We have had a few actual physicists active here, but they seem to have at least momentarily fled the environment. — jgill

I've posted maybe a dozen times on Physics Forum, which is a fantastically well-run and professional forum, but they give very short shrift to anything deemed 'too philosophical' which covers a very wide range of topics. I posted a question about philosophy of maths and the ontological status of number, which was frozen because, the moderator said, there was no-one there qualified to address it.

And they do!

I know, right? And it’s what Trump thinks he really looks like….

Wish to hell the federal indictments would drop. This interminable 'is he or isn't he/will they or won't they?' is intolerable.

I'll add that of all the weird and irrational s***t that Trump gets up to, the trump card, pardon the pun, was his NFT collection from a couple of months back. The idea that someone who pretends to be a contender for the highest office would instigate such a scheme is just beyond ridiculous.

You may be interested to note that Philip Goff registered and entered one post in response to my criticism of one of his articles about six years back.

"So, do we have an adequate grasp of the fact—even if we should consider it in many ways—that what is entirely, is entirely knowable; and what in no way is, is in every way unknowable?" (477a) — Fooloso4

This is clearly derived from or descended from Parmenides, is it not?

A footnote:

The good, being beyond being, is not something that is entirely. — Fooloso4

The way I parse this in the modern lexicon is to use the expression 'beyond existence' rather than 'beyond being'. 'Existence' is what 'the transcendent' is transcendent with respect to, whereas 'being' may denote 'domains of being' beyond what we understand as 'existence'.

:chin:

There are degrees. Normality is not 'insane' by definition, but there's a range. I mean, there's been discussion of the fact that sociopaths and psychopaths often succeed in climbing the corporate ladder due to their ruthlessness. There are widespread kinds of mental health issues amongst the populace, and anxiety, depression and drug dependency are widespread. Many of those subjects are not insane by any stretch but they're also not optimally adjusted.

I wrote a blog post once on the 'bell curve of normality' - on the left, those with severe mental health or personality disorders, then the middle of the bell curve, where most people are (it being a bell curve!) but then on the extreme right the really high-functioning types who are as far above the norm as the left side is beneath it. That can be mapped against Maslow's 'heirarchy of needs', meaning that on the right, there's your highly self-actualised individuals. Very difficult to judge who that might be, of course.

But I'm struggling to think of where you would look for the criteria to make this judgement. As Freud says, his yardstick for sanity was really just the ability to live, work, and maintain relationships. But I think that philosophy looks for something rather deeper than that.

By the standards of the enlightened, everyone is indeed a bit mad. (According to Buddhist scholar William S. Waldron there is a Pali aphorism 'Sabbe sattā ummattaka' meaning 'all sentient beings are deranged', although the canonicity of that phrase has been disputed (source.)) Indeed in many pre-modern traditions, the normal human condition is seen as one of inherent delusion or confusion. I think that's the meaning of avidya or ignorance in Eastern religions. In Christianity, however, this has come down as the 'original sin', making it a volitional rather than a cognitive defect, and so far less tractable to a strictly philosophical analysis. But there's still an overlap there.

In any case, one of the basic features of the modern liberal political system is to make the world a safe place in which to remain ignorant. Cynical, I know, but there you have it. On the upside, at least in the free West you're allowed to make such criticisms of the culture you're in.

What makes that form of realism Platonic? — Mww

Platonism about mathematics (or mathematical platonism) is the metaphysical view that there are abstract mathematical objects whose existence is independent of us and our language, thought, and practices. Just as electrons and planets exist independently of us, so do numbers and sets. And just as statements about electrons and planets are made true or false by the objects with which they are concerned and these objects’ perfectly objective properties, so are statements about numbers and sets. Mathematical truths are therefore discovered, not invented. ....

Mathematical platonism has considerable philosophical significance. If the view is true, it will put great pressure on the physicalist idea that reality is exhausted by the physical. For platonism entails that reality extends far beyond the physical world and includes objects which aren’t part of the causal and spatiotemporal order studied by the physical sciences. Mathematical platonism, if true, will also put great pressure on many naturalistic theories of knowledge. For there is little doubt that we possess mathematical knowledge. The truth of mathematical platonism would therefore establish that we have knowledge of abstract (and thus causally inefficacious) objects. This would be an important discovery, which many naturalistic theories of knowledge would struggle to accommodate. — SEP

In his seminal 1973 paper, “Mathematical Truth,” Paul Benacerraf presented a problem facing all accounts of mathematical truth and knowledge. Standard readings of mathematical claims entail the existence of mathematical objects. But, our best epistemic theories seem to deny that knowledge of mathematical objects is possible. Thus, the philosopher of mathematics faces a dilemma: either abandon standard readings of mathematical claims or give up our best epistemic theories. Neither option is attractive. ....

