OK, now you add another qualification, the child must be able to understand the language. That just proves my point. Which do you believe, does the child abstract the concept of redness solely by seeing red things, or is the use of language necessary as well? — Metaphysician Undercover

The child abstracts the concept of redness solely by seeing red things. The understanding of language is not necessary for abstracting the concept, but it is to test if the child got the concept or not, simply because us observers need to ask the child questions. If we could pierce into his mind without asking questions, then he would not need to understand the language. The language is necessary only to know the words which point to concepts, not to obtain the concepts themselves.

First, you beg the question with your definition of universal form, by saying that they are separate from the minds which they are in. That is what you are trying to prove, that they are separate from the minds. — Metaphysician Undercover

Are you suggesting that universal forms are identical to minds? This seems so absurd to me that I did not find the need to backup that statement. Does this means that if you think of a triangle, then your mind becomes triangle-ness? Anyways, I was not trying to prove that concepts are separate from minds, I was trying to prove that all minds connect to the same concepts; as such the argument is not begging the question.

Then, you still do not have any premise which allows you to assume that concepts in different peoples' minds have "the exact same properties"? — Metaphysician Undercover

We went over this before but I will demonstrate once again for one concept. My concept of triangle-ness has the essential properties "flat surface" + "three straight sides". Does your concept have the exact same properties? If not, then what are they?

I would assume that being in different minds is a case of having different properties. — Metaphysician Undercover

But I thought you agreed that forms were not physical, did you not? If not physical, then they cannot have any physical properties, such as a physical location.

I asked about this "higher plane of being". You've said a lot but nothing that counts as an explanation. What is it? How is it? What is it? Where is it? When is it? — apokrisis

IN the context of a discussion about Platonic philosophy, the 'higher plane of being' is the domain of forms. Given that there is doubt about whether the Forms (Eidos) are real, the question could be asked analogically, i.e. 'where is the domain of natural numbers'? That is obviously nowhere, in a spatial sense. What it is, can't be reduced to anything lower, i.e. the domain of natural numbers simply is that. How is it? - unclear. And so on.

I am familiar with how the argument goes. To succeed, the argument must be consistent with what we observe and what we observe are hylomorphic particulars such as the builder, the blueprint and the building, not immaterial forms or formless material. — Andrew M

The cosmological argument is consistent with what we observe, as well as consistent with logical principles derived from what we observe. Do you recognize that in every case of a hylomorphic particular, the potential for that particular precedes, in time, the actual existence of that particular? And do you allow a general, inductive principle derived from this fact?

This really comes down to Wittgenstein's private language argument. Hylomorphic particulars are public observables. — Andrew M

What it comes down to is whether or not you are prepared to accept some simple logical principles derived from our understanding of reality.

The child abstracts the concept of redness solely by seeing red things. The understanding of language is not necessary for abstracting the concept, but it is to test if the child got the concept or not, simply because us observers need to ask the child questions. If we could pierce into his mind without asking questions, then he would not need to understand the language. The language is necessary only to know the words which point to concepts, not to obtain the concepts themselves. — Samuel Lacrampe

So your claim is that the child understands what "red" is without understanding language. Why is that not contradictory to you?

Are you suggesting that universal forms are identical to minds? — Samuel Lacrampe

No, I'm not saying that at all. I don't know how you derived that conclusion, it's far from what I said.

We went over this before but I will demonstrate once again for one concept. My concept of triangle-ness has the essential properties "flat surface" + "three straight sides". Does your concept have the exact same properties? If not, then what are they? — Samuel Lacrampe

Sorry, but my concept of triangle is not the same as that. Mine is of a plane figure, with three sides and three angles. See how different mine is from yours? Yours is "flat", mine is "plane". Mine has three angles. yours does not. Mine is the concept of a triangle while yours is the concept of triangle-ness. To have "the exact same properties", all properties, even the accidentals, must be the same.

Do you really believe that we can have concepts without language?

But I thought you agreed that forms were not physical, did you not? If not physical, then they cannot have any physical properties, such as a physical location. — Samuel Lacrampe

Space and time, as we understand them, are not physical things. Nor are the relationships between physical things physical things. This is why physicalists produce such a confused form of metaphysics, they take the descriptions which physicists produce, concerning the physical world (descriptions of relationships between objects), and treat these descriptions as if they are actually physical things.

But psychological science gives us good reason to question "primal experience". What is the status of the yellow we see? — apokrisis

Your objection is misplaced, because I have already acknowledged that when it comes to empirical claims, the scientific method of collective observation and corroboration is the most effective we have. But metaphysics and phenomenology are different matters. Of course there can, and should, be agreement in those but it is of the nature of testimonial commonality and agreement, rather than strict experimental arbitration. You would want to subsume those disciplines to science, and you speak as though this stance is justified by itself being supported by science; but this is circular reasoning, and you are thus assuming a standpoint that you are called upon to show is free of that very assumption.

We presume introspection is part of primal experience and yet it is a learnt, language-scaffolded, skill - a social framing. — apokrisis

Firstly, as I already stated at least once, if I am not mistaken, I am not talking about introspection in the sense of "looking within and seeing the (objective) contents of experience'; I am talking about reporting how experience seems to us in its 'first person' immediacy, not its objective contents but its subjective quality. I believe this is something we all know; we know what it is, subjectively speaking, to experience ourselves in relation to a world of others, not as some objectivist description about it, but as subjective immediacy.

Even animals must be thought to emjoy such a subjective quality of life, or experience. This is prior to any "language-scaffolded, skill - a social framing"; you just don't seem to be able to get that, though; apparently because you are too caught up in your discursive deliberations. This is stuff that inhabits the domain of the arts, not that of hard science (although the so-called human sciences may participate in both domains). I agree that both third person understanding and first person experience should be consistent with one another, even though they are given in very different terms and one can never replace the other.

