/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13391036]

Plato devoted his life to prove the reality of the realm of forms. And failed. Because the only way he could prove reality of the realm of forms was if they showed up in some material way. But the moment they showed up in some material way they’re no longer a part of the realm of forms. They’re part of the realm of this churning sea of empirical sensation we pretend to call reality, according to Plato.

They can’t be proven because proof is reason and evidence in the material realm. And since the forms are anti-rational and anti-empirical they can never be proven.

If you get the metaphysics wrong, the actual nature of reality - and he says there are two, the pathetic material realm and ideal realm of forms - your epistemology is also wrong.

Because now it is not about learning the material world of science, reason, and evidence - it’s now about exploring this ideal in your mind that can never be proven.

Creating a higher realm where non-existence equals existence.

Inventing a higher realm where falsehood equals truth.

Creating a higher realm where the complete absence of evidence and rationality is certain proof that something exists - you’re just taking philosophy and just creating a realm that is the exact opposite of philosophy and claiming you contributed something substantial to the discipline.

[Anonymous No.13391044]

tldr: Plato was a pseud

[Anonymous No.13391053]

>>13391036
You either get the theory of forms or you don’t. No amount of reading can help you.

[Anonymous No.13391058]

>>13391053
Help me out then. Am I taking it too literally?

[Anonymous No.13391061]

>>13391036
Plato destroyed the theory in the dialogue Parmenides

You have no idea who you are talking about

[Anonymous No.13391068]

>>13391061
Explain

[Anonymous No.13391072]

>>13391061
This. People are so confused by philosophy because of the STEM disease. In the dialogue Meno, the character of the same name tells Socrates that he’s smart not to lie ace Athens because he would be accused of Sorcery. Forget what you know about philosophy, forget what you know about thinking, logic, rationality, forget all that when you start Plato. Cuz all those things were things invented by his student. You come to the foot of the master, and like a true devotee he has nothing to say but to praise the memory of his master.

[Anonymous No.13391076]

>>13391058
Sort of. Whether or not the forms are in some metaphysical plane or in our imagination, they certainly exist and have perfect forms. When stories and songs and technologies are created, don’t you get the sense that they should have been there all along? That they’ve always existed? The same phenomenon occurs with memes and jokes etc. I wouldn’t take the forms too seriously, but there’s something there that’s worth thinking about.

[Anonymous No.13391077]

>>13391072
So the realm of forms is theology.

[Anonymous No.13391088]

>>13391036
>>13391036
OP did good post, rest of posts suck, including this one

[Anonymous No.13391123]

read stanley rosen. oh wait, you're too retarded.

[Anonymous No.13391127]

Not a single argument thus far. Tsk tsk boys.

[Anonymous No.13391130]

>>13391077
It’s how people who have been cucked by Aristotle are forced to make sense of Plato.

>What’s the point
>what’s his end game

No. He’s not trying to sell you something, neither is he so stupid, like most philosophers, to think he has “something new” or that he’s “invented” a “new path”.

I forget where he said it but Heidegger said something to the effect that all philosophers, as far as they are true, are all speaking from the same source. But this source is so inexhaustible... nawm sayin

[Anonymous No.13391145]

AI is not a machine. We are not building a machine. We are building a prison. What we are facing now is the replacement of the human race with the human space. And that space is getting smaller everyday.

[Anonymous No.13391199]

>>13391036
There’s two Plato.

One is the image of Plato that has been made by everyone. They are always saying to read the Republic and about how Plato believed in something called the Theory of Forms, blah blah

Then there’s Plato who wrote the dialogues. This Plato, very very few actually know or study.

Your post belongs to the first Plato. You are speculating on the idea of Plato, the form of Plato, not the man who is responsible for those dialogues. Even a beginners glance at his bibliography show that he is quite possibly the single most impenetrable thinker in history

[Anonymous No.13391214]

>>13391199
>Even a beginners glance at his bibliography show that he is quite possibly the single most impenetrable thinker in history

how so

[Anonymous No.13391245]

>>13391036
woah op if only we had someone as genius as you the last 2500 years

[Anonymous No.13391250]

moral story: find answers to questions, not evidence for your presuppositions

[Anonymous No.13391258]

Al-Ghazali proved the existence of forms. If you say something has a quality, you must agknowledge that quality exists and you have some knowledge of it an sich. If you say someone is just for example you must premise this on justice having a reality. Otherwise if you say someone is just, or beautuful, or excellent, you are literally not saying anything, just making noises. Forms don't have to be material because our understanding of the material world depends on them existing and that proves them.