Mathematical objects are in many ways unlike ordinary physical objects such as trees and cars. We learn about ordinary objects, at least in part, by using our senses. It is not obvious that we learn about mathematical objects this way. Indeed, it is difficult to see how we could use our senses to learn about mathematical objects. We do not see integers, or hold sets. Even geometric figures are not the kinds of things that we can sense. ...

[Rationalists] claim that we have a special, non-sensory capacity for understanding mathematical truths, a rational insight arising from pure thought. But the rationalist’s claims appear incompatible with an understanding of human beings as physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies. — IEP, Indispensability Argument in Phil. of Math

Some scholars feel very strongly that mathematical truths are “out there,” waiting to be discovered—a position known as Platonism. It takes its name from the ancient Greek thinker Plato, who imagined that mathematical truths inhabit a world of their own—not a physical world, but rather a non-physical realm of unchanging perfection; a realm that exists outside of space and time. Roger Penrose, the renowned British mathematical physicist, is a staunch Platonist. In The Emperor’s New Mind, he wrote that there appears “to be some profound reality about these mathematical concepts, going quite beyond the mental deliberations of any particular mathematician. It is as though human thought is, instead, being guided towards some external truth—a truth which has a reality of its own...” ....

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? — What is Math

Can you see the issue lurking behind these controversies? It is that naturalism/empiricism - 'our best epistemic theories' - don't seem to provide for the kind of innate capacity that mathematical knowledge seems to imply. And this is the tip of a very large iceberg - which is, tacitly, that mathematics and reason are incompatible with naturalist epistemology.

didn't have to look!

Looking at 74b, we can see the inkling of something new and different just beggin’ to be exposed. Socrates says stuff like…when we think……but leaves it at that. Kant steps in with a new notion of what is actually happening when we think, and the transcendental arguments are the necessary conditions that justify those speculative notions. It’s Aristotle’s logic in spades: if this is the case, which the LNC says it is, and that follows necessarily from this case, which the Law of Identity says it does, then the entire systemic procedure is only possible if this certain something is antecedent to all of it.

By delving deeper into the human cognitive system, examining it from a transcendental point of view, claimed to be the only way to determine that antecedent something, Kant both sustains and refutes arguments from imperfection. Refutes insofar as purely logical systems can be perfectly formed and thereby perfectly concluded, hence can be absolutely certain in themselves; sustained insofar as being metaphysical, there are no possible empirical proofs for those transcendental points of view, which a proper science must have, hence is imperfect. — Mww

:up: I will only add that I think this is where the synthetic a priori is of great significance. Even if, as you say, the purely a priori gives no meaningful empirical information, through the act of synthesis - through the combination of a priori principles with empirical observation - much new ground has been discovered, possibly including the vast majority of modern physics. I think this what is behind Eugene Wigner's well-known essay on the Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences. Whence the strange concordance between the operations of mathematical reason and the order of things? All of this goes back to these dialogues.

****

I will step back a bit and say something about what interests me about this topic. I came to philosophy forums ten years ago with the conviction that Platonic realism was in some sense true. By that, I simply meant that the natural numbers and such things as laws and principles, are real ('discovered not invented'). The mainstream consensus seems very much the opposite - various forms of conventionalism, fictionalism and so on ('invented not discovered'). The arguments become extremely technical and really only understandable to specialists but the broad drift is that empiricist philosophy generally reject the notion of innate ideas.

I've been researching this particular question through various perspectives. The theme that is beginning to emerge is that this all goes back to the medieval contests between nominalism and metaphysical realism.

Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence. — Richard Weaver, Ideas have Consequences

So in my case, I've started to go back and try and understand the origins of this debate, which in my view begins with Parmenides but my knowledge is, and probably will always be, very sketchy.

In Buddhist abhidharma (philosophical psychology) mind (manas) is one of the six sense-gates - eye and visible objects, ear and sound, nose and odor, tongue and taste, body and touch, mind and mental objects. But let's not take the thread further in that direction as Buddhist psychology is a vast subject in its own right.

