Phaedo 74a-76e

Some thoughts: this is deliberately flying at a higher level than an "argument analysis" flies: what I mean by that is that I am using references like "74a-c" and NOT including line numbers. Another thing: I am trying to stir the pot here, to make you think about alternatives to Plato's ideas that might help us understand but also questions Plato's ideas.
 I hope that it will inform and enrich your argument analyses of this passage.

1. 74a-c
   
1. There is something that is equal, the equal itself.
1. Note well that this means that the Form of Equality is itself Equal
   
1. "self-predication of forms" means that the name of a form can be applied to the form itself: thus the Form of the Equal is equal.
2. What can that possibly mean?
3. It makes better sense, perhaps, to say that the Form of Redness is itself red, but what sense does it make to say that a single thing, by itself, is equal? Isn't "equality" inherently a relative thing such that a thing itself cannot be equal: it can only be equal to another thing? So how can the equal itself be one thing AND be equal (to what?)?
   
4. Some, including Aristotle, Metaphysics 987b14-18, have suggested that Plato posited the Form (Equality)  as well as Intermediates (things that are perfectly equal)
1. But such things as Intermediates (like mathematical objects) are not explicitly mentioned by Plato
5. Take the dictionary definition of 'equality':
1. the state of having the same measure, quantity, amount, or number as another or others
6. It uses a concept "same" which might be held to 'beg the question': is it just another way to say 'equal'?
   
7. It also mentions 'others' which implies one thing and other things, not just one thing (but others may refer to people: see below)
   
8. But is that dictionary definition itself "equal" in any meaningful way?
2. Sensible things sometimes appear equal to one and unequal to another
• Is "one" and "another" here referring to people perceiving them or to other sensible sticks which may or may not be equal to the sensible things in question?
3. Equality always appears equal (to what? whom?).
1. This moves away from what the 'equal' is to how it 'appears':
   
2. anyone who encounters it will realize that it is equal and
   
3. it cannot appear otherwise to anyone.
   
4. Therefore, by 2 and 3, sensible equal things are not the same (as Equality).
5. But from the sensible equal things, we come to grasp Equality.
2. 74c-75c
6. Seeing one thing and thinking of another was previously agreed to be recollection.
• What about simple association, where we see one thing and, because of that, also think of another? Does that exist in Plato's world?
  
• Is simple association necessarily recollection?
  
• It seems it is if we think about some specific thing (call it Y) because we have seen some other specific thing (call it X).
• But what if when we see a cat we think of "animal": it makes no sense to call that a recollection of "animal." Does it?
• if we never see 'animal' but only 'Rufus' the dog and 'Bessie' the cow and Ferdinand the bull, etc. then isn't any time we think "animal" or even "dog" when we see Rufus a case of recollection rather than simply associating 2 sensible?
  
• And what if the important thing is not that X puts us in mind of Y, but rather that we think of X and Y together and thereby come up with a new combination?
  
• Does Plato reject or not notice the possibility of original thought?
• Does he reject the phenomenon of induction whereby we see several things we are not familiar with and are all a bit different, and yet somehow we come to have a general conception that they all belong to the same kind of thing?
• i.e. the capacity to generalize from examples, to blur them together, or pick out certain aspects: that capacity could explain what Plato is trying to explain, no? why do we need recollection for that?
  
• Does he reject the idea that we can learn things from others, who learned them from others, etc.?
• If that is the case, we don't need recollection but only hand-me-down ideas.
  
• That seems like another possible way to explain what Plato is trying to explain
• BUT, where did the first person who knew such things learn them? That's a flaw here, maybe.
7. Two sensible things that appear equal are somehow 'deficient' in their equality compared with Equality, which is 'really' equal.
   
• Is it that they are not perfectly equal? They are only approximately equal?
• This is called "approximation" and is a candidate for how the Forms are related to sensibles.
• There are some other candidates: Nehamas' view, for instance.
  
• Is it that seen from another perspective or measured in some other way, they are not equal?
• What does 'deficient' mean?
8. Whenever someone realizes that a thing is 'deficient' in some quality compared with another 'reality,' it must be the case that the person has prior knowledge of that other 'reality.'
• Again, an original thought or getting ideas from others are not even considered as  possibilities!
9. The only way we can grasp Equality (in our bodily state) is thru our senses.
10. But our senses make us realize that everything we see falls short of its goal.
• What does this "fall short of" mean? Is it approximation: that things are only almost/approximately equal, or almost square, or almost some other quality?
• Why can't things be perfectly whatever they are?
11. Therefore, before we perceived these things, we must have had knowledge of Equality.
• This is meant to be a conclusion from 8, 9, and 10. Does it work? How can we formulate it so it works best?
12. Since birth, we have had sense perceptions (i.e. we have been in a bodily state).
13. Thus our knowledge of Equality must predate birth (it must predate our bodily state).
• How is that concluded from what precedes?
• Couldn't we have invented Equality by induction, or gotten it from another human?
• Or maybe at some point, some neural pathways form, some developmental milestone, and suddenly we are better at generalizing or learning from others or noticing commonalities between things...
3. 75c-76e
14.  Therefore, we knew before birth Equality, Greatness, Smallness, Beautiful, Good, Just, Pious, etc.
    
• Note what there are forms of: are they all relatives? what about things like Redness or Humanness or Tableness? would they fit into this argument? What sort of things are these Forms mentioned here?
  
15. If we had it then, but don't have it now, and we discover it by looking at sensibles, we are recollecting knowledge of these things.
16. Thus learning is recollection.
• Is that true of all learning? Surely learning that this stick is on my foot by seeing and feeling it is something I 'learn' without recollection. Why doesn't Plato talk about that kind of 'learning'?
  
17. And if we had knowledge of these things before birth, we must have existed before birth and been intelligent then.
• Maybe there's a big vat of grey gooey brain-stuff, and we each get a portion, but it's not "me" or "you" in any meaningful way? Alternatively, more plausibly, maybe the way our neurons are built, at some point an emergent quality of them is the capacity to tap into generalizations and judge them and tweak them and play with them: that would produce things like Forms without the need for objectively existing Forms, or would it?
• Maybe we have built into us the ability to notice differences and similarities, and the ability to 'blur' things (to see them vaguely), as well as the ability to generalize. None of these need be totally accurate to get us going and explain how we come to know "equal"
  
18. If the Forms exist, and we refer the things we perceive to them, then just as they exist, so our soul must have existed before birth.
    
19. If the Forms do not exist, then the argument for the soul pre-existing our current bodily existence is futile.