Why groundless? Psychological science shows that we are only thinking about our consciousness in some particular socially constructed fashion. — apokrisis

This shows clearly what I say above; you keep defaulting to thinking I am talking about "thinking about consciousness" in some objective sense; you just cannot seem to get outside your presuppositions in order to understand what I am saying. It seems we will continue to keep talking past one another; and no fruitful discussion can ensue if one side tries to eliminate or subsume the other, so maybe it's a good time to stop wasting each other's time. :)

Sorry, but my concept of triangle is not the same as that — Metaphysician Undercover

This is where you keep getting unstuck. You keep arguing about whether ‘the same’ means ‘the same’, or whether it means something else. Whether your idea, and someone else’s idea, of ‘a triangle’, is the same or different. Whether the difference between two accidental objects (i.e. rocks) is intelligible. You are arguing here that because the way you describe ‘a triangle’ is different to the way another does, that this difference is significant. All I see in all of that is obfuscation.

I have been reading up on Timeaus again, following your recommendation. The key idea that Timeaus introduces is between ‘that which always is’ and ‘that which becomes’ - being and becoming. The idea is that the Forms are ‘that which always are’, and actual things, particulars or individuals, are in the realm of ‘becoming’. Now at this stage, very little detail of how forms relate to particulars etc is left vague - it wasn’t until much later that the details were really considered.

But to try and get the dialogue back on track, here is one version of the original quote on the ‘concept of triangle’

Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. Triangularity as your intellect grasps it is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed. Of course, your mental image of a triangle might not be exact, but rather indeterminate and fuzzy. But to grasp something with the intellect is not the same as to form a mental image of it. For any mental image of a triangle is necessarily going to be of an isosceles triangle specifically, or of a scalene one, or an equilateral one; but the concept of triangularity that your intellect grasps applies to all triangles alike. Any mental image of a triangle is going to have certain features, such as a particular color, that are no part of the concept of triangularity in general. A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once.

Feser, Some Brief Arguments for Dualism

So I don’t have any confidence in the idea that ‘your idea’ and ‘my idea’ of ‘what constitutes a triangle’ means or amounts to anything.

The point of the above, is that the original conception behind the distinction of form and substance, was drawn from Plato’s conception of ‘the forms’ as kinds of ideals or blueprints for all existing things, existing eternally and unchangeably. So using the example of ‘a triangle’ to illustrate this principle, and also referring to numbers and geometric shapes as forms, are simply allegorical ways of presenting the basic idea. It’s not as if numbers or geometric shapes are themselves mystical or magical or floating around in “Platonia”. Rather they’re attributes of the structure of rational thought, they are how rational thought proceeds and operates, which is the sense in which I think the ‘intuition of the Forms’ is correct. I agree that this is a ‘revisionist’ interpretation, something which I have come to understand more clearly through this debate.

IN the context of a discussion about Platonic philosophy, the 'higher plane of being' is the domain of forms. — Wayfarer

Hmm. I thought you were referring to a realm of meaning, value, wisdom and consciousness rather than a realm of mathematical abstracta.

I'd say that Plato's forms are easy to understand in terms of constraints or immanent limitations. They are the shapes, the structuration, that stand at the edge of material possibility. And this connects to the initial discussion about information/entropy.

So the realm that maths inhabits is the zeroed realm where dimensionality and energy have gone to their effective material limit. A code, for example, is dimensionality constrained to a 1D sequence that is then composed of 0D points. The natural numbers are just such a structure - with the addition of the points being arranged in an ordinal sequence. The code contains a message in that it points the temporal direction for acts of counting.

So everything about mathematics can be understood as a limit description on dimensioned materiality. There is a world of action and direction. Then there is the antithesis of the "realm" which is the emergent limit on actions and directions. The reduction of actions and directions produces this ghostly space of the zero-d - an infinite wasteland of discrete points, which can then be semiotically imbued with private meanings.

Once entropic existence is reduced to a set of bare marks, then the marks can take on unlimited meaning within a new level of semiotic mechanism. That is, us humans can describe the structure of the Cosmos in terms of constructive patterns. We can build systems of constraint using our mathematical templates - our ideas about triangles, numbers, manifolds, and so forth.

So Plato's realm is what springs up at the edge of material existence. It is the "flattened" view of the whole produced by dimensional constraint going to its extreme. Collapse dimensionality and energetics - actions with directions - and you wind up with patterns of marks that can be used semiotically to encode the world just collapsed.

Is a triangle real? Well our concept of a triangle certainly encodes the core facts of spatial geometry. We can throw away nearly everything - all entropic irregularity or actual dimensionality - to arrive at a limit state description in terms of a number of sides, a sum of internal angles, a quantification of a compact surface in terms of its ultimate simplicity.

Where does this triangle exist? Well, in our minds, in our habits of conception. But also it "exists" in the world as a particular ideal limit - a constraint on 2D dimensionality using the least number of 1D edges and 0D vertices. So it doesn't really exist in the world as limits are where existence finally ceases to exist. There are no perfect triangles in a materially real world, just their asymptotically close approximations.

So my point is - connecting again to the OP - is that the "higher plane" really exists in the semiotic view. There is an epistemic cut that divides reality into its entropic material sphere and its semiotic informational sphere.

Existence or being can be accounted for as the constraint on potential. In the beginning, the Cosmos would have been unlimited materiality - just pure unbounded fluctuation. An infinity or chaos of action and direction. In expressing every possible action and direction, this vagueness would have been no kind of action or direction in any proper sense at all.

Then out of this "everything goes" conflict, constraints would have to emerge. All the conflicts would start to cancel each other out, leaving only what counts as the simplest harmonies or resonances. In quantum cosmology terms, this is exactly the path integral or sum over histories approach. Order must emerge from chaos. Free action must still find its long-run equilibrium balance.