My problem, everyone's except for a few perhaps, is that the only conduit for perception (both of ourselves and the world out there) is our senses (the 5 physical and the sixth, mind) and there's no reason at all why they should be truthful or untruthful. — Agent Smith

But as I said, humans are self-aware beings. We can make decisions, decide on courses of action, plan to get or to avoid, and so all - all manner of things. Doing that, we constantly make judgements about what matters, what can be ignored, what must be acquired, and so on. That happens from from the autonomic level up to the conscious level, constantly. Sensory perception is only one element in this, the other being intellection or rational judgement (not to mention impulse, desire, emotion....) So what you're talking about is not something simple.

I (see) no necessity that our senses be either truthful or mendacious — Agent Smith

It's a truism that appearances can deceive. And I think that's because judgement is involved. Even in animal perception, appearances can be deliberately used to deceive, as in the myriad cases of camoflage by predators or prey. On the other hand, the senses can also be extraordinarily accurate - barn owls can hear a mouse moving a kilometer away or see by the light of a single candle the same distance. But only humans are required to make judgements about truth in the abstract, to reflect on the meaning of their experiences, about what experience means.

I've often discussed the two truths doctrine. It's greeted with scepticism from naturalists, because it claims there's a higher truth (paramathasatya). That scepticism is because, I believe, modern thought doesn't have a category for 'the unconditioned' (except for perhaps in formal logic). I think it's a major deficiency. I suppose that is because in Western culture, 'the unconditioned' is nearly always associated with God, which puts it out-of-bounds for naturalist or secular philosophy. But that is a very big question.

(This made me think again about the role of revealed truth in Buddhism. Many would say that Buddhism rejects the idea of revealed truth, but really the Buddha's enlightenment is said to reveal the truth of the cause of suffering and its end. In that sense Buddhism is not so vastly removed from other religions.)

In any case, Buddhism and Schopenhauer both diagnose human ills as originating in a mistaken judgement about the nature of existence (or experience, which amounts to the same). They both, in different ways, say that humans attribute reality to things that have no genuine or real being, so we're attached to an illusory realm which inevitably dissappoints us because it doesn't bring us the joy we thought we could get from it. Schopenhauer and Buddhism are both described as 'pessimistic' on those grounds, but that fails to see that there can be freedom from that condition.

Of course it’s much easier said than done.

What can't you afford, exactly? Being calm and measured? That would certainly map well against your output.

Sage advice from the Buddha: watch your breath. Don’t pursue chains of thought, or allow yourself to be seized by emotion. Know that everything is transient. Carry on.

I encourage any Q-physicist reading this post to consider enrolling in this course — jgill

If you mean this https://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/courses/reality-being-and-existence-an-introduction-to-metaphysics-online - I've had that course bookmarked a long while but have never found the time to enroll. But I agree, I think it looks a worthwhile undertaking.

There is for Aristotle no "equal itself" existing by itself timeless and unchanging. — Fooloso4

I’m very aware the ‘problem of reification’ when this discussion comes up. I know that Aristotle is said to have ‘immanetized the Forms’ but I don’t believe that by so doing he denied their reality. But I will do some more reading on it. I think I will also create a new thread on Gerson's essay Platonism vs Naturalism, for which there is a video of his reading of it.

FIrst rate. I have encountered the Comford book before and will re-visit it. (I love the image of the tethered goat although of course Jurassic Park comes to mind which is wildly anachronistic.) But much to chew over there, I will return to those points.

I'm posting irregularly at the moment due to work commitments. Appreciate the feedback

Nature doesn't create good and bad people; it creates biological strategies, which are then moulded by social contexts and judged through ideological lenses. — Baden

But that's the defiency of naturalism, and the hope that naturalism will provide some kind of moral compass. At best, as you say, it can provide a means of orienting yourself to your social context, hopefully positive. But nature is indifferent to good or bad, there's only the well-adapted, and then those who aren't - presumably departed.

I think it's necessary to peer behind all of the socially-conditioned concepts of "theism" to ascertain if there really is a true good, a true north which the ethical compass must orient towards. Of course as soon as you say that, it sounds like an appeal to religion, and is then opposed on those very grounds. But if there is to be any kind of real ethical principle, then I don't see how it can be avoided. Perhaps it can be re-articulated or re-mapped as existentialism attempts to do but deep down it's grappling with the same level of elemental truth - suffering is bad, love is good, life is transient, success is perishing, all we hold dear will pass. And so on.

