It's not within the provice of philosophy as now understood, that's for sure. — Wayfarer

But what could philosophy be other than rational discourse? If the esoteric is outside the bounds of rational discourse, and if philosophy cannot be anything other than rational discourse, then how could the esoteric be within the purview of philosophy?

But what could philosophy be other than rational discourse? If the esoteric is outside the bounds of rational discourse, and if philosophy cannot be anything other than rational discourse, then how could the esoteric be within the purview of philosophy? — Janus

The same problem must be faced with regard to Plato's dialectic. Reasoned speech cannot lead to knowledge of the Forms. Dialectic is nothing more than reasoned speech.

I could point to the work of various highly regarded scholars whose reading too is what you would regard as tendentious, — Fooloso4

I think there is a tendency to deprecate the mystical aspects of Plato, as it sits uncomfortably with naturalism, but as Plato is such an important figure, then he has to be accomodated. You even see that in the footnotes of the online edition I was reading.

I'm casting around for some of the congenial commentators. I rather like Raphael Demos.

Plato hardly claims the power to grasp absolute truth for himself. Very often, when approaching the territory of final metaphysical ideas, he abandons the style of logical exposition for that of myth or poetry. There is something characteristically unfinished about his thought; he eschews neat systems and his intuitions often jostle one another. By contrast, the works of any commonplace thinker leave an impression of extreme artificiality in their orderly array of premises leading inevitably to the one possible conclusion. That is not -- one reflects -- how the thinker actually arrived at the solution; those neat proofs do not represent the complex processes of his mind in its fumbling quest. Only after he had worked out his thought to its conclusion, did he conceive of the systematic pattern which he sets down in his book. Nor is he really as pleased with the solution as he claims to be; in his mind, the conclusion is rather a tentative answer standing uncertainly against a background of aggressive alternatives impatient to replace it. Now, in Plato's works, we have not the manufactured article, but the real thing; we have the picture of a mind caught in the toils of thinkings we get the concrete process by which he struggled to a conclusion, the hesitation amongst the thousand different standpoints, the doubts and the certainties together. The dialogues are, each one, a drama of ideas; in their totality, they depict the voyage of a mind in which any number of ports are visited before the anchor is finally east. And at the end, it is as though the ship of thought were unable to stay in the harbor but had to cast anchor outside; for according to Plato the mind must be satisfied with a distant vision of the truth, though it may grasp reality intimately at fleeting intervals.

http://www.ditext.com/demos/plato.html

That reminds me of Arthur Koestler's book, The Sleepwalkers, about how many of the great modern scientists arrived at their seminal insights through serendipity, chance, co-incidence and happenstance - not at all through a methodical application of steps. And often their great discovery was not what they set out to find.

Dialectic is nothing more than reasoned speech. — Fooloso4

I thought the point about dialectic, in particular, was that as it arises from discourse between opposing points of view, then it discloses a kind of understanding that is impossible to state plainly. A dialectical understanding emerges through the dialogue but it is not the property of any one of the participants. (The Madhyamika dialectic is another example.)

what could philosophy be other than rational discourse? — Janus

There's a lot in philosophy that is not stated, but assumed. You might assume that science is normative for what ought to be considered real, and that much else in philosophical discourse is a matter of feeling or akin to poetry. And that in turn depends on some very basic and therefore deep presuppositions about the nature of reality. Most people are inclined to philosophical realism by nature and that is reinforced by the culture we're in. Given those starting points, then you can proceed with as much rational discourse as you wish, but you won't be inclined to agree with anything that oversteps what you consider those limits.

But I just cannot project some kind of 'trans-human' status on another human being. Obviously some people are generally wiser or or more virtuous or more skilled than others, but it's an uncertain continuum. We're all still fallible, vulnerable humans. — j0e

We are not in a position to know if any sage really 'has it' as we don't know what 'it' is and presumably, following the logic of higher consciousness, the ordinary person probably also lacks the capacity to see higher truth when it appears, so how do we know if teaching is right? How can we judge them by their works if judgment is down to us? I can't even tell if my mechanic is being straight with me...

