Please explain to me the theory of forms. Cuz I don't get it.

Forms are basically ideals that don't exist in our reality. Plato states that our reality is but a shadow of a perfect one, in which Forms are real.
In this reality there are perfect shapes, thoughts, tastes and so on. There the ideal is reality.
We know about this reality through our intuition, because we strive towards these Forms. But at the same time we can't really know or attain Forms in our own reality, because it is imperfect.

>plato
>relevant in 2015

Just read Aristotle and disregard Plato. He was a hack.

>>294420
So that ideal reality does litterally exist according to Plato? Or is it symbolic for something? Perhaps that we strive for "forms" that we can never have?

This reminds me of the cave. We only deal with shadows.

>>294423
Why?

>>294363
it's ok we don't get it either

>>294423
Why would you say this so brashly like you had nothing to actually back it up with and you were just trying to be relevant?

Oh.

>>294451
Plato has no proof aside from intuition. Because we strive towards perfection, we know it must exist.

Basically it's the same as Santa Clause. You have to 'believe' yo.

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>>294423
>Just read Aristotle and disregard Plato. He was a hack.
aristotle is for normies

I think Phaedo is good, more than any other work . It's not any one dialogue really, though, it's the entire process of dialogue itself. You have to see Plato's dialogues as a ritual, an initiation. If you read Plato in an analytic way to break down his points and discover his opinions and try to assess where he fits in the history of Western philosophy, etc., you are reading him wrong (or, at least, not on his own terms). The point is to have your mind swept up in the process of the dialogue, to be fully and completely engaged in it. The dialogue begins with the presentation of an idea, then that idea is attacked, a new idea is offered to correct it, etc., all the while your mind is being trained to contemplate ideas fairly without dismissing them out of hand. Then, when the dialogue reaches its peak, your mind reaches a state of aporia (loss, confusion). This is when your mind feels completely blank. It's hard to describe. Your mind loses all perception, you totally forget the world, your surroundings, your self, and are just in the immediate presence of your own mind. This is when you realise that you have a mind and how immanent it is. The danger here is that you will fall into the Hindu trap of believing that you are part of the divine mind that makes up existence, the experience is that powerful. And then the dialogue introduces its best take of the ideal (usually given by Socrates), and your now freed-up mind is able to contemplate the idea as though it were a statue stood right in front of you.

Plato was discoursing on his theory of ideas and, pointing to the cups on the table before him, said while there are many cups in the world, there is only one 'idea' of a cup, and this cupness precedes the existence of all particular cups.
"I can see the cup on the table," interrupted Diogenes, "but I can't see the 'cupness'".
"That's because you have the eyes to see the cup," said Plato, "but", tapping his head with his forefinger, "you don't have the intellect with which to comprehend 'cupness'."
Diogenes walked up to the table, examined a cup and, looking inside, asked, "Is it empty?"
Plato nodded.
"Where is the 'emptiness' which precedes this empty cup?" asked Diogenes.
Plato allowed himself a few moments to collect his thoughts, but Diogenes reached over and, tapping Plato's head with his finger, said "I think you will find here is the 'emptiness'."

>>294473
>hindu trap

Are you a christfag?

>>294490
I know Plato has a habit of doing that. I remember him saying that we would prefer four legged horses over horses with three because "horseness" has to do something with four legs. Someone said he looked at a group of horses but only saw a group of individual horses. No "horseness" sillyness. Plato simply said the man was lacking intelligence.

>>294506
Well it's strange
Do universals exist without us prescribing them?

Who know not me

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noumenon

It's the grey zone where religion and philosophy are at the crossroads.

>>294473
,Sad little christ fag. You may as well swap plato for the bible. That's the same sophistry you use for 'understanding' your holy book.

> don't read it with your intelect read it with you heart

Fuck off

>>294761
>being an euphiruc redditor
>any time, any year
Why?

>>294802
I don't reddit.
I have more sense than that or you

>>294490
Diogenes being a based motherfucked as usual

Someone post the 'muh forms, muh forms mothafucka"

>>294490
Holy fucking shit, Diogenes

>>294473
Fucking sweet.

I've read a little bit of Gadamer so I'm pretty keen on reading some Plato again. He set up a good refutation against Heidegger and against people who separate Aristotle too much from Plato.

Bump to save

I'll address OP in a little bit; I just need to type up some key passages to discuss.

>>294473
Kek, so that really has become copypasta now?

>>294363
>something something cups
>something something cupness
>something something emptyness
>something something your head is empty
>fucking rekt

>>294473
Explain the hindu trap plz and how to avoid it

>>294490
So Pluto described object oriented programming before computers were even invented.
Dat sick burn tho.

TOF is Plato's attempt to explain why we have an intuitive knowledge of concepts like "beauty" and "justice" (he didn't really focus on what the forms meant for physical objects) when we can't give a universal description to them. The beauty of a women and the beauty of a good book are two different things yet we can see them both. So he prosed the theory of the forms which says that things in this world share likeness to a "Form". As an anon said before a Form is a perfect ideal and everything has a Form. There is a perfect ideal of beauty and that is the Form of beauty which exist in the realm of Forms. (He explains this more in the analogy of the cave). We recognize things as beautiful because they are imitations of the Form.

>>294363
Okay, so the thing about the "theory of forms" is that there really isn't any such "theory" (in a modern sense) in the dialogues, and that problem is exacerbated by the fact that the forms get different treatments in almost every dialogue where they appear, and that sometimes we're supposed to have noticed that they don't show up where we'd expect them to (the clearest example of this is in the Theaetetus; there are moments when Socrates seems to hinting at something like forms to Theaetetus, but Theaetetus never picks up on any of it).

