I was thinking the "established interpretations" include the series presented through centuries of accounts given upon these writings. Those views changed over time. It is only fairly recently, however, that talk about how different the past was from the present became a reason to question the meaning of a text.

On that basis, your view of what happened from then and now is more reliant upon recent scholarship than those who see no reason to question previous descriptions.

We can be aware of the sources that shape our understanding of things and also be aware that there are earlier sources that differ from these. We can then address the problem of the extent to which we can lessen the influence of modernity on our understanding of those earlier sources. — Fooloso4

In this regard, my attempts to cleanly separate history and interpretation runs into a spot of bother.

The idea that ancient texts were saying something other than established interpretations was through a recognition of their development through time. Trying to reverse the flow is a new river mapped with conjecture and new methods of comparison.

I am more familiar with Gerson as a commentator upon ancient writing than his thesis upon Ur-Platonism. He is also often cited by others doing the same work of interpreting texts.

Gerson has often objected to the term 'Neo- Platonism' because it prejudices the perspective of what differs between later scholars and the original expressions. I grant that he makes a good point about classification. But this is why I keep harping about Plotinus as the elephant in the room. In the essay I linked to above, no mention is made of using Plotinus cosmology to comment upon Aristotle's De Anima. He just uses it. In such cases, where will the differences be found from which to make comparisons?

I haven't read enough Gerson to form a clear opinion, but what I have read in the passages quoted in these forums make him look somewhat like a thinker with a predetermined agenda. — Janus

As a question of the future, I don't know what accepting his either/or would look like. We are being asked to stop mixing the two modes. I wonder if he has talked about the replacement somewhere.

It does come across that way sometimes.

Leaving all that to the side, the topic here is a particular thesis put forward by Gerson. How can that view be challenged by a different view? Are there other ways of viewing the question that differ from Gerson's suppositions?

What makes asking that question very difficult in the present situation is that Gerson is a highly respected participant in a difficult area of study. His decision to make his claim is different from the years of his life as a scholar. Or if they are not different, that is not a component of the theory.

It makes challenging the theory difficult because the problems of interpretation get mixed with theories of history. So, for example, when I question Gerson's reading of a text, that is not equivalent to challenging his view of history.

Your approach is very reasonable. Would you say that Gerson's thesis is a tempest in a teapot regarding the limit of philosophy? Or is there something in his either/or that resonates with you?

I find being told to read something in lieu of a response is patronizing and consider it a withdrawal from discourse. I share your complaint.

We had a discussion about it a few months back and I'll refer to a very long post which summarizes the relevant points from those chapters — Wayfarer

I re-read the Perl text and I still have the same response given there:

For Aristotle, the hierarchical ordering of the different kinds of beings is based on the extent to which form predominates over matter in each.
— Eric D Perl Thinking Being - Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition

Aristotle certainly put the active principle above the elements being acted upon. I am not aware of any passage that expresses a ratio of the sort Perl is putting forth.

I have been reading chunks of Plotinus lately and can report that he speaks about such a ratio.

It looks like Gerson and Perl read Aristotle in a similar fashion.

I now regret mentioning Wittgenstein because his remarks do not change my observation that Gerson is defining "naturalism" by means of Rosenberg saying:

I think naturalism is right, but I also think science forces upon us a very disillusioned “take” on reality. It forces us to say ‘No’ in response to many questions to which most everyone hopes the answers are ‘Yes.’ These are the questions about purpose in nature, the meaning of life, the grounds of morality, the significance of consciousness, the character of thought, the freedom of the will, the limits of human self-understanding, and the trajectory of human history.

That precisely outlines what science cannot provide and certainly cannot be described as "Platonist." But the statement is not "anti-philosophical" because it recognizes we have questions beyond what science tries to answer

Gerson gets this to be considered "anti-Platonist" by yoking it together with Rorty's campaign against Plato as emblematic of all that is wrong with Western metaphysics. The argument is specious. The two do not share a view of nature they have both signed off on. They do lack qualities that Gerson's view of nature require.