And so the dimensionality of initial cosmic chaos would be reduced. It would collapse towards the definite three spatial directions and the one collective temporal dimension we experience. The maths of symmetry and symmetry breaking are particularly good for describing this natural self-simplifying tendency. Physics is deeply mathematical because symmetry maths encodes the greatest possible states of simplicity. Symmetry maths explains why the goal of the Cosmos is to become as reduced in direction and action as it can get - the ultimate imperative that is a Heat Death.

But in this story of entropification - the slide towards greatest equilibrium simplicity - is then to be found the other side of the coin, the informational realm that emerges ever more strongly as dimensionality is flattened and simplified. As the Universe heads towards the closest it can get to zero-d constraint, that produces the new possibility of negentropic semiosis. You can get the counter-action of regulating the material world through zero-d systems of symbols, marks or codes.

Plato's realm comes alive in our hands. Ideas about numbers, triangles, and other abstracta, can be turned from being the deadened limits on materiality to the formative constraints we place on still lively materiality. As long as there is a little heat left in the Universe, we can mine it, regulate it, for some privately created meaning or purpose.

Of course, overall, our human-centric semiosis or negentropy has to be entropic. We must produce waste heat whenever we do work. But for us, Plato's realm is a higher plane of being in that it is a place from which we can actually act and give direction. It encodes the physics of the world in a way that is real, but also in a way that is causally reversed in that we are imagining the patterns as not emergent but constructed. We reframe the entropic truth of the world in a way that is technologically convenient.

Now you may see that as a spiritual move. Plato's realm is somehow accessing something divine or actually transcendent.

But the semiotic story is only of a faux transcendence - an epistemic cut. We extract a story about limits so that we can impose those limits on nature through acts of entropic construction. If I want to build things, I can have in mind a kitbag of ideal shapes, like triangles, cubes, planes, etc.

Plato's higher plane exists in our imagination as the entropic world turned around on itself. So it "really exists" as being a realm of physical limits or ideal constraints. But it is really a mirror-land in that it is this physical realm imagined in terms of the constraints being constructable. The causality is flipped around from being top-down to bottom-up.

(Although of course the causal relation between the forms and the physics is precisely what created all those Platonic ontic puzzles - the allegory of the cave. It was clear that the constructive approach of actual mathematics was in conflict with the fact that in nature, limitations are emergent. Platonic debate recognised the disjunct, but failed to resolve it. Hence the dualism that has bedeviled the subject ever since.)

IN the context of a discussion about Platonic philosophy, the 'higher plane of being' is the domain of forms.
— Wayfarer

Hmm. I thought you were referring to a realm of meaning, value, wisdom and consciousness rather than a realm of mathematical abstracta. — apokrisis

But the entire point is that Plato was concerned with a real basis for value, an objective 'domain of values'. That is the sense in which Platonist philosophy provides a dimension of a 'higher truth', which I know is a terribly non-PC thing to say. So you were challenging me - 'where is this higher truth? When? How' etc. That's why I brought it back to the Platonic intuition about numbers.

But, you're still maintaining an essentially physicalist ontology. I think, perhaps, with semiotics, you're half-way between plain old-fashioned reductionism, and something else altogether - 'the old is dying, but the new is struggling to be born'. I'm with you on biosemiosis, but I loose you at pan-semiosis - in other words, I agree with you about the science, but not about the metaphysics.

But metaphysics and phenomenology are different matters. You want to subsume them to science, and you act as though this stance is itself supported by science; but this is circular reasoning, and you are thus assuming a standpoint that you are called upon to show is free of that very assumption. — Janus

Metaphysics and phenomenology couldn't be more connected. Epistemology doesn't get going until we accept that we find ourselves already thrust into the world in a state of conditioned perception. "Metaphysical" presumptions are already in play by the time we realise that there is this thing called "phenomenal experience".

So no circularity. We start by recognising we are already caught in the bind of a hermeneutic circle. The idea of "raw feelings" is just another of the things that folk are talking about.

So the task is to haul ourselves out of this unthinking state and move towards some better considered position. Hence the method of scientific reasoning. We accept the necessity of making assumptions. And then we turn a bug into a feature. We consciously state we begin with a guess and then deductively work through its consequences, inductively confirm its advantage.

It is not circular but hierarchical. Axioms are footholds to lift ourselves to a viewpoint that has some greater advantage.

Of course you can question the nature of the progress being made by any particular hierarchical excursion. But that is simply itself a meta-practice of the same epistemic technique. At least it is if your question is "reasonable".

I am talking about reporting how experience seems to us in its 'first person' immediacy, not its objective contents but its subjective quality. I believe this is something we all know; we know what it is, subjectively speaking, to experience ourselves in relation to a world of others, not as some objectivist description about it, but as subjective immediacy. — Janus

Again, I can only say that this is a cultural conception which we all have to learn. So the "first person" claim very much does have to be put in scare quotes.

Even animals must be thought to emjoy such a subjective quality of life, or experience. — Janus

Again, I can only repeat that of course we would expect animals to have a biological sense of self. I have pointed out how perception is based on the very ability to make a self~world distinction. And yet also, we have no reason to think that animals are aware of this self in a third person descriptive fashion.

They would be extrospective, not introspective. They would simply "be themselves" in experiencing "the world". They wouldn't do the linguistic thing of experiencing themselves as beings in the world. The self and its qualia would not switch from being subjects to objects as a matter of conception.

This shows clearly what I say above; you keep defaulting to thinking I am talking about "thinking about consciousness" in some objective sense; you just cannot seem to get outside your presuppositions in order to understand what I am saying. — Janus

It's not a default. It is what psychological science has to tell us. The social default position is that we are self-aware creatures in some innate way. It is very much against the grain of popular opinion to say that our habit of objectifying our selves, our experiences, is the product of linguistic behaviour.