One of the essays I often hark back to is Anything But Human, by Richard Polt, a Heidegger scholar, arguing against the reductionism of much modern thinking. He makes no appeal to theism, yet strangely his ideas, like those of Heidegger, echo those concerns in a more contemporary idiom. Because absent "theism" - a word I'm sure only sprang into popular usage with the Internet, as that to which "atheism" is a foil - then what is it to be human, other than a highly-evolved animal or not-very-efficient computer?

Wherever I turn, the popular media, scientists and even fellow philosophers are telling me that I’m a machine or a beast. My ethics can be illuminated by the behavior of termites. My brain is a sloppy computer with a flicker of consciousness and the illusion of free will. I’m anything but human.

Maybe the rejection of "theism" often, maybe always, results in the loss of something more than an archaic social institution. Maybe "atheism" is right, but whether it is or not, it ought to be of concern to everyone.

I don't find the argument persuasive. — Fooloso4

I find it more than persuasive, I'm compelled by it. And why? Because, in the broadest sense, as soon as you appeal to reason then you're already relying on something very like the knowledge of the forms.

Lloyd Gerson in his seminal paper Platonism vs Naturalism, put it like this:

...in thinking*, [says Aristotle] the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true… . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a Form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.

*I take this to mean 'thinking' in the sense of discursive reason, not simply idle mental contents.

Another Aristotelian says:

For Empiricism there is no essential difference between the intellect and the senses. The fact which obliges a correct theory of knowledge to recognize this essential difference is simply disregarded. What fact? The fact that the human intellect grasps, first in a most indeterminate manner, then more and more distinctly, certain sets of intelligible features -- that is, natures, say, the human nature -- which exist in the real as identical with individuals, with Peter or John for instance, but which are universal in the mind and presented to it as universal objects, positively one (within the mind) and common to an infinity of singular things (in the real). — Jacques Maritain, The Cultural Impact of Empiricism

Examples could be multiplied indefinitely but these suffice to make my point.

(It's also significant that the arguments all go back to anamnesis, the doctrine of recollection. There is, of course, the suggestion of what the soul knew, prior to 'falling' into this life. But a naturalistic account might be provided by, for example, Chomsky's 'universal grammar', although that's a topic for another thread.)

'argument from imperfection' anticipates Kant's Transcendental Arguments.
— Wayfarer

Sure reads that way. — Mww

I'm beginning to see the connection. Still working on it.

'What did you do the cat, Erwin? Looks half dead!' ~ Ms Schrodinger.

Please elucidate the training program in metaphysics I would need to complete to be considered competent in metaphysics. Be specific as possible. — jgill

I don't know if there's a course about it, but there are a number of books by qualified quantum physicists who are deeply versed in it, beginning with Werner Heisenberg's Physics and Philosophy. There's Bernard D'Espagnat, who studied under the quantum pioneers and was a senior scientist at CERN, whose books also include one called Physics and Philosophy. Shimon Malin, Nature Loves to Hide, is another. Another two recent books that I've read cover-to-cover are Quantum, Manjit Kumar, and Uncertainty, David Lindley. There's a writer called Tim Maudlin who writes on the metaphysics of physics. I'm sure there'd be graduate course on physics and metaphysics floating around which makes reference to one or more of these books. There's probably a bunch of lectures on Youtube. Michel Bitbol's lecture on Kantian Quantum Physics is a good one.

'Whenever I hear of Schrodinger's cat, I reach for my gun' ~ Stephen Hawking.

Rather than looking at it in terms of empiricism, I look at it in terms of practice. A carpenter determines that two boards are of equal length. If they are not then one will either not fit or be too loose. A merchant puts things on a scale. They are of equal weight or not. They either balance or not. Rather than thinking of it in terms of equality they might be thought of in terms of bigger and smaller or the same. — Fooloso4

That is discussed in the Dialogue. But a distinction is explicitly made between the equality of sensibles and absolute equality, which are said to be of different kinds. Through the comparison of larger and smaller, equal or not equal, we are reminded of the idea of equal, which we already have at time of birth but have forgotten. But the suggestion is not that we arrive at the idea of equality by seeing empirical objects of equal size, because empirical objects are not absolute, which the idea of equality is.

