Isn’t it imperative to be precise in matters of metaphysics and cosmogony? — Fooloso4

What is the precise meaning of 'cosmos' in Greek philosophy? As I understand it, it's not strictly speaking synonymous with 'universe'.

Probably both. You know the original etymology of 'sin' is 'to miss the mark'.

Useful discussion of meaning of religion here, from which:

The religious person perceives our present life, or our natural life, as radically deficient, deficient from the root (radix) up, as fundamentally unsatisfactory; he feels it to be, not a mere condition, but a predicament; it strikes him as vain or empty if taken as an end in itself; he sees himself ashomo viator, as a wayfarer ( :yikes: ) or pilgrim treading a via dolorosa through a vale that cannot possibly be a final and fitting resting place; s/he senses or glimpses from time to time the possibility of a Higher Life; he feels himself in danger of missing out on this Higher Life of true happiness. If this doesn't strike a chord in you, then I suggest you do not have a religious disposition. Some people don't, and it cannot be helped. One cannot discuss religion with them, for it cannot be real to them.

I'm struggling to do the reading. Gerson's books are about 90% addressed to other academics in defense of his interpretations, and the whole field of scholarship is so dense that it's almost impossible for the casual reader to absorb. All I've noticed is from the Gerson lectures I've listened to and read, is that Gerson seems to defend a general interpretation which I'm drawn to - anti-reductionist, anti-nominalist, and so on. Probably better not to go down that road in this thread.

The 'subject of experience' is the being to whom experiences occur. The 'problems of philosophy' are (for example) the kinds of problems about the nature of mind, nature of universals, number, ontology, metaphysics and so on. The problem of reductionism arises in the attempt to apply the quantitative approach of the sciences to the qualitative problems of philosophy.

:up:

Which Christian denominations do not consider Christ their saviour? — Vera Mont

But there are very different interpretations of what that means. The Eastern Orthodox interpretation is different to the Calvinist, for instance - the orthodox don't believe in 'vicarious atonement'. In any case, it isn't my intention to get into all of those details. From the perspective of philosophy of religion, the question is what do these doctrines and ideas mean?

It's unclear to me what kind of things are "philosophical problems" or a "subject of experience". — 180 Proof

That they're 'unclear to you' is not an argument against it. It might just as well be an acknowledgement that you don't understand the problem.

The division between primary and secondary qualities is indeed central to the whole modern world-construct. As Nagel puts it succintly

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36

You can see how this provides the context for the entire 'hard problem of consciousness' debate. But then, as you think that is a pseudo problem and that there really isn't any issue to discuss, then there really isn't any issue to discuss, so let's leave it at that.

Like most of the things that everyone knows about Aristotle, this one is not true.
It is not even close. It is so spectacularly wrong that it blocks the understanding of anything
Aristotle thought.

Lloyd Gerson says exactly the same in his essay 'Platonism v Naturalism'.

Christianity is based firmly on the sin-sacrifice-redemption dynamic, wherein the god is a discrete entity, aloof and judgmental. — Vera Mont

Christianity (and other religious and philosophical traditions) are not one exclusive model. Otherwise there wouldn't be the interminable conflicts between the various denominations. Within the Christian world there are more and less pantheist or panentheist visions.

I am not at all sure that there is a life beyond this one, but I'm certain that I came into this life with some memory of previous lives, ill-defined but at times vivid. So I have the tentative view that life extends beyond the bounds of an individual birth and death and so am alive to the possibility that heaven and hell are more than myth. So with that in the background, something like Pascal's wager assumes a greater urgency. I frequently contemplate the gloomy possibility that at the point of death, you will realise that your life has been misdirected, at the precise moment when you know you have no more chances to do anything about it.

What is Christian faith supposed to be about, in philosophical terms? I would put it like this: it is about realising one's identity as a being directly related to the intelligence that underlies the Cosmos, a direct familial relationship, not as abstract philosophical idea. (This is the gist of Alan Watt's book The Supreme Identity).

The name 'Jupiter' was derived from the Sansrit 'dyaus-pitar' meaning 'Sky Father'. There are versions of that name all through ancient culture. The name sounds like 'Jehovah' even though it is etymologically unrelated. But the point is, for a great many people, believers and unbelievers alike, Jehovah is conceived as a 'sky-father'. But underneath or concealed by the popular image, there's another level of meaning although it's very difficult to convey. The name 'Jehovah' was derived from the Hebrew yahweh, itself a derived from the tetragrammaton, a sequence of consonants that was literally un-sayable. In ceremonial religion, the name of God was invoked using other terms, but the 'sacred name' was unsayable because it was unthinkable, it was over the horizon of being, so to speak. By uttering the name casually, one profaned it, by bringing it into the profane world.

