According to Lloyd Gerson in Platonism and Naturalism, universals are the only means of preserving realistic identity, because they provide the means that something can remain the same whilst also changing (same in essence, different in specifics.) This discovery was a consequence of the long dialectic arising from the teachings of Parmenides (nothing real changes) and Heraclitus (nothing real stays the same.)

As to whether identity can be reduced to genetics, I think not. People can overcome their genetic predispositions, although of course they can also enact them. But they are not wholly determined by them.

I would say we can induce 'the good' as, most generally, acts which care about life to the maximal extent possible; and 'the bad' as the negation of it. — Bob Ross

That's fine. At this point you have a definition or an essence.

I think this is an important topic generally, especially on this forum. It relates to 's opinions about Moore's Open Question. It relates to Moore's understanding of so-called "naturalism." It relates to and Anscombe's despairing of the moral landscape.

It's sort of interesting how modern philosophy has attempted to do without essences, but really you can't do without them. Linguistically, words need to have meaning. Intentionally, concepts need to be specified. And when studying realities that are given, or "objective," or "natural," one is studying something with a determinate form that must be explicated if any sort of meaningful investigation is to take place. The modern abandonment of essences is a train gone off the tracks, and many contemporary philosophers are waiting by the centuries-old wreckage, train ticket in hand. I basically agree with Lloyd Gerson that such an unmitigated abandonment of Plato's basic project isn't really worthy of the name 'philosophy.' It's no wonder that our moral thinking is so deeply confused when, as a matter of principle, it is claimed that notions like 'good' or 'moral' have no essence at all.

You clearly take issue with Fooloso4 for a secular and, shall we say, 'modern' reading of Plato and Aristotle? You think his take, though scholarly, stops short where it matters, right? — Tom Storm

I respect his knowledge of the texts and have benefitted from it in many discussions about Plato. And I’m also aware of the deficiencies of own learning. In generations past, these texts were the subject of The Classics and classical education but I encountered little of them until well into adulthood. But on the other hand, Plato is one of the founding figures of Western culture and I feel as though a certain amount of it has seeped in to me solely due to my cultural heritage (and I have at least done some readings) But as I now understand it, a classical education in Plato required reading all the dialogues, in a prescribed order, and with associated commentary, as part of a structured curriculum. At this stage in life, I am not going to achieve that.

So I’m not equipped to criticise Fooloso4’s interpretation, save to say that in my view it’s rather deflationary. I think Plato’s dialogues can be read on many levels and are open to many kinds of interpretation, and that there are kind of ‘off-ramps’ for those who are not inclined to the esoteric face of his philosophy. But I agree with Lloyd Gerson that Platonism and naturalism are incommensurable, whereas for most here, naturalism is axiomatic and anything that can be categorised as supernatural - and it’s a broad brush! - is off limits.

At heart in most of these discussions you hold the position that there is a realm beyond the quotidian world and that this can be understood/accessed through a range of approaches - e.g., Buddhism, Tao, Jnana Yoga, and the classical Western philosophical tradition, which has been filleted by secularism and modernist understandings. — Tom Storm

That’s what philosophy is, or used to be. Pierre Hadot makes that quite clear in his ‘Philosophy as a Way of Life’ and other publications. I think the watershed was the division of mind and matter, and primary and secondary attributes, associated with Galileo, Descartes and Newton and ‘the scientific revolution’.

The underlying historical cause of this phenomenon seems to lie in an unbalanced development of the human mind in the West, beginning around the time of the European Renaissance. This development gave increasing importance to the rational, manipulative and dominative capacities of the mind at the expense of its intuitive, comprehensive, sympathetic and integrative capacities. The rise to dominance of the rational, manipulative facets of human consciousness led to a fixation upon those aspects of the world that are amenable to control by this type of consciousness — the world that could be conquered, comprehended and exploited in terms of fixed quantitative units. This fixation did not stop merely with the pragmatic efficiency of such a point of view, but became converted into a theoretical standpoint, a standpoint claiming validity. In effect, this means that the material world, as defined by modern science, became the founding stratum of reality, while mechanistic physics, its methodological counterpart, became a paradigm for understanding all other types of natural phenomena, biological, psychological and social.