So, okay, the forms might not be presented in quite the way that scholars persist in presenting them; but that still doesn't answer the question of what the hell the forms are and why so many conversations in the dialogues touch on them.

First things first; there are two Greek words that usually end up getting translated as "form":

Eidos/Eide: The term comes from the verb "eidenai," which means "to know," but which has the primary sense "to see," and the character of the former sense comes out of this latter sense (roughly, "knowing by sight"). The word "eidos," then, originally meant "shape" or "visible appearance" or "apparent look," and quickly took on the meaning of "kind" or of "form." At least in Plato's writings, its use is supposed to be really strange and striking; the "apparent look" of invisible things.

"Idea/Ideai": This term comes from the same verb as the above, but as a noun it often connotes the actual visible look of things. It *can* mean "apparent look" like "eidos" usually does, but more often then not it refers to something you can see. There may be other nuances to this term that are simply missed by conflating it with "eidos," but we should note that in the Republic, there's a lot of speaking about "eide," but the Good is called an "idea". The distinction is somewhat mysterious.

(cont.)

>>297198
Now, the best way to understand them is to look at a few select passages from the dialogues where they get discussed, and to discern what kind of questions they're supposed to answer, how they're supposed to answer them, what they are, etc.

If you'd like, I'd be perfectly willing to walk you through some of those passages.

(And my own suspicion is that the forms are just the fundamental problems of philosophy.)

>>297203
What do you mean by
>just the fundamental problems of philosophy

>>294835
>Fuck literary form
>Works of literature work the way I tell them to work
>sense

>>294473
Agreed that Phaedo is one of the best dialogues. He poses all the right questions

>>297233
Exactly that, i.e. the problems that philosophy is always after. Philosophy is characterized in the Symposium as a recognition of one's own lack of knowledge, and the desire to acquire it; it's left as a sort of open question as to whether that's ever actually possible.

My understanding of most of the form passages is that they 1) offer hope to those who are non-philosophers (by Plato's sense of "philosopher"), and that 2) they show to philosophers the fundamental puzzles that need working out. It has to be acknowledged that we *never* get an example in *any* of the dialogues of a complete working out of any of the forms; just lots of hints and suggestions and additional puzzles.

If the philosopher's goal is knowledge of the Whole, then the forms passages are already a problem from a theoretical vantage point; they don't make clear what their relationship to each other ever is, and so we only ever end up with maybe partial knowledge of parts of the Whole.

>>294473
I don't agree that we shouldn't break down his works in an analytic way because he does makes some pretty bold claims (only philosophers are fit to rule, there is another world apart form this one) and people shouldn't give him a pass just because he makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

>>297298
Im sorry but are you trying to say that Plato's theory of the Forms is weak (which is a widely known thing, ever since his pupil brought up the 3 man argument) or are you trying to say Plato's Form's illustrates how hard it is to get at the "big truths"?

>>294473
Copypasta brought to you by https://warosu.org/lit/thread/S7320061#p7320293

>>297343
Closer to the latter, but I don't think the intent is to illustrate a difficulty (I take it that the difficulty falls out from trying to make coherent sense of them), but to provide a weak account of the fundamental questions for the pedagogical purpose of provoking philosophers into inquiry into those topics.

I take it that sometimes we get close to a "true account" of things with a Form-account, but that it's often in the nature of that account to present more questions that are fundamentally part of that truth.

I'm sorry if this all sounds confused; this has been my specific focus for the past couple of years, and shit's hard to discuss outside of readings of the dialogues.

>>294505
probably not but you are definitely an actual fag

>>297380
I think it shows the problem trying to answer the big truths i.e "what is beauty" "what is person hood" using something that isn't empirical and relateble. There simply isn't any credible thing logically or realistically that lends major weight to the theory. I love the guy but he goofed on this one. Do you see any use of this theory outside of being a major basis of religious Judeo-Christian thought(there are other worlds than this one) and being something a cautionary tale?

>>294506
You have to take industry into account.

>>294363
Do you understand the allegory of the cave?

Do you agree that knowledge is useless without the theory of forms?

If you disagree with either of these things then Plato is not for you.

>>297499
You can understand the allegory without having to agree with it. Also you can reject his theory of the Forms and still be into Plato considering the huge impact he had on other various branches of philosophy.

>>297499
Yeah, I think I get the cave. But would the "forms" be comparable to the objects casting the shadows then? And that we only see the shadows, which represent our reality?

>>297515
Are you irreligious?

Do you like continuity?

>>297531
No

Yes

>>297441
>Do you see any use of this theory outside of being a major basis of religious Judeo-Christian thought(there are other worlds than this one) and being something a cautionary tale?
Truth be told, I'm not sure I see any *use* for Plato's ideas, but then, I don't think the theoretical always has to be useful. If you're asking if there's any continuing theoretical relevance in them that I see, I do, but neither modern scientists nor modern philosophers (whether analytic or continental) are going to be interested in hearing that or taking a look for themselves; shit requires a lot of work to get down, and lot of easy and common misunderstandings to correct, and why bother spending all of that time on an Ancient Greek thinker whose work might not result in cool new technology, more grant money, or the support of modern ethical/political pieties?

>I think it shows the problem trying to answer the big truths i.e "what is beauty" "what is person hood" using something that isn't empirical and relateble.
I take it that that's not quite the problem; the mysterious thing is that sometimes the forms do seem to point to something true, but it's never as clear as we'd like it to be. Certainly the lack of empirical evidence of such "beings" can be troubling, but modern science is in its own way actually *founded* on an understanding of the forms, by way of Galileo and Descartes; the introduction of mathematics into physics relies upon math not being *merely* a model, since sometimes the equations are trying at their utmost to describe reality, and then the "laws" of physics are pretty much forms in more modern dressing and language--they've been given a haircut to keep with the times, but the laws aren't themselves empirical entities that we can see, but are inferred in much the way forms are.