By that method, I could combine any two thinkers I disagree with.

Yes. He made that clear in Tractatus and that thought is consistent with the following works. But he did not oppose the practice of science, only the claim it replaced everything else.

I don't agree at all, I think they're motivation is completely different. It is something which Rosenberg celebrates and Wittgenstein mourns. Alex Rosenberg is a militant atheist which Wittgenstein, despite his reticence, never was. Remember he used to carry around Tolstoy's edition of the Gospels during his war service. The 'mystical aphorisms' in section 6 of the Tractatus, about the transcendent nature of ethics, would never be found in anything Rosenberg writes. — Wayfarer

I had not considered it as difference in motivation, only as a statement about what "science" does or does not provide.

I will have to think about your description of "Christian Platonists." I have to admit it is difficult for me to approach this with pure objectivity.

I appreciate that you considered the quote from Sophist as germane to the discussion.

How you would go about opposing this Rorty-esque approach to philosophy, — Leontiskos

Gerson starts with:

Rorty advanced the astonishing thesis that Platonism and philosophy are identical.

And then says:

What I aim to show is that Rorty (and probably Rosenberg) are right in identifying Platonism with philosophy and that, therefore, the rejection of the one necessarily means the rejection of the other.

In presenting this statement, there is more than a little sleight of hand in play with Gerson joining Rorty and Rosenberg together as fellow "anti-Platonists":

Rosenberg is the one who locates "naturalism" as the product of scientific activity:

I think naturalism is right, but I also think science forces upon us a very disillusioned “take” on reality. It forces us to say ‘No’ in response to many questions to which most everyone hopes the answers are ‘Yes.’ These are the questions about purpose in nature, the meaning of life, the grounds of morality, the significance of consciousness, the character of thought, the freedom of the will, the limits of human self-understanding, and the trajectory of human history.

This could be Wittgenstein saying: "We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched." Tractatus 6.52

But Rorty is not talking about that boundary when he condemns all of philosophy to be Platonism. He was a self-identified pragamatist. As such, he said things like:

In what follows, I shall be arguing that it helps understand the pragmatists to think of them as saying that the distinction between the past and the future can substitute for all the old philosophical distinctions — the ones which Derrideans call ‘the binary oppositions of Western metaphysics’. The most important of these oppositions is that between reality and appearance. Others include the distinctions between the unconditioned and the conditioned, the absolute and the relative, and the properly moral as opposed to the merely prudent. (Philosophy and Social Hope)

Rorty said contradictory things that Nick Gall does a good job of drawing out the problems of such declarations.

In any case, the project described as being: "the distinction between the past and the future can substitute for all the old philosophical distinctions" is clearly not equivalent to what concerns Rosenberg. Rorty is radically historist. Rosenberg offers no opinion about that sort of thing in the provided quote. "Plato", as a set of ideas, does not concern either in the least.

Gerson's synthesis of these different views is his philosophy of history, his theory of how we got to where we are now:

This is the thesis that most of the history of philosophy, especially since the 17th century can be characterized as failed attempts by various Platonists to seek some rapprochement with naturalism and, mostly in the latter half of the 20th century and also now, similarly failed attempts by naturalists to incorporate into their worldviews some element or another of Platonism. I would like to show that what I am calling the elements of Platonism—to which I shall turn in a moment—are interconnected such that it is not possible to embrace one or another of these without embracing them all. In other words, Platonism (or philosophy) and naturalism are contradictory positions.

That is a very sharp either/or. I don't know what that does not exclude from the pursuit of natural causes.

Whether you think Gerson's "Platonists" were opposing the same sort of thing in their own day? — Leontiskos

This is where I think Gerson should not quit his day job before becoming a philosopher of history. He establishes himself in that role but not in a way that can be compared with other attempts. That is why I had to agree with your observation about the futility of comparing Ur-Platonism with Heidegger.

It is low hanging fruit to point at the difference between results of an active scientific practice with questions over whether it would anger the gods to ask too many questions.