The early founders of the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth century — such as Galileo, Boyle, Descartes and Newton — were deeply religious men, for whom the belief in the wise and benign Creator was the premise behind their investigations into lawfulness of nature. However, while they remained loyal to the theistic premises of Christian faith, the drift of their thought severely attenuated the organic connection between the divine and the natural order, a connection so central to the premodern world view. They retained God only as the remote Creator and law-giver of Nature and sanctioned moral values as the expression of the Divine Will, the laws decreed for man by his Maker. In their thought a sharp dualism emerged between the transcendent sphere and the empirical world. The realm of "hard facts" ultimately consisted of units of senseless matter governed by mechanical laws, while ethics, values and ideals were removed from the realm of facts and assigned to the sphere of an interior subjectivity.

It was only a matter of time until, in the trail of the so-called Enlightenment, a wave of thinkers appeared who overturned the dualistic thesis central to this world view in favor of the straightforward materialism. This development was not a following through of the reductionistic methodology to its final logical consequences. Once sense perception was hailed as the key to knowledge and quantification came to be regarded as the criterion of actuality, the logical next step was to suspend entirely the belief in a supernatural order and all it implied. Hence finally an uncompromising version of mechanistic materialism prevailed, whose axioms became the pillars of the new world view. Matter is now the only ultimate reality, and divine principle of any sort dismissed as sheer imagination.

The triumph of materialism in the sphere of cosmology and metaphysics had the profoundest impact on human self-understanding. The message it conveyed was that the inward dimensions of our existence, with its vast profusion of spiritual and ethical concerns, is mere adventitious superstructure. The inward is reducible to the external, the invisible to the visible, the personal to the impersonal. Mind becomes a higher order function of the brain, the individual a node in a social order governed by statistical laws. All humankind's ideals and values are relegated to the status of illusions: they are projections of biological drives, sublimated wish-fulfillment. Even ethics, the philosophy of moral conduct, comes to be explained away as a flowery way of expressing personal preferences. Its claim to any objective foundation is untenable, and all ethical judgments become equally valid. The ascendancy of relativism is complete. — “Bhikkhu Bodhi, A Buddhist Response to the Contemporary Dilemmas of Human Existence

Not everyone will defend so stark a position as expressed here, but it is undeniably a major influence on today’s culture. And do notice the hostility that criticism of it engenders. I’m never one to deny that I am ignorant in many things, but I don’t proclaim that ignorance as a yardstick of what ought to be discussed.

Yes, I have read Gerson's thesis and some of his essays on Aristotle. We have argued about them for years. A search for "De Anima" in the site search function gives a flavor for the dispute. My question to you was if you see that disagreement only in terms of your objections to 'modern' naturalism.

For my part, the two issues are only connected through a history of interpretation and not through trying to understand Plato and Aristotle on their own terms.

The carpenter knows that his personal 'form of bed', the formula which he follows in building a bed, is not the most perfect, ideal bed possible, it is not the divine form of bed. — Metaphysician Undercover

Quite right.

It is not, as you say, the "attainment of this insight" or an "innate capacity for enlightenment". It is the capacity to know. — Fooloso4

But there are different kinds of knowing, as spelled out in the Analogy of the Divided Line. And the specific kind of knowledge that characterises the Philosopher is spelled out in Book 6:

We must accept as agreed this trait of the philosophical nature, [485b] that it is ever enamored of the kind of knowledge which reveals to them something of that essence which is eternal, and is not wandering between the two poles of generation and decay. — Plato, Republic, Book 6

The 'two poles of generation and decay' are contrasted against 'something of that essence which is eternal'. Again it bears comparison to Indian philosophy (with which it was in fact contemporaneous). I understand all of this sounds too 'spiritual' in today's terms. It is felt to be superseded, a sentiment belonging to a vanished past. But as I see it, the spiritual orientation of Plato's philosophy has been deprecated in modern culture, because it is, as Lloyd Gerson says, antagonistic to naturalism, which is the prevailing orthodoxy.

I know you will probably not agree, but I'm used to being in the minority in these matters.

Facts are not skills. Which is why I support philosophy as a fundamental pillar of education. And yet many nations or education systems do not offer philosophy as a primary or secondary level module. If it were up to me it would be mandatory and fostered from an early age.

I think the issue is that many assessments are based on an objective points based system. If "Fact X,Y or Z" is mentioned then assign 1, 2 or 3 points to said exam response.