>>297517
>But would the "forms" be comparable to the objects casting the shadows then?
Interesting question; I don't think so, but think that the objects outside of the cave would correspond more with the forms. The shadows in the cave depend on what are (in actual fact) themselves images (in sculptural form) of things outside of the cave--so the shadows are an image of an image.

>>297517
Yes. Humans and their appearance (you can choose anything from shoes to dildos) have changed throughout the years we as a species have been on this planet. Th conceptualization of a person (the soul, personality, essence) has stayed almost constant throughout time and civilizations. When you die the conceptualization of the self is gone (maybe to inhabit another body, maybe to go to heaven, maybe to just float around). The concept of the self stays which is the intellect or the soul (im drunk).

Everything is not as it seems.

>>294490

To be fair, empty and emptiness are not constructs of the human mind, and so Plato's idea does not logically extend to it/them. Dude shouldn't have insulted Diogenes, but he wasn't shown to be wrong in that dialogue.

>>297570
Alright, so "forms" are kind of like templates.

>>297550
>neither modern scientists nor modern philosophers (whether analytic or continental) are going to be interested in hearing that or taking a look for themselves. I would have to disagree with that, I would argue that most modern thinkers acknowledge the impact and importance of Plato, its just that there's been to many developments for him to have any continued large relevance. There is simply nothing left of Platonic philosophy that hasn't been used or discarded.

I'm talking about how the theory shows that anything that seeks to explain *not just describe* the world needs to have something natural because that how we humans experience the world, and using a theory that starts from an supernatural basis is useless. (I think Aquinas said that).
> "laws" of physics are pretty much forms in more modern dressing and language
Not to be rude but can you explain this?

>>297613
Yeah, perfect eternal templates that exist in an imperfect form in our reality.

>>297613
Not him, but Yes. Someone in this thread said Plato described Object oriented programming. This is a very useful metaphor in the modern day, I find.

HORSE.DLL or whatever, may have different emergent properties when accessed through the program, but it all draws from the same source. I'm also drunk, so this may not make sense.

>>297619
>I would have to disagree with that, I would argue that most modern thinkers acknowledge the impact and importance of Plato, its just that there's been to many developments for him to have any continued large relevance. There is simply nothing left of Platonic philosophy that hasn't been used or discarded.
>I'm talking about how the theory shows that anything that seeks to explain *not just describe* the world needs to have something natural because that how we humans experience the world, and using a theory that starts from an supernatural basis is useless. (I think Aquinas said that).
I don't think I agree with that (that subsequent developments make his work of limited relevance). But any further discussion of that would seem to me to make too much of a matter that depends on considering how others *could* take his work. I suppose I could be tempted to say something or other more explicit about that without regard for whether it would ever be recognized as such, but otherwise it seems maybe too tangential, and easier to opine on instead of demonstrate without lots of references to other movements in science, political science, modern philosophy, etc.

As for the "supernatural" quality of the forms, I don't think that holds either; the "natural" character of the forms is firstly a big question in Plato, let alone the question of what Nature itself is, but to take Aquinas himself as an example, his ideas rely a lot on logic and metaphysical concepts--is any of that "natural" by a purely empirical standpoint? Probably not, but if modern science itself won't push too hard on something like that, since non-empirical concepts make up a good deal of good, useful, and maybe true science.

>Not to be rude but can you explain this?
All I mean by that is that the laws are not empirical objects; they're often either mathematical or metaphysical principles that somehow underlies physical phenomena that we can empirically account for.

>>297692
> laws are not empirical objects;
Yes but their often base on empirical evidence or based on substantiated logic. Plato's theory of the Forms is different because it starts from a premise of "Oh we all recognize beauty but what is beauty?" and makes a unjustifiable leap of logic to "must be Forms". It's unnatural because we have no experience of the world outside of the cave where the Form resides yet he makes claims there exist one without giving any proper evidence. He makes no call for the Forms to be "natural".

>>297692
>Aquinas himself as an example, his ideas rely a lot on logic and metaphysical concepts--is any of that "natural" by a purely empirical standpoint
And that's a problem with a some of his arguments.

>>294363

evolution proves his theory is wrong

>>297791
He says that our world is constantly changing and is imperfect but seeks perfection. Evolution arguably shows all of this.

>>297803
The concepts are constantly changing, it;s better if you think of it like that. They will never achieve the perfection, which is awesome.

>>297791
Explain

>>297819
>concepts are constantly changing
No they're not. That is a definite misunderstanding of his theory of the Forms. One important point of them is to create an objective answer to Socrates question "what is valour" (interesting historical note, he made this theory as a fuck you to increasing popularity sophist relativistic answers to questions like these). To Plato change imply's imperfection, and if the Form's are imperfect then there is literally no distinction between this world and the world of the Forms.

>>297819
Sorry the physical manifestations of these concepts are always changing, you can say the world too.

>>297846
Yeah i dun' confuzed mighself

>>297864
No problem dude.

>>297751
>Yes but their often base on empirical evidence or based on substantiated logic.
That seems fine, but doesn't that also kind of sidestep the issue of whether scientific laws are themselves empirical? Especially in cases where the laws is a mathematical formalization that other scientists use, it's not the phenomena that the laws are based on, but the laws themselves as somehow "true" and "real" that are referred to. As for their being based on "substantiated logic," I think that just compounds the problematic status of laws *if* one adheres to a strict empirical framework, since that logic is not itself empirical.

