Platonism through the lens of formalism's eyes
Is it the case that many open questions in Philosophy are not that interesting for those who favour formalism over platonism when discussing truths about what objets and properties are for example?
If you have a preference for formalism, have there arisen cases when you felt a platonic viewpoint would be more useful when reasoning about something?
Has formalist thinking ever constrained you in surprising ways and forced you to at times, if even temporarily, abandon formalism. Can you think of examples of problems for which formalist thinking was insufficient to theorise resolutions to seemingly formal questions? As a formalist (if you consider yourself firmly in that camp), has there arisen any instance where you felt that Ptatonism was needed to satisfy a question you had about something.
Sorry if this seems vague.
If you have a preference for formalism, have there arisen cases when you felt a platonic viewpoint would be more useful when reasoning about something?
Has formalist thinking ever constrained you in surprising ways and forced you to at times, if even temporarily, abandon formalism. Can you think of examples of problems for which formalist thinking was insufficient to theorise resolutions to seemingly formal questions? As a formalist (if you consider yourself firmly in that camp), has there arisen any instance where you felt that Ptatonism was needed to satisfy a question you had about something.
Sorry if this seems vague.
Comments (88)
So I share this sentiment, that formalism is "not that interesting" philosophically. Except that I apply that to nominalism in toto.
It's interesting how old nominalism is. It's seems to me to be common sense. Ideas of natures and objects having accidents coming out of substances are adult fantasies to my mind
It's only 700 years old. "Platonism" is as old as humans have been walking the Earth.
And I'm not arguing for Aristotle's metaphysics. I dont accept that.
As for "adult fantasies" the whole nominalist worldview would logically entail that all of reality is a fantasy. There are no actual qualities or properties things actually share, so they don't have properties or qualities. Which means everything you have ever seen heard or experienced is a mental illusion created by your brain. Nothing is real. If you think that makes sense, go for it.
How do you know that?
Quoting Dharmi
No it doesn't. It just says that a tree and another tree don't share some quasi non-material nature in common. Its just a bunch of matter. And matter is real. Qualities might be outside or inside the mind, but even Kant realized we have to posit SOMETHING out there, because otherwise we have solipsism. Solipsism is absurd, so there world is not fantasy. This is clearly true (platonism is not)
Because we have historiographical studies of ancient societies, and as far as we can tell, the vast majority of human societies held to a form of Idealistic Panentheism. Mesoamerican socities, ancient European, Vedic, East Asian. Several.
It does totally. That's why Max Stirner, Nietzsche, Existentialists, Postmodernists and nihilists are honest and consistent nominalists.
EXACTLY. They share no properties in common. "Just matter" no dude, "matter" is a property. They don't share that property. You just said they share no inherent natural properties. Matter is property. You contradict yourself in the same sentence. And you're proving my point.
Matter is a quality of experience, you can't prove it is real. And quantum physicists can't even describe the mass, charge, spin, location, weight etc. of "matter" which is no different than it not really being there.
No, empirico-materialism leads to solipsism. According to Kant, and according to you, all that exists is reducible to sense perceptions (without anything linking them together due to Hume's problem of induction) and chemical combinations in the brain creating the illusion of "reality."
Your worldview leads to solipsism, my worldview says the world exists actually and truly. There are properties, natures, qualities, essences, natures that things truly actually have.
That doesn't tell us what THEIR ancestors believed. Humanity is between 200, 000 and 300,000 years old
That's also false. Modern science says humanity is 350,000 years old. More than that, you're just assuming modern science is true. Which is just an assertion. I would claim it's much older. Anyway, this is a derail.
I don't need to prove my position is the oldest to prove your position is only 700 years old with no antecedent.
Matter is not a property, it is a substance. You are made of matter. It doesn't matter is messed up people also believe in nominalism. A healthy person can believe in it to. Are all Platonists perfect?
If it's much older, prove they believe in Platonism? Matter is entirely provable. Punch yourself in the arm or pick up a chair
Substances, natures, essences are universals. How can you not understand that?
Platonism, at least in it's classical formulation, I actually reject. I hold to the formulation that the Vedanta schools hold to.
Formalism is denying that talking about matter in ontological terms is legit, so maybe speaking of nominalism might be a derail even though it runs counter to Platonism
No, matter is not provable. Qualities of experience are all that has ever been proved. You've decided ad hoc to call these qualities of experience "matter"
Thought of in Platonism or Hegelism terms, sure. Not in Kantian or empiricist terms though
Speaking of nominalist philosophy isn't a derail, trying to talk about the history of it is a derail. Those different issues.
That's absurd to the highest degree. You are denying you are a body then
Because those philosophies are inconsistent. "There are natures but there are not." Pure sophistry.
