I am surprised to hear that you are waiting. The FDA will approve the vaccine. At this point it is a matter of bureaucracy rather than safety or efficacy, which have been amply demonstrated.

Because then you have the problem of how purpose arises out of purposelessness. — Wayfarer

That there are living things that act purposively, that there are living things with desires, does not mean that the universe must act with purpose and have desires, any more than that there are living things that walk and talk and see means that the universe must walk and talk and see.

1) Does it mean that a baby, for whom language does not even exist at all, has no world, i.e. nothing exists for him/her? No pleasure in sucking milk? No sense of the warmth of his/her mother hug? No intimate connection with her? No recognition of objects? And so on ...
— Alkis Piskas

Yes, that is what Witt is working from; the world does not exist for them as yet. — Antony Nickles

What can be said does not limit what can be seen. Language represents or pictures the world, it cannot do so if it is not seen. It does not begin to be seen only when one begins to say things.

Thus when the Tractatus tells us that 'Logic is transcendental', it does not mean that the propositions of logic state transcendental truths; it means that they, like all other propositions, shew something that pervades everything sayable and is itself unsayable. — Anscombe, G. E. M. An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus. 1971. G. E. M. Anscombe, pg. 166

I take it that Wittenstein is using the term 'transcendental' in the Kantian sense, that is, the condition for the possibility of both language and world.

This can be seen as coming from Wittgenstein's view of language as saying what can be said about my world and showing what cannot be said about my world. — Shawn

According to the Tractatus, I am not part of the world, I am not in the world, in the same way as the eye sees the world but is not what is seen.

You have brought up a lot of thoughts (which I guess are attributed to Wittgenstein?) — Alkis Piskas

Almost everything in my was direct quotes from the Tractatus including his numbers. The numbers should not be ignored.

One of the characteristics of Buddhism is just the emphasis on meditation and cultivation of the spiritual life. — Wayfarer

Meditative practice for the sake of practice is not the same as meditative practice as a means to the end called enlightenment. The terminology, especially in translation, is problematic but there is still the expectation of transformation, of sight and insight.

But such principles can be realised through practice and may be known in that intuitive sense. — Wayfarer

Is that something you know or something you believe can be attained?

As regards the idea of the Forms, it seems to me that most analytic and 20th C philosophy doesn't 'get it'. — Wayfarer

What does 'get it' mean? Platonic Forms were hypotheticals.

Thomist and neo-Thomist ... Aristotelian realism ... Jacques Maritain ... — Wayfarer

This is not Plato's Forms.

I'm asking if Wittgenstein's solipsist from the Tractatus even had a psychology? If he or she did, then what was it based on? — Shawn

5.541
At first sight it looks as if it were also possible for one proposition to occur in another in a different way.
Particularly with certain forms of proposition in psychology, such as ‘A believes that p is the case’ and A has the thought p’, etc.
For if these are considered superficially, it looks as if the proposition p stood in some kind of relation to an object A.
(And in modern theory of knowledge (Russell, Moore, etc.) these propositions have actually been construed in this way.)

5.542
It is clear, however, that ‘A believes that p’, ‘A has the thought p’, and ‘A says p’ are of the form ‘“p” says p’: and this does not involve a correlation of a fact with an object, but rather the correlation of facts by means of the correlation of their objects.

5.5421
This shows too that there is no such thing as the soul—the subject, etc.—as it is conceived in the superficial psychology of the present day. Indeed a composite soul would no longer be a soul.
— T

W. is not denying the existence of the soul but a particular concept of the soul as an object in the world containing or possessing thoughts, beliefs, etc.

Isn't the idea of a private language already precluded in the Tractatus?

The statement cannot be understood without understanding how he draws the limits of "my world". Language represents of pictures the world. Ethics and aesthetics are outside the bounds of the world and thus outside of what can be said. See the following from this thread; https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/246700

5.6
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
— T

What is the significance of his shift from language and the world to “my language” and “my world”? The self cannot be found in the world. It can play no part in logical relationships, and propositions about it are nonsense. My world and my language do not connote a relationship between facts or objects.

My language means not simply English or German but the way in which I represent reality.


