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Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

prospectmagazine.co.uk

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Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#61

Post by JackFr »

api wrote: post #8

I've believed for many years that Plato got something incredibly fundamentally wrong: he believed that logic, math, and the language of thought was primary and preceded existence. This error underlies all kinds of things all the way up to and including the present-day philosophical fad of "rationalism." (the Yudkowski variety) It's a popular idea because it's a "truthy" idea. When we introspect, thought feels primary…

> It implies that they are deep fundamental laws of the universe

Rather they are deep fundamentals of what your brain can contain, so you perceive them as fundamental to the universe.

If we admit there are all sorts of phenomena which we cannot observe directly, which we ultimately observe through machines we construct -- does your imagination permit that there are possibly thoughts that are literally unthinkable to you? What would an artifact that allows us to contain some shadow or essence of these thoughts look like?

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#62

Post by aestetix »

What's funny about this article is that it seems to focus on the Republic without addressing any of his other dialogues. What about the aporetic dialogs where there are no clear answers? What about his Parmenides where he rips to shreds his own golden theory of forms?

To say that he got "everything" wrong, there's an assertion that we now have some "correct" answer which supercedes Plato. Can we now say with confidence what defines justice, which in many ways was the point of the Republic? What about defining love, the topic of the Symposium?

Rather than taking an arrogant modernist high horse and saying Plato was wrong about everything, it might behoove to highlight some of the questions Plato raised, and see how well we can answer them today.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#63

Post by Analemma_ »

api wrote: post #8

I've believed for many years that Plato got something incredibly fundamentally wrong: he believed that logic, math, and the language of thought was primary and preceded existence. This error underlies all kinds of things all the way up to and including the present-day philosophical fad of "rationalism." (the Yudkowski variety) It's a popular idea because it's a "truthy" idea. When we introspect, thought feels primary…

> This error underlies all kinds of things all the way up to and including the present-day philosophical fad of "rationalism." (the Yudkowski variety)

I’m not sure where you’ve gotten the impression that Yudkowsky and the rationalists are Platonists, it’s totally false. Almost all of them are hardcore nominalists, and several have written very lengthy diatribes about how ontological categories are purely human constructs which are only useful insofar as they serve human needs.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#64

Post by svnt »

nathan_compton wrote: post #33
monkeyelite wrote: post #13

Yeah I guess is he is wrong if you are a nihilistic secular materialist, which is the dominant view. Hearing a coherent view that is different is part of what’s interesting.

The dominant view? Weird definition of dominant. I happen to actually be something like a nihilistic secular materialist and as far as I can tell I'm in a vanishingly small minority. I see this kind of comment a lot and I am dumbfounded by it all the time. Most scientists in the US believe in God or a higher power, most Americans do too. The current government is chock full of weirdos with supernatural beliefs and it…

They are apparently too busy recycling ideas in academic philosophy to make it out to the local church of nihilistic materialism.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#65

Post by monkeyelite »

nathan_compton wrote: post #33
monkeyelite wrote: post #13

Yeah I guess is he is wrong if you are a nihilistic secular materialist, which is the dominant view. Hearing a coherent view that is different is part of what’s interesting.

The dominant view? Weird definition of dominant. I happen to actually be something like a nihilistic secular materialist and as far as I can tell I'm in a vanishingly small minority. I see this kind of comment a lot and I am dumbfounded by it all the time. Most scientists in the US believe in God or a higher power, most Americans do too. The current government is chock full of weirdos with supernatural beliefs and it…

> 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 secular materialists + God. Their assumptions are almost identical (God is a scientist, things just happen, etc). Radically different Christians do exist (God led me to the grocery store for a purpose), but it’s not the norm.

Do you subscribe to the idea that Christianity is not in decline?

> Where are all these nihilistic materialists people are always talking about?

The managerial class of western society.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#66

Post by daseiner1 »

aestetix wrote: post #62

What's funny about this article is that it seems to focus on the Republic without addressing any of his other dialogues. What about the aporetic dialogs where there are no clear answers? What about his Parmenides where he rips to shreds his own golden theory of forms? To say that he got "everything" wrong, there's an assertion that we now have some "correct" answer which supercedes Plato. Can we now say with confiden…

Yup, couldn't agree more. One of my biggest intellectual annoyances is the common (mis)conception that philosophy is about answers when, as you said, it's really about questions. Less debate, more play.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#67

Post by dcre »

aestetix wrote: post #62

What's funny about this article is that it seems to focus on the Republic without addressing any of his other dialogues. What about the aporetic dialogs where there are no clear answers? What about his Parmenides where he rips to shreds his own golden theory of forms? To say that he got "everything" wrong, there's an assertion that we now have some "correct" answer which supercedes Plato. Can we now say with confiden…

Narrow focus on the Republic (and of course misreading it) is a classic feature of bad Plato critique.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#69

Post by taneq »

daseiner1 wrote: post #50
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…

Hi! Thanks for your thoughts.

I have no issue with pontificating about angles and pinheads. What I have issue with is statements like "platonic solids are the fundamental building blocks of the universe" where the justification is "because I think they're neat".

Plenty of people have used "objectively..." as the start of terrible statements, no argument there. (And let's not even get into objectivism...) But the shared belief in an objective universe governed by universal, immutable, fundamental laws is at the heart of all real science.

Even if the pot's a hypocrite, that doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#70

Post by monkeyelite »

daseiner1 wrote: post #40
monkeyelite wrote: post #13

Yeah I guess is he is wrong if you are a nihilistic secular materialist, which is the dominant view. Hearing a coherent view that is different is part of what’s interesting.

There's a strong argument to be made that Plato himself laid the seeds of nihilism and it's irrefutable that the Judeo-Christian conception of God would be radically different without it's heavy Platonic influence.

> Judeo-Christian conception of God would be radically different without it's heavy Platonic influence.

Yes.

> Plato himself laid the seeds of nihilism

No.

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