[Anonymous No.13391266]

>>13391214
Take Euthyphro. It’s *supposedly* boils down to “Is piety good because it is loved by the Gods, or do the Gods love it because it is good?” And then you have your quack teacher taking jabs at God and theologians thinking that’s what Plato was doing. But people always want to skip over the method. When Socrates goes over the difference between carrying and being carried. Look it up! Nobody talks about it. Or the Sophist and Statesman. Who is this stranger from Elea, and how the fuck is he doing what he is doing, and what exactly is he doing?

>Le dialectic

Ok. Sure what’s the dialectic.

>sounds of crickets.

Enter Hegel.

>sound of frustrated readers and pissed off philosophers

Take Gorgias. Is it a dialogue about rhetoric, the nature of good and evil or pastries? And has ANYONE, I mean it, anyone made sense of Parmenides? No. What are you doing Plato? What are you talking about?

>sound of a cool breeze over an open field of green grass and broken stones on an island in the Mediterranean Sea

[Anonymous No.13391270]

>>13391258

[Anonymous No.13391274]

>>13391258
>what we say must have a bearing on reality because we say it
This solves no problems in philosophy

[Anonymous No.13391279]

>>13391266
so Hegel minsunderstood Plato?

[Anonymous No.13391286]

>>13391274
>when we talk about reality we mean that which cannot be sensed, known or articulated

[Anonymous No.13391303]

>>13391286
>our senses are infallible
>what could just be a function of our intellect is posited as a proof for the existence of "forms" aside from the objects they describe

[Anonymous No.13391318]

>>13391303
>we must reject axioms even when it is proven we depend upon them for any epistemology whatsoever

[Anonymous No.13391330]

>>13391318
>epistemology depends on certain axioms therefore they are true and beyond doubt

[Anonymous No.13391341]

>>13391330
>questioning the truth of axioms that must be presumed for truth to even exist
>trying to disprove truth exists via an epistemeology which requires truth to exist to be accurate

[Anonymous No.13391370]

>>13391341
>not questioning the truth of said axioms because it's necessary to uphold your epistemology
>it requires truth to exist for you to be able to doubt the reliability of what we perceive

>we attribute qualities to things, for those things to have any meaning the qualities must have objective existence aside from the objects which can be described by them
>the object's qualities can't be similar yet separate and detached from any external form and we can't call into doubt the accuracy of our speech in doubting axioms such as these

[Anonymous No.13391377]

You’re taking this too autistically. Forms correspond to an idea of something or some concept. For example, when you think of a chair you think of a thing that has legs, usually a back, and that can support the weight of a human. That is the form of chair that you just thought of. You may have thought of a specific chair, but notice how your specific chair had all of these attributes or encompassed a rough outline. Plato asserts that things must have forms that they correspond to or how could we know and classify them. For example, you can look at a cockatoo and a parrot and know that they are both birds, becuase they are both in the form of bird. However, they are different becuase matter is imperfect and only in the realm of forms can bird be perfect so on earth bird can take many shapes.

>the only way he could prove reality of the realm of forms was if they showed up in some material way.
Why? A thing does not have to be observable to be proven. And observation rarely equals proof.

>They can’t be proven because proof is reason and evidence in the material realm. And since the forms are anti-rational and anti-empirical they can never be proven.
The forms are not anti-rational. Plato asserts that the only way for a man to know the forms is though being rational. Becuase, assuming that Plato is correct and forms do exist, man would not be able to know his foot from a tree limb if the forms were anti-rational. To put it in another way, the fact that we can even be rational, again assuming Plato is correct, is proof that the forms are rational.

[Anonymous No.13391385]

>>13391370
>haha, what if truth and knowledge aren't real? BTFO even though I can't even explain wtf I am talking about since "real" itself is a quality

[Anonymous No.13391386]

>>13391279
No he go it

[Anonymous No.13391387]

>>13391036
>philosophy

whats in a nigga name though

[Anonymous No.13391388]

>>13391377
Sure, you could say forms exist in that we use them to communicate ideas, though do forms have any effect on the actual objects? For example Aristotle believed goodness is fulfilling the object of your essence/form and gave them quite literal existences, is this not going too far? I don't see why we don't stop at saying "as humans we attribute certain qualities to things and multiple things can share the same quality, that's a form." Maybe I am taking it autistically idk.