5.61
Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits.
So we cannot say in logic, ‘The world has this in it, and this, but not that.’
For that would appear to presuppose that we were excluding certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case, since it would require that logic should go beyond the limits of the world; for only in that way could it view those limits from the other side as well.
We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think we cannot say either.
— T

The logical relationships within the world are not the only relationships. There is also a relationship between the “I” and the world.

5.62
This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism.
For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest.
The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.
— T

In what way does the limits of language show that the world is my world? Suppose someone were to reject W.’s claim saying: “There must be more to my world”, to which the response would be: “What more is there”? And of course no answer could be given. If an answer could be given, whatever is said would be within that limit. I take this to be a form of skepticism. He is not denying that there may be more than I can say or think but that it is nonsense to say this because it does not point to anything. It does not mark a limit to the world or to language but to my world and the language I understand. But the same is true for all of us.

Solipsism - solus "alone" and ipse "self”. That language which alone I understand, is that language which solus ipse is understood. If there is a language I do not understand then even though the propositions are in proper logical order to picture reality, they are for me without sense (sinnlos) because I do not know what state of affairs they represent. They cannot represent if they cannot be understood.

5.621
The world and life are one.
5.63
I am my world. (The microcosm.)
— T

The world is all that is the case (1). The facts that make up the world are not independent of the subject who perceives and represents those facts. This is the point of the cube having two facts. Facts are not independent of their representation. A picture is a fact. (2.141)The facts of the world include the representation of facts.




5.631
There is no such thing as the subject that thinks or entertains ideas.
If I wrote a book called The World as I found it, I should have to include a report on my body, and should have to say which parts were subordinate to my will, and which were not, etc., this being a method of isolating the subject, or rather of showing that in an important sense there is no subject; for it alone could not be mentioned in that book.—

5.632
The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world.
— T

“It alone could not be mentioned”, solus ipse. The I (ipse) alone (solus) that writes the book is not something that is found in the book.



5.633
Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found?
You will say that this is exactly like the case of the eye and the visual field. But really you do not see the eye.
And nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye.
— T

The subject is metaphysical because it is not a part of the physical world. Propositions about it are nonsense, for it does not represent anything in the world.

That which sees is not something seen. Just as the eye is not in visual space, the subject is not in logical space. The subject that represents is not something represented.

5.634
This is connected with the fact that no part of our experience is also a priori.
Everything we see could also be otherwise.
Everything we describe at all could also be otherwise.
There is no order of things a priori.
— T

What is the connection between the metaphysical subject and the contingency of facts?

5.64
Here we see that solipsism strictly carried out coincides with pure realism. The I in solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.
— T

The I alone which sees the world, that experiences, that describes, has no logical connection to the world. We can only say how things are, not how they must be or will be.

5.641
There is therefore really a sense in which the philosophy we can talk of a non-psychological I.
The I occurs in philosophy through the fact that the “world is my world”.
The philosophical I is not the man, not the human body or the human soul of which psychology treats, but the metaphysical subject,
the limit—not a part of the world.
— T
My world is the world I see, the world I experience, the life I lead. My limits are its limits.

@Wayfarer

A couple of comments on transcendence in the Tractatus and the good in Plato.

Transcendence is not entry into some realm beyond ordinary experience. It is, rather, what is outside the bounds of facts and logic.

At 99c Socrates says he does not know the good itself as a cause. This leads directly to his "second sailing" in search of a cause. (99d). That is by way of hypothesis. What is easily missed is that he is never able to give an account of why it is best that things are as they are. Note that the cause of his not fleeing at 98c-99b is the choice he made regarding what he thought best. That the whole acts in an analogous way is an assumption that is not examined. It assumes that what the jury decided and what he then decided is all in accord with the whole because in both cases it was determined that this was best. But surely what is best is not always the same as what seems to be best.

The problem is clearly stated in the Republic:

Then the good is not the cause of everything; rather it is the cause of the things that are in a good way, while it is not responsible for the bad things. (379b)

The good then cannot be the cause of the whole since the whole obviously contains things that are bad. He goes on to say that by the good he means what is good for us. (379c) There are things that are good for us and things that are not. The search for the good is the search for the human good, that is, of determining what is and is not good for us.

