Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[GaryLouisSmith]

Gary, I did read the passage you recommended. I agree that perfect elevation of reason would bring emotional flatness. But except when a man is unwell or dying it's as likely he'd lack emotions as if his blood did not circulate around his body.

But I had asked you if you would comment on the locus of Plato's forms.

The first line of the Iliad is Sing, O Goddess, of the meinis of Achilles. That Greek word meinis is usually translated as madness, fury, or rage. It is that madness that is the topic of the Phaedrus. It seems strange to me that you would call it an emotion, which is such a limp word for such a strong thing. So is the word reason, which you also use. The word locus seems wooden to me. The madness of the Phaedrus is like the Fury and the Rage of God in the Bible. One wouldn’t say that God is being emotional. And human dread in the face of that is not merely an emotion.

In the Phaedrus, the madness that is the god Eros is either demonic or divine. It is not human. The first two speeches of the Phaedrus portray it as demonic, then Socrates repents and says he has blasphemed. And the third speech begins. It is still madness he is talking about. The madness of erotic desire. Look at that scene of the charioteer. The black horse is furious and the driver has a very hard time controlling it. It eventually becomes a very bloody affair. Such is desire. I don’t know if you have ever felt the power of Desire or of Jealousy. It really is madness, fury and rage. It is not a mere emotion. Look at Achilles sitting in his tent, refusing to fight, furious about what has happened. Then he hears that Patroclus, his lover, has been killed. He rushes out of his tent and becomes a killing machine. Brute force takes over as the main actor. Reason is laughable.

We come to know the Platonic Forms from the god Eros. They are madness. Now you want to know their locus. Where is the locus of Madness? Of Desire? Of Jealousy? Of Killing? To me the question makes no sense.

[Jklint]

Plato's dialogs are in essence syllogistic meaning full of leading questions advancing to the response the questioner, mostly Socrates, had in mind to receive usually in the form of simple agreement. This technique wouldn't be very successful on philosophy forums or in any philosophy course. It's as if one person is doing all the thinking and the other ones are tagging along too lazy to think forward. Under the stringent rules in a court of law such type questionings would be considered completely ultra vires not leading to any truth but merely forcing one's views as outwardly logical hoping thereby to win one's case and therefore objectionable.

I agree that the argument presented by Plato in the dialogues is artful deception. I think all philosophical argument of any kind is that. Where I disagree with you is that you seem to think there is argument that is not artful deception. There isn't. It is all rhetoric, even "good" scientific argument. Good scientific argument is nothing more than good, proper academic formatting.

If that were true, we'd still be doing philosophy ancient Greek style with only an occasional bit of science to cover a pothole. If a scientific argument, which is actually in the form of hypothesis or theory, turns out false or half false, it either gets chucked or amended. If that were true for philosophy we would have chucked Plato a long time ago. As it stands, all errors and absurdities subsumed under philosophy get archived for further academic study.

Philosophy never had to self-correct on anything.

[GaryLouisSmith]

If that were true, we'd still be doing philosophy ancient Greek style with only an occasional bit of science to cover a pothole. If a scientific argument, which is actually in the form of hypothesis or theory, turns out false or half false, it either gets chucked or amended. If that were true for philosophy we would have chucked Plato a long time ago. As it stands, all errors and absurdities subsumed under philosophy get archived for further academic study.

Philosophy never had to self-correct on anything.

Science is not a search for truth; it is a romantic quest, an adventure, a reaching for the stars. Truth is irrelevant. It is thoroughly a romance. And it has been a lovely time. And it has been very successful at being a romance. Like all love affairs, internal contradictions and absurdities are normal and accepted. of course science and philosophy are also a power play, but that is also part of the adventure. Human beings are poets, not data/hypothesis junkies. No lover self-corrects.

[Jklint]

If that were true, we'd still be doing philosophy ancient Greek style with only an occasional bit of science to cover a pothole. If a scientific argument, which is actually in the form of hypothesis or theory, turns out false or half false, it either gets chucked or amended. If that were true for philosophy we would have chucked Plato a long time ago. As it stands, all errors and absurdities subsumed under philosophy get archived for further academic study.

Philosophy never had to self-correct on anything.

Science is not a search for truth; it is a romantic quest, an adventure, a reaching for the stars. Truth is irrelevant. It is thoroughly a romance. And it has been a lovely time. And it has been very successful at being a romance. Like all love affairs, internal contradictions and absurdities are normal and accepted. of course science and philosophy are also a power play, but that is also part of the adventure. Human beings are poets, not data/hypothesis junkies. No lover self-corrects.

Romance didn't create Quantum Theory or the Internet but it did create a lot of fiction...even Science Fiction.

[Jklint]

Human beings are poets, not data/hypothesis junkies. No lover self-corrects.