On dialectic.

These things themselves that they mold and draw, of which there are shadows and images in water, they now use as images, seeking to see those things themselves, that one can see in no other way than with thought."
"What you say is true," he said.
"Well, then, this is the form I said was intelligible. However, a soul in investigating it is compelled to use hypotheses, and does not go to a beginning because it is unable to step out above the hypotheses. And it uses as images those very things of which images are made by the things below, and in comparison with which they are opined to be clear and are given honor."
"I understand," he said, "that you mean what falls under geometry and its kindred arts."

"Well, then, go on to understand that by the other segment of the intelligible I mean that which argument itself grasps with the power of dialectic, making the hypotheses not beginnings but really hypotheses - that is, steppingstones and springboards - in order to reach what is free from hypothesis at the beginning of the whole.

The problem is, how does one free himself from hypothesis? How does one use hypotheses as a springboard? Does one simply jump back to what is free from hypothesis? How does one land at the beginning of the whole?

I think there is a tendency to deprecate the mystical aspects of Plato, as it sits uncomfortably with naturalism, but as Plato is such an important figure, then he has to be accomodated. — Wayfarer

I attempt, to the extent that I am able, to read Plato on his own terms, and certainly not from the perspective of naturalism. I too once believed that the ascent from the cave and the power of dialectic was a description of the mystical experience of truth. I no longer see things that way. Among other things, it occurred to me that I had no knowledge or experience of transcendence. Like many others I mistook his image of knowledge for knowledge itself, just like the cave dwellers mistake the images on the cave wall.

Among other things, it occurred to me that I had no knowledge or experience of transcendence. — Fooloso4

Just because we don’t have it, doesn’t mean it isn’t real. So that is rather like an argument from ignorance. I hasten to add, I don’t claim to possess such an insight either - but I don’t recoil from the possibility that Plato understood things that I cannot. In that sense I have to take what he says on faith - not religious faith, but acceptance of the possibility that there are modes of knowing that I myself can’t access. I’m after all merely an example of the hoi polloi.

To ‘reach what is free from hypothesis’ I would take to be the direct apprehension of the forms. It is seeing the form that we know what something is, to the extent that it is knowable.

That excerpt we discussed the other day:

”... our present argument indicates,” said I, “that the true analogy for this indwelling power in the soul and the instrument whereby each of us apprehends is that of an eye that could not be converted to the light from the darkness except by turning the whole body. Even so this organ of knowledge must be turned around from the world of becoming together with the entire soul, like the scene-shifting periact in the theater, until the soul is able to endure the contemplation of essence and the brightest region of being. — 518c

Surely that indicates insight into the ‘what is’ of Parmenides, distinct from the ‘world of becoming’ which is the mutable world of perishing things. Which turning around I think is very ‘painful’, analogous to ‘being dazzled by the brilliance of the sun’. I take it to be ‘noetic insight into the realm of Forms’.

The way this later became developed in later hylomorphic dualism was that the mind sees the form by directly apprehending it, while the senses perceive the physical thing. ‘if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of nous 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.’ - Thomistic Psychology, Brennan.

We are not in a position to know if any sage really 'has it' as we don't know what 'it' is and presumably, following the logic of higher consciousness, the ordinary person probably also lacks the capacity to see higher truth when it appears, so how do we know if teaching is right? How can we judge them by their works if judgment is down to us? I can't even tell if my mechanic is being straight with me... — Tom Storm

Agreed. At least with the mechanic you can see if your car starts. I suppose a person could get high on the aura of a guru and their 'car starts' in that sense (because they believe, through their projection), so that's why I like the 'works whether or not you believe in it' criterion of science/technology.