>Plato's theory of the Forms is different because it starts from a premise of "Oh we all recognize beauty but what is beauty?" and makes a unjustifiable leap of logic to "must be Forms".
I don't think that's true, but I want to clarify something first, and that's that I disagree with the traditional understanding of the forms as a "theory," and characterizing them further with that assumption, for reasons I noted at >>297198. And again, my characterization of them as "fundamental problems" means that we're maybe arguing slightly at cross-purposes; I think, to be clear, that *we both agree* that the usual characterization of the forms is worthless and unjustifiable.

That said, I don't think his inquiry into the forms is quite as your characterization, though there is certainly the procedural element of starting an inquiry by investigating common experiences and opinions.

>It's unnatural because we have no experience of the world outside of the cave where the Form resides yet he makes claims there exist one without giving any proper evidence. He makes no call for the Forms to be "natural".
Doesn't Socrates in the dialogues kind of disagree with that characterization though? The problems of the forms find their ground in recognizing that the world is intelligible at all, but that what makes the world intelligible is somehow less intelligible.
(c.)

>>294363
Plato is a cunt, and forms are merely spooks.

>>297895
Now, with respect to the claim made about a separate realm of forms, I don't think that it's made as strongly as most people think, and Plato already is aware of the usual consequences of a strong view of that, as evidenced in an argument made in the dialogue Parmenides. (One would rather have to ask why Socrates makes something close to such a characterization to his interlocutors in the Republic; I think it's related to the fact that he's talking to two non-philosophers who seem to have trouble with the metaphysical accounts Socrates is getting into.)

But again, the question could still be asked: Are laws of nature "natural"? If yes, then one has to specify further why the forms are denied to be such, since they, as with laws of nature, are ostensibly intelligible suppositions that ground certain inquiries without *strict* empirical evidence. If not, we have to supply the answer to what Nature is in order to show that they aren't natural, and to do so without assuming from the outset that Nature is *only* intelligible by empiricism.

>>297763
But that problem is also true of science, and in such a way that is pretty trivial and that doesn't really cause many scientists (or almost anyone) to lose sleep. Or does science make no use of the concepts that are themselves unempirical? (E.g., can you "see" time?)

>>297846
>One important point of them is to create an objective answer to Socrates question "what is valour" (interesting historical note, he made this theory as a fuck you to increasing popularity sophist relativistic answers to questions like these).
What?

Where's our evidence that 1) Plato the forms belong to Plato alone, and that 2) he developed them only as a response to the Sophistic movement?

>>297895
I think in terms of "Scientific laws" those that aren't "empirical" have %100 basis on natural phenomenon or connected. I guess the main distinction is that these "laws" (the widely accepted ones) are falsifiable, you can prove whether a2=b2+c2 or the structure of an atom to a large extent. You can't falsify the Forms. I do dig your idea but I have to say the traditional idea of it being a "theory" is probably true because I would argue that he uses it as a basis for his "philosopher king" deal and is clearly alluded to in his analogy of the cave. And Laws of nature (Im using laws of nature as Scientific laws) are often "natural" in the sense that they don't base themselves on anything outside of our world i.e they deal with concepts that are relate.

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>>295168

>>297971
Wow that was bad writing but oh well. >But that problem is also true of science. Unfortunate its much more glaring in these philosophy due to the nature of the claims that are being made.

>>297952
Ok the 1) Yes it is Plato alone what are you talking about? He made the idea nigga damn. 2) Didn't say it as "only" a response. It was a nice added bonus.

>>297952
Ok the 1) Yes it is Plato alone what are you talking about? He made the idea nigga damn. 2) Didn't say it as "only" a response. It was a nice added bonus, as he really didn't like them.

>>297971
>I think in terms of "Scientific laws" those that aren't "empirical" have %100 basis on natural phenomenon or connected. I guess the main distinction is that these "laws" (the widely accepted ones) are falsifiable, you can prove whether a2=b2+c2 or the structure of an atom to a large extent.
I think we're in agreement on all that.

>You can't falsify the Forms.
I think you could, actually, and the issue with the approach would be more a matter of sheer length of proving it rather than it failing to be falsifiable. There are some suggestions in several dialogues (especially Parmenides and Phaedo) about how one might go about something of that sort.

>I do dig your idea but I have to say the traditional idea of it being a "theory" is probably true because I would argue that he uses it as a basis for his "philosopher king" deal and is clearly alluded to in his analogy of the cave.
Heh, this is something I've gone over on /lit/, actually:

https://warosu.org/lit/thread/S7271096#p7271706

>And Laws of nature (Im using laws of nature as Scientific laws) are often "natural" in the sense that they don't base themselves on anything outside of our world i.e they deal with concepts that are relate.
Okay, I agree with that, but is that not the case with the forms? I.e., are the forms not somehow an attempt to make sense of this world? If one asks about where the forms are, why could not one ask about where the Laws of Nature in the same way?

>>298039
>I think you could
I would be supper interested in how you could Falsify a post-mortem world or the existence of perfected concepts.
>Heh, this is something I've gone over on /lit/, actually:
Have you talked about the fact that the world of the Forms is if not in, heavily implied by the prisoner moving outside the cave/our world.
>but is that not the case with the forms?
I would have to say it really is not the case for the Forms, it can't be, simply because when applied to physical things it fails, look at the 3 man argument by Aristotle. He really isn't clear at all on how to apply the Forms to physical things. Its not enough for a theory to try and describe the world to be "natural". The theory has to essentially be natural, one glaring example of Plato not doing this is by separating the "form" of something from the thing itself.

