Colloquium 3: Commentary on Stone

This response provides a brief outline of Professor Stone’s argument that defends the reality of the so-called Platonic intermediates that stand between Forms and particulars. When the relationship between particulars and forms is understood arithmetically, the famous “third man” objection is devastating. Stone’s alternative is to conceive this relationship as geometrical, which involves the soul operating between the forms and particulars. The response raises a series of questions about how to understand these “geometrical relations,” including both whether they do and whether they need to solve the third man objection.