So yes, you keep refusing the consequences of this understanding. You maintain, despite the facts, that there is "raw feeling" in some pure first person sense.

But the first person point of view is a view constructed via a third person stance. It is not itself fundamental. At best - as a phenomenological project - it is only an honest attempt to recover what might be a pure first person point of view. It would be our best go at imagining our state of mind with the least cultural en-framing. Just the "raw feels".

But the entire point is that Plato was concerned with a real basis for value, an objective 'domain of values' — Wayfarer

The mathematical forms were a pretty convincing motivation for positing a concrete realm of abstracta. Philosophy began with the realisation that the world had this necessary immanent capacity for deep order.

But as you say, Plato then tried to tack on some rather anthropomorphic notions on top of that. He wanted to place "the Good" at the top of the chain of being. It was the light that illuminated the forms and caused them to be received as the impressions in a material world.

So yes, beyond the formal causes, there must be the final causes. That seems to make sense. Something must breath enough meaning and purpose into the possibilities of mathematical form to then cause them to become instantiated. The mathematical forms represent a set of free choices. Then someone, or some principle, has to make that choice for some reason.

In my semiotic/physicalist metaphysics, it is pretty obvious what plays the part of The Good. The animating purpose is the thermodynamic imperative - the general drive to self-organising simplification.

So again, it is no problem for me to point to the generic least action principle at the heart of Cosmic existence. We now even have the information theoretic maths to model and measure what we are talking about metaphysically. We can produce inductive confirmation of the metaphysical claims we might make.

The animating purpose is the thermodynamic imperative - the general drive to self-organising simplification. — apokrisis

Perhaps you might spell out the end-point of the 'thermodynamic imperative' - what it is all heading towards. This, I presume, will be what you see as the 'final cause'.

Perhaps you might spell out the end-point of the 'thermodynamic imperative' - what it is all heading towards. — Wayfarer

Again? Even I feel I have repeated myself enough. :)

I can't recall what you said in this particular matter, it would be helpful if you could provide some indication.

I can't recall what you said in this particular matter.... — Wayfarer

That also happens with great regularity. Right now I really ought to be going and having lunch.

The cosmological argument is consistent with what we observe, as well as consistent with logical principles derived from what we observe. Do you recognize that in every case of a hylomorphic particular, the potential for that particular precedes, in time, the actual existence of that particular? — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I don't. Time is a universal. As such, it is immanent in particulars and not transcendent to them.

So, on a hylomorphic version of the cosmological argument, there can be no universals prior to the existence of the prime hylomorphic substance, including time or potentiality.

Perhaps you might spell out the end-point of the 'thermodynamic imperative' - what it is all heading towards. This, I presume, will be what you see as the 'final cause'. — Wayfarer

Right then. The thermodynamic imperative is not pointing towards anything particularly grand. Just a Cosmic heat death.

So it represents the constraint, the final cause, that is a globalised tendency towards some state of ultimate mathematical simplicity.

If you wanted to, you could spin that as some deeply spiritual goal. It sounds like a state of maximal oneness or quietude. The Universe folds back into the depths of itself, let's go all its passing localised cares, and goes ... Ommmmm!

You can view the Heat Death as the ultimate failure of meaningfulness or celebrate it as the arrival at some ultimate state of elegant self-integration. There are plenty of anthropomorphic angles you could apply.

I don't have a strong feeling either way. Rightfully, the fate of the Cosmos is pretty much a neutral thing. Neither victory nor tragedy. We don't actually have to value it, do we?

But if you want to manufacture some kind of personal meaning from the thermodynamic imperative, there is definitely the practical concern - the question of why do we humans keep tending towards a certain kind of entropic end as living creatures?

And then if you are after a purely aesthetic judgement - and why not, it's fun - I think it's quite neat if the Heat Death can be shown to have Platonic necessity. It is one of your revered mathematical objects.

If symmetry can be broken, then this is the image of symmetry breaking taken to its ultimate limit. This is the image of maximum simplicity. Physics can hope for an ontological "theory of everything" as particles, forces, spacetime dimensionality, the constants of nature, the whole shebang, are indeed a Platonic object waiting at the end of time. The Universe is the crystalisation of an abstract limit on unbounded "everythingness".

So it is quite possible to dress up the Heat Death poetically. It can sound just like something really special. The secret of existence. The ultimate knowledge. The creation of eternal order.

We can say these things with a straight face. ;)

The thermodynamic imperative is not pointing towards anything particularly grand. Just a Cosmic heat death. — apokrisis

Well, this is where I think your appeal to the Aristotelian notion of 'final cause' doesn't really stack up. In Aristotle's scheme, final causes work on various levels - even mundane creatures have a final cause or 'telos'. But there's also a sense of an ultimate end, to which all the particular causes are directed. Of course that is then interpreted by later theistic philosophers in their terms, although Aristotle himself was not 'theistic' in their sense. But in any case, the salient point is that it is not simply non-existence or nothingness; so I think there's a problem with appropriating the notion of a 'final cause' but then adopting the 'thermodynamic imperative' in place of that.

In Aristotle's scheme, final causes work on various levels - even mundane creatures have a final cause or 'telos'. — Wayfarer

So this is another thing I've regularly repeated. Biology can internalise that kind of information. That is what the epistemic cut permits.

The Cosmos just has a pansemiotic tendency. Biology can encode semiotic functionality. Sociology can encode a human notion of purpose.

But there's also a sense of an ultimate end, to which all the particular causes are directed. — Wayfarer

Well this is where the advantage of constraints-based thinking shows. The Cosmos can have a tendency. And yet we can - for a while, in our own limited way - defy that. The flipside of constraints is that they also create freedoms.

