Abstract
This paper aims to achieve a better understanding of what Socrates means by
“sumfvne›n” in the sections of the Phaedo in which he uses the word, and how
its use contributes both to the articulation of the hypothetical method and the
proof of the soul’s immortality. Section I sets out the well-known problems for
the most obvious readings of the relation, while Sections II and III argue against
two remedies for these problems, the first an interpretation of what the sumfvne›
n relation consists in, the second an interpretation of what sorts of thing
the relation is meant to relate. My positive account in Section IV argues that we
should take the musical connotations of the term seriously, and that Plato was
thinking of a robust analogy between the way pitches form unities when related
by certain intervals, and the way theoretical claims form unities when related by
explanatory co-dependence. Section V surveys the work of IV from the point of
view of the initial difficulties and suggests further consequences for the hypothetical
method, including the logical relation between the sumfvne›n and
diafvne›n relations, and the need for care in ordering the results of a hypothesis.
“But anyhow I proceeded in this way: on each occasion hypothesising the lÒgow
which I judged to be strongest, I put down as true the things that seem to me to
sumfvne›n with it – both about a causal account and any of the other things that
are – but those things that did not I put down as false.” (Phaedo 100a3-7).
“But if someone clung to the hypothesis itself, you would bid him goodbye and
wouldn’t answer him until you had examined its results, whether according to
you they sumfvne› or diafvne› with one another.” (Phaedo 101d3-5).