I think this to mean that bits of matter somehow represent ideas, in the same way that codes represent objects in, say, computer systems. It seems natural, even obvious.
The problem is that even very simple mental operations can generate enormously divergent patterns of neural activity. Very simple stimulus and response patterns in mice are subject to what is called 'representational drift' - the same stimulus evokes responses in very different regions in the brain over time. Same thing happens with humans, albeit even more complicated. I read that long neurological studies attempted to trace characteristic patterns of activity in human brains when learning simple tasks, like memorising a new word, but that the activities were so divergent that researchers could detect no consistent pattern despite years of studies (see Why Us?, James le Fanu.)
Furthermore, consider the way in which a divergence of symbolic forms can be used to convey the same idea. A number can be represented by a variety of symbols, but they all specify the same idea. So the meaning of the idea is in some sense separable from its physical form. The mind, of course, can recognise such equivalences and translate one form to another - but again, can that be understood as a physical process? I think rather that it's a pretty cogent argument for dualism.
Does God being physical/material affect theism in any significant sense? Speaking for myself, I'm totally ok with God being physical. — TheMadFool
The modern translation is ‘intellect’ but it’s a bit starchy to convey the gist. The Wiki entry is a good intro. ‘nous’ is preserved in vernacular English as being cluey or having a kind of insight — Wayfarer
Further, apart from both the perceptibles and the Forms are the objects of mathematics, he says, which are intermediate between them, differing from the perceptible ones in being eternal and immovable, and from the Forms in that there are many similar ones, whereas the Form itself in each case is one only. ( Metaphysics 987b14-18)
... the pure arithmetical units and perfect geometric exemplars hinted at in the Divided
Line passage or at Philebus 56d-e are, in fact, not onta at all. Rather, they are the way Forms appear, or are thought and related to, in the medium of mathematical διάνοια – a medium by its very nature incapable of thinking Forms directly.
I think that "God", if he exists at all, could be anything.
The point is not to decide in advance what ultimate reality is. The point is to have an experience of it.
In the meantime, there can be nothing wrong with referring to it as "the unfathomable, ineffable, One". — Apollodorus
But I think there's a theme in world philosophy of there being 'mind' in a sense more general than 'the individual mind', yours or mine. — Wayfarer
My question is if the reach of language exceeds experience (2nd case above), doesn't this mean experience, all manners of experience, is, for that simple reason, always effable? — TheMadFool
That's why I can't buy into this idea that it's simply something humans thought up, it's the discovery of something deep about nature herself. When Galileo said the book of nature is written in mathematics, he wasn't simply employing poetic allegory.. — Wayfarer
No matter where I looked, the platonic forms were not found. — Corvus
The man who as far as possible uses his thought in its own right to access each reality, neither adducing the evidence of his sight in his thinking nor bringing any other sense at all along with the reasoning, but using his thought alone by itself and unalloyed, and so attempting to hunt down each real thing alone by itself and unalloyed, separated as far as possible from eyes and ears and virtually from his entire body, for the reason that the body disturbs his soul and, whenever it associates with it, doesn't let it acquire truth and wisdom, is the man who will attain to the knowledge of reality (Phaedo 66a)
You hunt something down by following its tracks until you see it. The tracks of the Forms are the universals, the things whose properties can be perceived in particulars .... — Apollodorus
The Form was always very tricky part in Plato. — Corvus
But I think there's a theme in world philosophy of there being 'mind' in a sense more general than 'the individual mind', yours or mine. Actually I'm embarking on a course of studying the current philosopher, Bernardo Kastrup, who has this kind of philosophy. — Wayfarer
That isn't an entirely bad question. And, of course, we could call the Good, the One, or God a "Quale" if we really wanted to. :smile:
However, my point is that what matters is not to name the object of experience but to experience it. And if we choose to name it, we may equally go for one of the names used by Plato himself (or by later Platonists). "The One" seems fairly neutral (as opposed to "God", for example) and would fit an object of experience of this nature IMO. — Apollodorus
Well, the ancient Greeks started the ball rolling. — Corvus
No matter where I looked, the platonic forms were not found. Now I am guessing, they could be my intuition or pure reason. — Corvus
... I feared that my soul would be altogether blinded if I looked at things with my eyes and tried to grasp them with each of my senses. So I thought I must take refuge in discussions and investigate the truth of beings by means of accounts [logoi] … On each occasion I put down as hypothesis whatever account I judge to be mightiest; and whatever seems to me to be consonant with this, I put down as being true, both about cause and about all the rest, while what isn’t, I put down as not true.” (99d-100a)
They are the mathematical or eidetic models of the elements fire, water, air, and earth. — Fooloso4
The Platonic forms are materializations of the corresponding eternal forms in Platonic heaven. — Prishon
Math describes them exactly but it doesn't privide an image of the forms — Prishon
The forms can never be known. — Prishon
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