Yeah, when I think of naturalized esotericism, I tend to think of artistic movements. That sort of thing feels inevitable, and natural to me. Of course there will be the temptation for those, in a circle, to use their privileged space in the circle for esteem, sex etc - but, that's part of it, it's hard to find fault there. — csalisbury

Right, and we might think if Nietzsche, the philosopher-artist , who spoke of 'rank' and the 'pathos of distance.' The great philosopher is a creator, an exalted 'liar,' a strong poet who brings new metaphors that cool down and harden into common-sense literality. We can think of the art-poetry of philosophy, adjacent to art manifestos. If cognition if metaphorical and metaphors are the core content of philosophy, then it's perhaps only the openness of the conversation that sets it apart. There's no guru in control. There's a clash of metaphors. There's an ethic of giving reasons, making a case, assimilating or neutralizing objections. 'Logic is a gentleman's agreement,' and rationality (seems to me) is fundamentally ethical-social, a respect for the other and the self, the other as the self in some sense.

I think the 'ideal of the Sage' is one who has transcended fallible human nature. Philosophically speaking, the point of dualism is that the human is in some essential respect an instance of a universal intelligence which has taken birth in human form and then forgotten their real nature (hence anamnesis, 'un-forgetting). So the 'sage' awakens to his/her 'true nature' beyond the viscissitudes of physical existence. (That is even implicit in the NT - 'It is not I that live, but Christ liveth in me'Gal. 2:20) This is the substance of Alan Watts' book The Supreme Identity. — Wayfarer

I think some version of the sage is dear to every philosopher. Not I but Reason thru me. Not I but Science thru me. The sub-sage self is a distortion in the lens, or some impurity in the lamp oil. Roughly I think the theory of reincarnation is metaphorically true. I think unforgetting is metaphorically true. IMV, as an individual comes to maturity, certain metaphors or stories make sense in a new way. I think anamnesis is something like waking up to a sense of connection with the dead and those not yet born, to being embedded in the conversation, to be made mostly of the same inherited fragments, comforted by perennial parables.

I think this gets it more or less right.

Unlike sense experience, thought is essentially communicable. Thinking is not an activity performed by the individual person qua individual. It is the activity of spirit, to which Hegel famously referred in the Phenomenology as “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’” Pure spirit is nothing but this thinking activity, in which the individual thinker participates without himself (or herself) being the principal thinking agent. ... Individual thinking subjects, while able to participate in the life of spirit, do not cease in doing so to exist as corporeally distinct entities who remain part of nature, and are thus not pure spirit. — link

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/

The stumbling block for some will be: thinking is not an activity performed by the individual person qua individual. The tempting performative contradiction will be that 'this is not rational, this is not allowed, one has to justify claims, make correct inferences.' Exactly. 'True' thought has a validity beyond the individual. One has to join the conversation. Then there's the anti-Cartesian point that language is not private and a private language does not make sense. I think Wittgenstein's later stuff is a naturalization of this otherwise spooky point.

Anyway, to me the perfect sage is like pure spirit or a signified without the need of a signifier and a system. I can't make sense of it. I don't see the need for it.

(in some cases, it's less clear - a moralist's approach on inner circles, well thought-out: https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/) — csalisbury

Very relevant text.

Let Inner Rings be unavoidable and even an innocent feature of life, though certainly not a beautiful one: but what of our longing to enter them, our anguish when we are excluded, and the kind of pleasure we feel when we get in?

I have no right to make assumptions about the degree to which any of you may already be compromised. I must not assume that you have ever first neglected, and finally shaken off, friends whom you really loved and who might have lasted you a lifetime, in order to court the friendship of those who appeared to you more important, more esoteric. I must not ask whether you have derived actual pleasure from the loneliness and humiliation of the outsiders after you, yourself were in: whether you have talked to fellow members of the Ring in the presence of outsiders simply in order that the outsiders might envy; whether the means whereby, in your days of probation, you propitiated the Inner Ring, were always wholly admirable.
....
Your little musical group limits its numbers because the rooms they meet in are only so big. But your genuine Inner Ring exists for exclusion. There’d be no fun if there were no outsiders. The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong side of it. Exclusion is no accident; it is the essence.
...

And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it. — CS Lewis

Isn't authenticity a quiet theme here? How does one distinguish between spontaneous friendship (which is bound to be selective, I think) and the bad kind of Inner Ring? As with most if not all of life, it's mixed, ambiguous, though some cases might be relatively obvious.