So you are stuck with the notion of "only one end". My view demands orthogonal ends. In the middle of an entropifying Cosmos, it is not a surprise that we would find a height of complexification.

It is a yin and yang thing. Even the Heat Death is both a state of order and disorder. Entropy is not the simple thing folk make it out to be. To be carefully disordered is a strict kind of order.

But in any case, the salient point is that it is not simply non-existence or nothingness; so I think there's a problem with appropriating the notion of a 'final cause' but then adopting the 'thermodynamic imperative' in place of that. — Wayfarer

Did I call the Heat Death a state of non-existence? It might be maximally nothing - the ultimate featurelessness. But that is also a great big something in that it is an eternally continuing and expanded featurelessness.

Remember that the Heat Death is defined as the asymptotic approach to absolute zero degrees kelvin, or the minimum possible energy density. We only arrive there when the Universe has reached a vacuum state balance in which it expands and dilutes exactly as fast as it can quantumly fluctuate and radiate.

The Universe still changes just as much, but the changes can no longer make a difference. It's like the Red Queen's race at the Cosmic scale - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_race

Such a beautiful idea!

Well, thank you, but not at all persuaded. However, pleased to have reached a civil disagreement over such a momentous issue.

So your claim is that the child understands what "red" is without understanding language. Why is that not contradictory to you? — Metaphysician Undercover

Do you really believe that we can have concepts without language? — Metaphysician Undercover

Why is it contradictory to you? It would be contradictory to understand the word "red" without the language, but not the concept "redness". Concepts are not made of words; rather, words point to concepts. A blind man may know the language, but cannot grasp the concept of redness if he has never seen a red thing. Therefore language is not the cause of acquiring concepts.

Sorry, but my concept of triangle is not the same as that. Mine is of a plane figure, with three sides and three angles. See how different mine is from yours? Yours is "flat", mine is "plane". Mine has three angles. yours does not. Mine is the concept of a triangle while yours is the concept of triangle-ness. To have "the exact same properties", all properties, even the accidentals, must be the same. — Metaphysician Undercover

"Flat", "plane"... don't be so picky about the words MU. And yes, you can have three angles too, but these are redundant because a plane with three sides necessarily has three angles. You might as well add that the sum of the angles equates to 180°, but this is once again redundant. To sum up, your concept coincides with mine; thereby demonstrating that subjects acquire identical concepts, which is necessary to have coherent communication.

What accidentals can you add to concepts? Remember that concepts are universals.

Space and time, as we understand them, are not physical things. Nor are the relationships between physical things physical things. This is why physicalists produce such a confused form of metaphysics, they take the descriptions which physicists produce, concerning the physical world (descriptions of relationships between objects), and treat these descriptions as if they are actually physical things. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think I agree with you regarding time not being a physical thing, because it is a function of causality, which is not necessarily about physical things. But what about space? Common sense or default position is that space or location is a physical thing. How can you back up your claim that it is not?

You stated the terms 'blueprint' and 'eternal' in the same sentence. I think it is important to keep the distinction between Forms and forms. Forms or necessary truths are eternal; forms or concepts or blueprints are not. It is not possible to imagine a thing that is illogical, thereby making logic an eternal Form. On the other hand, it is possible to imagine a world where no red things exist, that is, where no particular participates in the blueprint of redness, and effectively, no subject in that world (excluding God) can acquire the concept of redness; thereby making redness a non-eternal form.

You stated the terms 'blueprint' and 'eternal' in the same sentence. — Samuel Lacrampe

Actually that was in reference to the Timaeus, particularly in this section. Plato speaks of a ‘craftsman’ or demiurge who ‘fashions’ the Universe from ‘an eternal model’. So only ‘what does not become’ is what is ‘eternal’ whereas those things that are becoming (that is, sensible objects) are not the objects of knowledge. Knowledge is only possible with respect to the Forms, because they’re eternal, i.e. ‘always are’, by virtue of which they’re intelligible in a way that sensible objects cannot be.

However, when you equate ‘forms’ and ‘necessary truths’, I don’t know if that is made explicit here, nor in the later, Aristotelian account - I haven’t studied it enough to know. But I think you’re surmising that the Forms amount to the justification of ‘necessary truths’ - and i suppose that may be so, but I don’t know if that is explicit at the early stage of Platonism. (It sounds like an essay question).

I urge you to have a look at this passage, on Augustine’s presentation of ‘the nature of intelligible objects’ (scroll down to the numbered paragraphs; from the Cambridge Companion to Augustine). I have often presented and discussed this passage on forums, and I find it is of the utmost importance, particularly the way in which he uses it to demonstrate the reality of incorporeal forms. I think this is one of the keys to understanding how Platonism influenced first Augustine, and then indeed the whole development of Christian theology.

One question I have about it is - what exactly is meant by the term ‘intelligible object?’ An example is given, namely, that of prime numbers. But there must be others. I interpret that like you are also doing - that it’s a reference to universal abstract truths that are in some sense embedded in the fabric of the cosmos but are transcendent in nature - reason can glimpse them, but they’re above it.

This is where you keep getting unstuck. You keep arguing about whether ‘the same’ means ‘the same’, or whether it means something else. Whether your idea, and someone else’s idea, of ‘a triangle’, is the same or different. Whether the difference between two accidental objects (i.e. rocks) is intelligible. You are arguing here that because the way you describe ‘a triangle’ is different to the way another does, that this difference is significant. All I see in all of that is obfuscation. — Wayfarer

Perhaps it appears as obfuscation to you, but to me the beauty of the world is found in the uniqueness of each and every thing, with each and every minute difference. That is the basis of intelligibility, difference. The senses and the agent intellect act to determine the differences of the world. This is what Timaeus points to, the uniqueness of all the different animals, and different parts of animals, found in the realm of becoming. Understanding and knowing concerning the realm of becoming, is obtained through distinguishing all these differences.

