>tfw you realize the theory of the forms is metaphysical truth and you can effectively use the socratic method to make any rational being come to the same conclusion
>tfw the forms function as axioms from which further truths can be derived and therefore epistemology is a solved game
Oh my. . .
Try the redpill instead, retard
Destroy women, minorities, etc... Whatever.
Back to the topic!
Hey OP, help me come too the same conclusion.
I have a question I've been struggling with, and I was wondering if a learned man such as yourself could help.
Am I the same person today as I was yesterday?
but the premises of the Theory of Forms are contradicting by Platos own admission.
just try to think about the form of the theory of forms and you get BTFO pretty quick
The Ultimate Redpill
depends who you ask, Parmenides says yes, Heraclitus says no, socrates says wahhh i dunno, and every philosopher down the line says one or a mix of those things.
Yes yes, and certainly all of those wise men understand this topic far better than I do, but alas none of them are here! However, you have studied under them, and I have you. So go ahead and relate to me the answer you find most plausible:
Am I the same person today as I was yesterday?
Nice one. I suppose I would say that we have developed an ability to see patterns for survival. And one of those patterns is your personality, which people would see differently depending on the phenomena they have been privy to organise.
That seems reasonable, and therefore it is likely to be so. Now I am wondering if you can instruct me further: In light of what characteristics does my "personality" exist?
To put things more plainly, what establishes the continuity of "my personality" which is "myself" in the minds of others? My physical characteristics? The words which I speak? Some combination thereof? Or something else entirely?
I think it is a mixture of whatever memories people can have of your actions. So yes, physical, verbal, but and also their thoughts about what YOU were thinking at any given moment. An amalgamation of what they've seen of your body, speech, and what they've guessed of the contents of your mind.
Very well spoken, but I still have some lingering curiosity.
Now, I consider my nature as a human being; As I grow old, my skin grows wrinkled and the hairs on my head grow fewer! And certainly I do not hold the same opinions I did as a child! Indeed, all that I've seemed to retain throughout the years are my memories and my name!
But say I should meet an old playmate, despite our aged appearances and new opinions, should we not, provided our memories do not fail us, know one another in light of our names and our memories of time spent together?
You underestimate the ability we have to respond to patterns of even the most subtle quality. Surely there is some resemblance in your wrinkled face of the same childlike features. We can see these physical similarities even across generations. And though ideas might change, the style in which they are expressed is also likely similar. After all, our opinions change day to day but we can still speak within a continued conversation.
But when you say that you "know one another", you know that you know an outdated version, that will need to be updated. And that is why you would leap into questions to catch up and rebuild a more accurate understanding of their personality. But this is different to starting from scratch, because much of the old pattern will still be in place.
Excellent, now to find a rational being...
Aristotle > Plato.
>but the premises of the Theory of Forms are contradicting
Can anything ever exist without form?
Surely it is possible that we may even recognize one another by our physical features, although they be transmuted by unforgiving Time! You are wise to say so. Similarly, you are wise to point out that he may even be able to recognize me by my prose styling and by my themes!
Furthermore, I would like to apologize for any obscurity! By "know one another" I merely meant that we would be able to identify one another as a particular and familiar boy from our youth. You seem to agree that this is so.
In light of this, it seems as though "myself" can be identified by its particular characteristics, whether they be visual, psychological, phenomenal, or even taxonomic.
Would you agree then, that my same old friend might plausibly be able to identify "myself" by a portrait, a scrap of my writing, a story drawn from my life which recounts a shared experience, or from a name and date on my gravestone?
No it's not. The 'Socratic method' is Hellenophile trash.
It doesn't matter. Go back to riddit with 'muh dialogue' bullshit.
>reads philosophy once
Riddit would be a better site for you.
WHERE'S THE FORM OF THE KAKON, PLATO
Yes, I suppose that he could. Though he would likely be also recognising patterns that he attributes to the medium itself or a translator if one is involved.
Either contribute something valuable or fuck off back to redit yourself, since you seem to care and know so much about it.
>contribution
le reddit greek faec
>le
Once again, you have spoken well, and your words have great import.
So my old playmate is able to identify "myself" by a portrait, although as you say it is but an imperfect representation, mired as a result of translation from flesh and blood to oil and canvas. Yet if this portrait is but an impure representation of my true self, what is to be said of "myself" in my old age? Time is a translator just as the painter, and although he works in the medium of flesh and blood, he has certainly taken artistic license with my physical appearance!
