1 Nehamas, Alexander, ‘Predication and Forms of Opposites in the Phaedo,' Review of Metaphysics, 26 (1973) 461-91Google Scholar and ‘Plato and the Imperfection of the Sensible World,’ American Philosophical Quarterly, 12 (1975), 105-17. Henry Teloh, ‘Types of Existence in Plato,’ read at the Western Division Meeting of the A.P.A. (April 1979). Henry Teloh, The Analysis of Being in Plato,’ read at the Tenth Annual University of Dayton Colloquium (February 1981). In contrast, Nicholas P. White sees Plato as having problems with the attribution of sortal terms, with their implicit assumptions about identity, to changing objects in ‘Aristotle on Sameness and Oneness,’ Philosophical Review, 80 (1971), 177-97 and ‘Origins of Aristotle's Essentialism,’ Review of Metaphysics, 26 (1972-73) 57-85.

2 Nehamas, ‘Plato on the Imperfection of the Sensible World,’ 108-9

3 Teloh, The Analysis of Being in Plato,’ 3, 5 and Types of Existence in Plato,’ 2, 5-7

4 Teloh, ‘The Analysis of Being in Plato,’ 12

5 Teloh, ‘Types of Existence in Plato,’ 10

6 Both Smith, Robin in ‘Mass Terms and Generic Expressions,’ The Journal of the History of Philosophy, 16 (1978) 141-53CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Rosenmeyer, Thomas in ‘Plato and Mass Words,’ Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 88 (1957), 88–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar do discuss the relation between Plato's theory of forms and mass terms. However, their concerns differ from mine since they are primarily interested in showing that, at least for the early Plato, forms are something like stuffs and form-names can in many cases been seen as mass terms.

7 Solmsen, Frederich M., Aristotle's System of the Physical World, Cornell Studies in Classical Philology 33, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1960), 66Google Scholar. Like Solmsen, I believe that for Plato the ‘genesis of an entity reveals its nature and the principles to which it owes its being.’ Any account of this genesis, including Timaeus', should explicitly or implicitly contain the principles of identity appropriate to the kinds of being whose genesis is being described.

8 See, for example, Grandy, Richard E., ‘Stuff and Things,’ Synthese, 31 (1975) 479-85CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Griffin, Nicholas, Relative Identity (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1977)Google Scholar. The material in this section draws heavily on Griffin's distinctions.

9 This translation, with the exception of the last few lines, follows that of Zeyl, Donald J., ‘Plato and Talk of the World in Flux,’ Harvard Studies in Classical Philology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1975), 129-30Google Scholar. The last few lines, as Zeyl himself grants (p. 141). can be read as ‘either (a) prohibiting the application of ‘this’ and the like to things that are qualified in some way …, or (b) prohibiting the attribution of qualitative terms to the receptacle.’ I adopt the second reading in keeping with Mills, K.W., ‘Some Aspects of Plato's Theory of Forms: Timaeus 49c ff,’ Phronesis, 13 (1968), 155-6Google Scholar.

10 See, for example, Zeyl.

11 That one of the necessary conditions for the correct attribution of ‘this’ is persistence through time as the same individual is one of the assumptions underlying some arguments in the Cratylus (439d-440b) and the Theaetetus (183a-b). Thus persistence through time is at least a minimal condition for the correct attribution of ‘this.’ If the Timaeus is read as claiming that in order to be a ‘this' what is referred to must have eternal existence, then this maximal condition makes it incorrect to use ‘this’ to refer to anything which is not eternally what it is.

12 See, for example, Griffin, 58-75. The following discussion draws heavily on Griffin's.

13 See, for example, Zeyl.

14 Burnyeat, M.F., ‘Plato on the Grammar of Perceiving,’ The Classical Quarterly, 26 (1976) 29–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Nothing said in the Timaeus throws any light on the question of the criteria associated with the temporal continuity of the soul when ‘soul’ refers to the immortaL rational soul. (Just what the criteria are for Plato is widely disputed.) Nor does Plato raise the possibility that there could be an exchange of souls between two bodies so that a question might be raised concerning the identity of the composites whose souls have been exchanged.

16 It may be that any attribution of a special status to sortals in any of Plato's dialogues is mistaken. Although Teloh and others place a heavy emphasis on Socrates’ statements regarding the ‘being of Simmias,’ the logical subject referred to by ‘Simmias’ in the Phaedo passage may not be the whole living creature but the immortal soul presently ‘using a particular body.’ Given the context of the Phaedo and Socrates’ comments at the end of the dialogue in response to Crito's questions about ‘burying you,’ the logical subject could very well be the immortal soul and not the ‘whole human animal.'

17 Teloh, ‘Types of Existence,’ 10