OK so from what I can gather there are two 'worlds' one with perfect templates and the other is our world with imperfect forms

Are there any connections between the forms of our world and the other or did we see a snapshot of the perfect forms before we are conceived?
Is the perfect form world only existent in each individuals brain? eg: one cannot think of a cup itself without thinking of a particular cup but everyone's particular cup is not the same.
I understand everyones idea of cupness would be the same so is that where the idea comes from that for this idea of cupness to exist we need to all draw the idea from somewhere?

>>298072
*Theory has to have an essential part that is natural.

>>298072
>I would be supper interested in how you could Falsify a post-mortem world or the existence of perfected concepts.
I don't there's anything all that special about it. How do you falsify concepts, or of unempirical principles necessary for the explanation of physical phenomena?

>Have you talked about the fact that the world of the Forms is if not in, heavily implied by the prisoner moving outside the cave/our world
Uhh, I'm sorry, but I honestly can't make heads or tails of what you're asking me. I just offered that link in support of a reading of the Republic that doesn't take the philosopher-king to be a Platonic teaching or goal. Discussing specifics in dialogues is like pulling teeth, whether here or on /lit/, but if you'd like me to go over the Cave passage in detail, I'd be willing to.

>it can't be, simply because when applied to physical things it fails, look at the 3 man argument by Aristotle
Just as a matter of clarification, Aristotle's criticism is that *a particular* understanding of the forms suffers an infinite regress, but that's not something Plato was ignorant of, since Aristotle, being a bit of a trickster himself, is suppressing the fact that his argument is actually an argument that Plato wrote in the Parmenides.

As for the rest, it still seems that you're taking the forms to essentially be as described by scholars who think there is a "theory of forms," and again, I think we agree in our criticism of that, but I also don't think Plato's doing that.

>The theory has to essentially be natural, one glaring example of Plato not doing this is by separating the "form" of something from the thing itself.
Something already addressed in the aforementioned Parmenides. ;^P

>>298113
>there's anything all that special about it
Not to be mean but there is. Not to be condensing but in the physical sciences for a theory to be considered a thing you have to outline how to falsify it (even if it's impossible with currently). If you can't outline it there is usually experiments or previous evidence that point to something. You see you can't falsify concept but you can falsify unemperical principles (but these tend to exist in maths and are falsfied by logic). Platos *idea/suggestion of the forms have nothing to this effect. I think your being (not to be annoying or anything) intentionally ignorant that Plato was a dualist (as most Greeks were) and did believe in the world of the Forms. This is shown clearly by the his analogy of the cave. I was asking if you'd addressed the fact that Plato does believe in an illogical world of the Forms due to his anaology of the cave. Also the fact that it isn't a "theory" or even a well devolped argument I think further shows its uselessness. Is it that much to expect for something that attempts to explain our world and the big truths to make a bit more sense and be a bit more developed? Im supper dumb so could you explain to me more about the "afro mentioned Parmenides".

>>298160
What I'm trying to say is Plato is clearly appealing to a world seperate from ours, with universal laws that work like ours, therefore is unnatural. It makes it useless because we can't infer or use any of the theory because it basis is totally separate from what we know (no scientific law does this). I like the implications of it, I like the fact that it gives some objectivity to the world, but none of these are compelling reasons for me to believe in another freaking world.

>>298186
Fuck, *don't work like ours

>>298160
>You see you can't falsify concept but you can falsify unemperical principles (but these tend to exist in maths and are falsfied by logic).
But see, as soon as you say "can be falsified by logic," you're already conceding that concepts can be falsified, since *logic is not empirical*, and as soon as you say that logic and math have any place in science, you concede that there are unempirical elements in science.

>Platos *idea/suggestion of the forms have nothing to this effect.
I've already pointed to other dialogues that suggest that that's *not* the case though; that the dialogues themselves contain passages about the forms never merely standing as a sufficient account once posited, but that they need testing in order for the account to be secured.

>I think your being (not to be annoying or anything) intentionally ignorant that Plato was a dualist (as most Greeks were) and did believe in the world of the Forms. This is shown clearly by the his analogy of the cave.
And again, I'm willing to go over those passages to detail how I've come to my conclusions about Plato; say the word, and I'll start commenting on passages. But further, as per the link I put up above, I take it that the dialogues are works that demand careful attention both to the explicit arguments contained, and to the details that seem tossed off. If you ask me to go through such a reading, I can clarify all that; but as precursory statement, I don't take the Cave passage to be the final arbiter on the forms, but rather the passages about forms as a whole, of which the Cave passage is but one. Mind, I also pointed to a dialogue, the Parmenides, that explicitly refutes this "separate world" thesis.

> I was asking if you'd addressed the fact that Plato does believe in an illogical world of the Forms due to his anaology of the cave.
Okay, thank you for the clarification; again, as per above, I'm perfectly willing to go over specific passages to show why I have my take on him.

(cont.)

>>298278
>Also the fact that it isn't a "theory" or even a well devolped argument I think further shows its uselessness. Is it that much to expect for something that attempts to explain our world and the big truths to make a bit more sense and be a bit more developed?
Again, though, that would be a misunderstanding of what Plato's trying to do, and again I put back to my characterization of forms as "fundamental problems." I think a very simplistic, but not wholly inaccurate, comparison would be with the work of Wittgenstein and Gödel; i.e., Plato shows the limits of inquiry, and this is most evidently valuable with modern political science, but I think he's valuable for anyone who would demand that the sciences stand on stronger ground, since he points to elements of experience that science and modern philosophy have missed and won't touch, elements that are feasibly valuable for further research.

