyed.

The next thing he shows is that whatever is, cannot change or move. Suppose A changes. For it to be a real change, the being in question must differ in some way from A such that it is now B. But if A changed into B and B now is, then A is no more. But A cannot not be because non-being cannot be. Therefore, whatever is, cannot change. The same goes for motion. Suppose A moves somewhere. But for it to move somewhere, there must be something for it to move into. Whatever is cannot move into something else or into itself because either would prevent its movement. Therefore, in order for A to move, it must move into emptiness. But emptiness is nothingness or non-being, which cannot exist. Therefore, whatever is, is motionless. A consequence of this argument, if it is true, is that non-being is a precondition for motion. I will make mention of this later.

The arguments against change and motion already lay the groundwork for abolishing basically all of common sense, plus all seeming distinctions and divisions in being. However, it is still possible that there is a plurality of unmoving, unchanging, and eternal beings that therefore maintain some real distinctions and divisions. I now take aim at plurality.

All that is left to show is that all there is, is Being. Or, more precisely, that there is no plurality in being, it is undivided, and all distinctions within it are illusory. Parmenides himself is unclear on this point, but I think we can derive the point (1) from an independent argument and (2) from the arguments already made. First, an independent argument. Imagine a world in which there are two beings, A and B, that are not identical. For something to be non-identical to something else, it must differ in some way from it. This means that A must not be B, and B must not be A. But we have agreed that it is unintelligible to say that something is not in any way because it would be an instance of constitutive negation. Therefore, to avoid this, A and B cannot have any features which differ in any way from each other such that some negation is constitutive of their being. But if A and B differ in no way from each other, we have no reason to say they are different anymore. This means they are identical, contradicting our assumption. In short, A being not-B is constitutive of it being A because if it were not not-B it would just be B. This can be generalised to any world with any number of beings. Once all constitutive negations are removed from all beings, no being is truly not any other being. Therefore, all beings that exist must be identical. But if all beings are identical, there can be no plurality in being, and there is only undivided Being.

Let me try another couple of angles on this point, to make sure it is clear. Nothing can be distinct from anything else unless it is also not something else, which is impossible. Therefore, there is no plurality in Being. Or, put another way, if anything that makes any individual being not something else is impermissible in our ontology, then it is impossible that any being can be distinct from another because it can never be true that one being is not another. Therefore, Being is undivided, and all distinctions are illusory.

Another way of reaching this conclusion is through considerations introduced earlier which involved questioning how something could come to be. I noted earlier that any being whose existence required explanation must be explained by another being, because otherwise, it must have come from nothing, which is impossible. However, I also noted that any being must also be contained in the being that explains it because otherwise, it must somehow be and not-be ‘before’ the other being explains it. But as I noted, there can be no coming-into-being or destruction of any purported being. Therefore, both the being that is to be explained and the being doing the explaining must always wholly co-exist. But if they always wholly co-exist, and the subsidiary being being explained resides within the being doing the explaining, then the being being explained just is the being explaining it. To see this, imagine two worlds, one with and one without the being being explained. There is no difference between these two worlds because the one being wholly contains the other. Therefore, the being being explained is explanatorily unnecessary because no meaningful difference is attributed to or explained within the universe by positing the extra being. Thus, per Ockham’s razor, we should dispense with it. This is true for any proposed being needing explanation, because any proposed explanandum must always already exist within Being. That is, for any being needing explanation, it is always already identical to Being. Further, every proposed being requires explanation because if they are not explained, they must have come from nothing, which is impossible.

Let me reiterate what we have at this point. Parmenides’ way of truth ruled out the possibility of non-being existing because it is contradictory. However, the consequences of this are quite far-reaching. We cannot say that anything is destroyed or comes into being. We cannot say that anything changes or moves. We cannot say that anything differs from anything else. Therefore, there is no plurality, no distinctions, and no divisions within Being. All we can say is this: Being is.