But I don't want to make a specific claim in that regard. As expressed elsewhere, I wonder about how a history of philosophy relates to an account of what is, without qualification, as Aristotle might say.

Perl's use of myth echoes what I hear in Plotinus' language.

Plotinus would probably agree with:
— Perl, Thinking Being, Chap 2, Plato, Pp 38-39

Rather, the flight is a mythic representation of the psychic, cognitive attainment of an intellectual apprehension of the intelligible identities, ‘themselves by themselves,’ that inform and are displayed by, or appear in, sensible things.

My problem with this reading of Plato is that the "Theory of the Forms" becomes fixed as a doctrine. I commented upon this last year in a reply to you concerning FM Cornford's interpretation of the Theaetetus. The biggest problem with this fixed meaning of form and anamnesis is that it becomes a kind of form itself that exists separately from those who speak of it.

Perhaps the biggest challenge to Cornford's position comes from the Sophist through the voice of the Stranger:

Str: Now let us move on to the others, the friends of the forms, and you should interpret their doctrines for us too.

Theae: I shall.

Str: “Presumably you make a distinction between becoming and being and you refer to them as separate. Is this so?”

Theae: Yes.

Str: “And you say our communion with becoming is through the body, by means of sense perception, while it is by means of reasoning through the soul that we commune with actual being, which you say is always just the same as it is, while becoming is always changing.”

Theae: 248B “Yes. That is what we say.”

Str: “Now, best of all men, the communing which you ascribe to both, isn’t it what we mentioned a moment ago?”

Theae: What was that? Shall we say what this is?

Str: “An action or an effect arising from some power, from their coming together with one another.” You probably do not hear their response to this so clearly, Theaetetus, but perhaps I can hear it, as I am quite familiar with them.

Theae: What then? What account do they give?

Str: 248C They do not agree with what we said just now to the earth-born men about being.

Theae: What was that?

Str: We somehow proposed an adequate enough definition of things that are: whenever the power to be affected or to affect, even to the slightest extent, is present in something; that something is something that is.

Theae: Yes.

Str: Now to this they reply that; “the power to be affected and to affect is a feature of becoming,” but they say that neither power attaches to being.

Theae: Don’t they have a point?

Str: A point which makes us say that we still need to find out 248D more clearly from them whether they also concede that the soul knows, and that being is known.

Theae: They will surely assent to that.

Str: “What about this? Do you say that the knowing, or being known, is an action, an effect, or both? Or is one an action, and the other an effect? Or do neither of them have anything to do with action and effect?”

Theae: Obviously they would say “neither”, otherwise they would be contradicting what they said before.[1]

Str: I understand. Instead, they would say that; “if knowing is indeed some action, it follows that 248E whatever is known must, for its part, be affected. Indeed, based on this account, since being is known by the act of knowing, insofar as it is known, it is changed to that extent because it is affected, which we insist does not happen to the quiescent.”

Theae: Correct.

Str: But, by Zeus, what are we saying? Are we actually going to be persuaded so easily that change, life, soul and thought are absent from 249A what altogether is, that it neither lives nor thinks, but abides unchanging, solemn and pure, devoid of intelligence?

Theae: No, stranger, that would be an awful proposition were we to accept it. — Sophist, 248A, translated by Horan

That puts a hefty dent into the reasoning of the Timaeus and runs over Plotinus' interpretation of that book with a tractor.

Note to add: I don't mean to say by the above that the existence of forms is being denied. It is just to show that there is more than a single way to consider their activity as depicted by Cornford.

I appreciate the reference to someone I should probably check out.

I will leave arguments regarding the topic to a later date.

So, you have delved into the contents?

But that approach does not support your description of empiricism.

The Cary approach seems to consider the dynamic I proposed.

I am far from agreeing with Gerson's larger project but consider your questions worthy of response.

I will think about them.

It would be interesting if you traced this,fleshed it out and developed it. — Fooloso4

That would require re-reading Augustine yet again. I will have to think about taking on such a project. My knees hurt in the morning. I will check out scholarship along those lines.