>Im supper dumb so could you explain to me more about the "afro mentioned Parmenides".
Well, Parmenides is one of his dialogues; scholars say that it's written after the Republic, but before his late dialogues, and no one's really sure what to make of it, because Plato has the character Parmenides refute a young Socrates who seems to have views very similar (if not the same) as those expressed in other dialogues about the forms. That dialogue itself has the Third Man argument that Aristotle uses, and that dialogue also features a refutation of the supposed "separate worlds" thesis.

>>298282
>I concede i just said the total opposite of what i meant to say and im going to have to make what looks like a u-turn to make my argument cohesive. You can prove maths and analytical statements using logic . You can't falsify them as a key thing to falsify (sorry its 2am) is you have to test them, you have to check it against an experience. Plato's theory isn't a series of analytical statements but appeals to an observation of nature. You can check the fact that we all seemingly understand certain concepts but there is no way we can check whether these concepts= shadows of Forms. There is no conceivable way to test this. It operates under laws that aren't seen in nature "An eternal something that is perfection" there is no example of this in our world so that in my oppion makes it unnatural. I'm a bit hazy on the details but im sure Plato used the qoute "you can never step in the same river twice" to show the constant changing nature of the world. As you know the changing nature of the world is what makes it distinct from the world of the Forms. I feel like im being inflexible and you've obviously done the better reading so im probably wrong on this point.
>>298278
>Plato shows the limits of inquiry
How does the theory of the Forms show the limits of inquiry? Im assuming your talking about how he shows that empirical knowledge is limited but how I dont think he does this with his theory of the Forms.
> features a refutation of the supposed "separate worlds" thesis
Woah good stuff good stuff, had no idea about this.

>>297613
Exactly! The perfect template, from which all others are imperfectly copied.

>>294490
wouldnt emptyness an idea exist in the platonic realm

>>297791
First, take off your hat when you enter a building, second evolutionary theory proves it correct in many ways, especially natural selection.

Am I being completely out of line if my understanding is that the theory of form is an early attempt at philosophy of language, in particular answering the question "what is the meaning of common names?"
Where Wittgy answer it by "meaning as use", Plato instead answered it with the forms?

>>298387
>Woah good stuff good stuff, had no idea about this.
I'll touch on this before responding to the rest of your post, since it is kinda cool to see:

I'll start by quoting the *two* Third Man arguments given in the Parmenides:

P: I think that you think that each form is one because of this: whenever many things seem to you to be great, it seems probable to you, as you look over them all, that there *is* some one and the same idea. From this you conclude that the Great is one.
S: That's the truth
P: But what about the Great itself and the different things--if, in the same way, you look over them all with your soul, will there not appear, in turn, some one great thing that makes all of them, by necessity, appear great?
S: It looks that way.
P: A different form of Greatness, then, will be revealed, in addition to what was Greatness itself and the things that partake of it. And above all of these, in turn, another, that makes them all great. And so your forms will no longer be one, but will be boundless in multitude.

(cont.)

>>298579
#2

S: However, Parmenides, here's how it really appears to me to be: these forms stand in nature like patterns. The different things resemble them and are likeness, and so the different things' participation in the forms turns out to be nothing else than to be made in their likeness!
P: If then something looks like a form, can the form not be like its likeness, insofar as that thing's been made like it? Or is there some trick that can make the like be like what's not like it?
S: No, there isn't.
P: But doesn't a great necessity force the like, along with the thing like it, to partake of one and the same form?
S: Necessarily.
P: But whatever the like things are like by participating in--isn't that the form itself?
S: Entirely so.
P: Nothing, then, can be like the form nor can the form be like anything else. Otherwise there will always appear a different form beyond the form; and if that is like anything, another still. And there will never be an end to the genesis of new forms as long as the form becomes like the thing that partakes of it.

(cont. w/the separation thesis refutation)

>>298601
P: If one of us is a master or a slave of someone, he is not, of course, a slave to what Master itself is, nor is the master a master of what Slave itself is. Instead, since he's a man, he's both of these to another man. For Mastership itself is what it is of Slavery itself, and likewise...things among us have no power in relation to those things, nor they to us; instead, like I said, those things belong to themselves and are in relation to themselves and so too the things among us to themselves. Or do you not understand what I mean?
S: Oh, I understand well.
P: And so also knowledge. Would what Knowledge itself is be knowledge of what Truth itself is?
S: Of course.
P: But then what each branch of knowledge is would be knowledge of what each of the beings is, or no?
S: Yes.
P: But wouldn't the knowledge among us be of the truth among us, and in turn, each branch of knowledge among us would have to be knowledge of each of the beings among us?
S: Necessarily.
P: And yet the forms themselves, as you agree--neither do we possess them nor could they *be* among us?
S: No, they couldn't.

(cont.)

>>298635
P: But surely what each thing of the kinds themselves is, is known by that very form, the form of Knowledge?
S: Yes.
P: Which we certainly don't possess.
S: No, we don't.
P: None of the forms, then, is known by us, since we don't partake of Knowledge itself.
S: It doesn't look that way.
P: Then what the Beautiful itself is and the Good and all the things that we do suppose to be ideas are unknown to us.
S: I'm afraid so.
P: See then something still more terrible than this!
S: What's that?
P: You would probably say that if there *is* in fact a certain kind itself of Knowledge, it is far more precise than the knowledge among us, and the same for Beauty and all the rest.
S: Yes.
P: And so if anything else does partake of Knowledge itself, wouldn't you say that god, more than anything else, possesses this most precise knowledge?
S: Necessarily.
P: Then will the god, in turn, be able to know the things among us, since he possesses Knowledge itself?
S: Why not?