As a consequence of these complexities, many of the arguments about 'theism' are based on very confused accounts of what really is at issue. (David Bentley Hart's book The Experience of God addresses this confusion.)

What's been going on with JWST recently? — Changeling

James Webb Telescope question costs Google $100 billion

Google's hyped artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, Bard, just attributed one discovery to Webb that was completely false. In a livestreamed event, blog post(opens in new tab) and tweet(opens in new tab) showing the test AI in a demo Tuesday, the chatbot was asked, "What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my nine-year-old about?"

The query came back with two correct responses about "green pea" galaxies and 13-billion-year-old galaxies, but it also included one whopping error: that Webb took the very first pictures of exoplanets, or planets outside the solar system. The timing of that mistake was off by about two decades. ...

The embarrassing error for Google caused the search giant's parent company, Alphabet Inc., to lose $100 billion in market value Wednesday, according to Reuters

---

A COSMIC RAY struck the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and frazzled one of its instruments, according to NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

...The Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS), experienced a puzzling anomaly on January 15, when it suffered a communications delay within the instrument. This then caused NIRISS’ flight software to time out. After a thorough review, a reboot, and a test observation, teams from both space agencies are breathing a sigh of relief. — JWST Instrument Shut Down by Radiation

I think the wish to reduce everything else to physics, is because physics seems to offer the most unequivocal form of objectivity. In some fundamental way, physics deals with 'ideal object' i.e. objects whose every property and behaviour can be described unequivocally in mathematical terms - which is the ideal as far as scientific method is concerned. (Or at least that was the hope, up until the 1920's and quantum physics.) In any case, scientific method is generalised to describe everything that can be described accurately in precisely quantified terms, which is why physics and physicalism are paradigmatic for it.

Reductionism as an approach has been astoundingly successful. But difficulties arise when it is applied to philosophical problems, because these are problems that concern subject of experience, not objects which can be quantified. Nearly all the complaints against reductionism in philosophy, including Thomas Nagel's criticisms, arise from the attempt to treat subjects as objects.

The scientific revolution of the 17th century, which has given rise to such extraordinary progress in the understanding of nature, depended on a crucial limiting step at the start: It depended on subtracting from the physical world as an object of study everything mental – consciousness, meaning, intention or purpose. The physical sciences as they have developed since then describe, with the aid of mathematics, the elements of which the material universe is composed, and the laws governing their behavior in space and time.

We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe, composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.

However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all. — Thomas Nagel, The Core of Mind and Cosmos

You're welcome, quite an understandable misread.

Lets try another tact — Philosophim

'Tack' is the expression. From what yachts do when they need to change course. (Sorry for being pedantic. I suppose it wasn't very tackful :-)

I'm a bit confused as to why you would question the physicality of the 4 Greek elements? It seems so obvious. — Agent Smith

Only that the meaning of 'physus' was interpreted very differently in ancient philosophy, but I don't have anything further to contribute along those lines, so don't worry about it.

But are they? The modern idea of what constitutes 'the physical' is vastly different to the ideas of the ancients. The 'four elements' are a universal in ancient cultures, found just as much in Indian as in Greek philosophy (and I'd wager Persian, Chinese and Egyptian, although I don't know. Buddhists added 'space'. )

I think, lurking behind the search for the origin of being, there are states of realisation wherein the sage or seer attains direct insight into the 'principle of unity', which then he (it's usually 'he') tries to articulate in language, with various degrees of success. But in it, 'seeing' and 'being' are united in some fundamental way, which is beyond the comprehension of the hoi polloi (that's us). Our modern conception of knowledge embodies certain assumptions which likewise constitute a certain 'stance' or 'way of being', which, it can be argued, estranges us from the possibility of realisation of those unitive states of being which are preserved in those texts from the 'axial age'.