“Whence did we derive the knowledge of it [i.e. equality]? Is it not from the things we were just speaking of? Did we not, by seeing equal pieces of wood or stones or other things, derive from them a knowledge of abstract equality, which is another thing? Or do you not think it is another thing? Look at the matter in this way. Do not equal stones and pieces of wood, though they remain the same, sometimes appear to us equal in one respect and unequal in another?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, then, did absolute equals ever appear to you unequal or equality inequality?”

“No, Socrates, never.”

“Then,” said he, “those equals are not the same as equality in the abstract.”

“Not at all, I should say, Socrates.”

“But from those equals,” said he, “which are not the same as abstract equality, you have nevertheless conceived and acquired knowledge of it?”

“Very true,” he replied.

“And it is either like them or unlike them?”

“Certainly.”

“It makes no difference,” said he. “Whenever the sight of one thing brings you a perception of another, whether they be like or unlike, that must necessarily be recollection.”

“Surely.”

“Now then,” said he, “do the equal pieces of wood and the equal things of which we were speaking just now affect us in this way: Do they seem to us to be equal as abstract equality is equal, or do they somehow fall short of being like abstract equality?”

“They fall very far short of it,” said he.

“Do we agree, then, that when anyone on seeing a thing thinks, 'This thing that I see aims at being like some other thing that exists, but falls short and is unable to be like that thing, but is inferior to it, he who thinks thus must of necessity have previous knowledge of the thing which he says the other resembles but falls short of?”

“We must.”

“Well then, is this just what happened to us with regard to the equal things and equality in the abstract?”

“It certainly is.”

“Then we must have had knowledge of equality before the time when we first saw equal things and thought, ‘All these things are aiming to be like equality but fall short.’”

“That is true.”

“And we agree, also, that we have not gained knowledge of it, and that it is impossible to gain this knowledge, except by sight or touch or some other of the senses? I consider that all the senses are alike.”

“Yes, Socrates, they are all alike, for the purposes of our argument.”

“Then it is through the senses that we must learn that all sensible objects strive after absolute equality and fall short of it. Is that our view?”

“Yes.”

“Then before we began to see or hear or use the other senses we must somewhere have gained a knowledge of abstract or absolute equality, if we were to compare with it the equals which we perceive by the senses, and see that all such things yearn to be like abstract equality but fall short of it.”

“That follows necessarily from what we have said before, Socrates.”

“And we saw and heard and had the other senses as soon as we were born?”

[75c] “Certainly.”
“But, we say, we must have acquired a knowledge of equality before we had these senses?”

“Yes.

“Then it appears that we must have acquired it before we were born.”

“It does.”

“Now if we had acquired that knowledge before we were born, and were born with it, we knew before we were born and at the moment of birth not only the equal and the greater and the less, but all such abstractions? For our present argument is no more concerned with the equal than with absolute beauty and the absolute good and the just and the holy, and, in short, with all those things which we stamp with the seal of absolute in our dialectic process of questions and answers; so that we must necessarily have acquired knowledge of all these before our birth.”

“That is true.”

“And if after acquiring it we have not, in each case, forgotten it, we must always be born knowing these things, and must know them throughout our life; for to know is to have acquired knowledge and to have retained it without losing it, and the loss of knowledge is just what we mean when we speak of forgetting, is it not, Simmias?”

“Certainly, Socrates,” said he.

“But, I suppose, if we acquired knowledge before we were born and lost it at birth, but afterwards by the use of our senses regained the knowledge which we had previously possessed, would not the process which we call learning really be recovering knowledge which is our own? And should we be right in calling this recollection?”

“Assuredly.” — Phaedo

//incidentally, this, and the Meno, is practically the origin of the idea of the philosophical a priori, is it not?//

For example, part of the meaning of modern atheism are the unsustainable life-styles we associate with consumer-capitalism, life-styles that Baby Boomers in particular often justify on the basis of their metaphysical belief that "you only live once" . Atheism both drives, and is driven by, consumer capitalism, e.g. retailers preaching to us that we must live this 'one' life to the fullest.

If my opinion is correct, then the rise of sustainable environmentalism throughout the world will be correlated with a rejection of today's widespread atheistic beliefs for metaphysical belief systems that give moral incentive for individuals to live sustainably. — sime

:100:

I don't find the argument persuasive. Socrates says he is not talking about one thing being equal to another (74a), but I think that is where we get the idea from. We can see that one thing is larger than or more than another. The less the difference the closer they come to being equal. — Fooloso4

I suggest you're not finding it persuasive for the reason that the empirical philosophers always give in such instances - that it is derived from experience. The counter to that is that we already have to have the conception of Equals to arrive at such judgements. It's similar to Mills argument that we derive the basic concepts of arithmetic from experience. But the counter to that is we can't recognise numbers until we are able to count, so the ability must precede the experience for us to recognise it as number. Leaving aside that some animals can recognise small groups of numbers ('count') no amount of experience will impart to a non-rational intelligence what the abstract concept of Equals conveys.