(cont., one last little bit)

>>298657
P: Because we agreed, Socrates, that whatever power they do have, those forms have no power relative to the things among us, nor the things among us relative to them. Instead, each group relates only to themselves.
S: Yes, this was agreed.
P: And so if the god possesses this most precise Mastership and this most precise Knowledge, then their mastership could never master us, nor could their knowledge know us or anything else of the things among us. Likewise, we do not rule over them by the authority among us, nor, by our knowledge, do we know anything of the divine. According to this speech, in turn, they are not our masters nor do they know anything of human affairs--since they are gods!
S: But what an altogether terrible speech, if it strips the god of knowing!

>>298387
>>I concede i just said the total opposite of what i meant to say and im going to have to make what looks like a u-turn to make my argument cohesive.
No worries.

>You can prove maths and analytical statements using logic . You can't falsify them as a key thing to falsify (sorry its 2am) is you have to test them, you have to check it against an experience.
Okay, that seems right.

>Plato's theory isn't a series of analytical statements but appeals to an observation of nature. You can check the fact that we all seemingly understand certain concepts but there is no way we can check whether these concepts= shadows of Forms. There is no conceivable way to test this. It operates under laws that aren't seen in nature
There's an element to this that is true, namely, that Plato's forms always depend firstly on some common experiences of the world around us. As for testing, again, if one allows for the testing of natural laws, then the forms are testable, but if one limits that more specifically to the strictly observable, then I concede that they're not testable in that way, but rather in the way anything we know by inference is testable.

> there is no example of this in our world so that in my oppion makes it unnatural.
Oooh, you're tempting me! I think one of the keys to "getting" the forms goes along with those Parmenides passages above; they're not separable, not from our world, nor from each other, but that *that* ends up being the crazy thing about them, that they change all the goddamn time (It's similar to quantum indeterminacy, but that gets more involved to explain!).

(cont.)

>>294423
>aristotle
>bugs are born from garbage magically
kek
at least plato is relevant in mathematics

>>298773
>How does the theory of the Forms show the limits of inquiry? Im assuming your talking about how he shows that empirical knowledge is limited but how I dont think he does this with his theory of the Forms.
Each of the dialogues has some weird moment where the entire thing kind of breaks down, and the experience is akin to first learning about quantum indeterminacy; the forms as presented, don't work in light of other statements made in the very dialogues they appear in. The result is on one hand something true, but on the other hand, a bizarre misshapen and ugly truth that amounts to an ugly result that you really hoped not to end up with, with that result more often than not brazenly showing off the fact that it's not what you wanted. An example of that is the overall gist of the Republic: the ideal Just city? *Necessarily* involves shit tons of injustice, also fucking impossible because you'd have to ignore huge elements of human nature.

>Am I being completely out of line if my understanding is that the theory of form is an early attempt at philosophy of language, in particular answering the question "what is the meaning of common names?" Where Wittgy answer it by "meaning as use", Plato instead answered it with the forms?
That doesn't seem far off.

>>298579
>>298601
>>298635
>>298657
>>298672
>>298773
>>298792
>fuck me I just spent an hour typing what the everliving fuck

Did Plato even abide by the Theory of Forms himself?
I mean, I remember in the Parmenides he was showing how ridiculous things would get the more in depth you take it, and it seemed like he felt like he had to go back to the drawing board.

>>294363

Picture in your mind a perfect circle.

That circle does not exist in the real world, our cirlces are imperfect.

The world of the mind is perfect, where perfect ideas reside.

Now picture your car in your mind. That car you picture is the Ideal Form of your car, even if it's a shitty banged up lemon.

Your real car is different from the one in your head, and therefore imperfect.


The real world is just a distorted reflection of the mental world.

>>298827
Some scholars take it that the Parmenides is Plato offering a "self-critique" of the forms, though there's more argument over whether it's supposed to be a complete refutation of them, or if it's supposed to point to a better developed theory of forms that evades those specific problems; I should note though that those same scholars agree that Timaeus was written later then Parmenides, and its take on forms (forms = patterns in nature) would suffer what I posted up above at >>298601.

I think it's noteworthy that if Plato developed the way these scholars say he did, that he didn't destroy or revise his dialogues to reflect any of that, and there's a specific reference in the later dialogue Theaetetus to the Parmenides, with Socrates noting that he didn't quite understand what Parmenides' speeches had meant, but that doesn't stop him from trying to make hints about the forms within the same later dialogue written after the Parmenides.

The question one would have to answer would be "why did Plato choose to portray Socrates as young in the Parmenides, and to not destroy the Phaedo, which shows Socrates at the very end of his life making similar claims as he did in the Parmenides?"

I'm not especially sure of the answer to that question, but I suspect Plato wants us to consider them together; at least a surface suspicion of mine (surface insofar as I haven't had the time to better look into the Phaedo alongside Parmenides) is that some of what he's doing is rhetorical, since the overriding concern of the latter isn't even the immortality of the soul, but of the fear of death, which is solely what drives the inquiry into the soul.

>>298901
Uh, that view is explicitly refuted in the Parmenides, right inbetween the two Third Man arguments I quoted above. :)

>>298497
How?

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>>297033
>>Explain the hindu trap plz and how to avoid it
the hindu trap is really the choice to say that whatever you feel in higher state of consciousness [from the fourth to the eighth jhana] is the god. this is really the approach taken by the theists. nonetheless, the christians say that even in these states, you do not fusion with god, because humans cannot be god, but you feel the energy of god.
the buddhist say that the jhanas are a tool for developing the right view on reality.

when you discursive thoughts stop, you have a tranquility and a concentration unreachable in daily life [without regular practice].

reminder that contemplation for Plato as well as Aristotle was the ultimate goal of life.