There is a kind of anthropomorphism at work here — Fooloso4

Well, that brings up an often-overlooked feature in Plotinus. The different kinds of life are seen as different distances from the One. The difference in De Anima, marked out between humans and other animals as what humans have but the others do not, is not expressed in Plotinus as creatures of a specific kind. They are different formations of soul sinking to various depths of descent into the negation of the intellect.

The philosopher, like the poets and theologians, deals in likely stories. They too are myth makers. They do not bring truth and light to the cave, They too are puppet-makers, makers of images that by the light of the cave cast shadows on its walls. — Fooloso4

From what I have read so far, Plotinus uses myth to express aspects of his system, not as a "likeness" to help with what cannot be directly experienced. For example:

The souls of men, seeing their images in the mirror of Dionysus as it were, have entered into that realm in a leap downward from the Supreme: yet even they are not cut off from their origin, from the divine Intellect; it is not that they have come bringing the Intellectual Principle down in their fall; it is that though they have descended even to earth, yet their higher part holds for ever above the heavens.

Their initial descent is deepened since that mid-part of theirs is compelled to labour in care of the care-needing thing into which they have entered. But Zeus, the father, takes pity on their toils and makes the bonds in which they labour soluble by death and gives respite in due time, freeing them from the body, that they too may come to dwell there where the Universal Soul, unconcerned with earthly needs, has ever dwelt. — Plotinus, Fourth Ennead, Tractate 3, Section 12 12

The soul being able to see itself in reflection is understood within a universal structure. The architecture for this was taken up by Augustine and developed into his view of a person. In that way, Plotinus is an ancestor of modern psychology. One can detect an embryonic formation of Descartes in:

When we exercise intellection upon ourselves, we are, obviously, observing an intellective nature, for otherwise we would not be able to have that intellection. — ibid. III. 9. 3

This is where I wonder if you are barking up the wrong tree, because the comprehensiveness of Gerson's lens makes it hard for those who agree with him to see a contrasting picture. — Leontiskos

That fairly points to the limits of my thought experiment.

Okay. I see how the language of being shaken has to be heard with the other descriptions.

This just keeps getting more difficult. I used to read it as a fairy tale of sorts.

I see how the question works both ways in your first paragraph. But is the "unmade and the un-generated being offered as an alternative in this context? I read it as: Stuff is getting made and nobody can explain why.

I am reluctant to accept the second paragraph. I recognize the literary parallel played out by Timaeus as a poet talking about poetry. But I also think the wonder, the theomazien, unites Plato and Aristotle, as brothers, in a way that pisses them both off.

I will look at Sallis beyond this discussion. I am not familiar with it.

Aristotle would thank you if he were not otherwise occupied.

Sallis does require work. But in one way, he is economical. He deals with text in a direct fashion, pitting words against other words, something the reader can confirm (or not) for themselves.
Quite different from the coma some academic writing induces.

Your expansion upon "bastard reasoning" helps put the 'lack of something to compare to' I referred to into context. Whether one agrees or not with Sallis' thesis as a whole, he puts the burden upon others to find an alternative explanation for this expression.

The combining of the "divine craftsman's" role as a producer with that of being the progenitor is another way to frame the problem of origin.

The difference between what is generated by nature and produced artificially in the frame of our experience is said to not be a difference for the cause of our existence. An idea without a readily available image.

I don't see Gerson's lens as exclusive. — Leontiskos

That is an interesting question to ask. How about Heidegger versus Ur-Platonism?

They are both critical of the dominance of modern science. They both rely upon an intensive study of classical texts. They differ sharply on views of historical development. Can they share the same view of the world?

Thank you for considering the matter.

Edit to add: removed gratuitous remark that might diminish the gratitude.

I am responding to your comment in the Griffin thread in this one because it concerns the current discussion of how "matter" is to be understood in the works of Aristotle and Plotinus.

