The difference between what you might say in a fight is different from the problems that belong to an idea as that idea.
That is what I think is at stake in the passage I quoted. — Paine
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. — Sophist, 248A, translated by Horan
….if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality.
I had thought that in the passage, that ‘the friends of the forms’ were defending the forms. The ‘earth-born’ represent those who are unable to reconcile the distinction between ‘being’ - what truly is - and ‘becoming’, the world of change, growth and decay, and so are calling ideas into question. (And indeed there are many ‘perplexities’ involved as has been mentioned already, as the reality of change and decay seems undeniable. It is not as if admitting the reality of the ideas is a simple matter.) — Wayfarer
Str: Then let’s obtain from both sides, in turn, the account of being that they favour.
Theae: How shall we obtain them?
Str: It will be easier in the case of those who propose that being consists of forms, for they are gentler people. However, it is more difficult, perhaps almost impossible, from those who drag everything by force 246D to the physical. But I think they should be dealt with as follows.
Theae: How?
Str: The best thing would be to make better people of them, if that were possible, but if this is not to be, let’s make up a story, assuming that they would be willing to answer questions more fully than now. For agreement with reformed individuals will be preferable to agreement with worse. However, we are not interested in the people: we are seeking the truth.
Theae: Quite so. 246E
Str: Then call upon these reformed folk to answer you, and you should interpret what is said.
Theae: I shall. — ibid. 246c
Str: Well, let them say whether they maintain there is such a thing as a mortal living being.
Theae: How could they disagree?
Str: And won’t they agree that this is a body with a soul in it?
Theae: Yes, certainly.
Str: And they include soul among things that are?
Theae: Yes. 247A
Str: What about this? Don’t they agree that a soul can be just or unjust and can be wise or foolish?
Theae: Of course.
Str: But isn’t it from the possession and presence of justice and wisdom that each of these souls becomes like this, while their opposites do the opposite?
Theae: Yes, they agree with all this too.
Str: And they will surely agree that whatever is capable of being present or absent is something.
Theae: They do say so.
Str: 247B So, if they accept that there is justice, wisdom, and excellence, in general, and their opposites, and also soul in which they arise, do they say that any of these is visible and tangible or are they all unseen?
Theae: Hardly any of these is visible.
Str: Well then, surely they do not say that anything of this sort has a body?
Theae: They do not answer the entire question, in the same way. Although they think, that the soul has acquired a body of some sort, when it comes to wisdom and the other qualities you asked about, 247C they are ashamed either to admit that these are not included in things that are, or to maintain emphatically that they are all physical.
Str: Well, Theaetetus, we can see that these men have been reformed, for the original stock, their earth-born ancestors, would not have been ashamed of anything. Instead, they would insist that whatever they are unable to squeeze with their hands is nothing at all.
Theae: Yes, you have expressed their attitude fairly well.
Str: Then let’s question them once more. Indeed, if they are prepared to concede that there is even a 247D small non-physical portion of things that are, that is sufficient. For, they must explain the shared nature that has arisen simultaneously in the non-physical, and also in anything physical, with reference to which, they say that they both are. Perhaps this may leave them perplexed; and if that is what happens to them then consider this; would they be willing to accept a suggestion from us and agree that “what is” is as follows?
Theae: Yes, what is the suggestion? Tell us and we shall know immediately.
Str: Well, I am saying that anything actually is, once it has acquired some sort of power, 247E either to affect anything else at all, or to be affected, even slightly, by something totally trivial, even if only once. Indeed, I propose to give a definition, defining things that are, as nothing else except power.
Theae: Then, since they do not have anything better to suggest right now they accept this.
Str: Very well, though perhaps a different suggestion may occur both to us or them 248A later. For the present, let this stand as it has been agreed by both parties.
Theae: Let it stand.
Str: Now let us move on to the others, the friends of the forms, and you should interpret their doctrines for us too. — ibid. 246e
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? — ibid. 248e
The zero-sum game presented here seems pretty objective for someone who eschews absolutes and representations of the real. I recognize that there are different ways of looking at our shared experience. To link them as categorical antagonists, however, has history revealing a psychological truth. But revealing truth is one of the activities Rorty militates against. If the claim is a serious one, he has to abandon his aversion to verification. Sometimes, it seems like he demands admission to a club he denies exists.