>>297803
>>298497
>they think evolution have direction

>>299396
>reminder that contemplation for Plato as well as Aristotle was the ultimate goal of life.

Reminder that "contemplation" is "theoria", i.e., a comprehensive view towards things.

(Which would not be achievable to either Plato or Aristotle "when you discursive thoughts stop".)

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>>297127

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The realm of the Forms is a metaphysical "place" where every perfect rendition of a concept exists.

I.e perfect beauty, perfect love, perfect justice and so on, and we on Earth only have the shadows of these.

It's a novel idea, and understandable that someone would think like that in 350 BC, but I think it's more likely that Plato himself just used it as a philosophical device to explain why humanity fails at doing anything right, and why our world is imperfect, and not that it's real in any sense of the world "real".

>>294490
So Plato was basically a fedora pleb hipster back in his day. Interesting.

>>299418
Yes it does have a direction i.e "survival of the fittest". Species without advantagous characteristics die off. Doesn't this show what Plato is saying, our world is constantly changing etc?

>>299676
What I'm curious about is why you'd emphasize the least striking element of Platonic philosophy (the primacy of Becoming in the world of experience), and not say something or other about the supposed unchanging nature of the forms; I'd expect that if weighed against evolution, Platonic forms, if understood a certain way, would be pretty simply refuted by new developments or by the extinction of certain kinds, since one would now need to account for whether these new features or kinds of creatures have corresponding forms in whatever mode forms exist in, and whether they go out of existence as soon as a species goes extinct.

>>297302
>>I don't agree that we shouldn't break down his works in an analytic way because he does makes some pretty bold claims (only philosophers are fit to rule, there is another world apart form this one)
analyticity is too sterile to avoid being a nihilism

>>297938
>>But that problem is also true of science, and in such a way that is pretty trivial and that doesn't really cause many scientists (or almost anyone) to lose sleep
most mathematicians do not care about logic. they do not even know why they do math, and why should other people be interested in their work. they have no idea why they get up each morning.

same thing for logicians who do not know why they attempt to formalize the usual abstractions of our daily life.

same thing with the scientist who has no idea what he is doing besides asking money for running experiment. so far he is only able to tell us that his work permits a comfy life, because people are too hedonistic to live without computers and other technologies; but he fails to even prove once and for all that science is required to improve hedonism.

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>>300336

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>>300336

>>300336
My comment wasn't an invitation to puke up your usual stupid bullshit, bro.

(Do *you* even know why you rant about mathematicians, logicians, and scientists?)

>>301052
>(Do *you* even know why you rant about mathematicians, logicians, and scientists?)
because they are degenerate and pollute everything they touch.

>>301403
Oh, do tell.

There are many cases where human beings find it meaningful to count something as TRUE without a logical support. Terms like "gut instinct" and "flash of inspiration" appear all over our societal structures.

One of the paradoxical loops that arises with the term "empirically verifiable" is that one has to define that criterion. How does one determine that that is the true criterion? Empirical verification of course -- and the cycle continues. Either:

There has to be a root of that cycle, which is accepted without empirical verification.
You have to rely on non-standard set theories to describe the mathematical structures with which empirical verification occurs (these cycles cannot be described with a well-founded set theory)
Or you have to decide on another approach to truth.

Another thing to consider: perhaps there are other definitions of "true" and "false" which are more nuanced than those you use currently. Both are just words, four and five letters long respectively. It's the concepts behind those words that are so powerful. However, logic does not define True nor False. In fact, if you look at the fundamentals of mathematics, True and False are not constructed using predicate logic or anything like that. They are constructs that are defined implicitly by defining their behaviors with respect to operators (such as X OR False -> X)

>>301417

One utilitarian point of view would be to declare that the version of "true" you are using can never possibly be attained via empirical evidence, because there are always questions of whether we perceive what we perceive. Such a truth becomes a mathematical oddity, creating a skeptic mindset. However, if we recognize that, we can repurpose "true" to also include things where determining their truth-ness is actually more expensive (from a utilitarian POV) than the gains which one can get from knowing the answer. Why not declare something to be true when one's value is increased by such a declaration, even if one is ontologically wrong.

This is certainly not the only definition of "truth" out there, but I provide it as a tool to kindle ideas for other meanings. For example, many religious individuals "count" something as true without any empirical evidence for it at all (or, in some cases, empirical evidence which cannot be described to the non-initiated). Thus one can say there are many many individuals who have other definitions of truth besides the one you are using, and you have the freedom to explore them all, if you so wish.

>>301414
I am not into entertaining trolls who cannot read.

>>301419
Wow, you really showed me.

Question: Are degeneracy and pollution empirically verifiable? Because I know that there are certain senses of those words that are, but you don't seem to be using *those* senses.

>>301417
>>301418
I like this. Are you suggesting that the forms could be understood as such suppositions for the rest of thought to be possible, or would I be mischaracterizing what you've said?

ok

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>>295168
Imagining Plato grabbing his crotch, foot shuffling, and mumbling "muh forms muthafucka" always cracks me up.

>>303021
I think that what is said is that you must include, with the answer, the protocol which leads you to the answer. in one word, you go from typically through the notion of identity syntactical,
intentional and the notion of identity semantical or also known as extensional. in one word, matters the path that you take to reach whatever answer that you have reached. before, you have the answer, after you have protocol+answer. this destroys even further any objectivity, and the rationalist is led to produce the concept of inter-subjectivity to avoid losing the debate on whether truth/objectivity exists. it is the exact same thing as the theory of types, by Russell, in set theory, where we type, we contextualize the things that we manipulate.

all this says that the practice that you do to reach a conclusion matters just as much the conclusion.