In the Gerson review of Johansen, Aristotle's treatment of the "receptacle of creation", introduced at Timaeus 49A, is said to be:

In the sixth chapter, Johansen turns to an analysis of the receptacle of creation, arguing that its function is to be understood in the light of Plato’s conception of what coming into being actually is. The receptacle constitutes space (or place) because Plato needs to postulate a condition for something’s coming into or going out of existence. These are construed as “a certain kind of movement in and out of space (122).” Consideration of such movement abstracts from the mathematical conceptualization of nature. Thus coming into existence and going out of existence are really cases of the locomotion of the solid triangles out of which bodies are constructed. This is in contrast to the pre- kosmos where the coming into and going out of existence of the phenomenal bodies does not involve the movement of triangles. Both in the pre- kosmos and in the kosmos itself, movement is intrinsic to the phenomenal bodies or elements and is only derivatively attributable to the receptacle. Johansen goes on to argue that, in addition to the receptacle’s representing space or place, Aristotle was basically correct to identify it with matter. So, “place and matter coincide in that both are to be understood as the product of abstracting the formal characteristics of a body (133).” Space or place becomes mere extension. The receptacle thus becomes the continuant in change, which in the context of Timaeus is essentially locomotion. By contrast, Aristotle wants to distinguish fundamentally locomotion from other types of change — especially generation and destruction — and so he makes a sharper distinction between space or place and matter than does Plato. — Gerson, review of Plato's Natural Philosophy

I don't know if this account corresponds to Johansen's text but it leaves out a critical context in the dialogue. The "receptacle" is introduced at the start of a new beginning:

Clearly we should now begin again, once we have called upon 48E the god, our saviour, at the very outset of our deliberations to see us safely out of an unusual and unaccustomed exposition, to the doctrine of things probable. In any case, our fresh start concerning the universe should be more elaborate than before, for we distinguished two entities then, but now we must present a third factor. Two were sufficient for our previous descriptions, one designated as a sort of a model discernible by Nous and ever the same, while the second was a copy of the model 49A involved in becoming and visible. We did not distinguish a third entity at the time as we thought it enough to have these two, but now the argument seems to compel us to try to manifest a difficult and obscure form in words. What should we understand its capacity and nature to be? This in particular: it is the receptacle of all coming into being, like its nurse. Now although the truth has been spoken, a clearer statement about it is still required but it is difficult to do so, particularly 49B because it is necessary for the sake of this to raise a preliminary problem about fire and its accompaniments. It is difficult in the case of each of these to state what sort should actually be called water rather than fire, and what sort should be referred to as anything in particular rather than as everything individually, in such a manner as to employ language which is trustworthy and certain. How then, may we speak about them in a likely manner and in what way, and what can we say about them when faced with this problem? — Plato, Timaeus, translated by Horan

I take Gerson's point that a "likely account" does not refer to its "probabilistic" sense. The difficulty described by Timaeus is that the language of correspondence does not serve us as readily as it did in the other two models. The other difficulty is that third entity is prior to the other entities as fundamental ground of natural being. The new beginning is in that sense a second sailing as taken in the Phaedo (to which Fooloso4 often refers to.

A scholar who takes that perspective seriously is John Sallis. He takes exception to how χώρα is referred to as "space" in the sense of extension in (as expressed in Gerson's review) and even greater exception to Aristotle equating χώρα with "place" (τόπος):

For, according to Aristotle, this is what Plato declared the receptacle to be: “a substratum [ύποκείμενον] prior to the so-called elements, just as gold is the substratum of works made of gold.” Though in this context Aristotle refers to one other image of the χώρα, that of nurse (τιθήνη), he forgoes drawing on the content of that image and, instead, moves immediately to identify the receptacle with “primary matter” (329a). Yet the passage that is, at once, both most decisive and most puzzling occurs in Book 4 of the Physics: “This is why Plato says in the Timaeus that matter and the χώρα are the same; for the receptive and the χώρα are one and the same. Although the manner in which he speaks about the receptive in the Timaeus differs from that in the so-called unwritten teachings, nevertheless he declares that place [τόπος] and the χώρα are the same” (209b).

