Abstract

In Philebus 28-30 Plato claims that the universe is ruled by reason, by claiming that since theelements in our bodies derive from the universe, we could not possess a soul without the cosmosas a whole also possessing a soul. The exact nature of the argument has been subject tocontroversy, specifically why Plato thinks that the cosmic soul is required to ground human souls.In this essay I argue against a recent proposal by Ricardo Salles, which argues that the soul is akind of “basic body”, and argue instead that it is the disanalogy between material causation andthe causality of the soul that leads Plato to postulate a cosmic intelligence. By examining Plato’sarguments against identifying the soul with a part of the body or the body as a whole in thePhaedo (as well as Republic and Philebus), we see why Plato thought that material causes arenot sufficient to explain the emergence of the soul. In so doing I show how Plato’s positioncomes close to the cosmopsychist position in contemporary philosophy of mind.