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Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

prospectmagazine.co.uk

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Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#41

Post by pc86 »

MangoToupe wrote: post #29
reedf1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully you wrote this ironically otherwise... QED?

I'm legitimately confused what was confusing about my comment. Are we supposed to presume that the author thinks themselves better or not?

Typically when someone encounters a word they're unfamiliar with they'll do at least a cursory search of it[0] to see if it's a real word, the context, etc., rather than assuming the author made it up or intended to use some other word. Dimwit and midwit mean two different things.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=midwit

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#42

Post by taneq »

All 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 declaring it as fact because they thought it made them sound smart.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#43

Post by [deleted] »

speak_plainly wrote: post #6

This is a midwit-level take on Plato. Arguments: Plato is responsible for a dualistic model of mind and matter that hampers our thinking today. Plato had an unrealistic ideal of what knowledge is. Plato had weird methodological assumptions. There are real criticisms you could make about Plato and his work, but this misses the mark by miles.

[deleted]

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#45

Post by [deleted] »

keiferski wrote: post #15

This is a really weak article that doesn’t seem to have many arguments, just opinions. 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. The Greeks had a concept of an afterlife prior to Plato. Dualism seems more to me that it originated in one of the following: the fear of death and the hope for an afterlife; the…

[deleted]

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#48

Post by [deleted] »

taneq wrote: post #42

All 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…

[deleted]

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#49

Post by kstrauser »

jerf wrote: post #14
rurban wrote: post #2

Not just Plato, Aristoteles even more. He kept Mechanics for 2000 in the dark ages, by assuming that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects in proportion to their weight. He argued that a 10-pound stone would fall 10 times faster than a 1-pound stone. Continuous force is needed for continuous motion - without a force pushing it, a moving object would immediately stop. In fact continuous force leads to conti…

"He kept Mechanics for 2000 in the dark ages," You can blame him for being wrong at first, but somewhere around, oh, 200 years later (very, very conservatively), the people who treated him as an unimpeachable source really ought to be assigned about 100% of the responsibility. "A bit of mathematics would have helped." Your use of modern terminology in the previous sentence leads me to think you're not clear on how pr…

Question: Why do things move?

Before Aristotle: Um, Zeus’s will I guess. No need to look further.

Aristotle: Great question! I don’t really know. But maybe that’s something we should investigate and reason about so that we can understand how our world works. Hmmm, maybe… like this?

After Aristotle: What he said. No need to look further.

I think he’d have been horrified at the idea that we could stop investigating, and yet.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#50

Post by daseiner1 »

taneq wrote: post #42

All 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…

philosophy isn't really about answers, it's about questions. it's also not really about knowledge. a philosopher, literally, is a friend or lover of wisdom.

there are decent arguments, for instance, that reasoning about God (yes, angels dancing on pinheads) laid the groundwork for things like calculus as it necessitates reasoning with the infinite.

"objectivity" has been used to justify lots of bad things. and hate to be the bearer of bad news but "stuff people made up" is kinda the definition of society and culture.

> confidently making stuff up and declaring it as fact because they thought it made them sound smart.

pots and kettles.

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