>Let us imagine how Plato, Plotinus, or Augustine would react to the claim that mathematical knowledge, for example, is “poor in intuition.” For them, such knowledge is nothing “abstract,” nor is it merely the result of an inferential process leading from premises to conclusions. Such a process is only the extended, articulated reflection of an immediate, non-discursive, intellectual “vision,” or intuition (Anschauung), of intelligible, divine reality, of the formal principles that underlie, permeate, show up in, and lend a degree of intelligibility to the world.
>As such, intellect represents not a self enclosed subjectivity abstracted from all actually given content, but rather, on the contrary, the purest form of “openness,” of active receptivity. It is the very nature of intellect to have always already “received” all being, and indeed intellect is nothing but this having- received. Pierre Rousselot remarked long ago that intellect in Aquinas should be understood as the faculty not of abstraction but of “intussusception,” of taking up into oneself; 14 and this is no less true for Plotinus and for the entire classical tradition. Intellect, therefore, is not “poor” but, on the contrary, most rich in intuition, in immediacy, in givenness.
>[...] Thus Plotinus describes the extreme richness of being as intellectually intuited: “And certainly the sky there must be a living being, and so a sky not bare of stars, as we call them here below, and this is what being sky is. But obviously there is earth there also, not barren, but much more full of life, and all animals are in it . . . and . . . plants rooted in life; and sea is there, and all water in abiding flow and life, and all the living beings in water” (VI.7.12.4–11). He then summarizes this by saying, “There is no poverty or lack of resource there, but all things are filled full of life . . . as if there was one quality which held and kept intact all the qualities in itself, of sweetness along with fragrance, and was at once the quality of wine and the characters of all tastes, the sights of colours and all the awarenesses of touch, and all that hearing hear, all tunes and every rhythm” (VI.7.12.22–30).
This is utterly fascinating. But how does one access this intellectual intuition? I've never experienced mathematical knowledge in such sensuous terms.
>We should note the radical sensuousness of this account of intellectual apprehension. For Plotinus, there is no opposition between sense in its temporal, particularized facticity, as immediate, “rich in intuition,” and intellect in its eternality and universality as abstract, thin, “poor in intuition.” On the contrary, it is sense that is relatively “poor in intuition” in comparison with the concentrated richness of intellect’s intuitive union with reality. As Plotinus says, “Sensations ‘here’ are dim intellections, but intellections ‘there’ are clear sensations” (VI.7.7.30–32). Sense and intellect are lower and higher, or weaker and stronger, versions of the same activity, which is the intuition, the intussusception (receptivity, of being fullness), of being.
>Intellect, therefore, understood in the classical sense not as abstraction but as the intuition of being, not only fulfils, but paradigmatically fulfils, the contemporary demand for givenness, immediacy, embodiment, the flesh.
Furthermore, it's weird to go from inferential, abstract, and discursive reasoning as "the intellect" to some kind of "hyper-sensory" faculty as "the intellect." Was I supposed to have been cultivating my imagination all along? Where does abstraction and discursive thought play into this? This feels like a bait and switch.
>I've never experienced mathematical knowledge in such sensuous terms.
1. The quoted segment does not refer to mathematics.
2. The quoted segment does not refer to anything "sensuous", it refers to the exact opposite, namely pure intellect.
3. How to access this intellectual intuition? Become spiritually elevated. That's all there is to it.
>Was I supposed to have been cultivating my imagination all along?
It's not the imagination. Not really. Although it has its uses.
>1. The quoted segment does not refer to mathematics.
Wrong. Read the first sentence of the post.
>2. The quoted segment does not refer to anything "sensuous", it refers to the exact opposite, namely pure intellect.
I know that. However, it was DESCRIBED in sensuous terms. That was the point.
>3. How to access this intellectual intuition? Become spiritually elevated. That's all there is to it.
Easier said than done. How are we supposed to do that? And again, the bait and switch.
>Wrong. Read the first sentence of the post.
The immediate quoted segment does not refer to mathematics. The immediate, relevant quoted segment does not refer to mathematics.
>I know that. However, it was DESCRIBED in sensuous terms. That was the point.
Who cares? I genuinely don't understand where you're going with this. None of the things Plotinus is describing would be apprehended with the senses. They would be apprehended with the pure intellect. Plotinus is giving a description of things for mortals like us. As you can see prior to the start of quote, it is noted that the things described in the quote are to be perceived with the intellect, which is to say, not with the senses, which is to say, not with sight, taste, touch, smell or hearing.
>Easier said than done. How are we supposed to do that? And again, the bait and switch.
It's all there in Plotinus. If you are not satisfied, try another tradition. Is it easy? Not really, unless you're a demigod among us, I guess. Do you have anything better to do? Probably not.
This makes sense to me but it's too hard, so I personally will try something different. Thank you for the enlightening perspective anon.
> It's all there in Plotinus. If you are not satisfied, try another tradition. Is it easy? Not really, unless you're a demigod among us, I guess.
And here comes the schizo fricking cope, like buddhists who have never experienced enlightenment but keep meditating 30 years because they still believe that Buddha actually did it no matter how often they realize they’ll never achieve it.
I can see that enlightenment and transcendence make you uncomfortable. It seems that, for some reason, your emotional comfort is contingent on your denial of these things. If you want, you can persist in your current path, or you can take any other path you so choose. As for me, I know perfectly well that there is a beyond. And the Buddhists who "keep meditating for 30 years" also know that, much better than I do, as a matter of fact.
You must be pulling my leg at this point when you're trying to gaslight me on a post that I wrote. It literally says
>MATHEMATICAL KNOWLEDGE
It is literally described in
>IN SENSUOUS TERMS BUT EVEN MORE PROFOUND AND DETAILED (the typical senses are actually the impoverished sensuality)
How can you not acknowledge this? Are you fricking moronic?
Nta but The quote in the OP post is wrong, mathematics is not intellektual anschuuang. Spinoza also makes this distinction and in effect says that mathematics is in the realm of imagination rather than intellect.
Reasoning that occurs in a process, discursive or dialectical reasoning, as the form of reasoning below the intellectual sight described in the OP post
You purify yourself by turning away from body, but I don’t see how he would say that you can experience intellect either without dialectic or “turning inwards” which is just self contemplation
It doesn’t make me uncomfortable, it just makes my annoyed that people actually fall for this shit and believe it’s real.
Why is mathematics in the imagination? Shouldn't it be discursive? Dianoetic?
Spinoza says that quantity only exists in imagination, that’s not related to neoplatonism just another example. Plato and Aristotle for some reason put imagination lower, because of the Greek worldview. They didn’t understand the scientific method so didn’t get that “imagination” is useful for building models of the worlds or constructing hypotheses and thought that you could arrive at truths about the sensible world through pure reason, so they basically decided that imagination was useless bullshit.
>Spinoza says that quantity only exists in imagination
Does that make sense to you? Isn't that counterintuitive?
>Plato and Aristotle for some reason put imagination lower, because of the Greek worldview.
I don't think Plato nor Aristotle thought imagination was useless bullshit. That's a superficial reading. The "eidos" is another image, only superior to the ones we passively experience.
> Does that make sense to you? Isn't that counterintuitive?
Yes, I’m the one arguing it’s all bs and there’s no intellect
> That's a superficial reading
Maybe, but it appeared to be that the only reason aristotle brought imagination up was because it was a weird phenomena that he had to distinguish from reason, as in the only reason he treats it at all is to say it’s not reason.
Second quoted segment is for you. I messed up my formatting lolololololol.
NGMI moron.
>(the typical senses are actually the impoverished sensuality)
I can actually agree with this, but if you understand what this means properly (i.e. that there is a QUALITATIVE DIFFERENCE between material sensuality and """intellectual sensuality""") you would be forced to agree with what I am saying anyway.
>It doesn’t make me uncomfortable, it just makes my annoyed that people actually fall for this shit and believe it’s real.
I don't believe in it anon. I know it. And, I should note, it is not a super hard thing to know. I am not even sure why you are so opposed to this idea if you have the intellectual capacity to understand and distinguish between noetic understanding and discursive reason. Meeting materialists who are even capable of imagining anything beyond discursive reason is very rare.
The scientific method doesn't rely on the imagination either, it relies on empiricism and the testing of propositions and observations via experiment. This is because it is not just the imagination that is unreliable, but even the senses are not particularly trustworthy. I am not sure why you would elevate the imagination so much when by definition the imagination is capable of picturing anything regardless of the level of veracity or relevance of the image. I do, however, regret to discover that you have wasted your time studying Spinoza. My condolences. Perhaps a read through Plato will help you rinse your palate.
Retroduction/abduction requires imagination and it’s half of science, empirical testing is only used to “check” the predictive power of your imaginary hypotheses
> I know it
You feel like you’ve felt something like what Plotinus describes. It’s schizo “feels over reals” shit. People who’ve had NDEs also think they “know” that there’s an afterlife, but that’s an epistemologically unacceptable way to determine whether there really is.
I don’t believe in “matter” in the traditional sense, but I’m against the notion of “noesis” for two reasons, firstly, I think it’s scientifically evident that an individual’s experience is produced entirely by the brain. That implies unified states of consciousness are all reducible to manifolds, since the brain is a manifold. But noesis implies the experience of intelligible whose Being involves no corporeal manifold at all, which implies that there is a “soul” which is a monad, a plainly absurd notion that can’t help but fracture into Leibnizian insanity or incoherent cartesian dualism. Secondly, I have my own ethical beliefs that scorn Plotinus’s purity ethics as life denying crap, I think that anything that leads you to hate the sensible world is insane and unhealthy.
>I think it’s scientifically evident that an individual’s experience is produced entirely by the brain.
ngmi
>(i.e. that there is a QUALITATIVE DIFFERENCE between material sensuality and """intellectual sensuality""") you would be forced to agree with what I am saying anyway.