But we must agree that I as I am now am just as much 'me' as I was in my youth. I am the same boy that played with my school friend all those years ago, despite my graying hair! Can we then say that either youth or old age has any bearing on "myself" ? Or will we agree that it only a matter of representation?
Yes, I agree with that. The phenomena are real, but the patterns that we see in those, including what we call personality, are representations.
Now we see that whether we had chosen the portrait, the scrap of writing, or the biography, and followed the same methods, we would have reached the same result. My appearance, my psyche, and even my name are merely representations, but what are they representations of? There is only one answer: "myself."
If there is to be a continuity of self between my portrait, my old body, and my young body, such that they are all able to be identified with "myself," they must all represent in their varying ways some immutable characteristics which "myself" possesses.
From this we see that all of these objects are participants in the form of "myself,"
Let us consider the phenomenal, for there you have drawn a clever distinction. Certainly I am no more or less "myself" for having been privy to a phenomenon, but my physical response to that phenomenon is revealing. For example, befriending my old classmate was not a natural human response to a phenomenal stimulus, but rather a representation of "myself."
If there is a form of myself, why then does my body nearer capture it than my portrait? This is because my body is the temporary abode of the form of myself, which we commonly refer to as the soul. My immutable soul is translated into our physical world by my physical body, just as my three-dimensional figure is bound into the second dimension by the translation of the painter. My physical, psychological, phenomenal, and even taxonomic qualities are merely transient representations of my immutable soul.
Since we have agreed that the characteristics of the soul are immutable, by definition it is, was, and shall be. Even if my body passes away, my soul lives on. For this reason we should take great pains to curate our souls well for as long as they inhabit us. We are ambassadors for our own souls, and though they are unchanging we afford them honor in coming to know them and representing them well, and through them we may live forever!
...
Just as the subject of a portrait is honored before men by a painter who renders him with great skill, so too is that painter honored by the one who commissioned the portrait.
>tfw the forms function as axioms from which further truths can be derived and therefore epistemology is a solved game
Westerners with our obsession with being systematic...
The point of the Forms aren't to create an axiomatic system. This obsession has brought us to the current crisis in the sciences in the first place, that is, this idea that reality is reduced to some rudimentary, quantitative form: the "true" form; it's been a false metaphysical assumption since the days of Galileo, coupled with the idea that the qualitative world is totally subjective.
Husserl's critiques are a good first step. Follow it up with some Wolfgang Smith.
And here's an interesting theorem that may aid you in banishing the idea that all truths are derived systematically and in a deductive manner.
en.wikipedia.org
Thanks for your time, user. I liked this a lot.
What if it is merely the name that grants the same continuity? That is, imagine that you had never been given a name at birth, and never gave yourself one. Would there still be a concept with which to organise the patterns under?
It's almost impossible to imagine, because our minds want to immediately categorise you as some version of that-person-who-doesn't-have-a-name.
Either way, I wish I could agree with your outlook because it seems joyous, but I can't help but see our minds as taking the first arbitrary starting-point as a label that represents the first observed part of the pattern, and then managing everything else in relation to this. The first stimulus is arbitrary, but from then on the continuity is imposed by the mind, not as an inherent thing in and of itself.
you are way over complicating this
You have no definite, tightly bound existence. Whensoever you are defined t is only as a pronoun placed over a flux of transient properties and qualities.
Fluidity necessitating privation of identity is a non sequitur.
Plato's theory of forms is backwards. Forms are a tool of the human mind, which we "overlay" on physical reality, which is by contrast, fundamentally continuous, uniform, and singular/unified
identity is a property of perception, things are identified in terms immediate function as they are thought to be at a static instance
word
material reality is an undifferentiated popery which we place artificial boundaries on
>What if it is merely the name that grants the same continuity? That is, imagine that you had never been given a name at birth, and never gave yourself one. Would there still be a concept with which to organise the patterns under?
Yes, it's just hard to discuss without some broader linguistic placeholder. Transgender people often change their legal name, and radically change their physical appearance, yet few would argue they are no longer the same people after transitioning.
Try Parfit? He posited 'psychological continuity/connectedness' which could easily be reinterpreted into an argument for the form of the self.