Since this thread is on the examined life, it is important to be aware of the distance between claims of a transcendent reality and one's own experience. One might believe in transcendence but it is often the case that there is an imperceptible move from that belief to a purported reality. The examined life begins with being honest with yourself. Honestly, who here has had such transcendent experience? Who here knows the Forms and the Good? Who is a Zen master or an enlightened Buddha? None of us have knowledge of such things.

This is not to diminish the value of belief and faith, but rather to examine the relative importance of belief and knowledge, or, as the case may be, the absence of knowledge. Whether it is better to accept as true without knowledge or accept as true that one does not know. The problem with the former is that to accept as true without knowledge leaves us open to indiscriminate acceptance of all kinds of things as true, and if true then further inquiry becomes an attack on the truth.

You went from a false claim about

the classical philosophical tradition — Wayfarer

to contemporary physics. The classical philosophical tradition is not what you imagine it to be. The philosophers did away with the gods of the poets and priests. They were guided by reason rather than mythology.

But the fact that it's always existed doesn't validate it. — Wayfarer

What is validated is that is played a significant part in the tradition.

... banishing the idea of any purpose other than mechanical interaction — Wayfarer

That the universe itself acts purposively is analogical. The fact that some living things act purposively does not mean that the universe does. Rather than rule it out it is a question of why it should be ruled in.

... the paucity of my education in the classics of ancient literature and philosophy.

But the 'sacred thread' that runs through Greek philosophy and the formation of Western culture is unique and important, and constantly under attack from degenerative forces, principally materialism in all its forms, which has hijacked the terminology of philosophy whilst rejecting its meaning. — Wayfarer

Thales, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, and others were all materialists in some form.

I want to know what use is there in reading those old books. — baker

That is a good question. The answer in large part depends on how one reads these books and what is expected of them.

not statements of factuality. — baker

And this is a statement of your assumptions.

You said:

Nothing in what he says suggests he had such ignorance. — baker

Each of his statements suggests he had such ignorance. How do you reconcile these statements being made in the name of humility with the part where he says he is wiser than everyone else? What do you make of his changing the oracle's saying that no one is wiser than Socrates to Socrates' claiming that the oracle declared that he is the wisest? (21b) Those are two different claims.

From the Apology:

For I am conscious that I am not wise either much or little. (21b)

I am wiser than this man; for neither of us really knows anything fine and good, but this man thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas I, as I do not know anything, do not think I do either. I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either. (21d)

“Human wisdom is of little or no value.” (23a)

“This one of you, O human beings, is wisest, who, like Socrates, recognizes that he is in truth of no account in respect to wisdom.” (23b)

Yes, and that's why I emphasized the pre-Socratics because with Plato the waters start getting muddy again, that is, mythos gets reintroduced or reemphasized in philosophy. — 180 Proof

Parmenides proem begins with a mythical journey:

Welcome, youth, who come attended by immortal charioteers and mares which bear you on your journey to our dwelling. For it is no evil fate that has set you to travel on this road, far from the beaten paths of men, but right and justice. It is meet that you learn all things — both the unshakable heart of well-rounded truth and the opinions of mortals in which there is not true belief. (B 1.24–30)

With Plato too there is a concern with both truth and opinion, the unchanging and changing, logos and mythos. Plato's writings should be seen in light of his contentions with the poets and sophists. (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-rhetoric/) Both address "the opinions of mortals in which there is not true belief". In other words, persuasion is not intended to replace opinion with truth. Its function is twofold.

First, to change opinion, not replace it. The intention of the noble lies in the Republic are not to mislead. The myth of the metals is considered to be both necessary for the city and beneficial. The myths of the soul in the Phaedo too are beneficial. Plato may think it is good that mortals be of the opinion that are fixed, eternal truths accessible to the few, but that does not mean that it is true that there are Forms.

Second, to guard against misologic. Plato employs mythos in the service of logos. Reasoned argument has its limits. On the one hand it does not lead to knowledge of the whole, and on the other it does not persuade those who are most fixed in their beliefs about such things as gods and an immortal soul that their opinions are not truths. It makes use of myths to alter prevailing mythologies.