There is nothing in empirical existence which directly corresponds with '='. The fact that we use it all of the time in maths, in a vernacular sense in ordinary speech, doesn't detract from that, rather it reinforces the point that it is part of the innate architecture of reason, which Plato in particular did so much to articulate.

An abstract ideal, in this case equality which is indeed different than being equal. is not properly a knowledge but more an intellectual presupposition, later to be transformed into Aristotle’s categories, thus not technically derivable from instances of perception. — Mww

That is much nearer the mark. And those categories persist, with only very minor modifications, in Kant. And indeed I think the 'argument from imperfection' anticipates Kant's Transcendental Arguments.

The first thing that comes to mind for me is that while no two sticks are equal to one another, they are equal to themselves. So Socrates is equal to Socrates -- the actualization of the relationship of equality is that relationship which any individual has with itself. — Moliere

I don't know if that is signicant, is it? I mean in later logic, there is the law of identity, that A=A, but I again that also appeals to the concept of Equals.

I don't see that at all
— Wayfarer

Don't see what? — frank

Any basis for your response to fooloso4's posts. If you say they're neo-platonic, or Protestant. then produce an argument for that. As for 'having one religion based on Platonism', aside from being a pretty big claim, it doesn't amount to any kind of argument, either.

Any comments on the Argument from Imperfection?

there's an argument in the Phaedo (which I don't recall being discussed in the thread on that dialogue) called The Argument from Imperfection (reference). Basically this revolves around the 'idea of Equals'. It points out that there is no physical instantiation or example of 'Equals'. It argues that things that we see as equal - two sticks, or two stones - are not really equal but merely alike. Plato argues that the ability to grasp 'Equal' amounts to grasping the Form of Equal, which is something that is done solely by the Intellect, not by sensory apprehension.

That argument has intuitive appeal to me, because I believe that it is indeed true that 'Equal' has no physical instantiation, and yet it is a fundamental element of mathematical and indeed general reasoning. — Wayfarer

It seems germane to the topic.

Well it's an optimistic attitude. Actually it was advocated by Augustine, although it's fallen into disfavour since.

Interesting. That wiki article on pandeism says in part:

Weinstein examines the philosophy of 9th century theologian Johannes Scotus Eriugena, who proposed that "God has created the world out of his own being", and identifies this as a form of pandeism, noting in particular that Eriugena's vision of God was one which does not know what it is, and learns this through the process of existing as its creation. In his great work, De divisione naturae (also called Periphyseon, probably completed around 867 AD), Eriugena proposed that the nature of the universe is divisible into four distinct classes:

1 – that which creates and is not created;
2 – that which is created and creates;
3 – that which is created and does not create;
4 – that which neither is created nor creates.

The first stage is God as the ground or origin of all things; the second is the world of Platonic ideals or forms; the third is the wholly physical manifestation of our Universe, which "does not create"; the last is God as the final end or goal of all things, that into which the world of created things ultimately returns to completeness with the additional knowledge of having experienced this world. A contemporary statement of this idea is that: "Since God is not a being, he is therefore not intelligible... This means not only that we cannot understand him, but also that he cannot understand himself. Creation is a kind of divine effort by God to understand himself, to see himself in a mirror." French journalist Jean-Jacques Gabut agreed, writing that "a certain pantheism, or rather pandeism, emerges from his work where Neo-Platonic inspiration perfectly complements the strict Christian orthodoxy." Eriugena himself denied that he was a pantheist.

(Presumably because to have affirmed it would be to court heresy, which I think he was suspected of and which in his time amounted to a death sentence.)

Dermot Moran has a book on the influence of Eriugena on German Idealism (via the medieval mystics).

I must admit, it was one of those books I bought, or was given, but still sits unread on my shelf. But I understand the point is pretty central to her thesis. Of course hankering for the past is not something I would encourage, but it's an understandable attitude. But I also wonder if fundamentalism is not actually a personality profile - the desire for the certainty of view, of being on the right side, and so on.