On a personal level: am I being a snob? am I being desperate? I was in the underground music scene years ago and some bands got more attendance and respect than others. If you had a new band and wanted attention, your best bet was to play a show with a popular band. This was 'underground' music, so it was as much about quality and mystique as anything else. A band could have lots of the wrong kind of fans and not be respected. The 'cool kids' (actually adults in late 20s or early 30s) could not be exactly defined (just as people can argue about which famous philosophers deserve their fame) but the idea of cool and the pursuit of it (whatever slippery names it was given) was central. Unsurprisingly, what these musicians talked about was other musicians. In my circle, MC5 was cool (and I still think they fucking rock). It's been easy for me to see intellectual talk as related. On forums you have anonymous/underground philosophers talking about their 'MC5.' It's an endless process, striving to be authentic in some sense, striving against self-flattering biases, against the sadism that wants to create and humiliate outsiders for no good reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oeyt9wNYhnQ

I thought I'd share this passage on Plato's Forms to see what you (and others) make of it.

...there is a central role that the Forms play in the Phaedo and Republic which does concern me here. True knowledge or exact science cannot have as its object sensible things. ...Reasoning in geometry cannot be founded on what we can see and measure, since measurements cannot distinguish between those lines commensurable with a given one and those which are not. More generally, as Whitehead was later on to put it, nature has ragged edges. The terms in which we describe it in exact science don’t literally apply. Then what is exact science about? What are the grounds for calling the theorems of geometry true, for example? Neugebauer, in his discussion of this situation in [1969], suggests with an almost charming innocence that the Greeks simply introduced axiom systems in which the phenomena were idealized and then based truth on provability from the axioms. A wonderful idea! But, unfortunately, not one available to the Greeks in fourth century BC: it was to be more than twenty-three centuries before the idea of a formal axiomatic theory would be invented. For example, Frege did not even understand it: for him, as for the Greeks, axioms have to be true. But what are they true of ? What are, to use Plato’s terms, the corresponding objects? In Metaphysics I vi 2-3, Aristotle traces the motivation for Plato’s doctrine to the influence of Heraclitus’ view that “the whole sensible world is always in a state of flux”. We might take from Neugebauer the suggestion that they are true of an ‘idealization’ of the phenomena. But I think that if we try to spell out what this means, we are led to the view, which I think was essentially Plato’s, that they are true of a certain structure which the phenomena in question roughly exemplify, but which, once grasped, we are capable of reasoning about independently of the phenomena which, in the causal sense, gave rise to it. The theorems of geometry are not literally true of sensible things: indeed, they do not even literally apply to them. No sensible figure can be a point or a line segment or a surface or solid in the sense of geometry. Yet the assumptions made in geometric proofs are also not arbitrary; something provides traction for them. We have the idea of a point, a line segment, a surface, whatever, which we can, by a process of analysis or, as Plato called it, dialectic, come to understand purely rationally, stripped free of its empirical source. I believe that it is this which provided motivation for Plato’s reference to Forms and against which attempts to understand his so-called ‘doctrine of Forms’ should be measured. I believe also that this conception of autonomous reason in the aid of natural science was Plato’s great contribution. — Tait

https://home.uchicago.edu/~wwtx/plato.pdf

You're just dodging @janus's question.

The question was

If the esoteric is outside the bounds of rational discourse, and if philosophy cannot be anything other than rational discourse, then how could the esoteric be within the purview of philosophy? — Janus

That has nothing to do with an assumption of realism. One could be a thoroughgoing idealist and would suffer the same problem. If the knowledge is esoteric then rational discussion of it is pointless.

Yes, that passage is highly relevant. That's also what I'm grappling with. I think the 'ideas' are something very like 'intellectual principles', and that we are led astray by imagining a 'form' to be something like a 'shape'. But it is clear that there are forms of Justice, Beauty, and even Largeness (which baffled me when I first encountered it.) The question always is: what is the real nature of [X], such that by knowing that real nature, we know all instances of [X] rather than just this or that example.

