Platonic Ideals
About 2400 years ago, a Greek philosopher/scientist named Plato, while in consideration of the natural world as he knew it, as it was then known - as a world of imprecision and approximation - recognized that without exactness and precision there could be no exact a/k/a scientific understanding of the world. His solution to the problem (without any reference here to the hows, whys, and wherefores guiding that solution) was to create the idea of an existing realm where all the perfect originals, as ideals, of all the things in the world, which were somehow imperfect copies of the ideals, could be "found."
Some number of centuries later, the establishment view changed to an understanding that the natural world was created by God, with the consequence that everything in it possessed its own exactitude and perfection. It became, then, the scientist's job to find out exactly what that perfection was.
In short, that for the ancient Greek, the imperfect natural world was not perfectly knowable and so by an admirable feat of imagination he created a perfect world that could be known - but that wasn't the natural world. For Christians, however, this was an impossible situation. For Christians, God made the world and therefore it was already perfect, a fortiori, perfectly knowable, in itself.
The question here isn't what or how exactly Plato thought as to the existence of his ideal world. As the sketch of the history above suggests, it functioned as the solution to a broad set of problems. And in course of time the ground - the absolute presuppositions - of the sciences changed from a Pagan to a Christian understanding, meaning that Plato's solution had lost its ground.
But now millenia later, the question as to the existence of Platonic ideals is still for some people an open question, for others a closed question, but of those there are people on both sides of it.
The question here is, can we settle this question, and determine what the right understanding of Platonic ideals should be?
My own view is that the answer is obvious: Platonic ideals just are ideas of ideas. I have a pretty good idea of what a horse is. I can imagine the idea of a perfect horse, and I can also imagine that my ideas of such a perfection might themselves contain some imperfections, as judged by people who know more about horses than I do.
People like Kurt Godel, however, apparently thought that a Platonic world exists. As it turns out, Godel was also crazy, but that alone does not make his thinking dismissable.
On the question of the status of Platonic ideals, where are we? Where should we be? — tim wood
Platonic ideals
About 2400 years ago, a Greek philosopher/scientist named Plato, while in consideration of the natural world as he knew it, as it was then known - as a world of imprecision and approximation - recognized that without exactness and precision there could be no exact a/k/a scientific understanding of the world. His solution to the problem (without any reference here to the hows, whys, and wherefores guiding that solution) was to create the idea of an existing realm where all the perfect originals, as ideals, of all the things in the world, which were somehow imperfect copies of the ideals, could be "found."
Some number of centuries later, the establishment view changed to an understanding that the natural world was created by God, with the consequence that everything in it possessed its own exactitude and perfection. It became, then, the scientist's job to find out exactly what that perfection was.
In short, that for the ancient Greek, the imperfect natural world was not perfectly knowable and so by an admirable feat of imagination he created a perfect world that could be known - but that wasn't the natural world. For Christians, however, this was an impossible situation. For Christians, God made the world and therefore it was already perfect, a fortiori, perfectly knowable, in itself.
The question here isn't what or how exactly Plato thought as to the existence of his ideal world. As the sketch of the history above suggests, it functioned as the solution to a broad set of problems. And in course of time the ground - the absolute presuppositions - of the sciences changed from a Pagan to a Christian understanding, meaning that Plato's solution had lost its ground.
But now millenia later, the question as to the existence of Platonic ideals is still for some people an open question, for others a closed question, but of those there are people on both sides of it.
The question here is, can we settle this question, and determine what the right understanding of Platonic ideals should be?
My own view is that the answer is obvious: Platonic ideals just are ideas of ideas. I have a pretty good idea of what a horse is. I can imagine the idea of a perfect horse, and I can also imagine that my ideas of such a perfection might themselves contain some imperfections, as judged by people who know more about horses than I do.
People like Kurt Godel, however, apparently thought that a Platonic world exists. As it turns out, Godel was also crazy, but that alone does not make his thinking dismissable.
On the question of the status of Platonic ideals, where are we? Where should we be?
In other contexts it can also mean Original poster, meaning the person who writes the original post.
By the way, when you google "what is an OP?" you get the definition at the top of the results. — jamalrob
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