I want to agree with you. But the fact that you refuse to acknowledge that mathematical knowledge was mentioned at all (even though it's literally in the first sentence of my post) is grating on me. It makes me think that it's a bullshit concept made up by pseudointellectual mystics.
In your OP there are three paragraphs. They may be related to each other but they do not have the same content. The actual quote by Plotinus (or at least I assume it is a quote from the 6th Ennead) is in the third paragraph. This is what I have been trying to clarify.
>Retroduction/abduction requires imagination and it’s half of science, empirical testing is only used to “check” the predictive power of your imaginary hypotheses
Science also requires your ability to breathe but you wouldn't base science around your ability to breathe, would you now? The imagination is a useful faculty but it is not, in itself, useful for arriving at truth. It can only be useful for that when it is transformed and regulated by the higher faculties. So, yes, the imagination is absolutely the most inferior of the mental faculties.
>empirical testing is only used to “check” the predictive power of your imaginary hypotheses
"Only"? What an intellectual you are. Science without empirical validation and confirmation is not science, it is a complete and utter joke. Furthermore, a hypothesis is not something you arrive at via imagination. You arrive at a hypothesis either via logic or via intuition, and you certainly unfold, expand and describe it in logical terms. The imagination can be useful for visualising the hypothesis, but not for formulating it or determining its logical conclusions (the "predictive power" that you would be confirming via experiment).
>but that’s an epistemologically unacceptable way to determine whether there really is
Literally nothing is epistemologically acceptable. Epistemology isn't obvious, common sense, or a settled issue. It is an extremely nuanced, subtle and difficult science. If you think seriously about the issue, you will quickly realise this. If you are willing to dismiss this experience, what experience are you willing to admit, and why, and does it make sense? And if you are not willing to admit experience at all, where do you even start? Descartes already grappled with this and failed.
>I think it’s scientifically evident that an individual’s experience is produced entirely by the brain
Produced by the brain or expressed by the brain? Let us say they are produced - are these experiences the full totality of all that is real? Or only of what is known or discoverable to us, or to some of us, or to a given scientific tool? Some food for thought.
>Being involves no corporeal manifold at all, which implies that there is a “soul” which is a monad, a plainly absurd notion that can’t help but fracture into Leibnizian insanity
I am not familiar with Leibnitz but I don't find that to be a challenging concept at all.
>scorn Plotinus’s purity ethics as life denying crap
Plotinus would counter by saying that Life is not limited to earthly life but encompasses a far broader range, with you limiting yourself to the smallest bit of it at the expense of the larger part.I don't hate the sense world btw
>Science also requires your ability to breathe but you wouldn't base science around your ability to breathe, would you now? The imagination is a useful faculty but it is not, in itself, useful for arriving at truth. It can only be useful for that when it is transformed and regulated by the higher faculties. So, yes, the imagination is absolutely the most inferior of the mental faculties.
Is perception a "passive imagination" while a mature intellect an "active imagination"?
>Is perception a "passive imagination" while a mature intellect an "active imagination"?
I don't really understand what you are saying. Perception and imagination may be related but they are not the same. Perception is grounded in sensory facts, imagination is not necessarily such.
A mature intellect does not consist solely of an active imagination which, as I already stated, is the most inferior intellectual faculty.
I do not understand the question. Discursive reason is below noetic intuition, if that is what you are asking. We could say that discursive reason (including mathematics) is a reflection of noetic reality, like a pure lake reflecting the moon. I think that's the charitable interpretation of the first paragraph in the OP.
>We could say that discursive reason (including mathematics) is a reflection of noetic reality, like a pure lake reflecting the moon.
How would it be like noetic reality? What the hell is nous or noesis, anyway?
I feel like if you are going to make a thread about Plotinus, you should at least read his works and the works of Plato. I have no idea why you would bother writing the OP if you don't know what nous is.
I've read 70% of Plato and Aristotle's corpus and I'm halfway through the Enneads, I even read the recently translated Proclus commentary on the Republic for pointers on nous, and I spend half of my extra-reading time thinking about what nous is or reading about what other people think nous is, yet I still have no idea what nous is. I am extremely skeptical that anybody else knows what nous is either, given its unique position in Greek heritage. It is loosely translated as mind, intellect, intuition, and/or consciousness, yet it appears to be none of these things. It certainly isn't phren, it isn't thumos, it isn't psyche, it isn't dianoia, and it isn't logistikon. And I doubt it is merely the cyclical trialing of hypotheses, either, given the mystical descriptions afforded to it.
If you understand what nous is with ANY certainty, then I doubt you have digested Platonism *at all*. It has no comparison in our current cultural and intellectual atmosphere.
Not the anon you're back-and-forthing with, but this post is a bit much, anon.
>I am extremely skeptical that anybody else knows what nous is either, given its unique position in Greek heritage.
And what unique position is that? You've read Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus to see how it fits their nomenclature, but have you looked at all in Homer, the historians, or the public rhetoricians? (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/wordfreq?lang=greek&lookup=no%2Fos)
>It is loosely translated as mind, intellect, intuition, and/or consciousness, yet it appears to be none of these things.
You haven't said how this is the case, or why such translations are loose and apparently unacceptable.
>It certainly isn't phren, it isn't thumos, it isn't psyche, it isn't dianoia, and it isn't logistikon.
That it's not dianoia or soul isn't anything extraordinary to notice, because the Republic distinguishes dianoia (but do note: "dia-NOIA") from noesis, and no one faculty on the Divided Line is identified with all of soul. And it's perhaps not thumos given the account of it, but how can you be sure it's not logistikon; there are three parts of the soul, not four, and which one do you suppose deals with intelligibles and would be the likeliest culprit for what has such a faculty? As for whether it's phren, the Republic may not speak to that, but consider that the teaching about nous in the Republic might be dependent on the occasion and the people spoken with; just as in Meno 88b-d, Socrates adjusts his speeches so that episteme = eumathia = phronesis, where each word gets used as if interchangeable, or how Socrates in a crucial passage about impiety and his daimonion switches from exclusively using nomizein (to believe / worship in a customary way) to hegesthai (to lead oneself to believe); or how Justice appears as a comprehensive art that includes Piety in Euthyphro, is the activity of making others perplexed in the Gorgias, and is discovered in the Republic as, minding one's own business and not being a busybody, both politically and within the soul.
This is to say that's it's not befitting to say both "It's not manifest to me what it is," and "almost no one else who claims to be able to say what it is knows either!"
>And it's perhaps not thumos given the account of it, but how can you be sure it's not logistikon; there are three parts of the soul, not four
First, Socrates makes it clear that in Book IV that he's giving a preliminary investigation of the soul. This is not to invalidate his categorization, which I personally find brilliant, but we're only given the BLUF notes for it. Second, the only part of the soul in the Republic that's given a full-throated, almost mystical characterization is thumos. The desirous part of the soul, Eros, is reduced to mere appetite, and the intellectual part of the soul, Nous, is reduced to logistikon, for the purposes of exploring the possibility of political philosophy. Thumos is granted as thumos, characterized like a mercurial yet valorous person that yearns for something great, instead of being reduced to something functional like "enkrateia" or something along those lines. Third, we know that nous can't be mere logistikon because logistikon is defined as a calculative faculty, the thing that is employed to achieve a certain end. That is the essence of dianoetic thinking, only applied to practical problem-solving. It's a mere shadow of the full capacity of nous.
>This is to say that's it's not befitting to say both "It's not manifest to me what it is," and "almost no one else who claims to be able to say what it is knows either!"
The reason it's given translations such as "intellection", "intuition", etc., is because we literally need a word that is "thinking" but has a little bit of a woo-woo superpower to it. Because that's how it's described, and that's what it seems to be. Direct knowledge of intellectual objects. Yet it's often paired with discursive reasoning in such a way that it makes such an intellectual intuition seem foreign to modern thought. Anybody who thinks there's a simple answer to the question doesn't understand 1) how much intellectual intuition has been problematized since the Ancient Greeks; 2) pretends that their preliminary understanding is anything more than a theoretical placeholder; and 3) fails to recognize that even the Platonists, including Plato, see it as a crowning achievement of a long intellectual life, something that cannot be communicated and has to be experienced. It's one of those weird "bell curve meme"/"iceberg"/"alpha and omega" ideas where you don't know forms until you have that revelatory experience granted from living the rigorous life of a philosopher.
>If you understand what nous is with ANY certainty, then I doubt you have digested Platonism *at all*.
Now this is just a cope. If you've read so much and you've done so attentively, I am sure you will understand it on your own eventually anyway. And you will be better off for it since you'll have gone through the work to learn and internalise on your own.
>"Glaucon," I said, "isn't this at last the song itself that dialectic performs? It is in the realm of the intelligible, but it is imitated by the power of sight. We said that sight at last tries to look at the animals themselves and at stars themselves and then finally at the sun itself. So, also, when a man tries by discussion--by means of argument without the use of any of the senses--to attain to each thing itself that is and doesn't give up before he grasps by intellection itself that which is good itself, he comes to the very end of the intelligible realm just as that other man was then at the end of the visible."
The Republic
>I certainly have composed no work in regard to it, nor shall I ever do so in the future, for there is no way of putting it in words like other studies. Acquaintance with it must come rather after a long period of attendance on instruction in the subject itself or a close companionship, when suddenly, like a blaze kindled by a leaping spark, it is generated in the soul and at once becomes self-sustaining.
7th Letter
I should note that the Letters are not necessarily considered authentic. But yes, I agree with the passage in the Republic. Dialectic *can* take you to noesis. It won't necessarily. But it can. And if you are interested in the Platonic view on noesis, I think Plotinus gives you plenty to work with.