[Anonymous No.13391510]

>>13391036
>>13391044
Diogenes exposed pea-brain plato

[Anonymous No.13391542]

>>13391061
>Plato destroyed the theory in the dialogue Parmenides
>You have no idea who you are talking about

[Anonymous No.13391562]

>>13391542
Daswuteyesed bitch

[Anonymous No.13391900]

>>13391036
>where falsehood equals truth
but what "IS" truth?

[Anonymous No.13391995]

>>13391562
Parmenides discloses and proves the correct theory of forms.
It's not just some logical exercise, if you'd read Sophist-Statesman, Philebus and Laws, you'd know this.

[Anonymous No.13392009]

>>13391036
Plato never claimed there was some "higher realm". For him, forms were immanent.
All you achieved was to show how much of a retard you are by refuting your own misreading.

[Anonymous No.13392010]

>>13391036
>Because the only way he could prove

Awful thread in general, but this is the worst offense.

[Anonymous No.13392083]

>>13391036
I agree w everything except early analytic philosophy relief on his mathematics to attack neokantian idealism. Plato did a great job and forms are found rationally, the forms even have a hierarchy

[Anonymous No.13392089]

>>13391036
>Because the only way he could prove reality of the realm of forms was if they showed up in some material way.
Stopped reading this anachronistic Enlightenment bullshit right here. A fundament misunderstanding of Platonic ontology.

[Anonymous No.13392094]

Forms come before language right?

[Anonymous No.13392156]

>>13392094
yes,of course

[Anonymous No.13392170]

>>13391058
The forms in particulars are real. Take me for example, the perfect man. But taking yourself, an imperfect man, you have the real form of the man + defects or lethe, i.e. forgetfulness of form. Everything in the realm of becoming has real form in it on display for all to see, its just that that real form is in part occluded by defects. So the existence of any particular necessarily proves the existence of forms, and every particular is a real instantisation of really existing and sensible form for you to apprehend.

[Anonymous No.13392220]

>>13391258
>If you say something has a quality, you must agknowledge that quality exists and you have some knowledge of it an sich.

But that doesn't mean there is a form of that quality out there, it might just be a shorthand for some kind of behaviors and pattern. We are quick to make entitites out of observations because that's cognitively easier. That doesn't mean those entities exist by themselves. They're more like useful fictions.

A riddle for you: if I say centaurs don't exist, does that mean the non-existence of centaurs is a thing ? Is there a form of nonsexistence of centaurs somewhere ?

TL;DR: Read Brentano.

[Anonymous No.13392223]

>>13391385
That's not what he said but nice epistemological ping-pong match.

[Anonymous No.13392330]

>>13392220
>form of nonexistence
No, forms are only good, beautiful, and of being.

[Anonymous No.13392363]

>>13391130
So you're saying that milk is for the pussy?

[Anonymous No.13392364]

>>13392330
But non existence is beautiful, good, and because it exists in my mind, exists in the realm of forms

[Anonymous No.13392373]

>>13391036
This is why Platon was a theologian at heart, not a philosopher. His ideas are inherently irrational and bound to the divine.

[Anonymous No.13392384]

>>13392364
Paradoxical. To say non-existence exists is to give it properties of being, thus negating its non-existence. Read Parmenides.

[Anonymous No.13392452]

>>13391036
Actually studying plato recently, I've found him to be a bit of retard
He's basically the old version of /pol/ users who think they can create their own ethnostate

>Guardians are supposed to study 50 years but not be allowed to pursue outside knowledge in case they get corrupted, and only through their studies are they allowed to govern the country despite not really knowing much of anything aside from their own perceived world

And when asked as to how it can be implemented in such a way that they're never corrupted he simply goes
>LOL I DUNNO, IT'LL WORK BRO

Absolute 0 iq republic Plato

[Anonymous No.13392488]

>>13392452
Admitting to skipping straight to The Republic and taking it at face value should unironically be a bannable offence on this bored

[Anonymous No.13392563]

>>13392488
Is this the
>Plato was only pretending to be retarded
Defense?

[Anonymous No.13392595]

>>13392563
Read Laws you troglodyte, The Republic was a hypothetical system designed for “Gods and the children of Gods”.