My paraphrase of the principle is that the 'form' of a particular is at once its idea, its organising principle, and what it truly is - its essential nature or essence - whereas this or that individual particular is an ephemeral instance, here one minute, gone the next. So particulars are not intelligible objects of knowledge, because of their temporality. They're only real insofar as the exemplify ('participate in') some form (or idea). It's the idea that is real, the particular is simply a better or worse facsimile.

My rough thumbnail sketch of what this developed into, was the hylomorphic dualism of Aristotle, which was then passed down and transformed for centuries, via the Muslims, and then the Scholastics.

One reference I often point to is this blog post on Thomist psychology -from that and various other neo-thomistic philosophers, including Jacques Maritain and Ed Feser. (There's an entire movement called Critical Thomism which attempts to reconcile Aquinas and Kant, I've hardly scratched the surface of that subject.)

Your quoted passage mentions Heraclitus, but the other essential predecessor is surely Parmenides. It's the unchangeable reality of what truly is, which is discerned by reason. That is essential to understanding the origin of the forms in my view.

But what are they true of? What are, to use Plato’s terms, the corresponding objects? — Tait

This is the question. It shows up in the arguments about platonic realism in mathematics. The first question asked of platonic realism is, in what sense is a number or geometric form 'an object'? I would answer that it's only in a metaphorical sense. When the ancients speak of 'intelligible objects', they're not speaking of literal objects. They're objects of thought - noumenal objects (where 'noumenal' means 'object of nous', intellect). So you might say, where are such objects? They're not located in some literal space. Where is the domain of natural numbers or prime numbers? Obviously it's not anywhere, but there are numbers that are 'inside' and 'outside' of those domains. But they're also not only 'in the mind' because they are the same for all who think. (This as I understand it is Frege's view also. There's a paper called Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge.)

But there was a centuries-long process whereby the reality of intelligible objects became discounted and then rejected (most forcefully by The Great Mustache - 'thinnest and emptiest' etc). That was the decline of scholastic realism, which upheld the reality of universals, and the ascendancy of nominalism, which became ascendant. Most here will advocate nominallism. But,

Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.

In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. — What's Wrong with Ockham? - Joshua Hothschild.

That's an interesting association, thanks!

That has nothing to do with an assumption of realism. One could be a thoroughgoing idealist and would suffer the same problem. — Isaac

That's true; the problem is that the idea of something being both exclusively beyond and also within rational discourse is simply self-contradictory in an entirely ontology-independent way, (of course some may claim there's a virtue in that). I imagine there may be a poetic virtue in it, but I would not agree to any more than that.

the problem is that the idea of something being both exclusively beyond and also within rational discourse is simply self-contradictory in an entirely ontology-independent way, — Janus

Yes. The assumption which I keep raising that @Wayfarer and other apologists keep repeating is that because science (or materialism) doesn't deal with esoteric issues, the alternatives must somehow therefore do so.

What arguments like yours show is that they don't do so either. Nothing does. Except perhaps art, in a subtle way.

As Wittgenstein said "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

And as Ramsey (even better) added "..and we can't whistle it either."

@Wayfarer here is just trying to whistle.

So particulars are not intelligible objects of knowledge, because of their temporality. They're only real insofar as the exemplify ('participate in') some form (or idea). It's the idea that is real, the particular is simply a better or worse facsimile. — Wayfarer

We might think of a species (form) as compared to organisms of that species (particulars). Roughly we talk in terms categories/concepts. 'A dog tried to bite me on the way here.' It was a particular dog, but we can only speak (and perhaps remember and dream) of the concept or bundle of concepts. We can call either the species or the organism 'real,' but it's not clear how this matters apart from other concerns. Feuerbach talked about the difference between bread, which I can eat, and the form or idea of bread, which I can't. A hungry man will call the unnameable particular bread real.

To sensuous consciousness, all words are names – nomina propria. They are quite indifferent as far as sensuous consciousness is concerned; they are all signs by which it can achieve its aims in the shortest possible way. Here, language is irrelevant. The reality of sensuous and particular being is a truth that carries the seal of our blood. ...To sensuous consciousness it is precisely language that is unreal, nothing. How can it regard itself, therefore, as refuted if it is pointed out that a particular entity cannot be expressed in language? Sensuous consciousness sees precisely in this a refutation of language but not a refutation of sensuous certainty. — Feuerbach

But I don't reject concepts, despite F's portrait. Instead, I like H's view.