...not anywhere near! Most of them are either sports junkies or crackpots! Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. Besides, poetry is thoroughly useless but sentimentality still abounds in spades.

[GaryLouisSmith]

Human beings are poets, not data/hypothesis junkies. No lover self-corrects.

...not anywhere near! Most of them are either sports junkies or crackpots! Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. Besides, poetry is thoroughly useless but sentimentality still abounds in spades.

What I was writing to you is typical postmodern stuff. Bruno Latour is particular. I know how you like to be disagreeable, so I thought you might set up a good rant. I see you as a modern scientific rationalist. One of those. I usually see myself as post-postmodern, even though I have no idea what that is. How would you characterize most writers on this blog? I think they too are modern scientific rationalists. That's what people are taught in high school and undergraduate level college. It will take some time for postmodern thought to seep down to high school lever so we can all escape modernism. By then others will have become trans-meta-post-postmodern alchemists.

[Sy Borg]

Our filters protect us. Without them, we would be blinded, deafened and would f-l either as if burning alive or freezing - all the senses turned to maximum.

They appear to act more like a dimmer switch than a binary on/off one, so it's possible to dim then down (or up) with meditation, psychedelic drugs, etc. This can be frightening and/or enlightening depending upon one's psychological stability.

Yes, a number of dimmer switches moving up and down like the faders on a programmed sound mixing board.

I tried MDMA one time and it didn't make me feel ecstatic, rather I felt like absolute crap, which was disappointing. No mental effects. No sure if that's because I'm on the spectrum. The only entheogen I've had was a type of synthetic weed - a fringe brand made by hippies rather than organised crims. That was beyond cool but soon was made illegal and disappeared. Meanwhile, alcohol regulation has not tightened.

[Sy Borg]

..."careful of what you wish for". I agree.

Our filters protect us. Without them, we would be blinded, deafened and would feel either as if burning alive or freezing - all the senses turned to maximum.

You have given a sensual interpretation to what I wrote, but I did not have sensa in mind. As you know I am a big fan of Platonic Forms, abstract things, the elements of logic. If you add –ness, -ty,try, -tion, or –hood to a word you get the abstract element. It is that that I am interested in. As a realist I assert that those abstract things exist. They exist external to the mind. They are not concepts in the mind. In my philosophy, there are no concepts.

For example consider the logical connectives: or, and, negation and if-then. Those words name real things. We know them immediately and directly. We don’t need filters to see them. Our acquaintance with them is perfect. Another example, take the fact that the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. That is a fact. We understand fact-ness or facticity fully. Now consider 1, 2, 3, … ∞ . Look at those three dots. You know exactly what they mean. I should say that you know the thing that they refer to. No sunglasses are necessary to see it. Another example. F(x). it means x is F. Both x and F are variables that stand for particulars and properties. You understand the idea of variable or variable-ness. Moreover, look at those parentheses. You understand what they mean.

None of those things need filters between them and the one knowing them. We know the thing itself perfectly, completely. The scandal in my posts here is that I use the word “boy” and people get upset. But I am not referring to any particular boy, only to boyness, the Platonic Form. No sensa are present. No determinate properties. Neither this one nor that one. It’s outside space and time. Do you think I need filters to see and know that Form. No, I don’t.

Gaz, ALL of those things need filters.

How do you comprehend anything when blinded, deafened, scalded and frozen all at once? Obviously it's impossible to differentiate or discern anything in such a state. BTW, this is not miles from descriptions of how people felt when they returned from near death experiences. All light is blinding. All sounds are painfully loud. They either feel like they are burning or freezing. Their filters apparently had taken a while to start working again.

I have no qualms with the idea of Platonic forms. Certain patterns repeatedly appear in nature at different scales, and these imperfect fractal relationships tell us something about their nature.

[Belindi]

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... types-love

Please see especially eros, and philia, for special reference to Plato.

Extract:

For Plato, the best kind of friendship is that which lovers have for each other. It is a philia born out of eros, and that in turn feeds back into eros to strengthen and develop it, transforming it from a lust for possession into a shared desire for a higher level of understanding of the self, the other, and the world. In short, philia transforms eros from a lust for possession into an impulse for philosophy. Real friends seek together to live truer, fuller lives by relating to each other authentically and teaching each other about the limitations of their beliefs and the defects in their character, which are a far greater source of error than mere rational confusion: they are, in effect, each other’s therapist—and in that much it helps to find a friend with some degree of openness, articulacy, and insight, both to change and to be changed.

[GaryLouisSmith]

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... types-love

Please see especially eros, and philia, for special reference to Plato.