The important part about dialectic is that it refines and elevates the human being and its intellectual faculties. Then the hope is that you reach an opening or a qualitative change that enables insight into intellection.
I just think that it's the first instance of reaching for the "absolute, positive, and speculative philosophy", only done 2000 years before the German idealists were obsessed about it. The main difference is that the Greeks were marginally more confident that it could be done.
I am not familiar with or interested in German idealism but as far as Platonism is concerned, the Platonists pursued henosis as a quite tangible goal for the individual to achieve. It wasn't some speculative, far-off dream.
I wouldn't call it "quite tangible." According to record, Plotinus only achieved union with the One a handful of times in his life, and he's obviously a talented individual.
If he achieved it, it is tangible.
It's still at the level of
>just trust me bro he did it for realz
For some reason we're just sitting here, participating in the nous but otherwise completely unable to grasp it without special preparation. It undergirds the possibility of intelligibility at all, yet whenever we try to approach it in its totality, we're stuck in an infinite process of attaining something just out of reach. It's the same phenomena-noumena distinction that Kant would later problematize 1500 years later.
Well you're clearly committed to your position, so I wish you all the best with it.
I'm not committed to my position. It fricking sucks, but that's all I've got. If somebody has a better perspective that acknowledges the problems but surpasses them, I'm all ears.
It sounds to me then that the real issue is that you haven't attained henosis yourself, which is why you are frustrated and displeased. In which case, welcome to the club. You're not the first, nor will you be the last. We all start like this and hopefully we'll know something else by the time of our deaths.
talk more about how German Idealism relates to neoplatonism
>talk more about how German Idealism relates to neoplatonism
Hegel was a massive pseud who said the neoplatonists were gods even though his spirit = absolute shit and self-grounded logic are completely unrelated to neoplatonism and undo its basic points
go on
should've put 'spirit = absolute' in quotes, at first I thought you meant Hegel's definition of spirit is absolute shit, lol
I've also seen nous translated as "apprehension of first principles", mainly with Aristotle. Probably shows up somewhere in Plato too, but don't quote me on that.
What is a first principle? You want the arche? Well, that depends. I've seen it refer to something akin to an axiom (i.e. the first principle of an argument) that one works with prior to a deduction. Any axiom goes. It can also be a retroductive process (and, really, a creative process) when one takes a conclusion and retroduces a likely explanation given prior knowledge. So, we have a "going down" and a "returning up" in logic. Finally, we have *the* first principles, *the* arche, that Plato claimed were The One and the Indefinite Dyad. The whole point of the philosopher's lifestyle is to train the mind to leave the cave and see the arche clearly.
>If you understand what nous is with ANY certainty, then I doubt you have digested Platonism *at all*.
If you read through Hindu texts and take note of the descriptions of Buddhi, you can come pretty close to understanding what they meant.
>
In your OP there are three paragraphs. They may be related to each other but they do not have the same content. The actual quote by Plotinus (or at least I assume it is a quote from the 6th Ennead) is in the third paragraph. This is what I have been trying to clarify.
Where does Plotinus situate dianoia then?
Quote the author you fricking moronic dumbass
this. source OP?
Good of the Intellect by Eric Perl
what is the difference between mathematical objects and ideas
>Where does abstraction and discursive thought play into this?
Abstraction have never been other thing than particularized imagination... Abstraction is no other thing than 'something which is factually in another thing, but intellectually separated from that thing, in such a way that the abstracted thing cannot be represented by itself, but only conceived as if it were in itself' (like the mental image of one side of a piece of paper alone - which has no representation).
IQfy is still not ready for Neoplatonism.
Its random bs noone should waste time with
It is easy as just reading Plotinus further, but if I was to describe the process as simply as possible, it is mainly a matter of negativity, a casting off of one’s appropriation of everything that is NOT eternal and pure intellect. You must resist your absorption into the senses which you feed and have only ever known through the pursuit of sensual pleasures and distractions. Spend time alone, resist the direction of the mind which is rooted in liking and disliking, and do not indulge nor resist what appears in the experience, including thoughts, feelings, perceptions. Continue this perpetual mindfulness in daily life, developing a sense of temperance and uprightness, no more lying or idle talk or malicious intent. When the mind is withdrawn sufficiently from concern with the content of your experience, the mind lets go of its identification with this lower part of the soul and returns to its natural place among the Intellect hypostasises, where it enjoys a universal perspective and permanent untouched satisfaction.
Error in the first paragraph. Mathematical knowledge is not seeing in neoplatonism because mathematical objects are not forms. Math is dianoia.
> But how does one access this intellectual intuition
You fricking don’t, they were making it ip. Neither Plato not Plotinus ever “saw” the forms. Plotinus says you have to use dialectic to “arrive” at the forms, for example, you use dialectic to show that there is a “form of beauty” itself. But this never actually gets past “proving” the existence of this form because there is no special capacity in the brain that let’s you “see” intellectual shit like that. The realm of intellect is purely hypothetical, where everything is united in pure being all at once, whereas all human reasoning is discursive and processional, which should be fricking obvious to anyone who can either observe their own thoughts or who isn’t schizo enough to deny basic scientific fact. This shit is the equivalent of Paul claiming he “saw the third heaven” or whatever and if you actually believe it like so many pseud elitists on this board you are a gullible self-deluding moron.
>Math is dianoia.
what's a dianoia
>Plotinus says you have to use dialectic to “arrive” at the forms
Plotinus says you can directly experience Intellect by turning away from the lower part of the soul. Dialectical proof is secondary as far as I can tell.
What grounds dianoetic knowledge? Where is the "aha" moment coming from? Are we just conditioned into seeing certain kinds of answers correct and other kinds of answers wrong? This quickly devolves into a psychologist theory of logic if that's all "process" and "discursion" is founded upon.
I don’t know if Plotinus discusses what “grounds” it, but he says that basically the soul is connected to the sensible world and therefore has come at Being from a temporal perspective, which caused discursive reasoning. The realm of intellect “grounds” it by being above it/it’s ground is the Being supplied to it by Intellect. I would say that dianoia is just corporeal or mediated or temporalized noesis.
So, if we're engaging in dianoia that doesn't begin with the sensible world (an ascent from the bottom to the top of the hierarchy), nor end with this fully fleshed out "super imagination" (to be distinguished with the imagination that "generates" the world as part of experience), then something has gone wrong as a result?
What happens is the Good/One produces Intellect and Matter, Intellect creates soul, and soul orders Matter by the imposition of Form. But it’s a basic tenet of neoplatonism that “every productive cause is superior to what it produces” and thus that when Intellect produces Soul, Soul is inferior to Intellect, it mixes with matter and creates Time. But it isn’t that Intellect “went wrong” in producing Soul because Intellect produces it by necessity and because of Plotinus’s anti-gnostic theodicy.
>You fricking don’t, they were making it ip. Neither Plato not Plotinus ever “saw” the forms. Plotinus says you have to use dialectic to “arrive” at the forms, for example, you use dialectic to show that there is a “form of beauty” itself. But this never actually gets past “proving” the existence of this form because there is no special capacity in the brain that let’s you “see” intellectual shit like that
To add to your observations, anon, I would like to point to some indications that Plato might in a very qualified way agree with you.
In the first place, the relationship between Forms and hypothesis seems to come up quite a bit (Parmenides, Republic, Meno, Phaedo), with the Parmenides being the most revealing in showing the tentative character of such an investigation. In the second place, the presentation of something like the idea of the Good in the Republic, which we're led to picture as something we can "see" through images like the Divided Line or the philosopher-king's education, has the rug pulled out from under it somewhat when we recall the passage where Socrates admits he only has an opinion about the Good, which he refrains from sharing (see 506b-e, compare with 504e-505c), which seems to be an admission that he hasn't experienced the vision of the Good. Thirdly, the non-discursive vision of the Beautiful in the Symposium culminates in a question that Diotima asks Socrates which he does not provide his response to ("Do you believe,' she said, 'that life would prove to be a sorry sort of thing, when a human being gazes in the direction of the beautiful and beholds it with the instrument with which he must and is together with it? Or don't you realize,' she said, 'that only here, in seeing in the way the beautiful is seeable, will he get to engender not phantom images of virtue—because he does not lay hold of a phantom—but true, because he lays hold of the true; and that once he has givenbirth to and cherished true virtue, it lies within him to become dear to god and, if it is possible for any human being, to become immortal as well?"), and which is preceded with Socrates' remark that Diotima "like the complete sophists" gave her speech about the Ladder of Love (which itself has to be compared with earlier parts of the speech that undermine it, like at 204d-205a, where if the Beautiful is the object of Eros, there's no coherent answer to what you'll get once you have it, whereas if the Good is the object of Eros, it's clear that one would have "happiness" or "well-being"; one also has to observe in Diotima's question above that the vision of the Beautiful doesn't produce "true virtue", but "true images of virtue" in contradistinction to "phantom images of virtue", where she contests not that one engenders images, but that one engenders phantoms ones while beholding what's true, which isn't a great admission).
Then how do you explain the whole thing in the Laws about learning philosophy and mathematics as “preparation” for the secret doctrines? I think either Plato was only ironically a skeptic, or he was never able to reconcile his philosophical beliefs with his Pythagorean/Orphic mysticism. But the latter would mean that all of his mystic writing was just pure pseudery.
I don't know, because I don't know which passages you have in mind, or what specifically you're taking issue with: is it how I'm characterizing hypothesis, or the Good in the Republic which is presented as reached through a mathematical education? If it's the latter, I would have to ask how you account for Socrates in the Republic seeming to know that such an education leads to such knowledge, when he characterizes his own understanding in the passages I cited as an opinion.