In my case, the shift is to suggest that every concept we have is essentially nothing but a tightly packaged bundle of analogies, and to suggest that all we do when we think is to move fluidly from concept to concept — in other words, to leap from one analogy-bundle to another — and to suggest, lastly, that such concept-to-concept leaps are themselves made via analogical connection, to boot.
...
The more we live, the larger our repertoire of concepts becomes, which allows us to gobble up ever larger coherent stretches of life in single mental chunks. As we start seeing life’s patterns on higher and higher levels, the lower levels nearly vanish from our perception. This effectively means that seconds, once so salient to our baby selves, nearly vanish from sight, and then minutes go the way of seconds, and soon so do hours, and then days, and then weeks... “Boy, this year sure went by fast!” is so tempting to say because each year is perceived in terms of chunks at a higher, grander, larger level than any year preceding it, and therefore each passing year contains fewer top-level chunks than any year preceding it, and so, psychologically, each year seems sparser than any of its predecessors. — link

http://worrydream.com/refs/Hofstadter%20%20Analogy%20as%20the%20Core%20of%20Cognition.pdf

It's the unchangeable reality of what truly is, which is discerned by reason. That is essential to understanding the origin of the forms in my view. — Wayfarer

That squares with what I know as a non-specialist in this area. In general, philosophy and science chase the eternal, seek to articulate the permanent structure of either the world or the human perception of the world. Some might say 'the real is that which resists.' Others retort that 'the real is that which persists.' Then 'real' is also (explicitly) honorific. 'Now this is real philosophy.'

But they're also not only 'in the mind' because they are the same for all who think. — Wayfarer

To me this leads into social ontology, the manner of being of 'public' entities like meanings. My view on this is predictably Wittgensteinian (and Feuerbachian.) The shared 'meaning field' is embodied in our social habits. There's the dancer and the dance. Meaning is a dance we dance together as individual dancers with our own mortal bodies that have to be trained into the dance and eventually leave, perhaps having changed it a little bit.

Most here will advocate nominallism. — Wayfarer

I'm guessing you'll find mostly (something like) conceptualism. If one rejects the idea that 'exist' has a single, clear meaning, the problem changes or even vanishes. For me it doesn't vanish because we can keep clarifying the big picture without ever getting perfectly clear.

I can't disagree with that!

Then 'real' is also (explicitly) honorific. 'Now this is real jazz.' — j0e

Yes real as opposed to phony, Equivalent to true as opposed to false.

Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.

In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. — What's Wrong with Ockham? - Joshua Hothschild.

I think concepts/analogies work just as well.

Yes real as opposed to phony, Equivalent to true as opposed to false. — Janus

Right. But, roughly, a proposition and a jazz performance aren't false in the same way. 'True' and 'false' seem to me just as flexible as 'real.' For me the take-home is something like: there's no substitute for (linguistic) skill. It's like reacting to the total context when driving.

Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.

In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality — What's Wrong with Ockham? - Joshua Hothschild.

Consider this (more from Hof):

“Why do babies not remember events that happen to them?” ... I do have a hunch, and I will here speculate on the basis of that hunch....it has to do with the relentless, lifelong process of chunking — taking “small” concepts and putting them together into bigger and bigger ones, thus recursively building up a giant repertoire of concepts in the mind. How, then, might chunking provide the clue to these riddles? Well, babies’ concepts are simply too small. They have no way of framing entire events whatsoever in terms of their novice concepts. It is as if babies were looking at life through a randomly drifting keyhole, and at each moment could make out only the most local aspects of scenes before them. It would be hopeless to try to figure out how a whole room is organized, for instance, given just a keyhole view, even a randomly drifting keyhole view. — H

http://worrydream.com/refs/Hofstadter%20%20Analogy%20as%20the%20Core%20of%20Cognition.pdf

I'm not sure if I'm anywhere near the ballpark but the notion of esoteric knowledge is amenable to a rather mundane interpretation which is that so-called sages and ordinary folks, despite similarities, are poles apart in terms of, among other things, values. This immediately creats a rift, unbridgeable it seems, between sages and the hoi polloi and the world of the sage and the world of the average person become mutually unintelligible.