[Anonymous No.13392599]

>>13392563
I hope you're only pretending to be retarded

[Anonymous No.13392639]

>>13392595
If it was designed for Gods why did it center around the concepts of mortal man and mortal creation

creation of an ideal for the use of man

[Anonymous No.13392836]

>>13391036
the perfect forms are only perceived by your thoughts, just because it can't be proven in the sensible world doesn't mean it is a fraud

[Anonymous No.13392920]

>>13391036
>two worlds meme

instant pseud filter

[Anonymous No.13392934]

>>13392920
not an argument

[Anonymous No.13392963]

>>13391036
Forms are just concepts. They don't need physical existence because they exist in the mind. He was pre Cartesian. He did the best he could.

[Anonymous No.13393004]

>>13392934
yes, your fundamental misunderstanding of plato is, in fact, an argument

[Anonymous No.13393092]

>>13393004
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of my argument. And there’s not much else to say. Refute specific points or fuck off.

[Anonymous No.13393112]

>>13393092
Once again, your argument depends on the two world ontology meme, which is a meme and based on a fundamental misunderstanding of Plato's project, which was to determine the ideational nature of the forms as they are and can only be immanent to becoming in the first place.

[Anonymous No.13393160]

>>13393112
To say they subsist apart from any physical space then makes the realm of forms pure theology, and can be discounted as such.

[Anonymous No.13393161]

Did you just watch Molymemes bullshit video on Plato?

[Anonymous No.13393166]

>>13393160
They don't and Plato doesn't say that, the Ideas are immanent attractors, not transcendent principles grafted onto matter

[Anonymous No.13393185]

>>13393166
So the Realm of Forms neither subsist apart from the material world nor are a literal physical space apart from this one? It must be one or the other.

[Anonymous No.13393195]

>>13393185
No, it isn't, because you can't think the coincidence of non-physical becomings within and as constitutive of the physical. The forms are the "being of becoming", and not Being beyond becoming.

[Anonymous No.13393339]

>>13391036

The scientific method assumes that logic / mathematics is a good confidence approach to describing reality. If you do not believe in ideals, then you do not believe that reality is governed by any definite axioms, so then I'm not sure how it could be possible to acquire any knowledge at all. What good is empirical data if it cannot be assumed to represent an abstract, general truth? If you observe something on one occasion and hold it in memory, how could you be sure that what you observed exists at all beyond random chance?

[Anonymous No.13393368]

>>13391279
Yes.

[Anonymous No.13393691]

>>13392452
plato is boring. Antisthenes is the true heir to Socrates.

[Anonymous No.13393750]

>>13391377
>Plato asserts that things must have forms that they correspond to or how could we know and classify them
Because the opposite is true. The "imperfect" deviations came long before the proper form we later asserted. The parrot and the cockatoo came before the idea of the bird in the mind of a man. The perfect form of a bird is an invented ideal based upon the imperfect matter, not the other way around. Philosophy is, and always has been, a tool of the mind, and it's thoroughly disingenuous to place the standard of philosophy before the extant reality it studies, as though the former were the basis for the latter.

[Anonymous No.13393897]

>>13392595
>>13391995
This and this.
Plato isn't lining up Socrates to be right in every situation, nor trying to berate all of the other philosophers. Basically they are forming the ideal image or value within the dialogue, each handing off or carrying brief instances of the form as it approaches finality, or simply evades their attempts at capture. There are moments when each person steps back to accept the position of another, and one might say that this allows the form to divide like a chasm only so that the dialogue is brought closer together in the end. The Form is thus a consort, or counsel, for each as they engage with the Idea - whether directly or indirecty.

If Socrates gets the best of the dialogue at times this is simply due to him being Plato's master, it is a matter of respect. We have to consider this as an overall image rather than a demonstration of power, metaphysical victory (or lack thereof). Each position in the dialogues is like a step in a ruinous building as we rise carefully over cracked stone, and eventually reach the uppermost floors to look over the city and survey which region received the brunt of the assault. We are only taking the view of Socrates because he knows how to endure within dangerous places. It is also simple to have one individual attempt to guide the others up the steps in order, and this gives the reader a certain position from which to view everything from a safe position, become accustomed to his surroundings, and learn from each other person free of bias.

This creates a sense of humility before the idea, we do not presuppose that we, or even our master, hold the key to open the door at the top of the tower. There is always the potential for great insight to come from an opponent, no matter how small, even if this revelation comes from a negative. Plato often presents Socrates as trying to learn from the other philosophers for this very reason. They are all essentially students of the One idea, and perhaps this is the essence of 'All I know is that I know nothing.' There is a life that emerges within this method, as if each reveals its place in forming a greater perfection, an experience which equates becoming and being that will persist after the end. And in this sense the Form is not some completely unknowable, distant ideal, but a contradiction in that it completely moulds us to its will while we are forced to seek out its perfection on our own. In this there is a great similarity to the myths.

