Karl Popper trashed Plato in The Open Society and its Enemies .
A fairly large chunk of the western philosophical corpus is philosophers giving their predecessors the dozens.
Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)
101–110 of 115 posts
Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)
#102> But on virtually every point that mattered he was disastrously wrong Plato no, but the author of this is. Well, he would be, if this article was anything but tripe - mass-audience mass-produced content of the kind suitable for a variety publication, and not a very good one.
Indeed, the writer basically provided a demonstration of the intellectual bulldozing of which he accuses Socrates.
Sure, tear everything down, but please show something improved in its place.
Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you kidding? American leaders use spiritual justifications for their actions all the time, especially if you include value-laden statements about, for example, human rights, as fundamentally idealistic in nature. The entire frame of American political life and foreign policy is idealistic in nature, not practical.
Just to chime in: it's entirely possible and not at all contradictory to believe in human rights and other base ideals/"moral axioms" while being a secular materialist. The only difference is in where the belief is justified. I consider myself a secular materialist in the way it's been talked about here, yet I still hold those views that you deem "idealistic". I just rationalize their origin in a different way. I alw…
> believe in human rights and other base ideals/"moral axioms" while being a secular materialist. The only difference is in where the belief is justified.
Anything beyond convenience and conflict resolution is justified by a metaphysical belief in human rights.
Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)
#104ITT: some of the wildest, disassociated, story mode narrative parroting
All language is just a Rorshach test. You saw truth in those books, I saw a connect the dots puzzle book for kids.
Those guys had the literacy of a modern middle schooler. Not gonna deify long dead people obsessed with wanking their literacy instead of inventing plumbing, etc… useful things for humans not empty mind places to gate keep
Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)
#105> Plato’s argument that the soul could survive the death of the body established a dualistic model of mind and matter that still hampers our thinking today.
That is quite possibly going to be mainstream technology one fine day!
We have machines that are beginning to vaguely grope toward having some kind of soul, and we can easily get their state to survive the replacement of their hardware.
The intuition is correct that there is a dualism there. The mind is separate from the implementation substrate on which it operates and we can contemplate preserving and migrating it.
Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)
#106> But on virtually every point that mattered he was disastrously wrong Plato no, but the author of this is. Well, he would be, if this article was anything but tripe - mass-audience mass-produced content of the kind suitable for a variety publication, and not a very good one.
Indeed, the writer basically provided a demonstration of the intellectual bulldozing of which he accuses Socrates. Sure, tear everything down, but please show something improved in its place.
"If we had paid more attention to the more modest aspirations of Aristotle we would not have got so sidetracked by sceptical concerns that true knowledge is impossible."
Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)
#107ITT: some of the wildest, disassociated, story mode narrative parroting All language is just a Rorshach test. You saw truth in those books, I saw a connect the dots puzzle book for kids. Those guys had the literacy of a modern middle schooler. Not gonna deify long dead people obsessed with wanking their literacy instead of inventing plumbing, etc… useful things for humans not empty mind places to gate keep
Do yourself a favor and read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Khun.
Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)
#108All of the 'great philosophers' got virtually everything wrong (and where they got things right, it was by luck rather than virtue) right up to the point where a few people started believing in wacky concepts like "the existence of an objective reality" and "maybe we should test our assumptions". Before that point all "great thoughts" were basically people with too much spare time, confidently making stuff up and dec…
You don’t think logic has value? Aristotle famously formalized logic.
Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Weird definition of dominant By dominant, I mean among people who would read Plato. Can you point me to a single academic department or branch of government who acts under different pretenses? > Most scientists in the US believe in God or a higher power, most Americans do too Ok. But this is mostly a result of unexamined conflicting ideas. The cultural domination overwhelms to the point where most people are secula…
I'm sorry, but I am firmly ensconced in the managerial class of western society and the people around me are not nihilistic materialists. They are, perhaps, liberal in the classical sense, but that isn't nihilistic materialism. Almost all Americans believe in moral ideals, human rights, etc, etc, etc. Christianity may be in decline, but that is at least partially separate.
Well I agree that folk Christianity has morphed into a humanism. But what do those people do if you push on that. What intellectual framework do they use to make sense of the world?
In my experience the humanism part is an unexamined social nicety that isn’t consistent with the rest of their beliefs.
Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you kidding? American leaders use spiritual justifications for their actions all the time, especially if you include value-laden statements about, for example, human rights, as fundamentally idealistic in nature. The entire frame of American political life and foreign policy is idealistic in nature, not practical.
I don’t think you are responding to my full comment.
Maybe so, but I think asking the leadership class to be anything but mostly selfish and mercenary is really moving the goalposts. I think its genuinely true that at any given moment in human history, from the medieval european "universal" catholic church to the Tibetan Buddhism, its people in charge are, according to the purported moral standards of the time, mostly out for themselves, but happy to use moral or mystical language to justify their position in the hierarchy. Given that, the current moment seems pretty much like any other with respect to the culture producing/running entities.
Maybe you just think that the decrease in the power of like evangelical Christianity or conservative Catholicism constitutes a turn towards materialism? I just don't see it. Unjustifiable metaphysical beliefs are rife in society and the decline of purely Christian hegemony (if it is happening at all, given that we have had a series of pure wins for Christians at the highest levels in this country recently) is a separate thing.