The principle, that there is a difference which is not significant, is fundamentally unintelligible by way of contradiction. This is because by saying that it is a difference, you have already assigned significance to it. You cannot determine a difference without assigning significance to it. That there is a difference which doesn't make a difference is inherently contradictory. That is what Aristotle's law of identity is all about. And the law of identity forms the basis for logical proceeding. By saying that a thing is the same as itself, absolutely no difference is allowed into the designation of "same", and the logical process which follows.

So you really have your ontological principles, which form the foundation for epistemological principles, backwards, just like apokrisis. By allowing that there is a difference which does not make a difference, you permit a tainted sameness into you epistemology. The tainted sameness allows that two distinct things, can be said to be the same, because the difference is not significant. What follows from this tainted sameness, necessarily, is confusion. So in reality, you are the one engaged in what you accuse me of, obfuscation. The difference between my accusation against you, and your charge against me, is that mine is rooted in a firm principle. Yours implies that the judgement of which of the differences are important, and which are insignificant, can amount to nothing more than a matter of reference, so we leave ourselves defenceless against sophistry, those who will take advantage of different points of reference.

I have been reading up on Timeaus again, following your recommendation. The key idea that Timeaus introduces is between ‘that which always is’ and ‘that which becomes’ - being and becoming. The idea is that the Forms are ‘that which always are’, and actual things, particulars or individuals, are in the realm of ‘becoming’. Now at this stage, very little detail of how forms relate to particulars etc is left vague - it wasn’t until much later that the details were really considered. — Wayfarer

Yes, this is the premise of Timaeus, and it is a very important premise, because the incompatibility between those who profess being as a first principle (Parmenides etc.), and those who profess becoming as a first principle (Heraclitus etc.), has been well exposed by Plato's other dialogues. It was explicitly laid out in Theatetus. Aristotle demonstrated how being and becoming are fundamentally incompatible. It is impossible that one is reduced to the other. This produces the logical necessity for dualism which Aristotle exposed.

Hegel, now, in his dialectics of being, alters this, and designates being as the ultimate form of becoming, through negation. Now being is reduced to an aspect of becoming. Becoming is described as being which is negated by not-being, which is negated back again by being, etc.. What this does is allow for a monist materialism, as there is no longer the need for a categorical separation between being and becoming. Being and not being (the logical distinctions) are subsumed within becoming (matter), hence the development of the phenomenology of spirit, where being is an emergent part of the material world, rather than a separate, fundamentally incompatible, category. Now, in the western world, we tend to look at being as a phenomenon, which means that we know it through our sense information. This is distinct from turning our attentions inward, to see being directly within, whereby we apprehend the fundamental incompatibility between being (which is within) and becoming (which is external) .

So process philosophers assume this type of materialism, as a starting point. But you will notice that anyone who carries process philosophy through to its finality, in trying to understand the reality of the world through processes, ends up in mysticism, having to posit mysterious principles, or even God, to account for the temporal continuity of sameness, which is otherwise called "being".

have been reading up on Timeaus again, following your recommendation. The key idea that Timeaus introduces is between ‘that which always is’ and ‘that which becomes’ - being and becoming. The idea is that the Forms are ‘that which always are’, and actual things, particulars or individuals, are in the realm of ‘becoming’. Now at this stage, very little detail of how forms relate to particulars etc is left vague - it wasn’t until much later that the details were really considered. — Wayfarer

Actually, an outline for the relationship between universals and particulars is well laid out in the Timaeus, that's why the writing became so important to the Neo-Platonists and early Christians through the influence of St. Augustine. As you say, Timaeus lays out a realm of eternal unchanging forms (being), as well as a temporal world of evolving forms (becoming). The two appear to be incompatible as Aristotle will demonstrate. As I indicated in my earlier post, Timaeus posits a third thing, in the middle of the Timaeus, and this is "the receptacle", which receives the form in the divine act of creation. This is "matter" in Aristotle's conceptual structure, and I've seen one translation of Timaeus, (I think it comes from a Christian tradition) which actually uses the term "matter". But I believe that "matter" although it was mostly developed by Aristotle, was in use at that time already, perhaps by the atomists, and I think Plato was intent to create a separation from this term. Aristotle, through his use, brought the term in line with Plato's Timaeus.

So I think it is more accurate to say that Plato described this third principle, as the thing which receives the form, without actually giving it that name. Nevertheless, it provides a bridge between Plato and Aristotle, an approach from Neo-Platonism toward Aristotle's "matter". So "matter" is what relates the universal Forms of Pythagorean Idealism, (the realm of being), what is referred to as Platonism in general, to the changing forms of particulars, (the realm of becoming), which we find in Aristotle's physics.

Now to turn to your description of triangularity:

Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. Triangularity as your intellect grasps it is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed.

This idea is inherently contradictory. It claims that the concept of triangularity is necessarily perfect triangularity, but then it allows that a triangle may be of different types. Perfection implies one and only one, the perfect one. Having within the universal concept, different types, is a privation from perfection. Perfect implies One, it does not allow Many. It is impossible that there is a conception of the perfect triangularity when the concept itself allows for different types of triangularity. This is the problem with universals which Plato exposed when he caught a glimpse of "the good". No universal can establish itself in perfection, as "The Ideal", because the ideal is necessarily a particular, the best.