>I can't help but see our minds as taking the first arbitrary starting-point as a label that represents the first observed part of the pattern, and then managing everything else in relation to this. The first stimulus is arbitrary, but from then on the continuity is imposed by the mind, not as an inherent thing in and of itself.
the perception of others has no influence on a things characteristics. Consider an optical illusion- appearances can be deceiving, even when faithfully representing the truth.
Forms are inherently rational and can be derived even within a p-vacuum.
If Forms are the answer to everything answer this:
How can forms have any meaning if the only way of describing them is by using other forms? (i.e forms are often described as being "perfect" but the concept of perfection is a form itself).
Doesn't this kind of self reference render them meaningless?
>forms are inherently rational
Okay, that sounds like something a nominalist/conceptualist can agree with
>forms can be derived
Anything can be derived. False conclusions can be derived from false premises. But I'm not even saying forms are false, just that they don't exist outside the mind. The mind separates the universe into little spacetime segments due to the biological expediency of doing so, not because the universe is inherently made up of such divisions and categories and patterns.
Also I don't know what a p-vacuum is
lol no shit, do you know what rational means
it means capable of being understood as a relative quantitative property of another relative qualitative property
there is no intrinsic discretion to dimensionality
the forms can exist independently of physical reality, whereas physical reality cannot exist independently of the forms.
also drop name
Think of the forms as existing in relation to one another. Like words in a dictionary, they can be added together to express more complex ideas, but can also be used to define one another. Many forms are merely expedient as illustrative tools, for example the Square. Consider instead the Rectangle and the Equilateral (which themselves can be further broken down).
Also recognize that the good or the perfect may in fact be an equilibrium of Forms, whereas the bad may be their disharmony.
It's 4am and I am totally out of focus I'm going to bed
But that was my point, you can't NOT have a linguistic placeholder. It's impossible to stay in that state, and when you come back to language the continuity will return as well.
Your optical illusion analogy actually supports the other side. Our minds impose structure by creating patterns and then conforming new perceptions to those. The optical illusions occur because we are always imposing old patterns onto new stimuli.
>the forms can exist independently of physical reality
The only way this could be true is if consciousness can also exist independently of physical reality. Forms can only exist within a conscious mind.
>physical reality cannot exist independently of the forms
So do you think the quarks and electrons in my body consult the platonic form of the human when they decide how to move and interact? Do they behave differently when they are exhibiting the form of the mountain?
Physical reality has no room for platonic forms to play any causal role. And if they don't play a causal role in the universe, then in what way can you claim that they are necessary for its existence? You must mean that a physical existence will always "exhibit" forms. But only if a conscious mind is there to perceive it.
ITT: If a tree falls in the woods, etc.
Depends on whether a sound is just vibrations in the air, or if a sound is the perception of those vibrations.
So, by analogy, questions about the platonic forms depend on whether they are independent of the mind, or instead perceptions of things independent of the mind.
And how could we EVER know?
you're saying that a qualitative, transitive attribute can exist independently of a subject yet still be inherently be expressive of the subject
your second part makes more sense to me, although "can be used" should be "has to be used"
there is no identity outside of attribution, complexity is a projected aspect
and naming fucking own you sleepy ass bitch, you should try it
Well when it comes to metaphysics, I don't think we ever "know", it's more about what theory is most useful, or even, how do we make our theories more useful.
and by useful, I mean, conducive to practical study. This is why I think nominalism/conceptualism is better than metaphysical realism (aka Platonism). Because Platonism doesn't mix well with physics and science in general. Science wants to be constantly updating its conceptual inventory, eternal universals serve no purpose. Whereas nominalism and/or conceptualism gel nicely with evolutionary psychology, and fit better, in my opinion, with 20th century advances in mathematics that make math seem less like "discovering objective abstract truths" and more like "honing our skills at systematic abstraction"
>This entire thread
To me the distinction is still between theories that feel good and are psychologically hygienic (add a sense of individualist meaning and control) vs. theories that feel comprehensive and consistent (like you have figured it out).
I've yet to find a worldview that either doesn't make me feel like an intellectual hypocrite, or doesn't make me feel that my life is essentially pointless. For me it has so far been either one or the other.
Person? No. Individual? Yes.
Read about alterity and ipseity.
This is bait to detect philosophical zombies. The only entity that would attract zombies is
If you don't have an immediate answer to the question, "Am I the same person today as I was yesterday?" you are a zombie, leave Veeky Forums. I don't say this to be rude, I'm only trying to help us both.