>My aim, rather, is to show that reading Plotinus in phenomenological terms allows us to see his thought in a new and highly revealing perspective.43 The fundamental principle on which his entire philosophy rests is itself phenomenological: the Parmenidean law that to be is to be intelligible, that being, τὸ ὄν, that which is, means, and can only mean, that which is given to thought.44 This is why, for Plotinus as for Plato, being is form, εἶδος, a word whose relation to seeing (ἰδεῖν) and original meaning of “look, visible appear-ance” never becomes lost in its use as a technical term in philosophy. To say that being is form is to say that being is appearance: not appearance as opposed to reality, but appearance as what “shows up” (φαίνεσθαι), what is given, to and in consciousness. When εἶδος is understood as appearance in this sense, the phenomenological dictum “So much appearance, so much being (Soviel Schein, soviel Sein)”45 (Cartesian Meditations §46, 133) applies precisely to the thought of Plotinus. And being is given, i.e., appearance occurs, more and less adequately at higher and lower levels. This is why, for Plotinus, the sensible is less being than the intelligible; but insofar as it is at all, it is εἶδος. (See V.8.7.18-24, quoted above, p. 29.) Only the One is not appearance, not εἶδος, not given as an object for con-sciousness in any mode, and for this very reason is not any being
Yes, if sense-perception is regular sight, with its skew and deception, noesis is akin to "super-sight" of the whole picture, i.e. the intellectual object. Noesis is achieved through dianoia, a process of intellectual triangulation where the picture is ordered until clarity of sight is achieved. Abstraction is a process of taking away to reveal one aspect of the picture at the cost of hiding everything else. Mathematics is just one form of dianoia, one form of triangulation. I suspect there are infinite such kinds of thought, and we're back to only a slightly better prognosis of the phenomena-noumena distinction.
And the strangest thing of it all is why is dianoia, discursive reasoning, considered a "shadow" of anything? Why is it so different from both sense-perception and intellection? Sense-perception and intellection are more alike to each other than discursive reasoning is to either of them.
>Why is it so different from both sense-perception and intellection? Sense-perception and intellection are more alike to each other than discursive reasoning is to either of them.
What's interesting is that Socrates introduces a proportionality between the parts of the line that can be worked out further. Picrel is from Leon Harold Craig's The Warlover, a commentary on the Republic focused on the role of thumos. 1 of 3.
I'm personally partial to lesser phi (imagination) : 1 (trust) : 1 (thought) : greater phi (knowledge). One can play around with the various symmetries involving the Golden Ratio and 1. Scott Olsen's work here is invaluable.
>They say that Plato maintained that the One and the Dyad were the First Principles, of Sensible Things as well. He placed the Indefinite Dyad also among the objects of thought and said it was Unlimited, and he made the Great and the Small First Principles and said they were Unlimited, in his Lectures On the Good; Aristotle, Heraclides, Hestiaeus, and other associates of Plato attended these and wrote them down in the enigmatic style in which they were delivered.
>Alexander says that “according to Plato the One and the Indefinite Dyad, which he spoke of as Great and Small, are the Principles of all things and even of the Forms themselves.” So Aristotle reports also in his books On the Good. One might also have got this from Speusippus and Xenocrates and the others who attended Plato’s course On the Good.
>Since the Forms are the causes of all other things, he thought their elements were the elements of all things. As matter, the Great and Small were Principles; as substance, the One; for from the Great and the Small, by participation in the One come the Forms, the Numbers.
>This demonstration of the continuing pre eminence of proportion is followed by a curious “evasion,” which we can only assume is aacovering up of the fifth body.
>Thinking to prove that the Equal and Unequal [other names for One and Indefinite Dyad] are first Principles of all things, both of things that exist in their own right and of opposites...he assigned equality to the monad, and inequality to excess and defect; for inequality involves two things, a great and a small, which are excessive and defective. This is why he called it an Indefinite Dyad - because neither the excessive nor the exceeded is, as such, definite. But when limited by the One the Indefinite Dyad, he says, becomes the Numerical Dyad.
>The Divided Line presents Plato’s Two Principles, both the One and the Indefinite Dyad. And its accomplishment is that it effectively counters the “worst difficulty” argument of Parmenides 133b, i.e., the argument that there is no connection between the Intelligible Realm (segments D and C) with the Visible Realm (segments B and A). The solution is that the two Realms are bound together through continuous geometric proportion. And not only that, but the powers of the Golden Ratio are carried into the Visible Realm as a kind of enfolded Implicate Patterned Order.
The essay is interesting, but I have some doubts about some of what Olsen says.
To take the simpler bit first, he pulls the passages about the Greater and Lesser and the Mean from their context in Statesman. Here's what the Stranger says about their bearing on the discussion (284a-b):
>STRANGER: If one will allow the nature of the bigger to be relative to nothing other than to the less, it will never be relative to the mean, will it?
>SOCRATES: That's so.
>STRANGER: Then won't we destroy by this speech *the arts themselves as well as all their works, and in particular we'll make vanish both the political art that's now being sought and the art of weaving that's been described?* For all arts of this sort surely keep a close watch in their actions on the more and less of the mean, not on the grounds that it is not but on the grounds that it is difficult. And it's in exactly this way, by preserving the mean, that they produce everything good and beautiful?
>SOCRATES: Why certainly.
>STRANGER: And if we make the political (art) vanish, won't our search after this for the royal science be perplexed?
Olsen, I can't tell why, doesn't express any interest on the bearing of the Greater and Lesser and the Mean on the arts.
Secondly, pertaining to the passage you quote, it doesn't seem clear how this view of the line solves the greatest impasse of the Parmenides (and this seems strange since that dialogue presents the gymnastic as the solution to that impasse, oblique as it is), it's just asserted with no further explication, which is curious for such a massive discovery.
I also don't really see how "we begin to see why Plato was so careful not to reveal the real nature" of any of this, a claim also simply asserted without explication. I would think accounting for it out of fear of being accused of atheism (Apology 23d, Laws 967a-d) would've been more reasonable and moderate.
>Secondly, pertaining to the passage you quote, it doesn't seem clear how this view of the line solves the greatest impasse of the Parmenides (and this seems strange since that dialogue presents the gymnastic as the solution to that impasse, oblique as it is), it's just asserted with no further explication, which is curious for such a massive discovery.
What do you think is the greatest impasse of Parmenides?
>What do you think is the greatest impasse of Parmenides?
Well, by 133b, the greatest impasse pertains to positing that each Form is separable from the beings (*a* great impasse re: participation is at 133a, so participation, while related, is also a distinct problem). Olsen seems to be saying, if I understand him, that the divided line solves a problem about the connection between the Forms and the beings, but that seems to only (obscurely) address the impasse of 133a, whereas the thing we desire to prove is that the Forms are in themselves both totally separate from what participates in them, and knowable by us. The consequences of the greatest impasse are spelled out from 133c-134e, among which are that we can't have knowledge of political relations (master and slave), we can't know "the god" (so piety has no bearing on anything), and that "the god" can't know anything about us (so there's no providence or divine favor). Now, the gymnastic is said to be a long fourfold exercise (that expands to eight with positive and negative determinations) that has to be done with not just the One, as shown in the dialogue, but the Many, Likeness, Unlikeness, Motion, Rest, Generation, Corruption, Being, Non-Being, etc. (Cf. 136a-c) It's admittedly hard to see how these exercises with each being or Form being posited solves the impasse, but I've also never seen anyone try to do so, and in any case, it's hard to see how Olsen solves it (and as per above, I think he's confusing the greatest impasse with a prior merely great impasse).
Two further questions before I dive in:
>the thing we desire to prove is that the Forms are in themselves both totally separate from what participates in them, and knowable by us.
I've always found "participation" to be such a vague and metaphorical word. It's almost as bad as the Neoplatonic term emanation (which I interpret as a necessary causal—in the ordinal and not the efficient sense—relationship from prior to the next). It's so bad that I've even come up with a "forms as historical essences Plato" interpretation to gross my friends out with. If we can find a similar way to "ground" this metaphorical term, I think we'll have some more clarity here.
>(and as per above, I think he's confusing the greatest impasse with a prior merely great impasse).
What other impasses could he be referring to?
>I've always found "participation" to be such a vague and metaphorical word. It's almost as bad as the Neoplatonic term emanation (which I interpret as a necessary causal—in the ordinal and not the efficient sense—relationship from prior to the next). It's so bad that I've even come up with a "forms as historical essences Plato" interpretation to gross my friends out with. If we can find a similar way to "ground" this metaphorical term, I think we'll have some more clarity here.
I don't think we're necessarily left with better options, and at least for precision so I'm not going astray from the texts being investigated, I prefer Plato's "participate" (I should note though that he uses three words in the Parmenides with similar senses: metalambanein, metechein, and meteinai). I agree thst it's used metaphorically, and I'm not especially taken with "emanation" either, but the introduction of technical nomenclature might have the unintended effect of distortion. In any case, even as a metaphor, we understand more or less what it means for a beautiful thing to participate in Beauty without being mistaken for the latter, even if it's unclear how it works, or whether it works at all.
>What other impasses could he be referring to?
At least per the article and what the geometric proportion seems to address, it looks like it only touches the impasse mentioned at 133a, which is participation, while the greatest impasse (which he explicitly cites) is at 133b. That said, I just looked through the relevant passages in Olsen's dissertation from 1983 (almost 20 years prior to the paper), and he claims to have solved the impasse there by appealing to the "mathematicals in the soul", which he asserts by also asserting that the "doctrine of the intermediate soul" is "very closely related to [the] doctrine of the intermediate mathematicals", and then appealing to geometry in the Timaeus. It's clever, but it's clever the same way an apologist cites numerous passages from the bible to buttress a position without necessarily paying attention to context or transformations of the argument in the dialogues. He still ignores completely that the gymnastic of the second half of Parmenides is explicitly offered to address the impasse, having nothing to say about any of it.