This is the gap, the categorical separation, between the proposed eternal forms, (universals), and the particulars. The idealist, such as yourself, wants to close the gap by claiming that the perfection of "The Ideal" is within the realm of the universal. "The universal is a perfection". But in asserting perfection, "The Ideal", "the perfect idea", is exposed for what it truly is, it is of necessity, a particular. This turns reality right around, such that the perfect Idea can only have real existence as a particular, not a universal. So the gap is closed by replacing the reality of the universal Idea with the reality of the particular Idea. This is why Plato's cave people who are seeing particular material objects, are actually seeing reflections, they are the reflections of the particular ideas which lie behind those objects. What is left is to explain the "matter" which is the medium between the Ideal particular Forms, and what the cave people are seeing and apprehending through universal forms.

No, I don't. Time is a universal. As such, it is immanent in particulars and not transcendent to them.

So, on a hylomorphic version of the cosmological argument, there can be no universals prior to the existence of the prime hylomorphic substance, including time or potentiality. — Andrew M

If you do not allow that the potential for the existence of an object precedes the actual existence of that object, how do you explain becoming? If the potential for a particular hylomorphic substance doesn't precede the actual existence of that substance, how does such a substance come into being from not being? Do all hylomorphic substances have eternal existence?

Why is it contradictory to you? It would be contradictory to understand the word "red" without the language, but not the concept "redness". Concepts are not made of words; rather, words point to concepts. A blind man may know the language, but cannot grasp the concept of redness if he has never seen a red thing. Therefore language is not the cause of acquiring concepts. — Samuel Lacrampe

You argument is non sequitur. Just because a person may know a language without knowing a particular concept, does not imply that a person can know a concept without knowing a language.

There is no such thing as redness unless there is such a thing as what the word "red" refers to. And, there is no such thing as what the word "red" refers to unless there is language. Therefore there is no such thing as redness without language.

"Flat", "plane"... don't be so picky about the words MU. — Samuel Lacrampe

You said "exact same properties", so if I am not picky I have not carried out my obligation of due diligence to determine whether the conditions of "exact same" have been fulfilled.

What accidentals can you add to concepts? Remember that concepts are universals. — Samuel Lacrampe

That's the problem. "Exact same" implies that accidentals have been included. "Universal" implies that accidentals have been excluded. The two are incompatible by way of contradiction. Yet you insist upon using the two together, to say that I have the exact same concept as you.

But what about space? Common sense or default position is that space or location is a physical thing. How can you back up your claim that it is not? — Samuel Lacrampe

Space is one of the concepts which we use to understand relations between things. So we say for instance, that there is space between the chair and the table. Upon analysis we find that there is air between the chair and the table, so it is not really space which is there. Likewise, one might say that there is space between the earth and the sun, but upon analysis it is found that there is electromagnetism, gravity, and other things there. So it is not really space which is there. Space is just a concept which we use in our measuring of things, it is not a real physical thing.

By allowing that there is a difference which does not make a difference, you permit a tainted sameness into you epistemology. The tainted sameness allows that two distinct things, can be said to be the same, because the difference is not significant. — Metaphysician Undercover

It must be hard for you to talk about differences in pressure or temperature when you don’t even believe in macrostate descriptions. Oh the tainted sameness of summing over microstates that make no significant difference.

So you may be correct that "all forms are eternal" could be what Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine thought. It is hard to tell because Plato's dialogues I have read (far from all of them) were all about logic and morality which are necessary truths, not about contingent things like apple-ness and redness. Same goes for your passage from Augustine, which uses math as the example so that doesn't help us either :( . But more important than opinion is truth (philosophy > philosophers); and I think I can justify why we should make a distinction between eternal Forms (1) and non-eternal forms (2).

Imagine an evil tyrant who takes over the world and decides to erase the past by burning all books and teachers talking about logic, math, and morality. Well, despite this, the new generation would still be able to rediscover or recollect the laws of logic, math, and morality, and furthermore, the tyrant would not be able to successfully teach different laws than the true ones, such as "2+2=3" and "justice is bad and injustice is good". This is also on par with Plato's Theory of Recollection in the Meno, in which a slave can recollect geometric principles despite never being taught geometry. As these Forms are indestructible and unchangeable, even in the mind, they are eternal and stand above all else.

On the other hand, if the evil tyrant decided to destroy any particular object that is red (jerk), then the new generation could not conceive the form of redness. Redness is not an eternal Form that can be rediscovered or recollected; and must be observed at least once to be conceived; and so Meno's slave could not have recollected redness if he never observed a red thing before. As these forms cannot be acquired by the mind without existing in particular things observed, they are not eternal in the mind.

One question I have about it is - what exactly is meant by the term ‘intelligible object?’ — Wayfarer

Good question. My guess is that 'intelligible' it is not synonymous to 'observable', but is rather related to having coherent communication. We can observe particular things with all their accidentals, but we cannot intelligibly describe each particular thing without the use of universal forms followed by their accidental properties. In order to have an intelligible conversation with you about a particular rock in my backyard, I would have to describe it literally as "the rock (universal form of rock-ness) in my backyard (its accidental properties)". If I called it "Rock #22" or "Bob", you would not know what I am talking to you about if you have never observed said rock.

Unless you are a dualist, the question seems moot. Only a dualist would classify things as physical/not-physical.

To an anti-realist, information is not physical because NOTHING IS.

To a physicalist, information is physical because EVERYTHING IS.

Is the implication then that we are all actually dualists? Or is something else meant by "physical" in this context?

And then there is the question of the meaning of the term "information". I would argue that a poor choice has been made by physicists in adopting the word "information" to describe quantum states. Like using "real" and "imaginary" to describe numbers in math, the term "information" has too strong of a colloquial usage (i.e., tied to the mental activity of interpreting symbols - or of a mind choosing to assign a meaning to an observed thing). Back at the beginning of the discussion, Bitter Crank asked if DNA is information. Well, DNA is a complex physical arrangement of genes that a particular system can react to, but calling it "information" might imply that the system is conscious and assigns meaning to the DNA. So the question of whether information is physical or not might hinge on whether you believe consciousness is physical or not.