One cannot but be struck by the lack of correspondence between this passage and the text of the Timaeus. The passage declares three identifications: that of the receptive (μεταληπτικόν) with the χώρα, that of matter (ύλη) with the χώρα, and that of place (τόπος) with the χώρα. Only the first of these identifications has any basis in the text of the Timaeus, and then only if one disregards any difference that might distinguish μεταληπτικόν from the Platonic words δεχόμενον and ύποδοχή.

For the identification of ύλη with the χώρα, there is no basis in the Timaeus. Plato never uses the word ύλη in Aristotle’s sense, a sense that, one suspects, comes to be constituted and delimited only in and through the work of Aristotle. When Plato does, on a few occasions, use the word, it has the common, everyday sense of building material such as wood, earth, or stone. Following Aristotle’s own strategy in On Generation and Corruption, one could refer to the image of the constantly remodeled gold as providing support for the identification. But reference to this image could be decisive only if one privileged it over most of the others, disregarding, for instance, the image of the nurse, which represents the relation between the χώρα and the sensible in a way quite irreducible to that between matter and the things formed from it. What is perhaps even more decisive is that all these are images of the χώρα, images declared in an είκώς λόγος (likely account}, which is to be distinguished from the bastardly discourse in which one would venture to say the χώρα. — John Sallis, Chorology: On Beginning in Plato's Timaeus

They provided different experiences from those on the unaltered menu.

The Timothey Leary and Casteneda versions were treating them as gates to realms not yet explored. I do not view that as negated by objections on the basis of limited functional consciousness seen in all addictions.

I like the way a friend put it. It is good to have windows but too many undermine the structure.

Exactly. We invented the concept of ‘same kind’ in order to count, but same kind doesn’t exist in nature. — Joshs

I get the argument that the concept serves a purpose in how we talk. The claims about what exists in nature seems to contradict the limits presented regarding such description. But how does that let us say what exists in nature?

Two eggs over easy with potatoes cooked in a medley of onions, peppers, and a bit of parsley.
A slice of Portuguese bread to sop up the yolk.

Thanks for that.

There are several matters in that review I would like to address that concern Plotinus but not Gerson. So I will put the comments in your Metaphysics thread when I can make a logos of them.

This is Gerson's thesis in a nutshell:

Here I briefly sketch a hypothetical reconstruction of what I shall call ‘Ur-Platonism’
(UP). This is the general philosophical position that arises from the conjunction of the negations
of the philosophical positions explicitly rejected in the dialogues, that is, the philosophical
positions on offer in the history of philosophy accessible to Plato himself. It is well known that
Plato in the dialogues engages with most of the philosophers who preceded him. Some of these,
like Parmenides and Protagoras, exercise his intellect more than others, including probably some unnamed ones as well as some unknown to us. All of these philosophers, with the exception of Socrates and Pythagoras, are represented as holding views that are firmly rejected in the dialogues either explicitly or implicitly. I am not claiming that anyone, including Plato, simply embraced UP. I am, however, claiming that Platonism in general can be seen to arise out of the matrix of UP, and that Plato’s philosophy is actually one version of Platonism, as odd as this may sound. So, in a manner of speaking, UP is a via negativa to Plato’s philosophy. To be a Platonist is, minimally, to have a commitment to UP. It is only a slight step further to recognize that this basic commitment is virtually always in fact conjoined with a commitment to discover the most consistent integrated positive metaphysical construct on the basis of UP. Disagreements among these same Platonists are, I believe, best explained by the fact that this systematic construct does not decisively determine the correct answer to many specific philosophical problems raised especially by opponents of Platonism. That is, UP is largely underdetermining for some specific philosophical doctrines or answers to specific philosophical questions.

The elements of UP according to my hypothesis are: anti-materialism, anti-mechanism,
anti-nominalism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism. — Gerson, Platonism Versus Naturalism

The list of negatives is drawn up by his reading of Plato. What comprises what is "firmly rejected in the
dialogues either explicitly or implicitly", is a matter of contention, especially the "implicit" part.

Relegating differences between thinkers as participants in the proposed larger container of agreement to a secondary concern removes any of the testimony of others to be possible challenges to the existence of said container.