What I want to stress on though is that the sage doesn't actually possess knowledge that's special or transcendental, knowledge that's beyond the reach of the masses in the sense of being intellectually challenging to grasp. Truth be told, the sage sets himself apart from the rest only because his values don't coincide with the values of the general population. In other words, esoteric "knowledge" is a misconception/misnomer if it's understood as a deeper more truthful account of reality requiring genius and perseverance to wrap our heads around.

For the sparkling diamond that is the knowledge of sages, it's not about depth. It's about facets.

ruth be told, the sage sets himself apart from the rest only because his values don't coincide with the values of the general population. In other words, esoteric "knowledge" is a misconception/misnomer if it's understood as a deeper more truthful account of reality requiring genius and perseverance to wrap our heads around. — TheMadFool

Nice point. This fits in with the idea that esoteric statements are (serious) 'poetry' expressing worldviews and self-concepts. The sage is often unworldy, not a seeker of riches, a seeker instead of a simple life that leaves him free to think, to contemplate and compose this esoteric 'poetry,' to share it with others, edit it with others.

Most here will advocate nominallism.
— Wayfarer

I'm guessing you'll find mostly (something like) conceptualism — j0e

I'm inclined to accept Platonic realism - that numbers, concepts, ideas, are real in their own right, not because someone thinks them, and not because they can be explained in terms of neurological activities.

Physics is the question of what matter is. Metaphysics is the question of what is real. People of a rational, scientific bent tend to think that the two are coextensive—that everything is physical. Many who think differently are inspired by religion to posit the existence of God and souls; Nagel affirms that he’s an atheist, but he also asserts that there’s an entirely different realm of non-physical stuff that exists—namely, mental contents. The vast flow of perceptions, ideas, and emotions that arise in each human mind is something that, in his view, is real as something other than merely the electrical firings in the brain that gives rise to them—and it exists as surely as does a brain, a chair, an atom, or a gamma ray.

In other words, even if it were possible to map out the exact pattern of brain waves that give rise to a person’s momentary complex of awareness, that mapping would only explain the physical correlate of these experiences, but it wouldn’t be them. A person doesn’t experience patterns, and her experiences are as irreducibly real as her brain waves are - and different from them. — Richard Brody - Thomas Nagel: Thoughts are Real

We naturally assume that the basis of reality are fundamental particles. But what if the actual bases are ideas? A vastly different vista opens up.

Nice point. This fits in with the idea that esoteric statements are (serious) 'poetry' expressing worldviews and self-concepts. The sage is often unworldy, not a seeker of riches, a seeker instead of a simple life that leaves him free to think, to contemplate and compose this esoteric 'poetry,' to share it with others, edit it with others. — j0e

I don't mean to be disparaging of sages but I find it rather implausible that there could be knowledge that only a select few can get a handle on. Of course, the fact that I find mathematics near impossible to comprehend works against me is not lost on me. Maybe there is such a thing as knowledge that only a few chosen ones can fully understand.

I wonder how the Socratic Paradox (I know that I know nothing) fits into all this?

I don't mean to be disparaging of sages but I find it rather implausible that there could be knowledge that only a select few can get a handle on. Of course, the fact that I find mathematics near impossible to comprehend works against me is not lost on me. Maybe there is such a thing as knowledge that only a few chosen ones can fully understand. — TheMadFool

Earlier in the thread, I suggested that (naturalized) inner circles are actually common. You mention math, a good example, but even in philosophy there's conceptual progress. We take it for granted even that scholars that specialize in a thinker's works are likely to have more insight than beginners. I'm not denying exceptions. Strong philosophers can make a case that an entire tradition of interpretation was or is on the wrong track. So perhaps the real issue is the concept of rationality, the 'gentleman's agreement' that we justify our claims and assimilate criticism. Esotericism is associated, rightly or wrongly, with personal authority. The sage is sometimes cast as having a different kind of access than others to evidence or truths.