They talk, I listen. — 180 Proof

Unlike some here who would do most of the talking.

This is outrageous, and the section you refer to does not support it. — baker

You are easily outraged! The quote is with regard to his ignorance. His knowing how to live in the face of his ignorance is what the examined life is all about.

The first thing to be considered is why Plato wrote dialogues. It was a choice that cannot be explained away by considerations of time and place. Aristotle, after all, did not write dialogues. Philosophy in the Socratic tradition is not simply a matter of thought abstracted from the life of the thinker. The participants are not faceless names. Desires, ambitions, motivations, all come into play. The character of the participants, and by extension, the character of the reader is fundamental to understanding the dialogue.

Their being true is not a matter of opinion, but our believing that they are true is. In other words we cannot know with certainty what is true. Socrates' lesson is to learn to live with knowing that you do not know. — Janus

I agree. Socrates' knowledge of ignorance is not simply a matter of knowing that he is ignorant, it is knowledge of how to live without knowledge of what is "noble and good".(Apology 21d)

Whereas the ideas were originally acquired in a former state of existence, and are recovered by anamnesis (un-forgetting) ... Which is why Platonism is a rationalist philosophy. — Wayfarer

Does not sound very rational to me. The myth of recollection is fraught with problems. A few quick points: The theme of the Theaetetus is knowledge but there is no mention in the dialogue of a theory of Forms or of recollection. In the Republic neither the story of the ascent from the cave to transcendent knowledge of Forms or the method of dialectic includes anamnesis. In the Apology Socrates says that neither he nor anyone else has knowledge of higher things. In the Phaedo the soul might in the next life that of an ass or an ant.

[Edit: See also the Apology where he claims to not know sufficiently about the things in Hades.(29b) Not knowing the things in Hades undermines the myth of recollection.]

How would you, for instance, distinguish that claim from positivism? — Wayfarer

You asked about the divided line. He makes a clear distinction between the world we live in and the world of Forms.

Do a priori truths inhere in the visible realm? — Wayfarer

That depends on whether you buy into the myth of recollection, but even there the knowledge gained in a previous life includes experiential knowledge.

Moral principles? If so, where? — Wayfarer

That depends on what you regard as a moral principle. As I understand it, they would be hypothetical, things we regard as just, noble/beautiful, and good. But absent knowledge of the just, noble/beautiful, and good what we may take to be a moral principle may be wrong.

h. sapiens evolved — Wayfarer

You have moved far beyond Socrates and the examined life. We are social animals. As such we have certain capacities for living together.

If nor opinion then what?

The problem that leaves me with, is whether anyone knows anything at all. — Wayfarer

This overstates the problem.

If all anyone has is opinions, then where is the lodestar? — Wayfarer

Those opinions that seems most likely to be true.

I also had the idea that opinion, doxa, concerned mainly the sensible realm whereas knowledge, noesis, concerned the realm of the ideas. Am I mistaken in so thinking? — Wayfarer

We live in the visible realm. Questions about how we ought to live are about the visible realm. The intelligible realm is about hypotheticals unless one has attained knowledge of the Forms. Socrates denied having such knowledge.

I wouldn't include it among primary sources for material of that era (which was in any case medieval rather than ancient.) — Wayfarer

The OP is framed in terms of ancient and modern. He was not a modern philosopher.

As to his importance:

Succeeding generations of philosophers wrote extensive commentaries on his works, which influenced thinkers as diverse as Aquinas, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Newton. (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/maimonides/)

Maimonides is a medieval Jewish philosopher with considerable influence on Jewish thought, and on philosophy in general. Maimonides also was an important codifier of Jewish law. His views and writings hold a prominent place in Jewish intellectual history.