You're a good sport. I too am an amateur, or rather, as I said, a casual reader, but I try and take these kinds of ideas seriously.
--

By way of a footnote to the origin of the term 'logos' - there is rather a good entry in the New Advent encylopedia, The Logos, from which:

God, according to them [the Stoics], "did not make the world as an artisan does his work, but it is by wholly penetrating all matter that He is the demiurge of the universe" (Galen, "De qual. incorp." in "Fr. Stoic.", ed. von Arnim, II, 6); He penetrates the world "as honey does the honeycomb" (Tertullian, "Adv. Hermogenem", 44), this God so intimately mingled with the world is fire or ignited air; inasmuch as He is the principle controlling the universe, He is called Logos; and inasmuch as He is the germ from which all else develops, He is called the seminal Logos (logos spermatikos). This Logos is at the same time a force and a law, an irresistible force which bears along the entire world and all creatures to a common end, an inevitable and holy law from which nothing can withdraw itself, and which every reasonable man should follow willingly (Cleanthus, "Hymn to Zeus" in "Fr. Stoic." I, 527-cf. 537).

A description which I find compelling and with some parallels, I feel, to the basic idea of (pan)semiotics. Of course, subsequently the logos became literally 'the Word', thence, 'the Bible', thence 'Religion', which kind of snuffed out the entire idea, or rather, kicked it into the long grass of mainstream theology.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-one-review-platonic-particles-and-waves-of-history-11673628851

(might/might not be paywalled, although it opened for me.)

1. Someone (call him Al) has parked his car on Avenue A (out of sight now) half an hour ago. Everything is normal, the car is still there, Al has a good memory. Does he know where his car is? — Ludwig V

A posteriori, he does, but not as a necessary fact.

i was just wondering about how we would choose the arche from the available options if it's true that they're all different states of each other. — Agent Smith

Pardon me for saying, but you have a way of presenting these ideas in such a way that it trivialises them. Like you've reached into a scrabble bucket full of words and out pops one - 'arche' in this case. 'Let's riff on that!'

I'm not going to pretend that I have any deep insights into arche - only that I think it's one of those seminal terms in Greek philosophy and the subject of many a learned discourse (none of which I've read.) But even as a casual reader, I can't help but notice, on a superficial level, the etymological connection between arche, archetype and also perhaps architect. In any case, the 'first principle' or origin or ground of all that is. But I also think grasping the meaning of such ideas, at once archaic and profound, is not at all an easy matter. (I am sceptical, for instance, whether there there is any real equivalent in modern science.) It's a word that ought to convey a certain gravitas, something to be contemplated, not simply tossed onto the board to stimulate chatter.

I think I could also say that in the original context that these ideas were considered, there was a sense of vital importance in understanding it - as if your life depended on understanding it. I recall in the thread on the Phaedo from a couple of years back, for instance, Socrates' attitude towards the arche of Anaxagoras to which he was initially attracted, but which he finally rejected, because it provided only a mechanistic account of causation ('bones and sinews'), not an account in terms of the reason for acting as one does (ref). Socrates, Heraclitus and the other philosophers wrestled with these questions. Presumably the different formulations they arrived at weren't simply interchangeable, because they themselves felt the answer to the question made a really big difference, in a life-or-death kind of way.

Anyway, one thing which we nowadays possess, which the ancients certainly did not, is the internet, and the ability to retrieve with a few keystrokes information on what the different views of the matter were, but it still takes work to absorb them.

I think you’re putting to much faith in empiricism (pardon the irony). Mathematics, logic and many other disciplines are not strictly empirical. in nature. I think what you’re actually saying is that God is intangible, beyond sensory perception.

Secondly God is not ‘based on an idea’. If anything, God is reduced to an idea or a series of propositions, which then are said to have no possibility of empirical validation. But that is a kind of ‘straw God’ in that it refers mainly to the kind of God whose only presence is as a term in Internet debates. In practice belief in God is grounded in community, in tradition, and in a way of living, which opens up horizons of being in a way that mere propositional knowledge cannot.

I’m not here to argue for ‘theism’ (which again is a word only really encountered in Internet debates) but to try and provide another perspective on the question.

"Was the wave function waiting to jump for thousands of millions of years until a single-celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer for some highly qualified measurer—with a PhD?" — Andrew M

I have often addressed that question. Again it's a question of philosophy not physics. For practical purposes you can assume the world has been there all along, just as is. But that is a methodological assumption, not a metaphysical postuate. That is what I think Sean Carroll doesn't see.

Ever seen the Andrei Linde interview on Closer To Truth? He talks explicitly about the role of the observer.

Google AI's info repository is restricted to 2005 and older. — Agent Smith

Not so. ChatGPT is said to be updated to 2021, but someone pointed out it correctly answered that Elon Musk owns Twitter which happened last year.