Listen zombies, we are concious entities. We are beings experiencing the world, you are not. We come to Veeky Forums to enjoy eachother's company and you come here because you think we're cool people, ironically "shitposting." We're not, you're shitposting, we're talking to each in a way that you can't understand. Please, this is not "bait" I am giving the certain truth. Please for the love of Christ don't post in this thread if you are a zombie. Remember you will know the answer if you can't immediately answer the question, "Am I the same person today as I was yesterday?"
I'm going to have to plant a flag here.
Define zombie.
I thought philosophical zombies don't have thoughts like "Veeky Forums is full of cool people ironically shitposting", they just do things like normal people but experience nothing
google p-zombie
its basically a person with no soul
Absolutely. Otherwise, your question would make no sense; in fact, you can ask the very same question tomorrow and it will still be true, if, i.e., you're still alive to pose it.
Ah. So you're one of those non-local, spiritualist chaps I've been hearing about.
It's literally the opposite. Those of us with autism who post on Veeky Forums do have souls. I know this to be undoubtably true because I know with absolute certainty that I'm experiencing something and I "ironically shitpost"* on Veeky Forums.
*note: ironic shitposting is actually us autists talking to one another.
Soul is the wrong term. Consciousness is the most apt term. Look up the hard problem of consciousness if still don't understand
Not really
I get your point: am **I** the same person **I** was yesterday, the term implies identity
But it doesn't have to imply identity, that's just one way of interpreting it. We don't necessarily have adequate language to describe the state of not being the same person one was yesterday. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to the question. The question implies something I think you understand, and the semantic answer doesn't really do it justice
What the fug
This.
Read Paul Ricoeur, user.
not him but you're being extremely materialistic
>yesterday
There is only now, the future and the past are just constructs you do not own.
t. Marcus Aurelius
t. Meme Philosopher
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
What is it that you think I don't understand? You're throwing a red herring. Are you uncomfortable with the soul or "consciousness" as you like to call it... The factor that separates you from the p-zombies... Is a spiritualist belief in a non-physical aspect of reality?
If you talked to your 15-year-old self, how much do you think you'd have in common? To what extent would you even recognize him?
I'd take him out drinking, Asian girl massages, more beers, sort his life goals out early... we would have the best fucking time in the world. It makes me sad I can't go back in time and do this.
I remember those days
God was a metrosexual back then, always examining his reflection
Then he was like, I'm going to make a dick and some tits AND DON'T YOU DARE HIDE THEM FROM ME.
tfw the forms function as axioms from which further truths can be derived and therefore epistemology is a solved game
So you're relying on the axiomatic argument eh? Too bad you still haven't solved the münchhausen trilemma. Looks like epistemology ain't solved yet kid.
That's not what I asked. I'll rephrase it. If you asked him "what do you think about X", would you be satisfied for every possible subject X?
It's just choosing the axiomatic option for the trilemma. What is flawed with this, if the precepts reflect the same limits of phenomenological experience?
Munchausen trilemma btfo's everybody who thinks too highly of their ideas, except me, the enlightened skeptic, I have exactly the right amount of confidence
It a trivial, meaningless answer to a trivial question. Just like as has already been discussed in this thread, it is impossible to not organise that meeting into mental representations of the person. If I stumbled upon myself at 15 I would recognise him because I have memory of him, and we would have our journey in common because we would be sharing 15 years of experiences in this world.
>Because Platonism doesn't mix well with physics and science in general.
You're kidding right? If anything the 20th century advances in science and mathematics made Platonism more tenable than ever. Our "skills at systematic abstraction" have been limited by Godel and mathematical entities are indispensable to our best scientific theories, which should at least push us towards some kind of ontological commitment if not outright concession to realism in mathematics
I don't think godel limits our systematic abstraction at all, just another part of the ongoing process
What I'm referring to is the discovery of complex numbers (and other irrational stuff) which seems to show that our mathematical symbols are only limited approximations, rather than that we have access to metaphysical truths
I don't see how "mathematical entities" in the platonic sense are indispensable to scientific theories, but I'm not a scientist, could you elaborate on that?
Godel does place a limit on sufficiently powerful axiomatic systems that can model arithmetic in first-order logic, which necessarily limits our attempts to construct a foundation for mathematics, which is why the formalist and logicist schools failed. It's a limit for logic, not people, which is an important distinction to make as it leads one to the question of how people can intuit mathematical "truths" but not the systems we construct to model it. It's a blow against the mechanistic view of the human mind as a machine capable of constructing all mathematics.