If one frees the two perspectives from Rorty's fight to the death, they become more like Nagel's objection to "the view from nowhere", a narrative Wayfinder regards highly. Rorty shares the critical view of science in some places but has complained that Nagel is too mystical in others. So, 'materialist' by comparison but not on the basis of claiming what nature is. He resists saying what that is. As I review different examples of his work, it is confusing to sort out what he objects to from an alternative to such. It is not my cup of tea.
As an American I hear his anti-war view that ideas should not force one to fight. I don't know if he talks about Thoreau but that is the register I hear the objection. A democracy of no. But that is its own discussion, or if is not, that becomes a new thesis. I fear the infinite regress. — Paine
For the purposes of this discussion, I have learned enough to say that Rorty is not one of those who are 'materialist' according to the criteria in Ur-Platonism. Rorty's demand that humans are the measure makes that impossible. I take your point that Gerson is not joining Rorty and Rosenberg at the hip. That allows me to ask what they have to do with each other.
[...]
They require the logic Rorty would expel. It is whatever else that is said that I cannot imagine.
[...]
In my defense, it is not like Gerson explains the sameness. His enemies never change. — Paine
Anti-materialism is the view that it is false that the only things that exist are bodies and
their properties.
Anti-relativism is the denial of the claim that Plato attributes to Protagoras that ‘man is
the measure of all things, of what is that it is and of what is not that it is not’.
Anti-scepticism is the view that knowledge is possible. Knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) refers to
a mode of cognition wherein the real is in some way ‘present’ to the cognizer. — Gerson, Platonism versus Naturalism
For the purposes of this discussion, I have learned enough to say that Rorty is not one of those who are 'materialist' according to the criteria in Ur-Platonism. Rorty's demand that humans are the measure makes that impossible.
[...]
But revealing truth is one of the activities Rorty militates against. If the claim is a serious one, he has to abandon his aversion to verification. — Paine
Rosenberg is in broad agreement with Rorty about what anti-Platonism is, although it may be the case that Rosenberg would disagree with Rorty about the pre-eminence of the natural sciences. But the disagreements among naturalists or anti-Platonists are not my main topic; nor, for that matter, are the disagreements among Platonists. 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. But I also propose to argue for an even bolder thesis that this one. . . — Gerson, Platonism versus Naturalism, p. 3
I think the best way to approach this is through Aristotle discussing the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake — Paine
This argument that it is okay to pursue first causes extends to all who attempt it. When Aristotle makes arguments against others employing what Gerson calls Ur-Platonism principles, that doesn't make his interlocutors unqualified to speak upon it. — Paine
The reference to Simonides invokes a struggle with tradition that is ever present in Plato's dialogues. An excellent essay on this topic is written by Christopher Utter. — Paine
This leads me to believe that, for Gerson, Rorty is not a materialist but he is at least a relativist and a skeptic. He is a relativist on account of his demand that "humans are the measure," and he is a skeptic on account of his aversion to verification and revealing truth. — Leontiskos
What is objectionable about this? Is the objection that Ur-Platonism doesn't correctly map to Platonism, or to traditional philosophy? Is it that any theory which places Plotinus and Aristotle into the same group must be a false theory, because they are so different? Is it that because Rorty and Rosenberg have both similarities and differences, the theory must somehow fail? — Leontiskos
I object to Rorty's claim of what comprises philosophy because it fails as a Logos, not because it fails a litmus test from applying a set of definitions. — Paine
My objection is more of a question; What is the benefit of all this taxonomy? — Paine
Say, for the purposes of argument, I accepted Gerson's taxonomy. What does his classification have to do with changing future work as he exhorts us to do? He would correctly identify that Rorty is outside the boundary as Gerson has drawn it. Why attach the possibility for philosophy upon one who has just been expelled from it? — Paine
To treat the modern battle as simply a continuance of the first overlooks critical cultural differences. There are champions of the modern and there are detractors. How history is conceived plays a big part in their differences. Take Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, for example. They both refused to shake the pom-poms with team Hegel. But the differences between them obviously extend far beyond what Hegel wrote. All three reference Plato as points of departure. But it is of limited utility to compare them upon that basis alone. All three do think they are doing philosophy. Can the differences be delineated through compliance or divergence from a set of categories? — Paine
