I was just thinking earlier that I can think of few philosophers who were quite as diametrically opposed to Plato than Wittgenstein. And if one thinks of the nominalistic proclivities of Quine, Davidson, Sellars, and their disciples, it's hard to argue that analytic philosophy as a whole is Platonic in its overall orientation (which is not to say there aren't plenty of Platonically oriented analytics, but only that there's plenty of variation within the field).

I was just thinking earlier that I can think of few philosophers who were quite as diametrically opposed to Plato than Wittgenstein. — StreetlightX

Yes, I agree with that.

I think Wittgenstein was opposed to Plato. Yet, I'm not sure how to prove it? Could you spell it out?

Socrates' notion of human reason, thought and belief remains prominent...

In lieu of an effort on my part, this blog post gets the general gist of it right, I think:

"Wittgenstein inverts the antiquated western metaphysical tradition which places the essential before the actual: the abstract is an abstract from the present material world. Thus the task of attempting to reach the real via a process of intellectual abstraction, or via an examination of linguistic forms, is doomed before it starts. The real is present before us - in analysing it and refining it into its (apparently) general essence we are not approaching the truth of the matter, the "real" which is concealed by the corruptible form of the actual, we are in fact becoming increasingly lost in the sterile imagination.

... Plato's attempt to essentialise the world and perceive the 'real' behind the phenomena is, to Wittgenstein, fundamentally misguided. It is the phenomenal which is the real and if we desire to understand it we cannot subsume it under some abstract system. The abstract can only be an etiolated version of the real; it is the real, once we have nullified the differences, the vibrancy, the temporality of actual existence. What we consider essential in things is in fact a statement of human value, and should not be mistaken for a quality in things themselves. The attempt to do so confuses and denigrates both the nature of scientific enquiry and the role of human value in thought."

http://ayinsrazor.blogspot.com/2009/07/wittgenstein-on-plato.html

Platonism is philosophical cancer.

. It is the phenomenal which is the real and if we desire to understand it we cannot subsume it under some abstract system. — StreetlightX

Only problem with this is that the hard sciences do exactly that. One can argue that some of the ancient Greek metaphysicians were getting at the reality beyond the senses in a pre-scientific manner. Democritus (atomism), Pythagorus (geometry), and Heraclitus (logos) would be three examples. Plato's cave can be seen (from a modern POV) as an analogy for the scientist leaving the cave of the senses to appreciate the mathematical equations describing the hidden reality revealed through experimentation.

Only problem with this is that the hard sciences do exactly that. — Marchesk

No, they do not.

No, they do not. — StreetlightX

How don't they?

How do they? You made the claim.

How do they? You made the claim. — StreetlightX

Ordinary matter is made up of atoms to small for us to see, mathematical equations are heavily used to explain physical and chemical interactions, there are aspects of QM which cannot be visualized or explained in ordinary language without invoking metaphysical interpretations, GR has counterintuitive implications for space and time, and so on.

But more than anything, our sensory modalities are left off as perceiver dependent properties. The scientific image is devoid of smell, sound, color, etc.

Ordinary matter is made up of atoms.... — Marchesk

I think the existence of atoms is questionable, in the sense of them being anything like the fundamental constituents of things. And I'm in pretty good company:

the smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or—in Plato's sense—Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics. — Werner Heisenberg

In addition, it doesn't get much more obvious than when we learned that solid objects are made of mostly empty space despite appearance, and the light we see is but a tiny bit of the EM spectrum, some of which can travel between those empty spaces in solid things.

Ordinary matter is made up of atoms to small for us to see, mathematical equations are heavily used to explain physical and chemical interactions, there are aspects of QM which cannot be visualized or explained in ordinary language without invoking metaphysical interpretations, GR has counterintuitive implications for space and time, and so on.

But more than anything, our sensory modalities are left off as perceiver dependent properties. The scientific image is devoid of smell, sound, color, etc. — Marchesk

This is all irrelevant. The question is about subsumption under abstraction. This is just fluff.

Platonism is philosophical cancer. — StreetlightX

On the other hand, you are saluting the nominalistic proclivities of Sellars, Quine and Davidson, among others. Let me just focus on Sellars for now.

Sellars's nominalism (if we can call it that) operates through Kant, and pragmatizes it. It is especially indebted to Kant for its acknowledgement of the constitutive and ineliminable role of our conceptual powers in shaping up experience (while recognizing the equally indispensable reciprocal role of sensory intuitions, or receptivity, in the constitution of the power of judgement). It is epitomized, within Sellars' own neo-Kantian pragmatism, by its denunciation of the Myth of the (non-conceptual) Given. But it also jettisons the idea that the a priori forms of the understanding can be disclosed by means of pure armchair exercises of the power of the intellect.

So, Sellars's pragmatism is inimical to Plato, in that sense. But it still retains, from Plato (and through Kant), the idea that intellectual reflection can reveal to the intellect its own a priori forms. Those a priori forms, however, are conceived within Sellars's pragmatized neo-Kantianism rather more on the model of Wittgenstein's grammatical remarks, or hinge propositions, or the constitutive laws/rules of embodied, situated and historicized scientific practices, or in the way Strawson and Grice have conceived of "analytic" statements (comparable to Sellars's synthetic a priori statements) in their rejoinder to Quine's 1951 Two Dogmas of Empiricism (in In Defense of a Dogma, 1956).

I think the existence of atoms is questionable, in the sense of them being anything like the fundamental constituents of things. And I'm in pretty good company: — Wayfarer

Well, for chemistry they are. But yeah, they're not fundamental they way they were initially thought to be.