[Anonymous No.13393921]

>>13393897
It is an authority which allows for our complete freedom outside of it, guides us to seek out its essence and realise its being. And when we fail this we are forced into other forms and values, and become further divided from the One to the point that the form and ideal return in unrecognizable shapes and patterns; lifeless. The material without form is ugliness, while the essence of art is material's forming as an eternal presence. This is why we say it is beautiful, as its power exists beyond the material realm, even captures us within a sense of eternal laws. Material reveals its deeper qualities, the still image moves; hence the natural opposition to realism in the greatest works.

The Forms perform in much the same way, they are not necessarily unworldly, but rather an unseen presence which guide us towards our own ideal. They only appear in opposition to us to the degree that we are distanced from their necessity. This invariably occurs in times of great wealth or bare survival, and in an era when these positions have achieved synthesis we might say that negation only proves the power of the Form.

[Anonymous No.13394276]

>>13391377
HE DID IT GUYS
HE SAID THE CHAIR MEME

[Anonymous No.13394526]

>>13391036
>hehasn'treadeverydialogueanddiscoveredthesevretholographicplatohedron.gif
>laughingolympians.jpg

[Anonymous No.13394862]

>>13393750
They're not saying there's a "bird" form retard

[Anonymous No.13394896]

>>13393750
complete and utter misunderstanding of platonic forms

i'm convinced 99% of plato's detractors are just hylic retards

[Anonymous No.13395333]

>>13394862
>For example, you can look at a cockatoo and a parrot and know that they are both birds, becuase they are both in the form of bird.
>only in the realm of forms can bird be perfect so on earth bird can take many shapes.
No?

[Anonymous No.13395619]

>>13395333
Is there any bigger tell for a brainlet than ending a declarative statement with a question mark?

[Anonymous No.13395757]

>>13393750
Form's are timeless and exist outside of time. There already exists in the timeless realm of forms the form of the 3000AD bird that will evolve/be bred and is nothing like any known bird. All forms of everything already exist as forms even if they aren't instantised in any particular yet.

Think of an imaginary or mythical bird that hasn't been discovered or invented yet. The form for that creature already exists in the realm of forms and you "inventing" it is merely recollecting it's pre-existent form from the realm of forms.

[Anonymous No.13395799]

>>13395757
this guy gets it

the formal syntax of the universe has already "anticipated" what species x would look and act like before it even exists

[Anonymous No.13395815]

Simple proof of forms:
View two shades of blue. Now think of an intermediate shade between those two shades. Your mind has gone (recollected) into the realm of forms and plucked an ideal shade of intermediate blue for you. You have not sensed that shade of blue, it is not an empirical blue, it is a blue you know by its from.

[Anonymous No.13395891]

>>13393750
My unironic take on reality and biology is that there are fundamental archetypes which are eternal in nature. Cats are one, dogs another, trees too, water also, the eye, a baby. All of these are simply ideas, and they've always existed. We inhabit the material realm, where things are born and die, but my reading of DMT reports causes me to believe there exist realms higher than our own, and living there are creatures who not only created our realm (i.e solving the infamous problem of origins, without resorting to either Abiogenesis or Genesis), but created it according to archetypes of themselves. ex. Mantis-beings seen on DMT may have been the original creators of the mantises we know of on Earth.

Sounds crazy, I know. Just trying to explore alternative possibilities. I simply have no effing clue how we are able to understand what something "is" without bringing the concept of ideas into play, and for how those ideas could ever be created as opposed to eternal. Take water, for example. How is it, that from the first time we saw water, we knew "what" it was? Why was it not completely foreign and unintelligible to us? What makes it "water"? The chemical understanding took a formal effort to obtain, and could only come to us because we could recognize water as water first. And what makes it "water"? Clearly, not just it's having two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom, which are recent discoveries, but we and all other species have always been able to recognize it as "water". My belief is that the water of water is an idea, which has always existed, and that these ideas are what form into material realities, be it here or on other planets, and are known to us because of the inherent connection our minds have to the realm where ideas themselves are, which we ourselves are and came from.

Gosh, this post sounds pretty bad. Not an intellectual or claiming to be one, just a kid brainstorming some ideas of his.

