Plato's beard

Plato's beard refers to a paradoxical argument dubbed by Willard Van Orman Quine in his 1948 paper On What There Is in which he stated that:

This is the old Platonic riddle of nonbeing. Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato's beard; historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam's razor.^[1]

The argument has been favored by prominent philosophers including Bertrand Russell, A. J. Ayer and C. J. F. Williams.^[2]

Karl Popper stated the inverse. "Only if Plato's beard is sufficiently tough, and tangled by many entities, can it be worth our while to use Ockham's razor."^[3]

The Indian philosophical system Vaisheshika has a distinct category called 'Abhava' (non-existence). It deals with this concept in detail, classifying it into absolute, anterior, posterior and reciprocal non-existence.

References

1. Quine, Willard Van Orman (1948).  On What There Is. Wikisource. 
2. Vallicella, William F. (2002). A paradigm theory of existence: onto-theology vindicated. Springer. p. 112. ISBN 978-1-4020-0887-0. Retrieved 3 November 2010.
3. Popper, Karl (1972). Objective Knowledge. Clarendon Press.

Further reading

• Durrant, Michael (1998). "Plato's Quinean Beard: Did Plato ever grow it?". Philosophy 73 (1): 113–121. doi:10.1017/S003181919700003X. ISSN 0031-8191.
• Bunnin, Nicholas; Yu, Jiyuan, eds. (2004). "The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy". doi:10.1111/b.9781405106795.2004.x. ISBN 978-1405191128.

External links

• Works related to On What There Is at Wikisource