I argue that in Plato’s Parmenides 141a6–c4, things in time come to be simultaneously older and younger than themselves because a thing’s past and present selves are both real. As a result, whatever temporal relation is predicated of any of these past and present selves is true of the thing in question. Unlike other interpretations, this reading neither assumes that things in time have to replace their parts, nor that time is circular. I conclude that the passage is committed to (...) a conception of the ongoing present and a rejection of presentism and endurantism in favour of a growing universe theory and perdurantism. (shrink)

I develop Iris Murdoch's argument that “there is no Platonic ‘elsewhere,’ similar to the Christian ‘elsewhere.’ ” Thus: Iris Murdoch is against the Separation of the Forms not as a correction of Plato but in order to keep faith with him; Plato's Parmenides is not a source book of accurately targeted self-refutation but a catalogue of student errors; the testimony of Aristotle and Gilbert Ryle about Plato's motivations in the Theory of Forms is not an indubitable foundation from which to (...) denounce Iris Murdoch's treatment of Plato as inaccurate but a rival reading of dubious charity. If Iris Murdoch's version of the Theory of Forms strikes Newton Garver as an incoherent mix of influences from Wittgenstein and Plato, this is not because Iris Murdoch is herself confused, but because in important respects the orthodoxy has Plato wrong. (shrink)

Inducing aspect-experiences – the sudden seeing of something anew, as when a face suddenly strikes us as familiar – can be used as a philosophical method. In seeing aspects, I argue, we let ourselves experience what it would be like to conceptualize something in a particular way, apart from any conceptual routine. We can use that experience to examine our ways of conceptualizing things, and re-evaluate the ways we make sense of them. I claim that we are not always passive (...) with regard to these experiences, and explain how we can actively induce them. I distinguish this method from other standard Wittgensteinian philosophical methods. (shrink)