The question is about subsumption under abstraction. — StreetlightX

I have no idea what that means.

It is literally what you quoted and said 'this is what science does'. So you don't even know what you're quoting, that's not my problem.

It is the phenomenal which is the real and if we desire to understand it we cannot subsume it under some abstract system. — StreetlightX

Oh, in context of the entire sentence I took that to mean that how the world appears to us is what's real, and not some abstraction from it. But then what is science doing when it uses mathematical language to form it's explanations of the world?

he smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or—in Plato's sense—Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics. — Werner Heisenberg

That is an interesting quote. I don't know what to make of the physical some days. I'm sure it's real in that it doesn't depend on us.

But anyway, isn't that what Tegmark and Meillassoux basically claim the world is?

But then what is science doing when it uses mathematical language to form it's explanations of the world? — Marchesk

Depends on how you understand the range of 'explanation'. If you think science exhausts the claim to explanation, then this strikes me as a reductive reading, unwarranted imposed from without, of what the sciences do.

If you think science exhausts the claim to explanation, then this strikes me as a reductive reading, unwarranted imposed from without, of what the sciences do. — StreetlightX

So your response might be that the full explanation is both our phenomenal experience and the corresponding scientific explanations. Both of which make up the real.

So your response might be that the full explanation is both our phenomenal experience and the corresponding scientific explanations. Both of which make up the real. — Marchesk

No. Explanation isn't a lego-house where you stack bits on other bits. Things are more complex than this. Without going into it, the point is simply that science does not play a subsumptive role with respect to explanation. At their limit, the 'laws' of science establish nothing more than limits in certain domains; everything else is fair game. Anyway, this is far beyond the OP.

Anyway, this is far beyond the OP. — StreetlightX

That's fine. I'm curious too how this discussion progresses.

I'm sure it's real in that it doesn't depend on us. — Marchesk

It is nevertheless the case that physics nowadays comprises mainly mathematical models - e.g. ‘the standard model’ - and they surely do. Which is not too far removed from Heisenberg’s point.

There's a famous essay by Arendt ("Tradition and the Modern Age"), where she characterizes our age as one that has effected a series of 'turning-operations' or 'inversions' upon tradition, marked by the names of Kiekregaard, Nietzsche, and Marx:

"Against the alleged abstractions of philosophy and its concept of man as an animal rationale, Kierkegaard wants to assert concrete and suffering men; Marx confirms that man's humanity consists of his productive and active force, which in its most elementary aspect he calls labor power; and Nietzsche insists on life's productivity, on man's will and will-to-power. In complete independence of one another none of them ever knew of the others' existence they arrive at the conclusion that this enterprise in terms of the tradition can be achieved only through a mental operation best described in the images and similes of leaps, inversions, and turning concepts upside down".

One of her conclusions is that these turning-operations can never be sucessful, because they take place on the same terms as those they aim to invert; so of Marx, she writes: "Turning the tradition upside down within its own framework, he did not actually get rid of Plato's ideas, though he did record the darkening of the clear sky where those ideas, as well as many other presences, had once become visible to the eyes of men". Arendt's point, among others, was that what needs to be inverted are not simply the philosophical 'positions' as it were, but the very terms in which those positions are posed: the whole framework. Otherwise you remain stuck with those same terms, even as you reject them (Heidegger will thus talk of a 'twisting-free' of Platonism, and Blanchot of a 'step not beyond' (Le pas au-delà) metaphysics, each of which tries to do more than simply 'do the opposite' of Plato or metpahysics).

So the sense in which Wittgenstein 'inverted' Plato needs to be carefully understood. I think that Wittgenstein did more that just a simple inversion of Plato (in Arendt's sense): he rejected more than just Plato's answers (as if simply inverting the priority of matter and idea): he rejected Plato's very questions. Plato's inane obsessions over 'what is Beauty?' 'What is Justice?' and so on are all renounced as awful ways of even approaching the questions. The blog post I linked to doesn't quite make this point, but I think it's important to insist upon. But yeah, the history of philosophy is full of these kinds of inversions - but it's important to pay close attention to how they are enacted.

So, Sellars's pragmatism is inimical to Plato, in that sense. But it still retains, from Plato (and through Kant), the idea that intellectual reflection can reveal to the intellect its own a priori forms — Pierre-Normand

Surely, if one squints hard enough one can see Plato in anything - which is not necessarily a bad thing (Deleuze: "The task of modern philosophy has been defined: to overturn Platonism. That this overturning should conserve many Platonic characteristics is not only inevitable but desirable".) And the Plato I have in mind is more the Plato who valorizes eternity, who rejects becoming, and poses infantile questions.

And the Plato I have in mind is more the Plato who valorizes eternity, who rejects becoming, and poses infantile questions. — StreetlightX

Fair enough. I have a tendency, myself, to try to pay attention to the best in the thought and hidden legacy of influential philosophers. This includes Descartes, whose influence I oppose relentlessly, but whose better insights have been aptly advocated by Daniel Robinson (who is nevertheless closely philosophically allied with the arch-Wittgensteinian and arch-anti-Cartesian P.M.S. Hacker!)

Mm, I'm of a know-thy-enemy type as well. You fight cancer by studying it rigorously and prodding it incessantly. The Sophist remains one of my favorite philosophical works.

Mm, I'm of a know-thy-enemy type as well. You fight cancer by studying it rigorously and prodding it incessantly. The Sophist remains one of my favorite philosophical works. — StreetlightX

Great!