[Anonymous No.13395949]

>>13395891
Start with Platonism in mathematics to give your intuition a firmer basis. Numbers exist prior to any particulars. Once you have a firm grasp on those arguments you can extend it to "the form/idea of every thing exists prior to any particulars."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/

[Anonymous No.13395959]

>>13391036
Alright boys, I'm wrapping it up here.

Take my word, one day I WILL send all Platonists on a deep descent into philosophical irrelevancy. Aristotle guide me!

[Anonymous No.13396010]

>>13395959
>one day I WILL send all Platonists on a deep descent into philosophical irrelevancy. Aristotle guide me!
>american who thinks in a right vs wrong imagery

how cute, you have much learn yet kiddo

[Anonymous No.13396068]

>Because the only way he could prove reality of the realm of forms was if they showed up in some material way.
Uhhh how has this shit thread gotten this many replies?

[Anonymous No.13396719]

>>13395619
Nice deflection, retard.

>>13395891
And I hate to sound like a cynic, but this just sounds like complete bullshit to me.
>How is it, that from the first time we saw water, we knew "what" it was?
We didn't. "We" were born in the water, adapted out of it, and still must return regularly to feed on it. But our recognition of water is entirely instinctual, and based on millions of years of honing from single-celled lifeforms to complex machines, every step of the way necessarily understanding the importance of water.
>What makes it "water"?
It looks like water. That doesn't mean there's an ideal form of water out there in this hypothetical realm of forms, it just means that we have the appropriate pattern recognition skills to identify water. Again, the water came first, then the philosophy. The idea is based on the object, not the other way around.

>>13395757
>There already exists in the timeless realm of forms the form of the 3000AD bird that will evolve/be bred and is nothing like any known bird
>The form for that creature already exists in the realm of forms and you "inventing" it is merely recollecting it's pre-existent form from the realm of forms.
Prove it.

[Anonymous No.13396744]

>>13392452
>muh /pol/
No better litmus test for pseudery than people trying to dissociate from /pol/ unprovoked.

[Anonymous No.13397039]

>>13396719
Because nothing comes from nothing. You can not know things that are unknown, you can only recall things you already know but have forgotten.

[Anonymous No.13398262]

>>13391036
it's irrational from the mindset of a 3-dimensional being.
from the perspective of a 4-dimensional being (or higher) it becomes rational.
the reason Forms gets so much credibility is because denying its reality brings in a bunch of problems that also can't be solved (or at least haven't been solved yet).
both sides of the issue don't make sense all the time.

[Anonymous No.13398310]

>>13392094
>>13392156
which means that for language to "work", Forms has to be real.
if Forms aren't real, then language is just noise

so when certain people claim "Forms aren't real", they're literally denying that language has any meaning, even though they're using language to make that assertion.
if they believe language has no inherent meaning, then their statements shouldn't even be listened to, it would be like listening to a baby that hasn't learned to talk, and just makes babbling noises.

[Anonymous No.13398344]

>>13398310
Yes, but only if they can't produce a convincing alternative ground for an intrasubjective experience of language or prove why the forms can't be as such.

[Anonymous No.13398408]

>>13398344
doesn't the fact that all languages around the world share certain similarities prove that Forms exist?
sure, the sky gets called by different names, but every culture has a word for sky.
or words for the expression of non-physical things too, like Anger, Love, etc.
or as someone else said earlier, Math is the example par excellence. Doesn't matter in what language, numbers and functions have the same MEANING, despite not having physical form.
It's why Ouspensky (a platonist) said in his book "Tertium Organum" that Noumena are basically "functions" (in the mathematical sense of the word, especially).

[Anonymous No.13398446]

>>13391036
You believe yourself to have single handedly refuted metaphysics, is that right?

[Anonymous No.13398464]

Numbers and mathematics aren't observable yet we can understand them through reason. I'm not a platonist btw just making an observation.

[Anonymous No.13398558]

>>13396719
Water as an intelligible form and not an evolutionary holdover.

I'm convinced people who don't understand Plato's forms are barely sentient

[Anonymous No.13398600]

>>13398446
That’s right. It’s now my life’s work to delegitimize Plato. When people view my ‘Influenced’ section on Wikipedia, they will see ‘All of subsequent western philosophy’.