Correct. I am a spirit soul which has a body. A body is like an avatar in a video game.
There are not universals, but there are material natures. The latter are defined by the matter we experience
But we've never experienced natures or matter. And a nature is a universal. Every metaphysician knows that.
That's mental illness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_disorder
No, it's the worldview that I have. Believing that everything in your mind is a chemical illusion is mental illness.
There is no consensus in philosophy. We experience matter and classify them according to their natures. Universals are spooks of metaphysicians
Everything you say is a spook. Is it universally true there are no universals?
Well I disagree. I had a great childhood and thus do not deny matter. I've experienced some trauma but it hasn't shaken my belief in matter. People get traumatized by life and deny matter. It's insane to do so though. There are universal truths, but no universals as substances. Truth is not a substance
It's a belief. I'm glad you admit it. There's absolutely no such thing as matter outside of your ad hoc belief. It's a religion. Great.
There are no universal truths if you deny universals. You are playing a sophistic game of wanting to have your cake and eat, which is what all Modernist philosophers do. Postmoderns are honest. "No universals, no universal truth." Let's be honest with our worldviews.
No, this is based on your belief in the substance of truth (Platonism)
How would you defend yourself in a fist fight while denying matter is real I would like to know
What would it otherwise be based on? Science? Science is based on tentative, limited, particular empirical sense data. It's pragmatic. So there would not be universal truth according to that paradigm.
Qualities of experience is not matter. You're asserting this, without justification.
I'm not a Foundationalist, so I am not claiming certainty.
Of course. The one rule in science is "identical objects act identically in identical situations". Knowing there is matter is a priori to all science.
Quoting Dharmi
I think that's a childish assertion
Quoting Dharmi
What I am trying to say is that nobody can be a foundationalist in their reasoning. But saying "I believe in matter" is not the same thing as saying "I believe in Platonic forms". Those two assertions have nothing in common because you are matter and speculating about forms is just philosophy. You are not philosophy
No, it's not an a priori to all science. It's a priori to modern scientific method that's based on the mechanical philosophy of Descartes and others.
People did science for thousands of years before and they weren't materialists.
Quoting Gregory
So? Who cares what you think? There are no universals according to your worldview, "reality" is just a mental illness created by the chemicals in your brain and there's no ultimate meaning or purpose to life so there's no meaning or purpose to what you say, think or do. So, I frankly don't give a crap.
Quoting Gregory
You're right, one is based on natural law, namely Platonism. The other has absolutely no foundation whatsoever. Matter has never been demonstrated to exist whatsoever. What exists are qualities of experience, or Platonic Forms.
Platonists can think whatever they want when they do science. Their experiments are on matter regardless of what they think.
Quoting Dharmi
False. Life has meaning because soul emerges from matter. Truth has no substance but the soul does. Some things are true, but I don't think "uinversals" in the Platonic sense are real
So there is no foundation to the claim you have a body? Lol, tell that to your doctor
No, they are demonstrably not, Matter has never been demonstrated to exist.
Quoting Gregory
Soul emerges from matter? Dude, you've lost it. Go lie down somewhere. This conversation is over.
I admitted I have a body, but that body is not "material" that is just an assertion.
Body means material dude
No, it doesn't . That's a language game. You need to read up on Derrida, Wittgenstein.
If the world ceased to exist it would be true there was once a world although there is nothing anywhere in any sense whatsoever
No you need to understand you have a body when you go see your doctor. Thanks for the conversation
I have a body. I'm not the body. And the body is not material. So again, you're on this low level that I'm not engaging with. You think words make reality, they do not. Matter is just a word.
"If the world ceased to exist it would be true there was once a world although there is nothing anywhere in any sense whatsoever"
Which pure empiricism cannot justify in any way whatsoever.
...
Quoting Dharmi
Empiricism is not the activity of an animal but a human capable of abstract thought
humans aren't animals now? Yeah. Okay.
I have read a fair portion of Plato, some of it many times. I don't have a clear idea of what "Platonism" might be.
There are various thinkers who summed up what Plato meant to them. Many of them disagreed with each other, some as contemporaries and others across generations.
The term seems more like an assigned value that is valued by what opposes it than some idea that explains itself.
Assuming God exists, since he only knows bliss and being, how does he know what pain and suffering feels like? Because he is an intellect and can think abstractly. We can talk about God because we think abstractly. Animals dont. Also, you don't believe in animals because you allegedly don't believe in matter
God is all-knowing and all-pervading. He dwells in every single quantum particle, so he is aware of pain, but he's infinitely beyond it as well. Because he's self-sufficient, self-satisfying, self-enjoying. Unlike organic things, which rely on contingent things to exist, God is necessary being. Relying on none.