His works swiftly caused considerable controversy, especially concerning the relations between reason and revelation. Indeed, scholarly debates continue on Maimonides’ commitments to philosophy and to Judaism as a revealed religion. However, there is no question that his philosophical works have had a profound impact extending beyond Jewish philosophy. For instance, Aquinas and Leibniz are among the non-Jewish philosophers influenced by Maimonides. (https://iep.utm.edu/maimonid/)

And also a polemic seeking to reconcile arcane theological terms with recondite philosophical argument. — Wayfarer

Can you give specific examples? The Guide takes common terms such as the hand, the finger, and the face of God and argues that they should not be taken literally.

I agree and would add that it is not just a matter of time but of place. The problem is compounded by the fact that it is not only a question of how Maimonides or Spinoza read those who came before and what they said about them but of how we today read them.

The philosopher is not a scholar. His concern is not to explicate the work of his predecessors. He appropriates them and uses them in the service of his own teachings. The comparison between Maimonides and Spinoza is particularly instructive. Both had to navigate between conflicting worldviews.

In the examination of one's life, there must be constants and variables, there can't be only variables. — baker

Socrates did not frame it in terms of constants versus variables but of knowledge versus opinion. We do not have knowledge of the just, noble (beautiful), and good, we have opinions. We must act on our opinions. The mistake that Socrates sought to correct was in assuming that one's opinions are not opinions but knowledge, and thus not subject to critical examination or correction.

It is not a matter of standards, but of consideration of the consequences for the well-being of myself and others. There is, however, always the possibility that I get it wrong, that what I thought would be of benefit caused more harm than good.

In order to measure these things empathy, compassion, and care are needed. In addition, self-knowledge is essential. Self-knowledge requires being honest with myself, knowing what I want and expect from myself, what I value, and what my motivations are.

Those seem to me to be two different questions. I do not think I can enumerate the assumptions I am working with, but they include the assumption that questions take priority over any answers that come up with and that both the questions and answers should remain open to revision. What makes a life examined is the continued practice of examination and the correction or amendment my thoughts and actions and attitudes when it seems appropriate.

None of the following are intended to impart wisdom, but if one is in pursuit of wisdom these books will help with regard to thinking, seeing, evaluating, perspective, self-knowledge, attitude, altitude.

Plato: Republic
Aristotle: Ethics
Ecclesiastes
Maimonides: Guide for the Perplexed
Zhuangzi

I summon you — baker

You summon me?

You need to be more specific, so that your formula cannot be applied to what would generally be considered cases of psychopathology. — baker

Socratic philosophy is not formulaic. It is about the development of phronesis.

Now, the question is, what in particular is good, just, and noble. — baker

And that is why it cannot be reduced to a formula. Each case, each particular, must be examined as to whether it should be regarded as such. But this cannot be done with also questioning what the good, and just, and noble are. Socrates was not satisfied with what is said to be good, just, and noble, he spent his life inquiring about such things.

The problem of the Stranger's method of diakrisis in the Sophist is addressed in the Statesman:

... you rated sophist, statesman, and philosopher at the same value, though they are farther apart in worth than your mathematical proportion can express. (257b)

The Stranger's method abstracts from value, it treats such differences as the same. Socrates too uses this method, but Socrates' divisions are not the same as the Stranger's. The method of division can treat different things as the same as well as things that are the same as different. The question then is in what way these things are the same or different and with regard to what?

What the method cannot do is evaluate. It cannot distinguish good from bad, just from unjust, noble or ignoble. The examined life requires more than a method of division. In fact, without consideration of the good and just and noble, division itself can lead to doing what is bad and unjust and ignoble.

Then it begs the question of what is truth, morality and justice? — Harry Hindu

Good point. The Eleatic Stranger in the Sophist says:

However, the method of argument is neither more nor less concerned with the art of medicine than with that of sponging, but is indifferent if the one benefits us little, the other greatly by its purifying. It endeavors to understand what is related and what is not related in all arts, for the purpose of acquiring intelligence; and therefore it honors them all equally and does not in making comparisons think one more ridiculous than another, and does not consider him who employs, as his example of hunting, the art of generalship, any more dignified than him who employs the art of louse-catching, but only, for the most part, as more pretentious. (227a-b)

The Stranger does not care about what is good or just. His concern is only with regard to how these things are the same or different. He neglects what Socrates considers the most important distinctions. Such indifference makes the philosopher indistinguishable from the sophist. And yet, the Stranger himself frequently makes the same distinctions he says of are no concern.