This is not learning, it's a memory test. — Benj96

I do think the U.S. is too opposed to philosophy, but the problem with your proposal is that "philosophy" is an incredibly elusive term. I would follow Lloyd Gerson in defining it in terms of Plato's wake, but many would disagree with me. So perhaps philosophy is a prophylaxis against propaganda; it's just that we will never be able to agree on what "philosophy" should mean.

Quine’s belief that we should defer all questions about what exists to natural science is really an expression of what he calls, and has come to be known as, naturalism. — Banno

And Lloyd Gerson lays out the thesis, in Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy, that (1) philosophy proper is Platonist, and (2) is incompatible with naturalism. This is what I believe is the underlying issue but I’ll fill that out later

From this it does not follow that animals are not rational. — Janus

I don't agree, although I also don't think it's of particular relevance. I agree that some experiments and observations demonstrate a kind of 'proto-rationality' amongst animals, but I don't agree that it amounts to reason in the sense that h.sapiens demonstrates it.

you appeal to Plato as someone who thought as you do. But there is no argument to support that way of thinking — Janus

I refer to it as historical background. I'm simply making the point that Plato's epistemology differentiated between different levels or kinds of knowledge in a way that modern philosophy does not. I agree that to elaborate that would require a much larger argument but I still think that it is germane. You might be aware that Lloyd Gerson's most recent book Platonism and Naturalism: The Space for Philosophy, argues that the history of Western philosophy proper is essentially Platonist, and that Platonism and naturalism are essentially incompatible.

The last paragraph is a reference to Kant's idea of synthesis and synthetic a priori judgements. I think there's an important point here, which you've gone from objecting to, to seeing nothing significant about (although I'm hesitant to explain why I think it's important). But, thanks for the feedback, appreciated.

I should say that while debates about universals—mathematical or otherwise—are interesting, I don’t want to enter that fray given my time constraints. — Leontiskos

By the way, here's a relevant essay on scholastic realism and nominalism, WHAT’S WRONG WITH OCKHAM? Reassessing the Role of Nominalism in the Dissolution of the West, Joshua P. Hochschild.

Thomists and other critics of Ockham have tended to present traditional realism, with its forms or natures, as the solution to the modern problem of knowledge. It seems to me that it does not quite get to the heart of the matter. A genuine realist should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired. Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.

In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. Preoccupied with overcoming Cartesian skepticism, it often seems as if philosophy’s highest aspiration is merely to secure some veridical cognitive events. Rarely sought is a more robust goal: an authoritative and life-altering wisdom.

ditto with the classics. But with this qualification: they are all long dead and long gone. — tim wood

One of the reasons they're still read is obviously because they were judged to have enduring value, and the fact that they have been preserved for millenia attests to that. (Presumably there were many minor and lesser writings that were not so preserved.) But I do get that to really understand (for example) Plato's corpus, you would have to read them in the original, so as to grasp all of the allusions and subtleties of the language. But then, it's a difficult field of scholarship, due both to the difficulties of the source texts, and also that they have been subject to centuries of commentary.

I've been attracted to Lloyd Gerson's books, and also those of a classics scholar Katya Vogt, but their books are very hard to read. They contain very lengthy and detailed footnotes and devote a great deal of time to defending their interpretation against others, ancient and modern, which introduce many intricacies of interpretation and arcane arguments replete with passages in Greek which of course I don't understand.

But, I do agree with the points you've made above, about assimilating the ideas from these texts, indeed that's why I made the remark at the outset. Also I've noticed this series from Princeton Press which makes available many classic texts.

If noumena are instances of direct reality, why is it there is never an example of a noumenal object? — Mww

You know that Schopenhauer criticized Kant's use of the term 'noumenal', right? According to a passage in World as Will and Idea:

The difference between abstract and intuitive cognition, which Kant entirely overlooks, was the very one that ancient philosophers indicated as φαινόμενα [phainomena] and νοούμενα [nooumena]; the opposition and incommensurability between these terms proved very productive in the philosophemes of the Eleatics, in Plato's doctrine of Ideas, in the dialectic of the Megarics, and later in the scholastics, in the conflict between nominalism and realism. This latter conflict was the late development of a seed already present in the opposed tendencies of Plato and Aristotle. But Kant, who completely and irresponsibly neglected the issue for which the terms φαινομένα and νοούμενα were already in use, then took possession of the terms as if they were stray and ownerless, and used them as designations of things in themselves and their appearances.