Animals are also spirit souls, not matter. Animals are just in their body-avatars just as we are. The body is like a suit the soul casts away after it's use. It's like a machine. The body breaks down, the soul moves onto a different machine.
Plaonists believe:
In God
In quasi-ideal Forms that do not subsist in a mind
In a certain geometry of these forms
In innate ideas that represent a previous existence in the realm of Forms
In material objects being either bad, non-existent, or hardly existing at all (like a shadow)
In the body being a vehicle of the soul which is intellectual and has its home in the Forms
In escaping from the phantom world (earth) and returning to ideal existence
What you mean is that the illusion breaks down, not the body? Right? That sounds psychotic, but a lot of people do believe that, pure Platonists being among them
They subsist in the mind of the One, via the Nous according to Plotinus.
Quoting Gregory
Yes. Shadows on the cave wall. Not the true reality, not unreal either, but not the true reality.
The rest is correct.
The body breaks down. This is the natural cycle: Creation, preservation, deterioration, destruction.
The body breaks down and dies. It's a machine, like any other machine.
The One of Plotinus is not a mind. It's pure potentiality, the "ideal being" of Rosmini. The system of Plotinus wasn't completed until Antonio Rosmini in the 18 hundreds. Ideal being is what we experience as innate in our minds. It is pure potential and we mold it with our will. The second level of Plotinus has mind, Logos, which is God. This is new ( "neo") Platonism though. Pure Platonism has infinite geometrical "ideal" (quasi-mental) Forms separate from God and the One (the later which supposedly connects our mind to God and rationality)t
The forms for Plato are a true external object for the understanding, not coming from God but instead existing on their own. This is what Aristotle objected too. Other interpretations simply reduce what Aristotle said to nothing
If you read the Timaios, Plato discusses the world soul, nous and the One.
Having said that, I'm not a doctrinaire Plotinian, and this is exactly where I disagree with him. God is pure consciousness. And all consciousness is a person. Therefore, God is a personal being, not some sort of pure act ("Actus Purus") or something like that. But your point is taken.
Many today ask "what is consciousness". I don't like it because it's one dimensional. How can anyone answer that question from that angle!? We have reason and will, which are powers that emerge from the part of matter evolution gave you as a body. There is a great recent thread on this forum about emergence, with many great articles cited in it. Something greater can truly come from something less by the way you come what is below (atoms and cells). We are only connected to the rest of the world in how the world effects our body (at the quantum level even). You seem to have a Eastern way of thinking. In the West there are those who believe the soul and body are separate, and those who believe they are one. I think they are one unit that acts as a whole. Not a form with prime matter maybe (Aristotle) but maybe just matter acting at a higher level because of the complexity in the geometry of the brain
The God as depicted in Timaeus?
The matter of geometry of certain shapes is presented against the need for dialogue to approach the neighborhood of forms. Which dialogues are you going to put in comparison? Cratylus versus Sophist? Protagoras versus The Republic?
Yes, the reference to "innate" ideas are given as evidence for the existence of Forms in many dialogues. But those references don't explain what they are as themselves.
I don't know which statements you are referring to in regards to material objects. I am going to let you educate me on the matter.
The Phaedo refers to the idea of the body being a vehicle of the soul that does not die. Where in the writings does that make the "soul" a home in the "Forms"? Plotinus reasons in that way but I don't know where Plato does.
The last dialogue I read was Parmenides. The Forms are pitted against "The One". Plato's references to God are sparingly spread out across his works. I think he called him Zeus (more than likely). Sorry I can't be more specific than that. I haven't read Plato is a few years
Emergentism is just dishonest Panpsychism, and Panpsychism is just dishonest Idealism. So I'm just being honest.
No. We are connected as individuals to the sum total of all reality, because we are the microcosm come from the macrocosm.
Western philosophy is absolute nonsense, I know because I have a degree in it. Western philosophers can't even agree on basic questions like "are there philosophical problems?" Not totally a waste of time, but logic cannot grasp the fullness of truth, neither can sense perception. Even Western philosophers admit that, though some of them still try to hold onto some degree of "truth" or "reality" many of them understand truth is something pragmatic, instrumental, deflationist, and reality has no true interpretation outside of our cultural, linguistic and historical context.
So, they admit that I'm right. Truth can only be grasped supra-empirically and supra-logically. In the Vedic philosophy, this is done through yogic meditation, vedanta and bhakti.
The allegory of the Cave is the most famous example of Plato's opinion on matter
Those are neo-Scholastics correct?