The problem of actualization of potentia brings science and philosophy forcefully together IMO. — jgill

See Quantum mysteries dissolve if possibilities are realities.

It has nothing to do with consciousness or intelligence (of course). An “observation” in quantum mechanics happens whenever any out-of-equilibrium macroscopic system becomes entangled with the quantum system being measured — Squelching Boltzmann Brains (And Maybe Eternal Inflation) - Sean Carroll

That is an a priori assertion, but which really could only ever be validated by observation.

Surprisingly this seems to be consonant with some aspects of logical positivism, although of course the positivist idea that empirical hypotheses and theories, which go beyond merely observational claims, can be verified, is itself nonsensical — Janus

Buddhists have a much broader definition of what constitutes 'experience', based on the experience arising from the jhanas. Even though Buddhists themselves wouldn't describe those states in terms of 'the supernatural', the Buddha himself is described as 'lokuttara' translated as 'world-transcending'. And the jhanas clearly exceed the boundaries of what would pass for 'empirical experience' in the modern sense.

Getting back to constructivism*. As Charles Pinter puts it,

If you lift your eyes from this [screen], what is revealed to you is a spread-out world of objects of many shapes, colors and kinds. Perhaps what you see are the familiar furnishings of your room, and if you look out a window you may see houses and trees, or a distant panorama of hills and fields. In fact, the word panorama is very apt: The root of the word is orama, the Greek word for what is seen with the eyes, and the prefix is pan, as in pantheism, meaning all. What you behold is a comprehensive display of the things before you, and this display is given to you as a single, undivided experience.

But at the same time, although this scene appears 'given' to our perception, in reality it is the faculty of apperception which combines all of the stimuli arising from the inputs into a unified scene - the panorama. And the process which enables the experience of unified cognition, called the subjective unity of perception, is (according to this source) an aspect of Chalmer's 'hard problem of consciousness'. That reference claims, citing research, that the faculty which synthesises the various disparate elements of experience is not well understood; it says that 'The subjective experience is thus inconsistent with the neural circuitry.'

Yet you can say that it is within this domain of the subjective unity of experience, that we 'make sense' of experience. Isn't this where the observation of cause and effect actually takes place? Isn't this the domain in which order is sought and connections are made? And where is that domain? Is it 'out there', in the world, or 'in here' in the observing mind? Or both? Or neither? Not claiming to have an answer, but I think it's an interesting question.

-------

*

Constructivism is a philosophical theory about the nature of knowledge and reality. The central idea behind constructivism is that knowledge and reality are constructed by human beings, rather than discovered. According to constructivism, our experiences and interactions with the world shape our understanding of it, and our perceptions and beliefs are constructed as a result of these experiences.

In other words, constructivists argue that there is no such thing as an objective reality that exists independently of our perception and interpretation of it. Instead, they maintain that our understanding of reality is shaped by our experiences and the mental structures we use to process and interpret those experiences. — ChatGPT

One more thing. I know this is a very difficult point to articulate but appreciate the opportunity you have provided for me to try and explain it.

From our necessarily dualistic intelligence we want to account for the fact that humans (and animals) share a common world and the only two possibilities we can think of are a mind-independent actuality or an actuality produced by a collective or universal mind. — Janus

There's an idea in the early Buddhist texts (which I will probably add to the draft I linked to):

By and large, Kaccayana, this world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "non-existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one. — Kaccayanagotta Sutta

You can see how this 'polarity' might map against the 'only two possibilities' you posit.

That is why I say that it is 'the idea of the non-existence of the world' that gives rise to the perceived necessity of there being a 'mind-at-large' which is thought to sustain it. It is thought that in the absence of this global mind, the world would not exist if not being perceived. But, says the Buddha, that is to fall into the 'polarity' of supposing that the world either 'truly exists' or 'doesn't exist'. 'When one sees the arising of the world' means, I think, attaining insight into the unconscious process of 'world-making' which the mind is continually engaging in. It is seeing through that process which is the aim of Buddhist philosophy.

(I expect you might find some discussion of this in the book you mentioned on non-dualism by David Loy. On that note, enough out of me for the time being, as I always I write too much. I've unexpectedly gotten a full-time tech-writing role for the next six months and next week I'm diving in the deep end so I have to switch focus for a while. Not that I'll dissappear completely. Thanks for reading.)

Thanks, good feedback, I'll take that on board. But I don't agree it's a matter of taste, although I will agree that it might be due to the limitations of my own understanding. But saying it's a matter of taste is again tantamount to making it a matter of opinion, which it isn't.