Extract:

For Plato, the best kind of friendship is that which lovers have for each other. It is a philia born out of eros, and that in turn feeds back into eros to strengthen and develop it, transforming it from a lust for possession into a shared desire for a higher level of understanding of the self, the other, and the world. In short, philia transforms eros from a lust for possession into an impulse for philosophy. Real friends seek together to live truer, fuller lives by relating to each other authentically and teaching each other about the limitations of their beliefs and the defects in their character, which are a far greater source of error than mere rational confusion: they are, in effect, each other’s therapist—and in that much it helps to find a friend with some degree of openness, articulacy, and insight, both to change and to be changed.

You have probably guessed that I find thoughts like that sickening. And they most certainly not Plato.

[GaryLouisSmith]

How do you comprehend anything when blinded, deafened, scalded and frozen all at once? Obviously it's impossible to differentiate or discern anything in such a state. BTW, this is not miles from descriptions of how people felt when they returned from near death experiences. All light is blinding. All sounds are painfully loud. They either feel like they are burning or freezing. Their filters apparently had taken a while to start working again.

You could simply have said that when you have a headache you need the filter of aspirin or when kids in the next room are making too much noise or the neighbors are playing their music too loud then you need ear plug filters. Or when you have money worries you need a fairy godmother. None of that is what I am talking about. I was answering a philosophical question, not the psychology of everyday life. In particular I was arguing against Kant.

[Belindi]

Greta wrote:

I have no qualms with the idea of Platonic forms. Certain patterns repeatedly appear in nature at different scales, and these imperfect fractal relationships tell us something about their nature.

If I think of Plato's Allegory of the Cave I think the light of the Sun represents reality, bearing in mind Plato's scientific knowledge predated Copernicus's and Einstein's. So the Forms would be reality and the locus of the Forms would be reality , and my perceptions are those of the people in the Cave, deficient shadows. This ontology also predates Descartes ,the notion of ontic substances, and theism. I'm sceptical about philosopher kings especially if they claim to be philosopher kings.

If the Forms as revealed by the allegorical sunlight include fractal relationships, I'd better jolly well find out about them.
Extract from an article in Psychology Today about fractals:

In the past 10 to 20 years, researchers in psychology have been finding increasing examples of fractal patterns across each of the domains of psychology: Including intentional behaviors, visual search, and speech patterns. In my own lab within the past few years we have found that interpersonal relationships are organized as fractals and most recently that the self-concept is a fractal, with complexity being associated with health in both the psychological and social domains. Furthermore, it appears that fractal complexity (or rigidity) is routinely exchanged among biological, psychological and social processes. Fractal personality structure helps us to grow and connect, as do fractal relationships, and each likely has direct influences on physical health by encouraging integration and flexibility among circulatory, respiratory, and immune systems.

[Felix]

GaryLouisSmith said: None of those things need filters between them and the one knowing them. We know the thing itself perfectly, completely.

Language itself is a mental filter, it influences how you interpret what you experience.

GaryLouisSmith said: I am after the abstract Form. Science not only doesn’t deal in such things, it doesn’t believe in them.

That's an odd statement: mathematics is Science's primary tool, and it could be called the language of abstract form.

[Sculptor1]

GaryLouisSmith said: None of those things need filters between them and the one knowing them. We know the thing itself perfectly, completely.

Language itself is a mental filter, it influences how you interpret what you experience.

GaryLouisSmith said: I am after the abstract Form. Science not only doesn’t deal in such things, it doesn’t believe in them.

That's an odd statement: mathematics is Science's primary tool, and it could be called the language of abstract form.

What odd things People type.
Absolutely YES, maths a primary tool of science.
But absolutely NOT. It is in not way the language of abstract form.
Abstraction is the utter rejection of mathematics.

[GaryLouisSmith]

GaryLouisSmith said: None of those things need filters between them and the one knowing them. We know the thing itself perfectly, completely.

Language itself is a mental filter, it influences how you interpret what you experience.

GaryLouisSmith said: I am after the abstract Form. Science not only doesn’t deal in such things, it doesn’t believe in them.

That's an odd statement: mathematics is Science's primary tool, and it could be called the language of abstract form.

Right there is the crux of the fight Russell had with the Idealism that had taken over Cambridge in the 1800s. Idealism said that in order to know the world the mind had to go through mental representations of the world first. And those representations “colored” your view. It was the play between Sinn and Bedeutung. If I say that some jackals are threatening the chickens, you have to first encounter the meaning of the sentence (der Sinn) and then check what that meaning refers to (die Bedeutung).

Russell, who was aiming for realism, insisted that the mind knew the object, referent, Bedautung directly without indirectly going at it through the meaning of a sentence or mental representation. For Russell, the meaning of a sentence WAS the referent, the Bedeutung. There was no distinction between concept, mental representation and the object itself. Direct vs. Indirect Realism. Indirect Realism was in fact Idealism for him.

The same goes for mathematics. Is it a tool in the mind or is it something outside the mind, perhaps in a Platonic Realm of Pure Forms? Is mathematics a concept invented by the mind or is it discovered out in Reality? And what about Infinity?