I absolutely despise medieval Christian, Jewish and Islamic philosophy. I think it's utter sophistry and nonsense. Trying to reconcile the irrational faith based position of an undereducated sub-literate Abrahamic religion with the rational, empirico-logical tradition of the pagan philosophers. That was their whole project, and it ultimately failed. Since nominalism was birthed from medieval Scholasticism.
Yes they were neo-scholastics. I take what is good in their works and disregard the rest
Yes, it's a very common allegory I bring up.
Our understanding of God is similar to the allegory of the Sun. The same way the sun emanates the energy of life on this planet, so to does God, the spiritual sun, emanates energy to all the Omniverse.
Vedic philosophy and religion is the same ultimately as Greek. The culture is different, the understanding is the same. Zeus may have been their name for God, as we have many names as well for God. The referent is the same, name might be different. In our faith alone, God has nearly 1,500 names. Since he is infinite, it is truly impossible to name him with one concrete descriptor.
Yes.
Quoting Valentinus
It's in his dialogue somewhere. He does say that. The soul originated in the realm of the Forms and returns there.
This follows the allegory of the Sun that I mentioned, since all emanate from God, then we all have the Divine Spark. As such, we all eventually return to Godhead whence we came.
That sounds like Sun worship. Aquinas, I believe, worshiped the sun, and some Popes called themselves sun kings (like Roman emperors) before King Louis XIV took that title formally. I know because I read history. Scholasticism must be seen without the Catholic Egyptian stuff. But you disregard science and prefer (bhakti) to pray to god or gods. That to me seems very irrational
I look forward to your reference to the text you recall.
No, it's not quite sun worship. We do have a god of the sun, Surya. But we have a "spiritual sun" which analogical to the sun.
In the microcosm, the sun gives all things the energy that sustains it.
In the macrocosm, the Absolute (Sriman Narayana) gives all things the energy to sustain them.
As above, so below.
"But you disregard science and prefer (bhakti) to pray to god or gods. That to me seems very irrational"
I don't disregard science. I accept what science says, I just don't think science is the only standard of epistemology.
I didn't actually read it in the dialogue, I heard it in a lecture on the dialogue. So I sadly cannot remember. I could reread all of the dialogues to find it for you, but I think I'll pass on that. I hope you understand.
Top down vs. down up? I like epistemic Hegelianism instead of yoga but perhaps it leads to where you are
No, this is a common notion in Hermetic philosophy. Macrocosm-microcosm. It's simply extrapolating the small to the large.
Tim Freke is a popular western philosopher who believes "down up". He thinks evolution will bring the existence of God into existence. A secular Teilhardian
Was that an opinion about "matter"? The allegory strikes me more about thinking in ways that are comfortable and pleasing to us as a "show" versus struggling with our own thoughts to get closer to what is real.
Idk. In college they said it meant that matter was like a shadow
Thomism is pure evil in my mind. Because it says God is Pure Act. This views leads straight to atheism. In order to protect God's simplicity, you either need to cut God off from the world (Classical theism) or you have to make the world equal with God (Pantheism). It is just pure atheism. I reject Thomism utterly.
The sun= The Forms
The whole= God
The Shadows= non-reality
The relationship between "desert Platonism" and "austere Gnosticism" is interesting
Since this world "partakes" of the realm of Forms, the realm of Forms is "more real" than this world. It's not that this world is false per se, but that the realm of Forms is more real.
Do you know who Manly P. Hall is? He did a lecture on the relationship between Platonism, Hermeticism and Gnosticism.
Interesting
Thomism is just so dry and boring that I was forced basically to get into Hegel, although his works feel very forced in themselves. I'd bet you have hidden suspicion that your yoga philosophy is somehow unnatural, but Thomists have their share of problems too. My younger brother is one (an actual professor). I started reading the Summa Theologica when I was 13. It got depressing beyond all hell so I started up with sections from Hegel and havent looked back
As presented as a matter of experience, some things were considered as being more or less a result of "participating" in forms and whatever logic governed them. The formless mud is just as real as the intellectual shape that turns it into something else.
I know. Thomism and Hegelianism are extremely dry and boring. Our philosophy is very natural, ancient societies were filled with God-consciousness. This society is the exception, not the rule. Hegel is a very good philosopher, I think German Idealists among the rest of Modernist philosophers are probably the best. But ultimately the sublime philosophy is the philosophy contained in the Vedic Scriptures. Particularly, the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita.
I was never a Roman Catholic, or a Thomist, so I never took to him and never will. I think Thomism is just crypto-atheism. Which is not necessarily bad, but Thomism is supposedly trying to create a theological system. If I'm reading Nietzsche or Marx, or Stirner that's fine, because I expect atheism from atheists, not from people who believe in God.
Marx is fun but being a Hegelian materialist is hard because your mind is overloaded with so many ideas you can't even write properly