You could say this same ... — baker

You could, I wouldn't.

The examined life is both an examination of life and a life of examination. It is both theoretical and practical. It is a critical examination of what I think, and say, and do. It is an examination of desires, and goals, choices, and values. But since we do not live in isolation, it is also about what others think, say, do, and so on.

We are at an impasse.

where Socrates corrects Simmias,.with a more true description of "tuning" — Metaphysician Undercover

It is not a correction. It is a series of weak arguments.

“Therefore it follows from this argument of ours that all souls of all living beings will similarly be good if in fact it’s similarly the nature of souls to be this very thing - souls.” (94a)

The argument is as follows: soul is an attunement, vice is lack of attunement, and so the soul cannot be bad and still be a soul because it would no longer be an attunement. What is missing from the argument is that being in or out of tune is a matter of degree. Vice is not the absence of tuning but bad tuning.

You previously denied that something can be more or less in tune, but, as any musician or car mechanic can tell you, that is simply not true.

At 94b Socrates locates the passions in the body. This is questionable. In fact, so questionable that in the Republic he locates the passions in the soul.

The problem with 94c is that there is such a thing as singing out of tune, internal conflict, acting contrary to your own interests, and so on.

Socrates closes this discussion by citing the authority of Homer, the “Divine Poet” (94e-95a). He uses Homer’s authority in support of his argument against attunement on the grounds of the separation of body and soul, and the rule of the soul over the body. But the passage cited (Odyssey XX 17-18) is not a case of the soul ruling the bodily desire, but of the soul controlling its own anger, not the soul controlling the body. But according to Socrates' claim that the soul is without parts and so he cannot account for the soul controlling itself.

In the Republic passions and desires are in the soul. It is a matter of one part of the soul ruling over the other parts of the soul. Why does Socrates give two very different accounts of the soul? Does the soul have parts or not? Are desires and anger in the soul or in the body? Why would he reject attunement in the Phaedo and make it central to the soul in the Republic?

You are refusing to accept Socrates' correction — Metaphysician Undercover

It is not a correction, it is a different concept of the soul. It is a soul that is completely separate from the body. This raises a host of problems. In addition to those above there is the problem of the identity of Socrates himself. He is neither his soul or his body. And if he is some combination then Socrates does not survive death.

Yes, that's the whole point, in that theory, the one offered by Simmias, there is no outside agency. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is no need for outside agency. This view is much closer to our scientific understanding of physiology and homeostasis.

Do you not grasp the "ing" suffix on "tuning"? — Metaphysician Undercover

When he says:

...the tuning is something invisible and bodiless and something altogether divine in the tuned lyre ... (Phaedo 86a)

he is not talking about some invisible act. The tuning of what is tuned is not the act of tuning, but rather the result. When a musician asks "what is the tuning" she is asking what the pitches are. [Edit: Examples: open E tuning, E flat or half-step down tuning, drop D tuning]

noun [ U ]
the way an instrument or a string on an instrument is tuned:
The tuning on this piano is awful.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/tuning

However, there is still a need for an "efficient cause", as the source of activity. — Metaphysician Undercover

From the Stanford article quoted above:

Philolaus presented a medical theory in which there was a clear analogy between the birth of a human being and the birth of the cosmos. The embryo is conceived of as composed of the hot and then as drawing in cooling breath immediately upon birth, just as the cosmos begins with the heat of the central fire, which then draws in breath along with void and time from the unlimited.

In the case of the cosmos as a whole, as we have just seen in Fr. 6, Philolaus argues that three starting points must be assumed, limiters, unlimiteds, and harmony, as a third element to hold these two unlike elements together.

There is in this theory no outside agent or principle acting:

Philolaus begins his book:

Nature (physis) in the world-order (cosmos) was fitted together out of things which are unlimited and out of things which are limiting, both the world-order as a whole and everything in it. (Fr. 1)

the requirement of something else acting on it is discussed, throughout 94 — Metaphysician Undercover

I was referring to Philolaus' argument. There is not discussion of Philolaus' argument. No discussion of a self- contained, self-sufficient system of limiters and unlimiteds, tied together by harmony.