>In any case, even as a metaphor, we understand more or less what it means for a beautiful thing to participate in Beauty without being mistaken for the latter, even if it's unclear how it works, or whether it works at all.
I don't think so. Since we have a vague notion of what participation is, and we haven't even tried to triangulate it with several working definitions, it could mean all kinds of things. Given how form-like substances have been problematized from Aristotle onwards (especially in modern philosophy), and knowing the problem raised about the existence of such-and-such form in Parmenides (form of hairness),
existence of such-and-such form raised in Parmenides, we could choose all kinds of ways to interpret how it works.
For example, I will now proceed to torture you with historicist Plato. I interpret participation as a lived, historical, and communitarian act that imitates some prior event, an event that, once occurs, never changes itself. Chairs participate in the historical form of chairness, which contextually allows us to understand what chairs are without mistaking it for some other form of furniture, a comfortable ledge in the woods, another person in a certain yoga position, etc. There are infinite such forms in the world, but once intuited, allow us to understand each thing for itself.
>I don't think so. Since we have a vague notion of what participation is, and we haven't even tried to triangulate it with several working definitions, it could mean all kinds of things.
I don't think this is true, and it seems at odds with Plato's overt procedure of, at least at the start of the dialogues, taking words with their normative (even if several) meanings and insinuations in mind. And one can still look up something like metalambanein's use in, say, the historians, to see that it judt means "participate" as we use that word commonly in ordinary speech.
>I will now proceed to torture you with historicist Plato. I interpret participation as a lived, historical, and communitarian act that imitates some prior event, an event that, once occurs, never changes itself.
I mean, okay, but you'll gundamentally be hampered by the fact that metalambanein etc. have no such description attributed to them in Plato's writings
It's not as if I don't get or sympathize with the frustrations of trying to pin something down, but we have what we have, and we have to at least grasp it as it presents itself to us first before we decide we can improve upon it. We have ways to tease it out, such as the meticulous and tentative comparison of word use; if that sounds boring and tedious, I agree, but it's also the only approach that reveals what you want without inventing answers wholecloth. (And we should slow down and recall that it's not what "participation" means in Plato that's in question, but how it works, if it works at all)
>that it judt means "participate" as we use that word commonly in ordinary speech.
And what kinds of things do people "participate" in, ordinarily?
>I mean, okay, but you'll fundamentally be hampered by the fact that metalambanein etc. have no such description attributed to them in Plato's writings
Does it have any contradiction? If it fits the rest of Platonic philosophy like a glove, then why should we reject it?
>And what kinds of things do people "participate" in, ordinarily?
If you're asking for the English sense that most resembles the Greek usage, we "participate" in assemblies, in meetings, in meals. If you needed some further clarifying, it would be less so in the English sense of "active participant", e.g., a speaker, as compared to someone present who doesn't "participate" (actively). But you're looking for Plato's possible sense/s as per normative Greek use, so by all means look at the cited examples on Perseus.
Metechein (see I.1 and 7):
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=mete%2Fsxon&la=greek&can=mete%2Fsxon0&prior=lo/gou#lexicon
Metalambanein (see I.5):
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=metalabei%3Dn&la=greek&can=metalabei%3Dn0&prior=h(mi/sea#lexicon
Now, between these two verbs, what range in meaning do they share such that they're used interchangeably in Plato?
>Does it have any contradiction? If it fits the rest of Platonic philosophy like a glove, then why should we reject it?
Yes? What part of an "historical...act", with "historical form[s]" = eternal and unchanging Forms in Plato? Where's the evidence? What exactly do the descriptors "lived" and "communtarian" add to Plato's thought, and where in the texts do we find any such correspondence? We both know that *you* know this is a sophism (because you implied as much above), but why would I bother reading Plato *this way* if I can perfectly well make up shit on my own?
>metechein
>to partake of, enjoy a share of, share in, take part (plus genitive)
>https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BC%CE%B5%CF%84%CE%AD%CF%87%CF%89#Ancient_Greek
>Metalambanein
>to have or get a share of, to partake of [+genitive]
>(middle) to get possession of, lay claim to (Koine) to eat or take (food)
>to share (someone's) society [+genitive]
>to take after, succeed to
>to take in exchange, substitute
>to interchange
They share pretty much all their meanings, especially if you read into "ekho" part of metechein.
>https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%94%CF%87%CF%89#Ancient_Greek
>What part of an "historical...act", with "historical form[s]" = eternal and unchanging Forms in Plato?
I just explained it to you. Once the event occurs, it is created and permanent. The past does not change. Participating in the original event after the event is akin to copying the event, in one sense or another.
>What exactly do the descriptors "lived" and "communtarian" add to Plato's thought, and where in the texts do we find any such correspondence?
They provide the mechanism for participation in a way that isn't immediately contradicted by the text, is supported by the vocabulary used, and metaphysically works (especially if you believe in anamnesis, both a "changing" and "unchanging" forms as supported by The Sophist, a crafting of forms as supported in Timaeus, Aristotelian hylomorphism, etc.).
>We both know that *you* know this is a sophism (because you implied as much above), but why would I bother reading Plato *this way* if I can perfectly well make up shit on my own?
Isn't that the point? Plato's dialogues are aporetic and are meant to inspire philosophical discussion. That's why key terminology is left indefinite.
>I just explained it to you. Once the event occurs, it is created and permanent. The past does not change. Participating in the original event after the event is akin to copying the event, in one sense or another.
We both know that's not the same as the dialogues discussing the Forms as uncreated and ungenerated.
>They provide the mechanism for participation in a way that isn't immediately contradicted by the text, is supported by the vocabulary used, and metaphysically works (especially if you believe in anamnesis, both a "changing" and "unchanging" forms as supported by The Sophist, a crafting of forms as supported in Timaeus, Aristotelian hylomorphism, etc.).
I'd have to ask for citations of consistency and examples; none of Aristotle, since that introduces more difficulties squaring where Plato and Aristotle agree and differ.
>Isn't that the point? Plato's dialogues are aporetic and are meant to inspire philosophical discussion. That's why key terminology is left indefinite.
No, it would not be. While there's much that's disputable or unclear in the dialogues, they're clear that we're at least after knowing unchanging truth. And while, yes, the dialogues do tend to predominantly be aporetic, I would remind that knowledge of ignorance is not the same as ignorance.
>We both know that's not the same as the dialogues discussing the Forms as uncreated and ungenerated.
If you take an eternalist account of time and merge it with anamnesis, then they were effectively uncreated and ungenerated, for they always were.
>I'd have to ask for citations of consistency and examples;
Plato loves his craftsmen analogies. You sure he doesn't think forms aren't crafted?
>they're clear that we're at least after knowing unchanging truth.
Which is not incompatible with what I've given.
You're off track now; I care about understanding Plato's writings, and to that extent, I'm willing to help others where I may with passages or observations, or to entertain doubts or questions, but I'm not interested in *your* thought, since it won't benefit me nor answer any questions I ask myself and Plato about the best way to live. If you'd like to read a Plato of your own invention, have at it, I don't care to discuss *that* Plato though.
Who knows if it was merely my invention? If it lines up so well, maybe that's what Plato believed! Besides, it's boring to not have some pet theories. Plato enjoyed comparing pet theories for fun.
Why not just give some theories of your own? Fight back you tard. Don't be an agnostic cuck. What is participation in your eyes?
>Olsen, I can't tell why, doesn't express any interest on the bearing of the Greater and Lesser and the Mean on the arts.
I've seen him talk about 284e. And also express that at ~61% into Parmenides that the Golden Mean displays itself again.
>I've seen him talk about 284e. And also express that at ~61% into Parmenides that the Golden Mean displays itself again.
From his article, here's the excerpt from Statesman 184e:
>[T]his other comprises that which measures them in relation to the moderate, the fitting, the opportune, the needful, and all the other standards that are situated in the mean between the extremes.
Compare with a fairly literal translation:
>...and setting down the other as all the arts that measure relative to the mean, the fitting, the opportune, and the needful, and everything settled toward the middle and away from the extremes.
"Arts" are suppressed in Olsen's reading (and "standards" added throughout his Statesman excerpts for some reason), and the whole context of the passage takes pains to be clear that the bearing of the Greater and the Lesser and the Mean regards the arts, such as that of statesmanship, which Olsen suppresses in favor of Platonic solids.
As for the Parmenides reference, it's to that terrible Jay Kennedy book. The passage reads:
>Euclid’s definition of the golden mean is phrased in terms of its technical name: a straight line is said to have been cut in “extreme and mean ratio” (akron kai meson logon) when as the whole line is to the greater section, so is the greater to the less (Euclid 1956: bk. II, D. 3). Thus the golden mean is defined by relations between a line and its parts; in various ways they are greater than, less than and equal to each other.
>A passage in the Parmenides at the location of the golden mean recalls Euclid’s language:
>Parmenides (61.7–61.8p): The One is equal and greater and less than itself … And if greater and less and equal, it would be of equal measures and more and less than itself … and in number less and more (151b5–c7; 61.8p = b7).
>The similarity of the content of this passage to Euclid’s definition, together with its location, suggests that Plato’s dialogues should be surveyed for similar allusions to the golden mean.
This is embarrassingly shoddy. The passage in Parmenides in no way expresses anything like the Euclidean definition of the Golden Mean; this is just Kennedy looking at whatever passage his schema tells him he should look at, and seeing the words "Greater," "Lesser," and "Equal," though those words don't add up to anything like the content of Euclid’s definition (which is mis-cited besides, it should be bk. VI, not II). From Kennedy's account, you'd miss that the comparison of the One with the Greater, etc. has been going on since 149d, and continues to 151d (and also 131d-e, 140d, 144c, 156b, 160a, and 165a). Citing Kennedy doesn't really give me confidence in Olsen.