[Anonymous No.13400309]

bump

[Anonymous No.13400346]

>>13391036
I have come down to the Piraeus to shed some light on the theory of forms, which seems to confuse so many people due to their own incompetence at actual philosophy.
Aristotle begins his criticism of Plato in his Metaphysics by stating that Plato wanted to find the causes of 'these entities’ and posited the Forms in pursuit of an answer to this inquiry. With 'these entities’, Aristotle refers to things in the sensible world, as opposed to things in the intelligible world of the Forms.
He claims (and it is important to note here that Aristotle’s claim in the Metaphysics is the only source we have on this matter) that Plato was influenced at a young age by Heraclitus’ disciple, Cratylus and retained his rather radical Heraclitean doctrines even in his old age.
This Heraclitean doctrine as propounded by Cratylus maintains that the objects in the sensible world are in a constant state of flux and change. This perpetual state of becoming implies that nothing ever 'is' and as Plato interpreted it, knowledge is not possible. In this way, Aristotle suggests that Plato posited the Forms to explain how it is possible to know things since no true knowledge exists in the sensible world.
On the one hand, one can doubt Plato’s alleged Cratylan radicalism of constant flux in the sensible world. In the Theaetetus, Socrates refutes this doctrine by arguing, among other things, that it would make it impossible to develop language. For if everything is in constant flux, one can never say that something 'is', since it is always 'becoming’. By the time one speaks of something, the subject will have already become something else, and no statement about that subject (if one can refer to it as such) would ever be correct. In the Timaeus, Plato once again confirms this difficulty of establishing a reliable and definite terminology concerning objects in the sensible world. However, he does, on the other hand, speak of constant flux in the sensible world in this very same dialogue.

I will assume that Plato at the very least accepted a moderate sense of Heraclitean flux, viz., objects in the sensible world undergo change in every aspect at every moment. Indeed, concerning the sensible, Plato himself says in the Phaedo that it is never the same and never equal to itself. Additionally, in the Philebus, he states that phenomena never have the least certainty. Nevertheless, he maintains that a stable and precise language is possible. Language can only be as certain as the objects to which it refers. Hence, language referring to the unchanging Forms will be absolute, but language referring to sensible objects (i.e. objects in the world of 'becoming') will only be relative to the resemblance these objects might possess in relation to the Forms.Thus the Forms are the only things of which we can have true knowledge, whereas we can at best, only have a true opinion about sensible objects.

[Anonymous No.13400350]

>>13400346
In his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Alexander of Aphrodisias states that it is very clear that the Forms are analogous to (Aristotelian) substances. Nevertheless, there exists a discrepancy in the ways in which both philosophers substantiate this word, and I identify the locus of much confusion to this misinterpretation. 'Substance' is the common translation for the Greek word οὐσία (ousia), i.e., the verb 'to be' (ibid). Aristotle uses this word in two distinct grammatical constructions, with two different meanings (ibid). In the first sense, substance (primary substance) is the foundation of being, i.e., individuals (or particulars) (ibid). Socrates is a primary substance. Socrates being a human being is a secondary substance (just like everything that can be said about the primary substance) (ibid). This second meaning of substance is, according to Aristotle, the essence or nature of a thing. As opposed to Aristotle’s individuals (i.e. particulars), for Plato, the primary substances are the Forms. Contrary to Aristotle, Plato does not make a distinction between the two meanings of ousia. To him, the primary substances are the Forms, and the Forms are the essences of things, i.e., we can determine the essence of a thing by linking it to the relevant Form. In this way, the Forms enable us to answer the question of 'what something is in itself’, thus enabling us to know its essence.
For Aristotle, universals (i.e. what individuals or particulars have in common, e.g. Forms) can never be essences. The substance of a thing is peculiar to that thing, while universals are common. If a universal were a substance, it would be the substance for all the things that have that universal property in common. This, Aristotle maintains, is not possible, because a substance is always peculiar to a thing and so it cannot be universal. No universals can be a substance in the way that an essence (secondary substance) is. Hence, the two meanings of ousia remain separate for Aristotle. For Plato, on the other hand, the Forms are the principles that give structure and purpose to these sensible things: they are their essences.

[Anonymous No.13400359]

>>13400350
Aristotle criticises Plato's (three according to On Ideas) arguments from the sciences (these can be traced back to his dialogues). The first argument maintains that every science functions by referring to the same thing. 'The same thing' means that one particular thing is involved in explaining different objects. The function of every science is to explain everything within its domain in terms of basic objects. To claim to know something, one must be able to explain it in terms of an appropriate basis. To know F, one must know that particular thing that makes F, F. The third argument maintains that knowledge does not refer to a particular example of an object, but the object without qualification. The scope of the second argument extends to arguments one and three. This argument states that there are objects of knowledge and that these entities are not particular things. Moreover, this argument is further supported by the fact that particulars (i.e. individuals) are indefinite, whereas knowledge is definite.