I wonder how the Socratic Paradox (I know that I know nothing) fits into all this? — TheMadFool

... I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either.

Great reference. In some ways that's the way of the anti-sage. Socrates is a complex figure. He's an anti-philosopher and philosopher at the same time. In the same way Jesus was a great critic of religion and the center of one.

I'm inclined to accept Platonic realism - that numbers, concepts, ideas, are real in their own right, not because someone thinks them, and not because they can be explained in terms of neurological activities. — Wayfarer

As you know, smart people have held that view. What does 'real in their own right' mean exactly?

What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?

The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.

But if you say: "How am I to know what he means, when I see nothing but the signs he gives?" then I say: "How is he to know what he means, when he has nothing but the signs either?"
— W

There's no way to anchor something like 'pure meaning' except in more signs and actions in the world.

We naturally assume that the basis of reality are fundamental particles. But what if the actual bases are ideas? A vastly different vista opens up. — Wayfarer

Just to be clear, I am much more in the 'ideas' camp than in the 'particles' camp. To me the foundation, to the degree that we want to call it that, since it hovers over an abyss in some sense, is practical life and ordinary language. IMV, 'Particles' and 'ideas' are both idealizations, good for some things and bad for others. 'Ideas' are truer to life as we know it, which is great, but proponents tend to flee from our
and their embodiment, projecting an exactitude and permanence on concepts that they don't have. Plato might have tried to stretch insights about geometric idealization too far.

Of course I'm with you on opening vistas, very much! But perhaps you'll agree that ideas-as-basis is anything but new and well-criticized (which doesn't mean we can't criticize the criticism.)
But even the philosophy I like is largely from the 1970s or before. (I'm a 20th century guy it seems.)

The light dove, in free flight cutting through the air the resistance of which it feels, could get the idea that it could do even better in airless space. — Kant

Signifieds without signifiers-in-a-shared-lifeworld are doves flapping their wings in a vacuum.

How do you respond to this point? (from the Blue Book thread.)

Frege ridiculed the formalist conception of mathematics by saying that the formalists confused the unimportant thing, the sign, with the important, the meaning. Surely, one wishes to say, mathematics does not treat of dashes on a bit of paper. Frege's ideas could be expressed thus: the propositions of mathematics, if they were just complexes of dashes, would be dead and utterly uninteresting, whereas they obviously have a kind of life. And the same, of course, could be said of any propositions: Without a sense, or without the thought, a proposition would be an utterly dead and trivial thing. And further it seems clear that no adding of inorganic signs can make the proposition live. And the conclusion which one draws from this is that what must be added to the dead signs in order to make a live proposition is something immaterial, with properties different from all mere signs.

But if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we have to say that it is its use.
If the meaning of the sign (roughly, that which is of importance about the sign) is an image built up in our minds when we see or hear the sign, then first let us adopt the method we just described of replacing this mental image by some outward object seen, e.g. a painted or modelled image. Then why should the written sign plus this painted image be alive if the written sign alone was dead? -- In fact, as soon as you think of replacing the mental image by, say, a painted one, and as soon as the image thereby loses its occult character, it ceased to seem to impart any life to the sentence at all. (It was in fact just the occult character of the mental process which you needed for your purposes.)

The mistake we are liable to make could be expressed thus: We are looking for the use of a sign, but we look for it as though it were an object co-existing with the sign. (One of reasons for this mistake is again that we are looking for a "thing corresponding to a substantive.")

The sign (the sentence) gets its significance from the system of signs, from the language to which it belongs. Roughly: understanding a sentence means understanding a language.

As a part of the system of language, one may say, the sentence has life. But one is tempted to imagine that which gives the sentence life as something in an occult sphere, accompanying the sentence. But whatever accompanied it would for us just be another sign. — Witt

What does 'real in their own right' mean exactly? — j0e

That they’re not reducible or explainable in other terms; that they’re the terminus of explanation.