Unless you are a dualist, the question seems moot. Only a dualist would classify things as physical/not-physical.

To an anti-realist, information is not physical because NOTHING IS.

To a physicalist, information is physical because EVERYTHING IS.

Is the implication then that we are all actually dualists? Or is something else meant by "physical" in this context? — Lucifer Sam

Welcome to the Forum.

Fair points. I think I am inclined towards dualism, albeit not of the Cartesian type; 'mind' is not a 'substance' in the Cartesian sense. I favour a functional definition of mind as 'that which grasps ideas'; almost a truism, but there's an observable difference between human mental capacities, which can, and those of animals, which cannot.

And, while I might be an anti-realist, I certainly accept that there are physical things, that physics and physical have referents. A comment from a encyclopedia article is: 'Objective idealism accepts common-sense realism (the view that independent material objects exist), but rejects naturalism (the view that the mind and values have emerged from material things)'. That describes my outlook pretty well.

So, what I do question is the ultimate reality of physical things, i.e. they're not 'self-existent' (in Buddhist terminology) but exist dependent on a causal matrix in order to exist (in line with 'dependent origination'). But they're still real on the level of conventional description i.e. a medicine has genuine causal powers to treat an illness, a hammer blow to the thumb really does hurt, unless you're sufficiently dis-identified with the domain of name-and-form not to be troubled by it (and I'm not).

the beauty of the world is found in the uniqueness of each and every thing, with each and every minute difference. — Metaphysician Undercover

I couldn't disagree with the sentiment, but that is not what is at issue in the discussion of Forms and Universals. This is where you keep muddying the waters. I can't see any such discussion in Timaeus; I think the idea of individuation started later, with Aristotle. In fact, the Wiki entry on the 'principle of individuation' says this:

Taking issue with the view expressed in certain Platonic dialogues that universal Forms (such as the Good, the Just, the Triangular and so on) constitute reality, Aristotle regarded an individual as something real in itself. An individual therefore has two kinds of unity: specific and numerical. Specific unity (that is unity of the species to which an individual belongs) is a unity of nature which the individual shares with other individuals. For example, twin daughters are both human females, and share a unity of nature. This specific unity, according to Aristotle, is derived from Form, for it is Form (which makes an individual substance the kind of thing it is. But two individuals (such as the twins) can share exactly the same form, yet not be one in number. What is the principle by which two individuals differ in number alone? This cannot be a common property. As Bonaventure later argued, there is no form of which we cannot imagine a similar one, thus there can be 'identical' twins, triplets, quadruplets and so on. For any such form would then be common to several things, and therefore not an individual at all. What is the criterion for a thing being an individual?

In a passage much-quoted by the medievals, Aristotle attributes the cause of individuation to matter:

The whole thing, such and such a form in this flesh and these bones, is Callias or Socrates; and they are different owing to their matter (for this is different), but the same in species, for the species is indivisible.

So, here I think I can see your point: that because it is matter that is responsible for differentiation, then material distinctions are in some sense 'accidents' and are perceived by the corporeal senses. However

By allowing that there is a difference which does not make a difference, you permit a tainted sameness into you epistemology. The tainted sameness allows that two distinct things, can be said to be the same, because the difference is not significant. What follows from this tainted sameness, necessarily, is confusion. — Metaphysician Undercover

I really think you're on your own here. You still find yourself in a position of quibbling about the law of identity and fundamental geometry; that's where the confusion lies. (But please don't go to the bother of trying to re-explain it.)

I think I can justify why we should make a distinction between eternal Forms (1) and non-eternal forms (2). — Samuel Lacrampe

This was touched on earlier in this thread: there is a distinction between 'concept' and 'form'. I think, in Aquinas' terminology, the senses perceive the shape, the intellect perceives the Form, and the mind derives the concept. So concepts are internal to minds, but the Forms are not. That is also the argument of Point (1) in the passage from Augustine I quoted. (I have to get around to reading some of Feser's books.)

My guess is that 'intelligible' it is not synonymous to 'observable', but is rather related to having coherent communication. — Samuel Lacrampe

Well, no, 'intelligible' has a very specific meaning in this context; 'intelligible' is the property of Forms, and they are intelligible because they are unchanging, therefore eternal, and because they're grasped purely by reason itself, not by the 'corporeal senses'. The discussions about knowledge in the Dialogues are very important in this respect, because of the sense that what people believe they know is being constantly challenged. But that often concerns subjects such as justice, virtue and beauty, not techne or technical know-how.

So the 'principle of intelligibility' is very specific to philosophy arising from Plato, modified by Aristotle, and then developed by the Western tradition of philosophical theology. Within that context, 'intelligible' has a very specific meaning.

One thing that should be understood, is that, for Plato, the world of common experience, the world as understood by the hoi polloi - that's you and I - is an illusory world. We don't see 'the real', which is the eternal domain of the Forms, instead we are trapped and beguiled by the sensory domain - the 'shadows on the cave wall'. But to see the real, to ascend from the Cave, requires the arduous intellectual and even ascetic training that students of the Academy would have undergone, which produces metanoia, something akin to 'conversion', a gestalt-shift which totally changes your perception of the nature of things. It was never the arm-chair philosophy that it was to become later.

@apokrisis - check out this blog article - I'm sure you'll appreciate it if you don't know it already.

This is long-winded, but on close inspection all I'm seeing is a bunch of assertions, and no cogent argument that makes any sincere attempt to address anything I've said so "hast la vista, baby" ...

Is this what you really felt or what you’ve talked yourself into feeling as a way to feel better? Honestly now. If you were to explore your most immediate feelings and not merely leap to a defence of your current framing, could you recover some less certain “raw state”.