[MUSIC] Okay, let's take stock of where we are in our attempt to understand the naturalist response to Parmenides. In the last lecture, we saw that Empedocles concedes to Parmenides the thesis, that there is no coming to be from what in no way is. But he leaves open whether there might be coming to be from what in a way is not. That's why we distinguished between two different senses of is not. And found that only one of them was as scary as Parmenides makes it out to be. Now, let's apply these results to the argument Parmenides made against the intelligibility of change. The argument, remember, goes roughly as follows. Premise 1, change involves coming to be from what is not. Premise 2, we cannot think about what is not. Conclusion, so, change is unthinkable. Now, that we can distinguish two senses of is, and so of is not, let's consider which sense is operative in the premises of this argument. The first premise says that change involves coming to be from what is not. We are now in a position to see that this premise is true, only in the predicate sense of is. If something becomes read, it previously was not read. But that does not mean, that it did not then exist, that it was not in the existential sense. So, let's annotate premise one to make it explicit in what sense it is true. Change involves coming to be from what is not in the predicate of sense. Now, if we turn to look at he second premise, which claims that what is not is unthinkable. We can see that we should accept this premise only if is, is being used in the existential sense. You can't think about what isn't there to be the object of thought, or so we've conceded to Parmenides. So, let's annotate the second premise to make this explicit. But now, look at the first and the second premises together. The first uses is not in the predicative sense, while the second uses is not In the existential sense. That is, the argument uses the locution, is not, in two different senses in the first and second premises. Now, that's a problem for the validity of the argument. Since the third step follows from the first two, that is from the premises, only if is not means the same thing in both premises. Since it doesn't, the conclusion, that is number 3, does not follow from the premises. The argument commits what gets called the fallacy of equivocation. The upshot for those who worry about the intelligibility of change is that, as long as change is the alteration of something that exists. And the is not that change involves is simply of the predicate of variety. Then that change is not vulnerable to Parmenides' objection. That is, at a very general level, the way Empedocles responds to Parmenides. He concedes that there is no coming into being ex nihilo. But insists that none of the changes of interest to the natural scientist involve creation ex nihilo. Rather, Empedocles insists, all the changes that occur in the cosmos are simply the rearrangement or alteration of entities that have always existed. More specifically, Empedocles claims that earth, air, fire and water are the four roots, as he calls them, out of which everything in the cosmos is made. He says that these roots are acted on by two cosmic forces called love and strife. Which sometimes combine and mix the roots together, that's love. And at other times, separate them and drive them apart, that's strife. Thus, Empedocles says, from these roots all things are joined and compounded. And he knows that while people tend to call this conjoining or compounding, coming into being, this is really a misleading way of speaking. And he elaborates this point in another fragment. He says, whenever the roots are mixed, so as to form a man. Or one of the wild beasts or bushes or birds, that is when people speak of coming into being. And whenever they, that is the roots, are separated, that is what they call the ill starred fate of death. They do not call it as is right, but I myself too assent to their convention. Now, we might capture Empedocles position here in the slogan, all generation is alteration. That is, everything that gets called coming into being or generation, is really alteration. And now this slogan, in fact, captures the naturalist response to Parmenides quite generally. Take Anaxagoras. Aristotle says that Anaxagoras accepted as true the common opinion of the naturalists that nothing comes to be from what is not. That is why Anaxagoras makes the generation of a thing, of a certain sort, into an alteration. Of course, Anaxagoras disagreed with Empedocles about whether earth, air, fire, and water are the basic constituents of all things. He thought that organic materials like flesh, bone, and blood, and hair even, are the basic stuff out of which everything is made. And that a cosmic intelligence, which he calls nous, stirs up this stuff, combining and recombining it to constitute the people, animals and other objects of our experience. Democritus and Leucippus by contrast, maintain that the ultimate constituents of everything in the cosmos are atoms and the void. And they called these the full, because of the atoms and the empty. That is the void. And as Aristotle reports their view, they declare the full and the empty to be the elements. Calling the former, what is. And the other, what is not. Of these, the one, what is, is full and solid, the other, what is not, is empty and rare. This is why they say, that what is is no more than what is not. Because the void is no less than body is. Now, there's some pretty bold anti-Parmenidean rhetoric in the last line there. But note, that when these atomists violate Parmenides' injunction against saying what is not is. They are talking about the void, which is empty space. Void is space that is, in the existential sense, but is not, in the predicate of sense, since it is not full. So, Leucippus and Democritus too are taking the same general line against Parmenides that Anaxagoras and Empedocles took.