The Wikipedia entry on Noumenon, from which that is copied, also says

The Greek word νοούμενoν, nooúmenon (plural νοούμενα, nooúmena) is the neuter middle-passive present participle of νοεῖν, noeîn, 'to think, to mean', which in turn originates from the word νοῦς, noûs, an Attic contracted form of νόος, nóos, 'perception, understanding, mind'. A rough equivalent in English would be "that which is thought", or "the object of an act of thought".

So, from that, I would have surmised that the ideas, in the Platonic and Aristotelian sense, might be regarded as 'noumenal objects' insofar as they're apprehended directly by intellect. Lloyd Gerson says in his essay Platonism and Naturalism:

in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. ...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.

A related comment from Ed Feser:

Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. Triangularity as your intellect grasps it is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed. Of course, your mental image of a triangle might not be exact, but rather indeterminate and fuzzy. But to grasp something with the intellect is not the same as to form a mental image of it. For any mental image of a triangle is necessarily going to be of an isosceles triangle specifically, or of a scalene one, or an equilateral one; but the concept of triangularity that your intellect grasps applies to all triangles alike. Any mental image of a triangle is going to have certain features, such as a particular color, that are no part of the concept of triangularity in general. A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once. — Edward Feser

Now, I know these are all very knotty philosophical problems, in no way am I trying to resolve them. It's just that it seems to me that 'noumenon' as 'intelligible objects' in the sense of those two quotations make sense to me, but that does not seem to be what Kant meant by the term, as Schopenhauer said. I sometimes wonder if Kant put too much emphasis on the necessity of empirical validation, as there are whole fields, such as pure mathematics, which seem to me to constitute real knowledge, but which are not empirically realised.

There's a passage I quote frequently from this paper, which has always seemed significant to me, but mostly elicits shrugs:

Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because in thinking, 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.

….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too. — Gerson, Platonism vs Naturalism

It is also central to Aquinas' epistemology:

...if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality. — Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Man, by Robert E. Brennan

I, perhaps, suffer from the opposite problem where everything in the discussion remains where it last stopped.

Responding to your added text, the idea of transjective constituents would count as antithetical to what Gerson required.

Good posts. I agree with what you say about Aristotle in them. I would have to go back to see what you've said about Plotinus. — Leontiskos

Since it relates to the topic of the OP (regarding the Unmoved Mover), I will take make my argument from the horse's mouth:

Aristotle says that the first existence is separated from sense objects and is an intelligible existence. But when he says that "it thinks itself," he takes the first rank away from it. He also asserts the existence of a plurality of other intelligible entities in a number equal to the celestial spheres, so that each of them might have its principle of motion. About the intelligible entities, therefore, Aristotle advances a doctrine different from that of Plato, and as he has no good reason for this change, he brings in necessity.
Even if he had good reason, one might well object that it seems more reasonable to suppose that the spheres as they are coordinated in a single system are directed towards the one end, the supreme existence. The question also might be raised whether for Aristotle the intelligible entities from one originating principle or whether there are several originating principles for the intelligible entities. If the intelligible entities proceed form on principle, their condition will be analogous to that of the sense spheres where each contains and dominates all the others. In this case, the first existence will contain all the intelligible entities and be the intelligible world. Just as the spheres in the world of senses are not empty, - for the first is full of stars and each of the others has its stars,- so their movers in the intelligible world will contain many entities, being that are more real than sense things. On the other hand, if each of the movers is an independent principle, their interrelation will be subject to chance. How then will they unite their actions and agree in producing that single effect which is the harmony of the heaven? What also is the reason for the assertion that the sense objects that are in heaven equal in number their intelligible movers? Further, why is there a plurality of movers since they are incorporeal, and no matter separates them from on another?
Thus those among the ancient philosophers who faithfully followed the doctrines of Pythagoras, of disciples, and of Pherecydes, have maintained the existence of the intelligible world. — Plotinus, Ennead V, i, 9, translated by Katz

The mention of Pythagoras is important because that is a pivot for Aristotle regarding how souls are embodied:

[9] There is another absurdity, however, that follows both from this account and from most of the ones concerning the soul, since in fact they attach the soul to a body, and place it in a body, without |407b15| further determining the cause due to which this attachment comes about or the condition of the body required for it. Yet this would seem to be necessary. For it is because of their association that the one acts, whereas the other is acted upon, and the one is moved, whereas the other moves it. None of these relations, though, holds between things taken at random. These people, however, merely undertake to say what sort of thing the soul is, but about the |407b20| sort of body that is receptive of it they determine nothing further, as if it were possible, as in the Pythagorean stories, for any random soul to be inserted into any random body, whereas it seems that in fact each body has its own special form and shape.96 But what they say is somewhat like saying that the craft of {13} carpentry could be inserted into flutes, whereas in fact the |407b25| craft must use its instruments, and the soul its body. — De Anima, 407b10, translated by C.D.C Reeve

The issue of the receptivity of matter raises the question of how there can be "natural" beings in a world where necessary events occur in conjunction with accidental ones. The view leads to an argument about the nature of actuality and potentiality (as I refer to upthread). What I have seen in Gerson overlooks the importance of the 'material' in Aristotle's pursuit of the natural.

Coincidentally, it is interesting that Plotinus chides Aristotle as a poor Platonist when the role of Necessity is an important part of the Timaeus.

Edited to remove unnecessary meta-afterword.

An arcane argument. The SEP entry on Plotinus, by Gerson, has it as follows:

With regard to Plotinus’ contemporaries, he was sufficiently exercised by the self-proclaimed Gnostics to write a separate treatise, II 9 (‘Against the Gnostics’) attacking their views. These Gnostics, mostly heretic Christians…were sufficiently close to Platonism, but, in Plotinus’ view, so profoundly perverse in their interpretation of it, that they merited special attention. The central mistake of Gnosticism, according to Plotinus, is in thinking that Soul is ‘fallen’ and is the source of cosmic evil. As we have seen, Plotinus, although he believes that matter is evil, vociferously denies that the physical world is evil. It is only the matter that underlies the images of the eternal world that is isolated from all intelligible reality. The Gnostics ignore the structure of Platonic metaphysics and, as a result, wrongly despise this world. For Plotinus, a hallmark of ignorance of metaphysics is arrogance, the arrogance of believing that the elite or chosen possess special knowledge of the world and of human destiny. The idea of a secret elect, alone destined for salvation – which was what the Gnostics declared themselves to be – was deeply at odds with Plotinus’ rational universalism.

I stand corrected.

In other words, according to Plato in the Seventh Letter there are no core doctrines or any doctrines at all in his writings that can rightly be attributed to him. — Fooloso4

That's a 21st century thesis in the sense that Plato and Aristotle died 2500 years ago and we can argue about their texts ad infinitum. The problem is that Aristotle was Plato's literal student. Aristotle knew Plato, Aristotle was taught by Plato, Aristotle and Plato inevitably argued with one another about things, and Aristotle continued to argue with Plato in his own writings. The claim that Plato held no doctrines or positions is almost certainly false (and the seventh letter certainly doesn't entail such a thing). The claim that in the 21st century we cannot discern any of Plato's doctrines or positions is arguable, but in my opinion also false. But crucially false is the claim that we cannot discern doctrinal differences between Plato and Aristotle from their writings, and especially from Aristotle's writings.

Whoa. A relief! I always thought of "Plato" as diverging from, even betraying, Socrates skepticism.

Is there such clear evidence of this lingering-skepticism-notwithstanding-writings-to-the-contrary in Aristotle too?

differences can be found within the dialogues themselves and in the works of Aristotle themselves — Fooloso4

Yes

Some argue that the Seventh Letter was not written by Plato. — Fooloso4

My point is that it does not entail what you say it does.

Make of this what you will. If you want to discover Plato's doctrines in what one or more of his characters say in the dialogues then such claims must be weighed against what is said and by whom in other places both within that dialogue and in other dialogues. — Fooloso4

It seems you missed the point of my post.

1. Did Plato and Aristotle argue?
2. Do we have a source for their disagreements in Aristotle's works?

If Plato held no knowable positions, then Aristotle could not have argued with Plato. But Aristotle did argue with Plato, and we have at least some of Aristotle's arguments for and against Plato. Therefore Plato held knowable positions (insofar as we accept Aristotle's depiction of Plato's thought).

To maintain your thesis would require upholding the idea that Aristotle was no more privy to Plato's thought than we are, which is false. Aristotle had access to Plato's person, not just his texts.

Gerson's account is a fair description.

I wonder how he distinguishes "These Gnostics, mostly heretic Christians" from the other varieties. Many of Plotinus' objections could apply equally well to a certain 'Saul of Tarsus', who called for the end of tis kosmos.