Fair point, but Spinoza says many things which I don't expect I would see from the pens of atheists. Besides, whilst he was often accused of atheism, he denied it. In the Ethics, Spinoza finds lasting happiness only in the “intellectual love of God”, which is the mystical, non-dual vision of the single “Substance” (I think 'subject' would be better here') underlying everything and everyone. The non-dual nature of this vision is clearly announced by Spinoza when he says that “[t]he mind’s intellectual love of God is the very love of God by which God loves himself” (Ethics, Part 5, Prop. 36). Since, for Spinoza, God is the Whole that includes everything, it also includes your love for God, and thus God can be said to love Itself through you.

Absolute evil is the reflection/mirror image of... — Agent Smith

according to some doctrines, evil cannot be absolute, for it comprises the privation of the good.

What about the category of ‘the sacred’? Is that also rejected?

Origen and Augustine both condemned fundamentalism in the first and fourth centuries AD, respectively. Nowadays, it's mainly a revolt against the unprecedented range and speed of change in modern culture.

I expect that anyone who believes in life everlasting would not be materialistic, for instance, yet Christians, at least in the US, seem quite ordinary in that regard. — praxis

I expect that a good number of conscientious Christians don't spend a lot of time arguing.

Secular means 'pertaining to the state'. Concerns things like making the trains run on time and building bridges and the like. A secular state allows for the practice of any religion or none, despite the fact that it is routinely interpreted to mean that 'none' is better than 'any'.

The irony in this statement is that it seems to be based on you thinking that you know what science can and cannot ascertain, rather than leaving it as an open question to be determined by further inquiry. — Janus

It's not just my opinion. I think what is known as the 'Copenhagen interpretation' and also QBism both acknowledge this. Remember Heisdenberg's ''What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.' I think the 'Copenhagen intepretation' (which is not a theory or an hypothesis but an attitude) is very mindful of what can't be said on the basis of quantum physics. Whereas those interpretations that insist on preserving so-called 'objectivity' are then obliged to posit infinitely dividing universes to accomodate their requirements.

I don't see that at all. I get a lot from Fooloso4's posts, but mainly I get how little I know about Plato, and the Herculean task of becoming more familiar with the labyrinthine layers of meaning.

A general question I have is this: I think there is a widespread mistake in the understanding of the term 'Forms'. I think it's almost universally taken to be something like shape - after all, in English, 'shape' and 'form' are very close in meaning. But I would have thought that a better modern interpretation would be something like 'principle'.

For instance, there's an argument in the Phaedo (which I don't recall being discussed in the thread on that dialogue) called The Argument from Imperfection (reference). Basically this revolves around the 'idea of Equals'. It points out that there is no physical instantiation or example of 'Equals'. It argues that things that we see as equal - two sticks, or two stones - are not really equal but merely alike. Plato argues that the ability to grasp 'Equal' amounts to grasping the Form of Equal, which is something that is done solely by the Intellect, not by sensory apprehension.

That argument has intuitive appeal to me, because I believe that it is indeed true that 'Equal' has no physical instantiation, and yet it is a fundamental element of mathematical and indeed general reasoning.

If you're not inclined to believe it, no argument will suffice. I read somewhere that Aquinas's 'five proofs' and other such arguments were never intended as apologetics or conversion devices but as edifying exercises for the faithful.

I have some experience with Pure Land Buddhism. This is very much a faith-based religion, where enlightenment is realised through recitation of the name of Amidha Buddha. One of their articles of faith is 'not engaging in religious disputes'. Probably wise.

I sometimes reflect on the asymmetry between atheism and theism. As far as believers are concerned, God is not a social theory or internet talking point, but the most important fact about life. For them, 'life everlasting' is real, and so the lack of it is a real loss, an inestimable tragedy. Whereas for atheism, it's only a matter of a false belief, which can't have any significance beyond the sociological or affective, because it doesn't stand for anything real in the first place. And I can't see any way to square that circle.

it doesn’t accept the basic premise that there is a world out there and that our job is to understand it. — Why QBism is completely empty - Mateus Araújo

I'm still persuaded by Pienaar. This 'basic premise', the division of self and world, is after all what is being called into question, and with good reason, as we are not ultimately outside of or apart from reality. Reality includes the observer, who is the subject of experience, the being to whom the world is meaningful. Pienaar's remarks about Cartesianism also make sense to me, see the Cartesian Anxiety.