Aristotle gives two objections to these arguments which elucidate Plato's motive for positing the Forms. The first objection is that these arguments do not prove the existence of Forms, but only that there exist some things other than sensible objects. These 'things', however, do not need to be Forms, Aristotle further maintains, but can also be 'in' things themselves (ibid). Nevertheless, he concedes that Plato is right to see that knowledge requires the existence of universals, but disagrees with him on what the nature of these universals ought to be. For Plato, these universals were the transcendental Forms, whereas Aristotle maintained that the universals were immanent in sensible objects. Aristotle might be on to something when he says that the arguments from the sciences only prove that there are universals and not that these universals exist as Platonic Forms.

[Anonymous No.13400369]

>>13400359
The dialogues from his middle-period seem to point at things which contemporary authors tend to refer to as 'incomplete properties'. Briefly put, 'incomplete properties' are properties which In themselves do not mean anything. They must always be in relation to something else. In this way, 'Socrates is large’ means very little in itself. For this statement to be meaningful, we need to know the relation to what Socrates is large. Socrates could be large for a male Athenian, but small in relation to a fully-grown oak tree. Forms then would be limited to these incomplete properties, because these properties raise problems of their own if they are to be attributed to sensible objects (ibid). The most pertinent of these problems to the question at hand is the 'compresence of opposites’. This problem maintains that an object can be F and not F at the same time. It appears then that Plato is looking for a largeness that is large in itself, i.e., a largeness that is not subject to the 'compresence of opposites’. It is for this reason that Plato felt impelled to posit the Form 'Largeness' because this Form 'Largeness' is always large in itself without being so in relation to anything other than itself.
Plato introduces the 'compresence of opposites' to demonstrate the necessity of Forms in preserving the possibility of explanation and knowledge. He presents the following two premises in the Phaedo:

1. Sticks and stones which are equal seem to be equal to one thing and not equal to some other thing, without actually changing.

2. Things which are truly equal never appear to be unequal, and equality never appears to be
inequality.

What Plato is trying to demonstrate with these two premises is that there is a difference between equality in itself and sensibly observable equality. Plato maintains that sensible objects are persistently capable of appearing opposite because they exist in the sensible world, and this world permits these objects to be observed from opposing perspectives (compresence of opposites). As the second premise would have it, if a person thinks of equality in itself, it is not possible for this equality to appear to him as inequality. Plato is suggesting that this is a property of equality in itself: equality in itself (i.e. the Form 'Equality') cannot deceive, but sensible equality can. Briefly put, there must be a thing that is 'Equality' in itself, which is distinct from sensible equality. This, Plato argues, must be the Form 'Equality'. In this way, Plato also introduced the 'compresence of opposites' to indicate that in order to speak of true knowledge, there needs to be something other than just sensible objects. In this respect, the Forms proved to be the perfect answer.

[Anonymous No.13400373]

>>13400369

So no, Plato is not doing the exact opposite of philosophy. He is in fact doing it at a level we ought to all aspire to. This short explanation is just first year undergraduate tier philosophy, anons. If you cannot understand this, please refrain from trying to attack a man in whose shadow you’re not even worthy to stand.

May God be with you all.

[Anonymous No.13400386]

>>13400373
PS: the ibids refer to Alexander.

[Anonymous No.13400389]

>>13392170
Based

[Anonymous No.13400448]

>>13400369
couldn't we say the "compresence of opposites" proves that there are Forms that are not just the Forms of sensible properties, but relations between sensible properties? couldn't there be Forms for contingent relations? or is that basically the domain of the sensible?

either way great write-up. OP eternally btfo

[Anonymous No.13400681]

>>13400448
saying it doesn’t make it so

[Anonymous No.13400817]

>>13400346
OP is never going to recover from this

[Anonymous No.13400921]

>>13400346
nigger, you literally copied word by word from that plato.edu site. absolute charlatan

[Anonymous No.13400958]

>>13400921
He didn't, but as he said, this is literally 1st year undergrad.
/lit/'s ignorance exposed for what it is

[Anonymous No.13400963]

>>13400373
Why are the holy pilled anons always the high-IQ ones.