Augustine placed Plotinus above Plato in The City of God. But I don't recall any reference to this part of the oeuvre.

Perhaps I should not have made my remark. I did not mean to hold Gerson to account as a matter of the 'minutiae' of citing specific schools of thought. Plotinus leaves the burden upon the one who would disagree with his argument. It is brilliant in that regard.

Is there such clear evidence of this lingering-skepticism ... — ENOAH

It should be understood that Socratic skepticism differs from other types of skepticism. It is the desire to know based on the knowledge of our ignorance. It is, as the root of the word indicates, the practice of doubt and inquiry.

With regard to evidence, we must follow the argument and action of the dialogues in Plato that lead to aporia and the dialectic of Aristotle. In both cases there is not a move from opinion to unqualified knowledge. I have discussed some of this in various threads that look closely at their writings.

Your arguments about this issue are best illustrated by the dialogue of Theaetetus.

Beyond the role of the mid-wife taking precedence over that of recollection, Socrates is heard defending Parmenides who also criticizes the Forms (in that named Platonic dialogue).

Aristotle takes issue with both thinkers. Plotinus does so in turn.

the desire to know based on the knowledge of our ignorance. — Fooloso4

Ok, fair enough, but with the assurance that you will know? Or notwithstanding your inevitably inescapable ignorance?

Plato himself gives us reason to doubt that he seriously held a theory of Forms. — Fooloso4

I think he provides the grounds to argue that, but I'm not persuaded. The heuristic I prefer is that forms or ideas don't exist - not because they're unreal, but because they are beyond existence (which is precisely what 'transcendent' means). We are blessed with the intellectual facility, nous, which is capable of grasping these forms (or perceiving rational principles) and which is what differentiates us from non-rational animals.

But the fact that there is nowadays great controversy over the nature of number (real or invented? Mental or existent?) only illustrates Plato's point. Here we have all the advantages that modern science has provided us, yet this question can't be decided!

Any man, whether greater or lesser who has written about the highest and first principles concerning nature, according to my argument, he has neither heard nor learned anything sound about the things he has written. — Fooloso4, quoting Plato 7th Letter

The Tao te Ching's warning comes to mind, 'he that speaks doesn't know'.

I found a crib of the section referred to:

Plato's explanation of why the deepest truths cannot be expressed in written form is famously abstruse. Before one attains the "thing which is cognizable and true" (gnōston te kai alēthes), one must have apprehended the "name," "account" (logos), "image," and "knowledge" (epistēmē). Name and account are approached through verbal description, while sense perception perceives the image. One attains knowledge only from the combination of verbal description and sense perception, and one must have knowledge before one can attain the object of knowledge (which Plato calls simply "the Fifth," name, account, image, and knowledge being "the Four"). The Fifth, moreover, differs from what is sensible and verbal expressions of it. Name and account provide the "quality" of a thing (to poion), but not its "essence" or "being" (to on). They are, moreover, akin to sense perceptions in that they are ever shifting and relative, not fixed. As a result, the student who attempts to understand the Fifth through name, account, image, and knowledge is confused; he seeks the essence, but always finds the quality intruding. Only certain kinds of student can scrutinize the Four, and even then the vision of the Fifth comes by a sudden flash.

Since this is how philosophy is conducted, no serious person would ever attempt to teach serious philosophic doctrines in a book or to the public at large.

My bolds

Who are you quoting?

Sorry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Letter

The way Aristotle dealt with the good indicates that he was a true Platonist.

With regard to Plato and Aristotle their shared common ground is that they are both Socratic skeptics, inquirers who know that they do not know. — Fooloso4

It should be understood that Socratic skepticism differs from other types of skepticism. It is the desire to know based on the knowledge of our ignorance. It is, as the root of the word indicates, the practice of doubt and inquiry.

With regard to evidence, we must follow the argument and action of the dialogues in Plato that lead to aporia and the dialectic of Aristotle. — Fooloso4

:100: :fire: This sums up my own freethinker-naturalist interpretation of 'Platonism' (which non-exhaustively includes 'Aristotleanism').