(Again, I found the book I read last year before taking a break from the forum, Mind and the Cosmic Order, brought a lot of these ideas into focus. It's worth just browsing the abstracts.)

I think the ratio you apply between knowledge and action is incorrect. — Paine

:up: Thanks, helpful explanation. I might have been making a connection where there wasn't one.

How do you square those two? If the only reality is "constructed by the activities of the intellect", then how can real numbers (which you claim are a part of reality), be "not a product of the mind"?

Either reality (part of which you claim includes numbers), is a product of the mind or it isn't. — Isaac

When materialist theories of mind say that something is a product of the mind, then it is positing an identity or equivalence between brain and mind. That is 'brain-mind identity theory', isn't it? That is a reductive explanation, i.e. it seeks to reduce ideas to a lower-level explanation i.e. the neurobiological.

So I'm attempting to argue for the generally Kantian view that knowledge comprises a synthesis of experience and intellect. Within that context what I'm arguing is that some fundamental ideas (what Kant calls the categories, and also logical and arithmetical primitives) are apprehended or discovered by the mind - that they're not a product of the brain, in terms of being understandable as a configuration of grey matter (i.e. 'discovered not invented'.) They are real on a different level of explanation or abstraction than that which materialism proposes (pretty much as per the last paragraph in the Schopenhauer quote I provided in this post.)

But whatever it is that appears as the empirical world cannot be said to be mind-dependent unless God or some universal or collective mind is posited. — Janus

I agree that it's a delicate philosophical position. I drafted a piece on that on Medium about it, from which:

Consider this. All of the vast amounts of data being nowadays collected about the universe by our incredibly powerful space telescopes and particle colliders is still synthesised and converted into conceptual information by scientists. And that conceptual activity remains conditioned by, and subject to, our sensory and intellectual capabilities — determined by the kinds of sensory beings we are, and shaped by the attitudes and theories we hold. And we’re never outside of that web of conceptual activities — at least, not as long as we’re conscious beings. That is the sense in which the Universe exists ‘in the mind’ — not as a figment of someone’s imagination, but as a combination or synthesis of perception, conception and theory in the human mind (which is more than simply your mind or mine). That synthesis constitutes our experience-of-the-world.

Another example from Western philosophy is provided in an account of Schopenhauer’s philosophy:

“The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied [by idealism] than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room [or the reality of Johnson’s rock]. The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper” ~ Bryan Magee, Schopenhauer’s Philosophy, p105.

What we need to grasp is that all we know of existence — whether of the rock, or the pen, or the Universe at large — is a function of our world-making intelligence, the activity of the powerful hominid forebrain which sets us apart from other species. That’s what ‘empirical reality’ consists of. After all, the definition of ‘empirical’ is ‘based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience.’ So, asking of the Universe ‘How does it exist outside our observation or experience of it?’ is an unanswerable question.

So there is no need to posit a ‘supermind’ to account for it, because there’s nothing to account for. — Mind at Large

I note in the essay that this is in line with the Buddhist view - refer to it for further details.

your opposition derives entirely from the fact that our mathematical models , assuming number is real, have been extremely successful in predicting previously unknown facts about the world. — Isaac

Not 'entirely'. The fact that mathematics can make predictions that can then be confirmed or refuted by experience is mainly an argument against fictionalism or conventionalism. My argument for mathematical platonism more generally is simply that number (etc) is real, but not materially existent. Numbers, and many other 'intelligible objects', are real, in that they are the same for anyone who can grasp them, but they're only able to be grasped by a rational intelligence. So they're independent of your mind or mine, but are only real as objects of the intelligence.

I think the conventional physicalist view is that ideas, as such, are a product of the mind, which in turn is a product of brain, which in turn is a product of evolution, and so on. That is the ontology of mainstream physicalism, as I understand it. Whereas this attitude is that these intelligibles are not a product of the mind, but can only be grasped by a mind. It is close to what is called objective idealism.

For Kant and Hegel, the only reality we know is constructed by the activities of the intellect. Hegel’s idealism differed in that Hegel believed that ideas are social, which is to say that the ideas that we possess individually are shaped by the ideas of the culture of which we're a part. Our minds have been shaped by the thoughts of other people through the language we speak, the traditions and mores of our society, and the cultural and religious institutions of which we are a part. We're embedded in that matrix of language, thought and convention.