The thesis was developed as a response to modern expressions of "anti-Platonism" and modern views of nature. As a philosophy of history, it is claiming that the conditions Plato emerged from are the same as those we live in. This battle between the two Titans seems to take place outside of History, in some kind of eternal now.

The thesis certainly does not help illuminate how Plotinus emerged in his time.

When I look under the hood of Gerson's writing, he adopts the perspective of Plotinus in an uncritical fashion. In that regard, he is too inclusive and sees everything through the goggles of Plotinus. That is what I have been trying to address in the Metaphysics thread.

Take, for example, Gerson's essay on the agent intellect. The following statement appears in the conclusion:

A good deal of the obscurity in this chapter is owing ultimately to the difficulty in identifying the subject of cognitive activities on the basis of the previous hylomorphic account of the human being. Is it the composite that thinks or the soul or the intellect? In my view, the key to resolving this difficulty rests upon the principle that a person is essentially a self-reflexive thinker. When disembodied, that self-reflexivity is expressed in pure imageless thinking. When embodied, that self-reflexivity is variously expressed, for example, when one says, 'I am perspiring', 'I am walking', 'I am aware that I am walking', and 'I am thinking about the health benefits of my walking'. In the first case, one identifies oneself with a body; in the second, with the composite; in the third and fourth, with the soul. The identification consists in the awareness of oneself as diverse subjects. One could not identify oneself with any of these subjects unless one were essentially self-reflexive, that is, unless one were ideally an intellect — Gerson, The Unity of Intellect in Aristotle's De Anima

This view of being "disembodied" is thinkable within Plotinus' model of the soul. From what I understand Aristotle to say about "particular individuals", being disembodied means you are dead.

One thing that bothers me about the Ur-Platonism idea, apart from the specific issues being discussed, is that there have been centuries of thinkers who have self-identified with belonging or not belonging to particular groups and here comes this bloke telling you where you belong.

I accept that there is a lot of nuances in how that gets expressed. When Aristotle refers to the 'Platonists', he may be that and something else at the same time.

It is tyrannical to have them all wearing the same neckerchief.

Are you saying that Gerson's interpretation of Plato is through his reading of Plotinus? That seems right to me. — Fooloso4

One thing that is verifiable is that Gerson's criticism of Aristotle is a repetition of Plotinus, almost verbatim:

In calling it an Unmoved Mover and characterizing it as ‘thinking about thinking’, he failed to see that thinking is essentially intentional and that for this reason alone his first principle could not escape the complexity found in thinking plus an object of thinking. In other words, the absolute simplicity of the first principle of all precluded thinking from being that principle. In addition, Aristotle erred in his hypothesis that the primary referent of ‘being’ is ousia. The main reason for this is that ousia or essence or ‘whatness’ is distinct from the existence of that essence, in which case complexity is once again introduced. So, Aristotle was in fact a dissident Platonist, but a Platonist after all. — Platonism Versus Naturalism, Lloyd P Gerson

If we look at the dramatic chronology of the dialogues Plato places Parmenides criticism of the Forms at an early stage of Socrates own philosophical education. This raises doubts as to whether Socrates own criticism of Forms should be explained away as the result of Plato having changed his mind in a later stage of his development. — Fooloso4

In view of that chronology, Plato seems to hold those cards close to his chest. Socrates is heard joining the criticism of Heraclitus but does not explain why he won't criticize Parmenides except to say he was wise.

Who are you quoting?

Your arguments about this issue are best illustrated by the dialogue of Theaetetus.

Beyond the role of the mid-wife taking precedence over that of recollection, Socrates is heard defending Parmenides who also criticizes the Forms (in that named Platonic dialogue).

Aristotle takes issue with both thinkers. Plotinus does so in turn.

Perhaps I should not have made my remark. I did not mean to hold Gerson to account as a matter of the 'minutiae' of citing specific schools of thought. Plotinus leaves the burden upon the one who would disagree with his argument. It is brilliant in that regard.