The heuristic I prefer is that forms or ideas don't exist - not because they're unreal, but because they are beyond existence (which is precisely what 'transcendent' means). We are blessed with the intellectual facility, nous, which is capable of grasping these forms (or perceiving rational principles) — Wayfarer

I.e. fallacy of reification / misplaced concereteness (which Nietzsche astutely points out is an inversion, or confusion, of effects & causes). As you anti-naturalists et al construe, Wayf, 'Platonic-Aristotlean' essences (universals) aka "Forms" are only abstractions from concrete entities generalized over them as classes (sets kinds types etc) by 'the need' (i.e. cognitive bias? will to power? the absurd?) of the human intellect to (aesthetically) impose (moral) order on (epistemic) chaos by justifying this slight-of-mind (nous) retroactively – at worst a sophistical subterfuge of implicit rationalization. To wit:

I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar — F.N.

Likewise I interpret what Wittgenstein means by 'patent nonsense from (traditional) philosophy misusing ordinary language (i.e. grammar) in order to try to say (meta-grammatically) what can only be shown' – or later, philosophers confusedly, or carelessly, 'playing some language game by the rules of another (à la making category mistakes)' – "transcendent illusions" of meta-nonsense. :eyes:

Anyway, if as you say, sir, that "Forms transcend existence", then it is a contradiction in terms to assume or assert that entities which "transcend existence" (e.g. super-naturalia like "Platonic Forms") have any explanatory – causal – relation to existence (e.g. nature).

Read Spinoza. :victory: :wink:

I.e. fallacy of reification / misplaced concereteness (which Nietzsche astutely points out is an inversion, or confusion, of effects & causes). — 180 Proof

I had the idea it is impossible to admire both Nietszche and Plato.

I admire Plato.

As for the 'fallacy of reification', that is precisely the misinterpretation of what the forms or ideas represent. To reify is to 'make a thing', but they're not things and they don't exist in time and space. But they are real as constituents of reason.

Is there such a thing as health? Of course there is. Can you see it? Of course not. This does not mean that the forms are occult entities floating ‘somewhere else’ in ‘another world,’ a ‘Platonic heaven.’ It simply says that the intelligible identities which are the reality, the whatness, of things are not themselves physical things to be perceived by the senses, but must be grasped by thought. If, taking any of these examples—say, justice, health, or strength—we ask, “How big is it? What color is it? How much does it weigh?” we are obviously asking the wrong kind of question. Forms are ideas, not in the sense of concepts or abstractions, but in that they are realities apprehended by thought rather than by sense. They are thus ‘separate’ in that they are not additional members of the world of sensible things, but are known by a different mode of awareness. But this does not mean that they are ‘located elsewhere,’ or that they are not, as Plato says, the very intelligible contents, the truth and reality of sensible things.

It is in this sense, too, that Plato’s references to the forms as ‘patterns’ or ‘paradigms’, of which instances are ‘images,’ must be understood. All too often, ‘paradigm’ is taken to mean ‘model to be copied.’ The following has been offered as an example of this meaning of παράδειγμα (parádeigma) in classical Greek: “[T]he architect of a temple requiring, say, twenty-four Corinthian capitals would have one made to his own specifications, then instruct his masons to produce twenty-three more just like it.” Such a model is itself one of the instances: when we have the original and the twenty-three copies, we have twenty-four capitals of the same kind. It is the interpretation of forms as paradigms in this sense that leads to the ‘third man argument’ by regarding the form as another instance and the remaining instances as ‘copies’ of the form. This interpretation of Plato’s ‘paradigmatism’ reflects a pictorial imagination of the forms as, so to speak, higher-order sensibles located in ‘another world,’ rather than as the very intelligible identities, the whatnesses, of sensible things.

But forms cannot be paradigms in this sense. Just as the intelligible ‘look’ that is common to many things of the same kind, a form, as we have seen, is not an additional thing of that kind. Likewise, it makes no sense to say that a body, a physical, sensible thing, is a copy, in the sense of a replica or duplicate, of an intelligible idea. Indeed, Plato expressly distinguishes between a copy and an image: “Would there be two things, that is, Cratylus and an image of Cratylus, if some God copied not only your color and shape, as painters do, but also … all the things you have — Eric D Perl Thinking Being, p31 ff

How is that a 'reification'? Reification, 'making a thing', is precisely what it isn't. That accusation is made by those who can't grasp the sense in which such ideas are transcendental.

Ok, fair enough, but with the assurance that you will know? — ENOAH

No assurance is given. In the Republic Socrates tells stories about transcendent knowledge but given his profession of ignorance these stories should not be mistaken for knowledge.