Simmias' argument is influenced by Philolaus. (61d) Perhaps the following will clear up some of the confusion:

Limiters and unlimiteds are not combined in a haphazard way but are subject to a “fitting together” or “harmonia,” which can be described mathematically. Philolaus’ primary example of such a harmonia of limiters and unlimiteds is a musical scale, in which the continuum of sound is limited according to whole number ratios, so that the octave, fifth, and fourth are defined by the ratios 2 : 1, 3 : 2 and 4 : 3, respectively.

Philolaus presented a medical theory in which there was a clear analogy between the birth of a human being and the birth of the cosmos. The embryo is conceived of as composed of the hot and then as drawing in cooling breath immediately upon birth, just as the cosmos begins with the heat of the central fire, which then draws in breath along with void and time from the unlimited. Philolaus posited a strict hierarchy of psychic faculties, which allows him to distinguish human beings from animals and plants. He probably believed that the transmigrating soul was a harmonious arrangement of physical elements located in the heart and that the body became ensouled when the proper balance of hot and cold was established by the breathing of the new-born infant.

Fragment 1:

…since these beginnings [i.e. limiters and unlimiteds] preexisted and were neither alike nor even related, it would not have been possible for them to be ordered, if a harmony had not come upon them… Like things and related things did not in addition require any harmony, but things that are unlike and not even related … it is necessary that such things be bonded together by a harmony, if they are going to be held in an order.

In Fragment 6a Philolaus goes on to describe this harmony and what he describes is a musical scale, the scale known as the Pythagorean diatonic, which was used later by Plato in the Timaeus in the construction of the world soul. This scale provides Philolaus’ only surviving explicit example of the bonding together of limiters and unlimiteds by a harmony.

In the case of the cosmos as a whole, as we have just seen in Fr. 6, Philolaus argues that three starting points must be assumed, limiters, unlimiteds, and harmony, as a third element to hold these two unlike elements together.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philolaus/#Har

A harmony is not simply the combination of elements or any arrangement of elements, it is a particular order. There is no need for a separate soul to order the parts of the body. It is harmony that bonds together the elements.

I already explained how this interpretation is faulty. "The tuning" is the act which tunes. — Metaphysician Undercover

The tuning is not the act of tuning, it is the ratio of frequencies according to which something is tuned.

... the tuning is something invisible and bodiless and something altogether divine in the tuned lyre ... (Phaedo 86a)

The soul accordingly is the attunement, the harmony, the condition of the body, not the act of tuning or something that does the tuning.

The cause of the lyre being in tune is not the activity of tightened and slackens the strings. If I give you a lyre you cannot tune it unless you know the tuning, unless you know the ratio of frequencies. It is in accord with those ratios that the lyre is in tune. The cause of the lyre being in tune is Harmony.

You continually ignore Socrates' reference to the activity of the soul — Metaphysician Undercover

Whether the body requires something else acting on it is never discussed. Simmias says:

... our body is strung and held together by warm and cold and dry and wet and the like, our soul is, as it were, a blend and tuning of these very things, whenever, that is, they're blended with one another in a beautiful and measured way. (86c)

The soul is embodied. It exists when the body is in a harmonious condition. This is never pursued because he has accepted that the soul is prior to the body based on the story of recollection.

Harmonia here does not mean a harmony in the sense of melodious sound

That is correct. That is the point of the quote from the Republic in my last post:

It isn't these men I mean but those whom we just now said we are going to question [the Pythagoreans] about harmony.
They do the same thing astronomers do. They seek the numbers in these heard accords and don't rise to problems, to the consideration of which numbers are concordant and which are not, and why in each case. (Republic 531c)

These numbers are the ratios identified by the Pythagoreans. As I said above:

Knowledge of harmonic movement is not auditory, in is intelligible, it is knowledge of the ratios. What all harmony, whether it is music or parts of the soul or body or city, has in common is proper proportions of the parts or elements. It is not just a mixture or an ordered arrangement, it is a properly proportioned arrangement, one with the correct ratio of parts. — Fooloso4