Dissatisfaction with the modern is expressed by some as the loss of a previously preserved virtue, others by a loss of a means of production, others by a loss of the means to experience life available to ancestors. That is not an exhaustive list of all possibilities, just some pieces that show how various are the attempts to connect those perspectives with our present and future lives. — Paine
With that said, where does accepting Gerson's criteria play a part? How does it figure in the struggle for future pedagogy in our lives comparable to the struggle in Plato's time? — Paine
Just to return to this, you have not answered why Plato, in his letter, when he clearly has an opportunity to present himself as a skeptic, instead chooses to say something very different, and even implies that he has shared knowledge of the forms with others (although not through dissertations.) — Count Timothy von Icarus
The Seventh Letter might not have been written by Plato, but it was decidedly not written by a skeptic. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Your reference to the Phaedo also doesn't say what you say it does in context. He doesn't call the forms "foolish" at 100. — Count Timothy von Icarus
“Consider then, he said, whether you share my opinion as to what follows, for I think that, if there is anything beautiful besides the Beautiful itself, it is beautiful for no other reason than that it shares in that Beautiful, and I say so with everything ... I simply, naively and perhaps foolishly cling to this, that nothing else makes it beautiful other than the presence of, or the sharing in, or however you may describe its relationship to that Beautiful we mentioned, for I will not insist on the precise nature of the relationship, but that all beautiful things are beautiful by the Beautiful. That, I think, is the safest answer I can give myself or anyone else.”
Like he says in the letter, you can't put this stuff into words. This is why he uses many different images to try to get the ideas across. — Count Timothy von Icarus
(99d-100a)After this, he said, when I had wearied of looking into beings, I thought that I must be careful to avoid the experience of those who watch an eclipse of the sun, for some of them ruin their eyes unless they watch its reflection in water or some such material ...
So I thought I must take refuge in discussions and investigate the truth of beings by means of accounts [logoi] … On each occasion I put down as hypothesis whatever account I judge to be mightiest; and whatever seems to me to be consonant with this, I put down as being true, both about cause and about all the rest, while what isn’t, I put down as not true.
(517b-c)“... in applying the going up and the seeing of what's above to the soul's journey up to the intelligible place, you'll not mistake my expectation, since you desire to hear it. A god doubtless knows if it happens to be true. At all events, this is the way the phenomena look to me: in the knowable the last thing to be seen, and that with considerable effort, is the idea of the good …”
acting like the very paradigm of the Sophists he criticizes so heavily. — Count Timothy von Icarus
He would be someone who pretends to know what he doesn't know — Count Timothy von Icarus
The question of what he knows is left open. Where does he imply that he and others have knowledge of the forms?
But Socrates does not pretend to know what he does not know. In the passage from the Republic he does not say that the way things look to him are the way they are. He says that a god, not him, knows if it happens to be true.
I shared them and bolded the most relevant parts earlier. — Count Timothy von Icarus
For everything that exists there are three instruments by which the knowledge of it is necessarily imparted; fourth, there is the knowledge itself, and, as fifth, we must count the thing itself which is known and truly exists.
the good itself, the beautiful itself, and the just itself.
There is a reason "skeptical Plato" theorists, from what I have seen, almost always deny the authenticity of the letter. — Count Timothy von Icarus
At the very least, the letter decidedly does not say "I write no doctrines because I have none," let alone "I wrote no doctrines because I know nothing." — Count Timothy von Icarus
In other words, according to Plato in the Seventh Letter there are no core doctrines or any doctrines at all in his writings that can rightly be attributed to him. I have included more from the letter below. — Fooloso4
The idea found in the Republic of eternal, fixed, transcendent truths known only to the philosophers is a useful political fiction. This "core doctrine" is a myth, a noble lie.
If Plato is a skeptic and doesn't think he really has any good idea what the Good is — Count Timothy von Icarus
...why is he writing things that are so suggestive and have been overwhelmingly understood as saying something quite the opposite? — Count Timothy von Icarus
This would seem to put him right in with the Sophists, fighting over who gets to mount their shadow puppets over the fires of Athens. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.