>The passage in Parmenides in no way expresses anything like the Euclidean definition of the Golden Mean;
151b-151d references how the Golden Mean retains its proportionality of greater and lesser, even if you take one to be the greater and the lesser as the lesser, or if you take one to be the lesser and the greater as the greater. You can also take one and the lesser and it will be equal to the greater. Very strange that the Golden Mean can be read here at all, supposedly @ ~61.8% into the text. Coinky dink numbers.
No it doesn't, and it's not strange at all that a regular topic of the dialogue from 50% on would happen to fall around 61%.
>No it doesn't,
See the following:
>The One is equal and greater and less than itself … And if greater and less and equal, it would be of equal measures and more and less than itself … and in number less and more (151b5–c7; 61.8p = b7).
It's describing the fractal nature of the Golden Mean. Or else do you reckon this passage is just gibberish? How can something be equal, greater, and less than itself? The Golden Mean is one rational principle which does this.
The Golden Mean is a specific frickin line proportion, not some loosey goosey whatever-you-want-it-to-be horseshit, and the specific proportionality of it (the whole line : greater segment :: greater segment : lesser segment) blatantly isn't there in the Parmenides passage. You, like Kennedy and Olsen, want it to be there, so you're overly impressed by the mere presence of words, and make nothing of the context of the passage in the second Parmenidean hypothesis, and overlook that the same "terminology" appears in a half dozen statistically unimportant places throughout the dialogue.
Stop baseding out over your failure to understand mathematical proportions lol. You just don't want to see what's clearly being described. What is the Golden Mean? It's a self-same fractal pattern.
>and overlook that the same "terminology" appears in a half dozen statistically unimportant places throughout the dialogue.
I'm not merely noting the terminology, but I'm noting how the terminology are connected in this case. Again, how can something be equal, greater, and less than itself? If you don't have the right interpretive tool, sounds like gibberish.
>not some loosey goosey whatever-you-want-it-to-be horseshit
See, that's the problem. If it wasn't in exactly the Golden Mean line proportion, then whatever is being described won't work. But you haven't even tried to interpret this passage, not even to try to refute that it couldn't be the Golden Mean. In fact, you're kind of dunking on Plato here by implying that this whole passage is just loose goosey horeshit, given that one would beg that there is some order to what seems like a dense and almost nonsensical explication.
Again, employ some abductive reasoning. We see what's there. We notice the problem. We see what Plato has described elsewhere. We see the conspicuous location. We fit a hypothesis onto the specified parameters. Suddenly it makes sense. Is it a coincidence? Maybe. But at some point you have to stop believing in coincidences, silence the inner soijak that screams NO IT CAN'T BE THIS WEIRD OCCULT THING EVEN THOUGH PLATO WAS INITIATED, and just take the hints that Plato gives you. What is the alternative? That Plato had a stroke when he wrote this passage?
The second hypothesis of Parmenides posits a "One that is" measured with less precision than in the first hypothesis (such that in the first hypothesis, the One can't be because if the One had being, from standpoint of precision it would be two and not One), such that the One of the second hypothesis = the Ones thst are Wholes and the Ones that are individual Parts of Wholes, such that the hypothesis allows the One to have being. That's fricking it, which is why it's not any kind of surprise that the One can be Greater, Lesser, and Equal to itself, because the One is just some individuated thing that's Greater if it's a whole measured against Lesser, Lesser if it's a part measured against Greater, and equal if it be either whole measured by whole or part measured by part. But boy, it sure doesn't fricking matter, because the Parmenides doesn't express the proportion, anywhere, at any point, and those passages are trustworthy as "allusions" as the Bible Code is.
>(such that in the first hypothesis, the One can't be because if the One had being, from standpoint of precision it would be two and not One)
Correct.
>because the One is just some individuated thing
The One isn't a thing. It doesn't have being. It is the principle of being.
>second hypothesis = the Ones thst are Wholes and the Ones that are individual Parts of Wholes, such that the hypothesis allows the One to have being.
And yet you don't have a problem with the apparent sleight of hand where One = Whole and One = Part, especially since having a differentiated whole is something an Eleatic would have been averse to? Or that, ignoring that sleight of hand, through your reading, this passage boils down to a boring tautology that parts are smaller than what they're made of? Is that what Plato wanted to express?
>measured
Man, Plato sure loves to measure things. What is his favorite measurement?
>But boy, it sure doesn't fricking matter, because the Parmenides doesn't express the proportion, anywhere, at any point, and those passages are trustworthy as "allusions" as the Bible Code is.
The second hypothesis doesn't conflict with the first hypothesis if you take the Form of the Good to be The One to be the Golden Mean, that concept that Plato in his holy Pythagorean-ness likes to sprinkle all over his dialogues. And there's no other way to make it work without rejecting one or the other hypothesis.
>The One isn't a thing. It doesn't have being. It is the principle of being.
Wrong, the One of the second hypothesis is the One of individual beings, be they wholes or parts of wholes.
>And yet you don't have a problem with the apparent sleight of hand where One = Whole and One = Part, especially since having a differentiated whole is something an Eleatic would have been averse to? Or that, ignoring that sleight of hand, through your reading, this passage boils down to a boring tautology that parts are smaller than what they're made of? Is that what Plato wanted to express?
There's no sleight of hand, because Parmenides laid out what the procedure was, 1) what x is in itself, 2) what x is in relation to everything else, 3) what everything else is in relation to x, and 4) given x, what everything else is in relation to everything else. If it reads like a boring tautology to you, then that's your problem, not mine.
>The second hypothesis doesn't conflict with the first hypothesis if you take the Form of the Good to be The One to be the Golden Mean, that concept that Plato in his holy Pythagorean-ness likes to sprinkle all over his dialogues. And there's no other way to make it work without rejecting one or the other hypothesis.
This explains literally nothing, and by the first hypothesis, the One != the Good, because that would make the One a two, by the same arguments used everywhere in the first hypothesis. Nor does forcefully inserting the Golden Mean in explain anything, nor have you demonstrated it, because all you've done is assert it (and insert it in a way contrary to Olsen even, who takes to be a relation between the ontological entities of the Divided Line, and *not* as the Good itself). The only dialogues that are explicitly Pythagorean are Timaeus (where Socrates barely speaks), and Phaedo (where Socrates' primary interlocutors are Pythagoreans who have to be reminded of Pythagorean doctrines they already no.inally believe, such is their despair; notably, Apollodorus, a non-Pythagorean follower of Socrates, bawls through the whole dialogue, the Pythagorean arguments apparently not assuaging him), and of the remainder that have references, Philebus has to be squinted at (because the Pythagorean element is just the words peras and apeiras, as though Anaximander hadn't already introduced those terms into philosophy), the Meno (where you'd have to ignore the revision of recollection at the end: "*[True opinions] are fastened by the tie of the cause*; and *this fastening of them, friend Meno, is recollection*, as you and I have agreed to call it [Note: they did not agree to this lol]."), and Phaedrus (only by use of the term recollection, and ignoring every difference in presentation there with Phaedo and Meno). You know who else was initiated into the Mysteries? Alcibiades, and Socrates and Plato, if they were initiated, gave as much of a shit about them as Alcibiades.
>Wrong, the One of the second hypothesis is the One of individual beings, be they wholes or parts of wholes.
Then that's not "the One" but rather something else. Again, see the sleight of hand comment, which you did nothing to resolve. The One was degraded in the second hypothesis.
>1) what x is in itself, 2) what x is in relation to everything else, 3) what everything else is in relation to x, and 4) given x, what everything else is in relation to everything else. If it reads like a boring tautology to you, then that's your problem, not mine.
That procedure does not show up in the excerpt that we were discussing in those terms or with that relationship. Obviously that's not a boring tautology, but it's also not what was said.
>This explains literally nothing, and by the first hypothesis, the One != the Good, because that would make the One a two, by the same arguments used everywhere in the first hypothesis.
How would it make it a two? The two is generated from the Good. They're not equivalent.
>Nor does forcefully inserting the Golden Mean in explain anything, nor have you demonstrated it, because all you've done is assert it
There is no forceful insertion or assertion. It was more like examining the edges of an incomplete puzzle and finding a puzzle piece which matches the outline from elsewhere.
>who takes to be a relation between the ontological entities of the Divided Line, and *not* as the Good itself)
Greater phi ends up being assigned to the realm of the forms in the Divided Line, so again you're wrong on that account too.
>Then that's not "the One" but rather something else. Again, see the sleight of hand comment, which you did nothing to resolve. The One was degraded in the second hypothesis.
>That procedure does not show up in the excerpt that we were discussing in those terms or with that relationship. Obviously that's not a boring tautology, but it's also not what was said.
It's literally how Parmenides introduces the gymnastic from 136a using the example "if Many is":
>"Take, if you like," he said, "this hypothesis that Zeno hypothesized: 'If many is, 1) what must result both for the Many themselves in relation to themselves and 2) in relation to the One and 3) for the One both in relation to itself and 4) in relation to the Many?' [Numbers added to distinguish each hypothesis]
So of course the One of the second hypothesis differs from the One of the first; the first is the One itself *in relation to itself*, and the second is the the One itself in relation to the Many. "The procedure does not show up in the excerpt" is specious, because the excerpt is an excerpt you're divorcing from the whole second hypothesis.
>How would it make it a two? The two is generated from the Good. They're not equivalent.
Because by 139b-140b, it would be the Same or Like the Good, which would make it the Same or Like of another, which would make it a Many, and not One.
>There is no forceful insertion or assertion. It was more like examining the edges of an incomplete puzzle and finding a puzzle piece which matches the outline from elsewhere.
