Arguments For Phaedo

In the Phaedo, Socrates does not fear death because he believes that his soul is immortal and will be sent to heaven after his death. It is worth noticing here that he pre-assumes that the soul exists, so his central argument is not about whether the soul exists, but whether it is immortal. One of his arguments is that the soul is invincible, and invincible things can’t be destroyed, so the soul is immortal. I shall explain more fully this argument in the next paragraph. Then I shall offer my objection on his premise that invincible things can’t be destroyed, and thus how his argument of the immortality of the soul is invaid.
Socrates starts by making a distinguish between compound things and uncompounded things. Compound things, like pencils,
Even though the sound of speech can’t be seen by human eyes, it could still be sensed by one of the human senses which is the ears. And even though the smell of coffee can’t be seen, it could still be sensed by one of the human senses which is the nose. So the counterexamples given in my objection regarding the sound of speech and the smell of coffee are no longer valid if the interpretation of “invisible” becomes “can’t be sensed by the five human senses”. So then Socrates’ argument, particularly premises 3) and 4), still works----things that can’t be sensed by the human senses, that is, things that can’t be seen, touched, smelled, tasted or heard can’t be destroyed. The soul is an example of such a thing. Thus the soul can’t be
Which is a third possible meaning of “invisible”. So what he really means by premise 3) that invisible things can’t be destroyed is that things that can’t be detected by any means at all can’t be destroyed. And thus the counterexample of the Wi-Fi signal no longer works because even though the signal can’t be sensed by the human senses, it could be sensed by machines such as cell phones and computers; Same for the imagined scene----even if the scene can’t be sensed by any of the five human senses, it could still be sensed by the director’s brain. This means that given the third interpretation of the word “invisible”, the Wi-Fi signal and the scene are not really invisible because they can still be sensed in some way. Here then, Socrates could say: unlike the ordinary things that can be sensed in some way, the soul is something that can’t be detected in any way at all, it is invisible under the third interpretation of the word