Again I'm not saying, and I don't think any mature idealism is saying that the world is 'all in the mind' or that objects per se don't exist. It's just that they don't possess the mind-independent status that physicalism wants to imbue them with. It does not seek to orient itself with respect to experience of objects, in the way that empirical philosophy seeks to do (even if it fully respects empirical philosophy in respect of that vast domain within which it is authoritative).

Without the idea of a collective mind, how to explain the easily deduced fact that we all see the same things in their respective locations? — Janus

Individual minds, that all operate under the same conditions and parse experience in the same way. Mind is ‘collective’ in the sense that we’re all members of the same language group, culture, and so on. Hegel made a lot out of that, didn’t he?

Well, we can agree on that, at least. But if you look at some of the remarks made by the various talking heads in that Smithsonian Institute essay about what they think is wrong with mathematical platonism , the kinds of arguments they cite say something larger about the issue:

Other scholars—especially those working in other branches of science—view Platonism with skepticism. Scientists tend to be empiricists; they imagine the universe to be made up of things we can touch and taste and so on; things we can learn about through observation and experiment. The idea of something existing “outside of space and time” makes empiricists nervous: It sounds embarrassingly like the way religious believers talk about God, and God was banished from respectable scientific discourse a long time ago.

Platonism, as mathematician Brian Davies has put it, “has more in common with mystical religions than it does with modern science.” The fear is that if mathematicians give Plato an inch, he’ll take a mile. If the truth of mathematical statements can be confirmed just by thinking about them, then why not ethical problems, or even religious questions? Why bother with empiricism at all?

Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York, was initially attracted to Platonism—but has since come to see it as problematic. If something doesn’t have a physical existence, he asks, then what kind of existence could it possibly have? “If one ‘goes Platonic’ with math,” writes Pigliucci, empiricism “goes out the window.” (If the proof of the Pythagorean theorem exists outside of space and time, why not the “golden rule,” or even the divinity of Jesus Christ?)

Why not ‘the divinity of Jesus Christ’ indeed? I think this signifies a deep confusion about the nature of transcendentals. And I think that is because empiricism, as a philosophical attitude, has conditioned us to believe that only what is phenomenally existent, only what science can validate, ought to be considered real. So despite the fact that science in general, and physics in particular, has been so utterly reliant on mathematical reasoning for its discoveries, the philosophical framework in which it operates can’t actually accomodate the kind of insight mathematics represents - hence those declamatory statements!. And that has many vast philosophical implications.

As I've often said, I came into this debate not through mathematics, as my school mathematics experience and performance was not very good. It was because I had what I consider a minor epiphany, concerning the reality of intelligible objects. There's a profound issue lurking there, buried beneath the ruins of an abandoned culture. One that used to be our own.

Actually I'll hark back to this discussion a couple of weeks ago which I feel ended on a reasonably harmonious note.

When we speak of Platonism isn't that something from ancient times? — jgill

That is what I would describe as a jaundiced view. Platonism one of the wellsprings of Western culture which I think still maintains both relevance and vitality.

Work on philosophy -- like work in architecture in many respects -- is really more work on oneself. On one's own interpretation. On how one sees things. (And what one expects of them.) (Culture and Value)

:100:

It may be ancient and unsolved, but that doesn't mean it holds the interests of those involved..... Philosophy is concerned with what was said or printed or argued in the past — jgill

Not in my view, obviously, but I won't try and persuade you.

Rather a good series of 10 essays by Marcelo Gleiser on The Big Think about quantum physics and philosophy. Well-informed and level-headed.

https://bigthink.com/people/marcelo-gleiser/

So far it’s quite angry and declamatory. — Jamal

Very much in the shadow of WWII and the Cold War. Walter Benjamin, who was an esteemed member of their circle, had been forced to suicide on pain of being captured by the Wehrmacht, apart from all the other massive destruction that had befallen everything around them. (I have a book called Grand Hotel Abyss which is a kind of collective bio of the Frankfurt School, must get around to reading more of it.)

I was reading what i thought was a great thriller, Kolmynsky Heights, Lionel Davidson. But I found to my intense annoyance about 75% of the way through the story introduces a major plot point which I found just beyond the pale of credibility and I had to abandon it.

Dialectic of Enlightenment by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. — Jamal

I've read quite a bit about that book, but never actually read it, but it struck me as pretty important. It interests me that they make many of the same criticisms of Enlightenment rationalism as do Christian apologists, albeit from a completely different theoretical basis.