You aren't hypothesizing or examing anything, you're just point blank saying it is, without any textual basis, and a ridiculous appeal to abductive reasoning, as though abductive reasoning wouldn't conclude that the simplest answer to what's on the surface of the text is exactly what's already there.
>Greater phi ends up being assigned to the realm of the forms in the Divided Line, so again you're wrong on that account too.
*As a value of length of the line,* not as *an object* of the line. Holy shit, slow down and stop runnin' and gunnin' when you read.
>It's literally how Parmenides introduces the gymnastic from 136a using the example "if Many is":
That's such a vague relational structure that it serves to be no value by inserting it into 151b-d.
>and the second is the the One itself in relation to the Many.
Then it isn't "the One", isn't it?
>Because by 139b-140b, it would be the Same or Like the Good, which would make it the Same or Like of another, which would make it a Many, and not One.
I never bought this argument if you're not simply comparing to names for the same concept.
>you're just point blank saying it is, without any textual basis, and a ridiculous appeal to abductive reasoning, as though abductive reasoning wouldn't conclude that the simplest answer to what's on the surface of the text is exactly what's already there.
At this point you're ignoring the hints I've mentioned plus become fully accepting of gibberish through a vague assertion of your own that it's actually a valid relationship being stated and not something that's inherently contradictory.
>*As a value of length of the line,*
That's not something Plato is interested in, considering that the Golden Mean is an irrational number and thus can't be quantified. You can already see this problem in Meno when he tells the slave boy not to bother trying to come up with the "number" of the hypotenuse of the root
>Holy shit, slow down and stop runnin' and gunnin' when you read.
I don't think you fully understand the implications of what you're trying to say, and your projecting your arrogance as my ignorance.
>That's such a vague relational structure that it serves to be no value by inserting it into 151b-d.
It's not an insertion into 151, it's the literal description in the dialogue itself of what's going on in 142b-157b.
>Then it isn't "the One", isn't it?
It is, *it's the One in relation to the Many.* That you don't get the difference isn't my problem, since you won't let the dialogue instruct you on how to take it.
>I never bought this argument if you're not simply comparing to names for the same concept.
Not my problem, and it's not "comparing names", but comparing the One in itself, i.e., in the precise sense, which as such can'tbe the same as the Good. All in all, you're just saying, "I can't make heads or tails of a doctrine I expected to find given these passages, so I'll just reject them and claim Plato didn't really mean it, somehow."
>At this point you're ignoring the hints I've mentioned plus become fully accepting of gibberish through a vague assertion of your own that it's actually a valid relationship being stated and not something that's inherently contradictory.
I haven't ignored anything, if anything, I've spent too much time sorting through windeggs, and your "hints" don't amount to anything; a vacuous scholar cites the Statesman ignoring context? Another vacuous scholar says the language of a repeated subject appears at the ~61% point of Parmenides? Citing passage context and judging the passages of a dialogue by other passages in the same dialogue is suddenly gibberish, because you don't get the New Age Plato of your dreams? If that's gibberish, it's better gibberish than judging passages in isolation and effectively saying their context is gibberish.
>That's not something Plato is interested in, considering that the Golden Mean is an irrational number and thus can't be quantified. You can already see this problem in Meno when he tells the slave boy not to bother trying to come up with the "number" of the hypotenuse of the root
You're skirting positions again; the GM is only relevant to the line as the proportional relationships that hold between the ontological objects of each segment, the meaning of which being only revealing of the degrees to which the bottom two have "clarity" and the top two have "truth", and Greater Phi only comes in on the top as a value of length, the only plausible meaning of which is that the top segment is irrational, "alogos."
>I don't think you fully understand the implications of what you're trying to say, and your projecting your arrogance as my ignorance.
I understand my implications just fine, merci merci. And it's rich being called arrogant from someone who disregards what Plato actually writes in favor of total woo. You don't have access to secret teachings on account of shoving the Golden Mean in whichever hole you choose. I'm dipping, because I've done enough homework for someone totally resistant to doing any of their own.
could you take a break with arguing with the Golden Mean autist and hazard me some hypotheses of what participation is, with as many scare quotes as you need to make you comfortable with throwing some doxa into the aether?
I can't, it's a long argument that's not suited for IQfy length, and if I even gave a summary, the immediate response would be "prove it", which literally requires beating my head discussing all of the dialogues. I can recommend authors that I more or less agree with, if that helps tho. Check out books/essays by Seth Benardete, Michael Davis, Alex Priou, Christopher Bruell, and David Bolotin. I don't agree with every word, and they differ from each other on points, but they very helpfully elucidate certain difficulties and provoke thinking problems through, especially Benardete and Bruell. But that's all I can say.
come on man, you can't even give a quick rundown? give me something to work with so I'll be inspired to read yet another meandering Straussian
I will throw this out, I think that while Socrates in Apology 21b-d is adjusting himself somewhat for an audience of angry jurors, I don't think the core take away of 21d is contradicted anywhere in Plato, and I would compare it with Symposium 204a and Phaedrus 278c-d, and consider how Socrates' Erotic knowledge relates to his ignorance (Symposium 202a), his daimonion (Theages 128b through to the end), and his practice of midwifery (Theaetetus 149a-151d). Consider also other passages where Socrates brings up his wisdom of Erotics (Symposium 177d, Phaedrus 257a, Lysis 204b-c, and again Theages 128b). The answer I've come to relates to all that.
Thank you, I'll get to reading.
Cheers. The basic gist is, if you can explain what kind of life Socrates lives and what philosophy is, you'll have a good sense of what kind of answers it can get. So if philosophy is or is related to Eros, and you understand what Eros is, you'll be pretty set to have a key to seeing what's going on in general with the Forms and participation.
Also, before I forget, there's something like an account of Socrates' philosophic development detailed through the dialogues, the earliest being the autobiography Socrates gives in Phaedo 95e-100e, the only account Socrates gives of his own development, followed by all of Parmenides, and Socrates' private speech about Diotima in Symposium 201d-212a. The oracle story in the Apology is hard to place as an account of how he started going around questioning others, but it's clear that he already had a reputation for being wise somehow, or Chaerophon wouldn't have gone to the oracle over it.
Why do you even come here? What don't you not know yet?
1) Sometimes it's fun to hash out Plato and work through it with others.
2) A whole fricking lot tbh.
>2) A whole fricking lot tbh.
Like what? What are you burning to know?
Well, one example that's been predominantly on my mind for the last few years is the precise relationship between Eros and Thumos in the soul, both in themselves as they relate to each other, and as they apparently motivate philosophy. Between the Republic and Symposium, they're both presented as something in the soul that moves it towards or contributes in moving it towards philosophy, but in these partial ways that exclude or downplay each other, hence Eros becomes reduced to appetite in the Republic, while Thumos seems to appear in the Symposium (the middle section of Diotima's speech about reproduction and poetry) as a reduced subphilosophic Eros. How to put their accounts together has been a big puzzle to me.
How much should one cultivate the erotic and/or thumotic sides of their souls? Is it about intensity? Harmony? Both? Extinguishing one or the other? Also, there's a "society of the mind" thing going on, given that thumos and eros both seem to desire in some way.
It's all hard to say. One thing that falls out of the question are the two predominant depictions of Socrates we see: Socrates the questioner, and Socrates the moralist. Eros seems to be the simultaneous desire to have something and to contemplate it from a distance, while Thumos seems to be indignation over another's victory and contriving to come out on top. Both accounts of soul in the Symposium and Republic are specious; the Republic on account of Socrates pointing out the longer and harder way to understanding, which Glaucon rejects taking, and the Symposium on account of Socrates claiming his speech is a beautified true speech about Eros, beautified to downplay the ugly parts of Eros. I do wonder if they're the same, but shown from partial vantage points, but it is hard to put the two together. The only dim suspicions I have are that the Eros of Thumos is found in the latter's "love of victory" and "love of honor", and that the Thumos of Eros is found in the latter's desire of something another may have, or the anger in not getting what's desired.
I don’t know how much you’re familiar with modern political philosophy, but Fukuyama discusses the need to obliterate thumos to secure peace as part of the end of history. On one hand, thumos seems to be about zero-sum goods that, if we have a stable and prosperous society, we don’t need and only serves to create unnecessary tension. On the other hand, thumos also seems to be a driving force behind overcoming struggle—see the parallels between thumos and Aquinas’s irascible, the natural virtue of courage, etc. Extinguishing thumos leads to a certain Nietzschean “last man” ugliness that many reactionaries have lamented in modernity.
>On the other hand, thumos also seems to be a driving force behind overcoming struggle—see the parallels between thumos and Aquinas’s irascible, the natural virtue of courage, etc. Extinguishing thumos leads to a certain Nietzschean “last man” ugliness that many reactionaries have lamented in modernity.
I think this is all correct. Thumos seems to be both an honor- and victory-loving attitude that might commit injustices, but it's also the very part indignant over injustice and desiring that justice be done. A society that extinguishes Thumos too much appears to be one incapable of defending itself against the predations of others, and indifferent to the sight of such predations. On the level of thinking, it also seems tied in Plato to mathematics via its demand for precision (I take it that the connection is through the desire to be correct or right in argument). This might have a distorting effect on thought, but it also seems to be something that impels argument forward (Socrates admits such a case in himself in Republic 536b-c). You do have something like a "problem of Thumos", and that's where I think the short dialogue Cleitophon comes in, a young man so impelled to seek justice that he desires to learn it from Socrates, but leaves Socrates' company dismayed by the constant questioning Socrates and his companions seem satisfied with. But that also highlights how common and important it is that people sometimes turn to philosophy out of a concern for justice, i.e., by being impelled by Thumos; this seems to be the lure that Socrates hedges on when he appeals to Alcibiades in the Alcibiades Major.