There are no "mathematical entities in the platonic sense". There are only mathematics entities that can be interpreted in a platonic or nominal sense. Our current well-confirmed scientific theories rely on mathematical entities for their success. If you wish to deny the existence of unobservable entities like numbers and sets, then what is to stop us from denying the existence of other unobservable entities like quarks? You can of course reject this view, but then you're committing yourself to an anti-realism not only about mathematics but also about science.
spotted the p-zombie
>mathematical entities are indispensable to our best scientific theories
hartry field, science without numbers
>It's a limit for logic, not people
It's both, logic is a human mental phenomenon
>it's a blow against the mechanistic view of the human mind as a machine capable of constructing all mathematics
Keyword here being all**. I don't see any evidence whatsoever here that the human mind therefore must be doing something non-mechanistic just because logic has no complete and consistent set of axioms
All it actually shows for sure is that our rational capabilities are not one monolithic function, we are capable of exploring different axioms and coming up with different derivations, and not everything we are capable of doing is able to be fit into a single coherent system
>if you wish to deny the existence of numbers and sets
I've said before that they are mental phenomena, they exist as a set of mental behaviors and concepts. This kind of existing is just as mysteriously nonphysical in many ways as platonic forms, but the difference is that I see no benefit in postulating that they exist outside the mind, when we can account for everything numbers and sets do by considering them to be mental phenomena
Quarks are not unobservable in the same sense that numbers and sets are. Quarks and other quantum phenomena are different from standard physical objects in that they flaunt our usual system of spatio-temporal contiguity, but their existence is experimentally verifiable. Their exact nature is difficult for humans to comprehend because our minds are evolved to deal with larger scale physics, with spatiotenporally contiguous objects, so the only accurate description we have of quantum mechanics is mathematical and abstract, but that doesn't mean that the phenomena themselves are mathematical in the same way numbers are.
Is there a reason you say there is only realism and nominalism, and not conceptualism? I prefer nominalism to realism any day, it fits fine with what I've already said in this post, with a few alterations, but conceptualism seems easier, since the mind and consciousness is mysterious and currently lacking a complete physical account
>It's both, logic is a human mental phenomenon
This is not necessarily the case. What it limits is a mechanistic view of the mind, but not the mind itself. I would say that mechanism would do the job of imposing limits, if we allow for the possibility of platonism and the possibility of intuiting rational truths. In this way it's a kind of negative thesis.
>Keyword here being all**. I don't see any evidence whatsoever here that the human mind therefore must be doing something non-mechanistic just because logic has no complete and consistent set of axioms
If logic is a human mental phenomenon, then the limit imposed on logic is a limit on the mind and to a mechanistic philosophy. I don't think either of us would characterize it as decisive evidence in favor of a platonist view, but it is certainly a powerful argument *against* mechanism.
>I've said before that they are mental phenomena, they exist as a set of mental behaviors and concepts. This kind of existing is just as mysteriously nonphysical in many ways as platonic forms, but the difference is that I see no benefit in postulating that they exist outside the mind, when we can account for everything numbers and sets do by considering them to be mental phenomena
My point here is that physical theories and our ontological commitments are confirmed holistically, at least if you're a scientific realist. If the mathematical formalism is correct, then the theory will match up with reality. If we do experiments, as we have, and can experimentally verify the existence of entities like quarks and electrons, which we have, then we're committed to their existence and so we have committed to an ontology that the formalism has provided for us. The formalism is just as necessary to the success of the theory as the entities whose experimental verification it relies on, as without the correct formalism there would be nothing to experimentally verify. Mathematics is indispensable to our best scientific theories and so we should be committed to the entities it postulates to exist, natural numbers, irrational numbers and the like included, provided the theory makes use of them.
>Is there a reason you say there is only realism and nominalism, and not conceptualism? I prefer nominalism to realism any day, it fits fine with what I've already said in this post, with a few alterations, but conceptualism seems easier, since the mind and consciousness is mysterious and currently lacking a complete physical account
You're right that I should be more conscious of the nuance in the philosophy of math. Conceptualism is a valid view, but when you reduce each view to its essence it broadly comes down to realism or anti-realism, with things like quasi-empiricism, conceptualism, monism, psychologism, etc., leaning towards one or the other.