There are a few different directions we could go to answer these worries. I will only mention a few. (Please note that my suggestions here are not rigorous renderings of later philosophers!) You could accept the argument but scaffold being with different types of existence to get around the counterintuitive aspects of its consequences. While I do not think this works, philosophers such as Aristotle and the Scholastics take this route. They think that we can explain change by distinguishing between potentiality and actuality. This distinction purports to avoid the conclusion because it does not rely on a notion of non-existence. It just relies on two types of existence. For example, if something changes from A to B, B does not come from nothing. Instead, A was always already potentially B, and is explained by this potentiality. For example, if I paint a white door orange, it becomes an orange door, but it was always potentially an orange door. What undergirds this is something Aristotelians call prime matter, which is one of the fundamental constituents of the universe. Prime matter is pure passive potentiality. It contains all possible forms of existence in it, which certain material causes come to actualise in the world. Thus, when any substance comes to be, such as a tree, dog, or human being, their being does not come from nothing, but rather exists as pure potential (for all time) within prime matter. In the case of a tree, its potential is both in prime matter and in an actual substance like an acorn. Once the right conditions are brought about, these things unproblematically become a tree. This is an unpopular move these days, but I think its advocates are more sophisticated than much of what contemporary metaphysics gives them credit for, especially those that refuse to deal with these big questions.

Another solution is to deny that the way of truth is the only way. In other words, it is to countenance the possibility that non-being or nothing really is, that that which is not, somehow is. This is Plato’s response, at least in the Sophist and arguably in the Parmenides. Plato seems to think that beings must take a share in non-being as a formal condition for their intelligibility and individuation. He thinks this precisely because of Parmenides’ Eleatic challenge. (I cannot defend this interpretation here, but I plan on writing something about it in the future.) This is possibly also Hegel’s response, though I have no idea what he thinks. Hegel accepts both the existence of being and non-being (but then I hear other Hegelians say that non-being and contradictions are merely speculative stages to be sublated into infinite being, so who could really know!). This is definitely Heidegger’s response, which I have written about here. His reasons for countenancing this possibility are similar to Plato’s. Intelligibility (whether or not it ‘carves nature’, which, for Heidegger, it absolutely does not) occurs in experience and must be explained by real nothingness. This is also what he means in his later work by a 'clearing' (or unconcealing itself) in Being as something prior even to truth. Ditto for Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

Another response in this vein, and perhaps most interestingly for our purposes, is accepted by the ancient atomists Leucippus and Democritus. They are where we get the famous theory that all there is, is atoms and void. The atomists were directly responding to Parmenides’ arguments, and in doing so, they simply accepted that non-being could exist in the form of the void. The void is an infinitely extended but empty receptacle that atoms would move through. Atoms are simple and indivisible but also in a constant state of movement. As the atoms move about, they join with one another over time into various configurations. Plus, since time extends infinitely for the atomists, they can explain how life came about. This is because it is just an inevitability, a mere matter of time, before the particular arrangement we see now came into being and is maintained as such. There are three interesting things to note about their views. First, they took to heart the Parmenidean argument (properly only found in Melissus) that non-being is a precondition for motion. By positing non-being in the form of void, they could thus recover motion, change, and the individuation of separate beings (by putting nothing between them). Second, the atoms themselves are just like Parmenides’ Being. They are indestructible and indivisible. This means they kept much of the Eleatic critique on board with regards to their fundamental entities, even though they affirm the reality of void. Third, this proposal is structurally similar to Newtonian metaphysics, whose ‘absolute space’ is just a warmed-over non-being, or void. Similarly to the atomists, absolute space in Newton’s system also grounds the possibility of the motion and individuation of matter.

Of course, there are many other ways to attack the argument, quibbling with its reasoning or conclusions. But here is the fourth and final strategy I will discuss. This strategy is to accept the argument and deal with its consequences in one way or another. Most recently, Michael Della Rocca does this, but I think he fails to explain certain hangovers even after all distinctions are shown to be illusory. Bradley does the same but deals with the consequences quite impressively. Notably, he points out that even if all of our cognition is mere appearance, it is still something (though not in the determinate sense), and that something must be explained, which he is absolutely right about. While I think Bradley does a good job, I do not quite think he is right. A particular reading of Bergson might get you to a resolutely Parmenidean view but one that respects the heterogeneity of life – but he too has his problems. Thus, finally, there is me, who also takes up this conclusion. And I am trying to do better.