Why does thumos sometimes triumph over eros, or vice versa? Isn’t it weird to have one area of the sole dedicated to desires, yet multiple elements “desire” of things?
>Why does thumos sometimes triumph over eros, or vice versa?
I'm not sure. The Republic obviously offers a kind of account, but one has to take Eros as merely a sexual appetite. It might be as simple as "certain people are born with a nature such that one is more predominant over the other," but that still leaves much to be explained. To consider again if they're in fact One, I would initially be inclined to say that they have different objects: Eros has the Beautiful, Thumos has Justice, and between them they share the Good uneasily. That looks like a difference, at first, but the Just tends to be tied to the Noble, i.e., the Beautiful (the ugliness of Justice seems to be located in punishment; consider the story in the Republic about Leontius gazing on executed criminals). And the Phaedrus' first two speeches about the lover, beloved, and non-lover seem to link the two through the indignation of unrequited love. Alcibiades is characterized by Eros highly, but isn't his Eros for the many the same as love of honor?
>Isn’t it weird to have one area of the sole dedicated to desires, yet multiple elements “desire” of things?
Oh definitely. I take it that there has to be some playfulness on Plato's part that the appetitive part of the soul is in Greek "epithumia", which involves Thumos. Eros is already constrained to being like hunger and thirst, it could've just as well been the name for that part, but Plato chooses a term that suggests it's just Thumos.
>epithumia
After… thumos?
I think the sense would be "with thumos" or "overly thumotic". Thumos there would be related to Homeric use, which is usually anger, but also just powerful passion.
That doesn’t make any sense to me. Think about a person who is overly thumotic and perhaps not erotic versus the complete opposite. What would that look like?
The "overly" is just to express that sometimes epi- as a prefix is an intensifier. "On thumos" would be another way to take it, but it doesn't really make great sense. But we'd have to distinguish what Plato might want to do with his choices of words, and how it's commonly used or even how it was formed.
You’re such a wienertease.
holy shit, I get it now. The One... and the Many. But it's actually just One and the Relative.
2 of 3.
3 of 3.
>humans do not have intellectual intuition
explain?
Basically humans dont have direct and immediate awareness or perception of objects as they are in themselves, independent of any concepts or mental processes.
So like 'you think it be like it do, but it dont be like that".
Not sure i agree necessarily however. Intelligence shows itself in many forms from creatures and just because there's layers of abstraction doesn't mean intelligence isn't being displayed intuitively
>Basically humans dont have direct and immediate awareness or perception of objects as they are in themselves
but wuh bout what plotinus say? is Kant wrong then?
You'll have to be more specific.
plotinus say we can have intellectual intuition but Kant say no we can't
Hi Nic
Logocentrist babble.
squee
Eros exists in multiple levels. Thumos is eros. Libido is prima materia. Noesis is sensual and imaginal and erotic. There is a sort of libidinal slingshotting. Erotic ascents and descents. A double movement. Way up n way down. Younguns engage thumos. Leads to eros. Leads to sophia. All ways are lawful to innocence, pure folly is key to initiation. One might also imagine an anagogic movement with an analogic descent from higher power as per the theurgic, the supernatural aka grace...
What is the hierarchy of eros thumos nous etc.? Is it ultimately a false distinction, that they’re all gradations of the same thing? How do you explain inner conflict between these forces?
Emanation represents hierarchy in form before time altho time presents itself as a evolutionary non-dual third order cubernetic system
Okay, so how would they be ordered?
There are three basic levels
The higher forms which represent vertical tension ie noesis gnosis nous
The intermediary forms like psyche and pneuma and eros and daimonion which link and connect
The lower forms like matter and body and appetite but even these are not without good or solely directed toward the nothing which noths or whatever
But all levels are present at every other level...
Mind
Life
Nature
Is hierarchy of forms
But there is triads above and below
And in our world they appear to appear reversed in emergence
What is inner conflict like? And where can I read more about this? Any cool infographics you have to share?
Read:
Shape of Ancient Thought
Orpheus and Platonism
A Study of Number
Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man
Breakdown of Bicameral Brain
Ever-Present Origin
Then Presocratics, Orphics, Pythagoreans, Zoroastrians, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, ancient Judaism, early Christianity, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, etc.
>inner conflict
We are simple (without parts) but this simplicity is foreclosed as a bar within self created by illusory egoic subject object bifurcation except during states of theoric rapture or rare phronetic flows...
>this simplicity is foreclosed as a bar within self created by illusory egoic subject object bifurcation
How can there be a subject object distinction to the mind? It makes sense as an internal-external thing. But when the mind observes itself and it notices that there is internal conflict, that some drives win at some times and other drives win at other times, how can there not be parts?
Everything you see is internal to mind yet external to the true self.
What is the true self relative to the mind? How can it be separate?
Spheres within spheres. Globes, bubbles, foam. Indra netting of mirrored dewdrops in spiderwebs refracting the clear light of a single infinite sun.
What’s doing the experiencing? Is the self unique or is it shared by all? What are the closest analogies for the true self in the history of philosophy?
Yes
>What’s doing the experiencing?
The experiencing itself is what's happening, looking for a "what" presupposes that there must be some fixed, separate object (or rather subject) that is its receptacle.
But this itself is the striving of the broken-up parts of the Whole to maintain their separation like a body maintains its movement by inertia.
Our sense of self is just a manifestation of this.
The "mystical experience" is where you catch a glimpse of the opposite tendency, the parts returning to the Whole.
Studying higher mathematics, particularly computation, made me skeptical of Platonism.
It seems to be a case of us casting absolute knowledge in our own image. When we look carefully at the world, e.g. in the discipline of physics, we see computation only occuring within time, a continual (local) becoming whereby being passes into non-being. The world is logical, but it exists as a sort of step-wise enumeration of entailments, not as a mirror of eternal truths. That is, reality seems more like dialectical unfolding ala Hegel than a mirror of some eternal set of objects.
I would highly recommend the article: "When is one thing equal to some other thing?"
Plato's conception of eternal objects is what I have the biggest problem with. Discrete objects seem to be something that are constructed by our nervous system, the product of evolutionary history. You can't find discrete, fundemental objects in physics. Atomism is simply the mistake of assuming that, because some of our senses can lie, that our sense of 3D space, which is cross checked by multiple senses (e.g., when you think a log is fake you pick it up to feel the weight) that only discrete fundemental objects can exist. I've seen fundemental particles refered to as shadows on the wall of Plato's cave. The real thing is the field, the part is only describable in terms of the whole, not the whole by its parts.
Both relativity and quantum mechanics are incredibly hard for us to wrap our minds around because they are at scales which were irrelevant for evolution. Close examination reveals a world of relations not objects. What is a number but the relations it has given some axiomatized system?
I don't really know if a mind independent world is even coherent or if naturalism isn't, in its current format, self-defeating (Plantinga, Hoffman). That's sort of aside the point though, which is that process and relation seems more essential than objects. Eternal objects only exist as they relate to other things. I don't buy some sort of bare haecceity, it brings nothing to the table.
You look at It From Bit or relational quantum mechanics, plus the relevant work on evopsych, and you start to think "why even assume forms." Forms seem like just another shadow on the cave wall.
It's not about "eternal objects", it's about what makes anything a "something" that we can take as, talk about, know as it is, how we can understand the world at all. Theaetetus, Sophist and Statesman deal with the same shit you mention, modern day nerds haven't fundamentally obviated it, they are just more blind to their own assumptions.
it's about qualia.
>I don't really know if a mind independent world is even coherent or if naturalism isn't, in its current format, self-defeating
The recognition of the Absolute would obviate the need for any 'physics' that divides the universe up into objects and establishes equations for their behavior. But being finite, limited beings ourselves it's our best shot as of yet to at least get somewhere. The more we transcend the finiteness the broader our conceptions will become. We need to get to the infinite through the finite, as Hegel knew.
>we need to get to the infinite through the finite
Based moron
Is it so hard to grasp?
Yes because it’s illogical schizobabble sculpted into the shape of an insight
>illogical schizobabble
imagine being filtered by such a simple point. Were you filtered by calculus and set theory too?
>muh calculus
>muh set theory
It’s all bullshit, stop playing around and misapplying ideas you don’t understand and check out Wildberger
lmao an actual finitist moron. Yes, I know of your favorite crackpot, his attempts at philosophy of math are cringe.
>b-but that numbah too big to rite down! Aaaah computer save meee!
Computers can’t save infinity lol. youre the dumbest anti-finitist charlatan I’ve come across.
the point is that Wildberger has a useless constructivist/computational take on numbers, as if it's a problem that mental objects defined within a formal system aren't concretely given yet you can still make statements about their features.
How is it useless? He has an Aristotelian take on numbers, which is ultimately about keeping mathematics grounded in, or at least somewhat connected to, an intelligible, concrete reality. Most people don’t understand the point or grasp the distinction. They think he’s against the reals even for applied things when he only wants the reals to be understood for what it is, and not taken for what it is not. To this date, I have yet to see an anti-finitist engage Wildberger in good faith and on his terms, it’s always angry religious-like vitriol, which suggests to me that he is right.
>keeping mathematics grounded in, or at least somewhat connected to, an intelligible, concrete reality.
that's a completely unnecessary requirement. If anything you might posit it for physics, but even there you have concepts like potential which are not "concrete" but from which concrete, measurable qualities are derived.
The "intelligible reality" is the reality of thought, which is where mathematics plays out. Criticizing that is about as useful as bashing complex numbers because there's no sqrt(-1) loaves of bread or whatever. Those debates have been had throughout the last centuries, Wildberger insists on pointlessly repeating them in slightly new clothing (now "computation" is supposed to be really real).
lmao these nerds writing walls of text and shit
Look at this painting and meditate on in