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Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

prospectmagazine.co.uk

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Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#71

Post by monkeyelite »

nathan_compton wrote: post #54
msgodel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a plurality of views in the US but material utilitarianism is how most people including scientists seem to argue for policy. The current government is kind of an iconoclastic reaction to some of the recent failings of that view.

Please elaborate. Genuinely curious. I'll be frank with my perspective: trying to understand recent (say the last 50 years) of US history on a "materialist -> idealist" axis is hilariously absurd. There has been literally no moment in the history of the united states that I can think of where anything like a truly materialist public facing justification for policy has ever been offered. And while its true that the fa…

> There has been literally no moment in the history of the united states that I can think of where anything like a truly materialist public facing justification for policy has ever been offered

The key word there is public facing. Can you imagine a White House staffer suggesting a course of action based on a spiritual prompting? In Islamic culture that does happen. In ancient Greek culture that happened all the time.

The public message is rhetoric designed to appeal to whatever mythos exists in the public with a shred of meaning or importance.

Humans do tend to be spiritual (and I understand why you feel different), we just don’t have a society that’s providing narratives and explanations of the world that feed that desire.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#72

Post by fmajid »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #31
ARandomerDude wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're not clear on how primitive mathematics is for Aristotle Completely agree, and to add some color: Aristotle lived about 100 years after Pythagoras, meaning in his time a²+b²=c² was groundbreaking material.

They didn’t even have access to algebraic notation (IIRC, an innovation of the Islamic Golden Age, a result of cross-pollinating Greek geometry with Indian arithmetic). So the groundbreaking material was that famous diagram of a right triangle with squares constructed on each side.

They didn't need algebraic notation to see that water spouts follow a parabola.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#73

Post by Barrin92 »

api wrote: post #26
daseiner1 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're essentially describing Idealism vs Materialism. Related is Nietzsche thinking he was the one to overturn Plato. Heidegger thought that Nietzsche was instead the logical conclusion of metaphysics. Heidegger's project was about "returning to the Question of Being" which he thought was first occluded by Plato, so he is in strong conversation with the Pre-Socratics. Deleuze has an interesting critique of Plato bui…

Yes, those are the proper terms. Nietzsche was weird. He was not an idealist but he posited this transcendent idea of "will" which is basically New Thought. But I'm not an expert on Nietzsche so maybe there is more nuance here. There is a kernel of truth to New Thought and its kindred ideas -- if you believe in your future success, you are less likely to become discouraged. In many cases success is claimed by those w…

>But I'm not an expert on Nietzsche so maybe there is more nuance here.

not just more nuance, that's a straight up misreading of Nietzsche. For one Nietzsche rejected any notion of transcendence, free will and was an (idiosyncratic) materialist and not a self help writer. He did not think you could manifest success by believing in it, or even that this mattered.

In fact one of his central ideas, Eternal Recurrence, implies the exact opposite. He argued that you ought to imagine the worst possible state you can be in, recurring over and over and say yes to the world purely out of love of fate, Amor Fati

"My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it"

Will in Nietzsche is immanent, he had nothing to do with New Thought, an as far as I'm aware idealistic American religious movement, he couldnt' be farther away from it if you tried to be honest.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#74

Post by Mikhail_K »

WithinReason wrote: post #56
Osmium wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s actually a very reasonable approximation within a certain regime: https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.4057 There’s a reason people without training in sciences sometimes have the intuition that heavier things fall faster. This intuition isn’t developed in a vacuum (hah).

You can disprove this idea even in a simple thought experiment, you don't even need an actual experiment. If I take 2 large stones, connect them with a string so it's 1 object, will that object fall twice as fast than the 2 stones fall separately?

That will depend on the length of the rope, once aerodynamic effects are taken into account

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#75

Post by fmajid »

analog31 wrote: post #10

Karl Popper trashed Plato in The Open Society and its Enemies .

And Bertrand Russell in his contemporaneous "History of Western Philosophy" (1946), which goes into more details on the historical context with Sparta.

Plato was basically a disgruntled aristocrat who despised Athenian democracy that led to his social class losing absolute power. Socrates was executed for being a nexus of Spartan collaborationism (the "misleading the youth" was a thinly veiled work-around around the amnesty that was granted as part of the peace settlement with Sparta). "The Republic" advocates for full-on fascism beyond the wildest imagination of Mussolini, Hitler or Stalin.

For a more accessible critic, there is I.F. Stone's "The Trial of Socrates".

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#77

Post by norir »

Analemma_ wrote: post #63
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 constr…

Many argue that rationalism itself, the elevation of reason above all other values and forms of knowledge, descends directly from Plato. I have only read a few of the Socratic dialogues myself, but I certainly have gotten the impression that this is a reasonable take on Plato and a departure from earlier traditions such as the Pythagoreans and other pre-Socratics -- most notably Parmenides -- who did not take a purely rationalistic view.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#78

Post by nathan_compton »

monkeyelite wrote: post #65
nathan_compton wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#79

Post by nathan_compton »

monkeyelite wrote: post #71
nathan_compton wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please elaborate. Genuinely curious. I'll be frank with my perspective: trying to understand recent (say the last 50 years) of US history on a "materialist -> idealist" axis is hilariously absurd. There has been literally no moment in the history of the united states that I can think of where anything like a truly materialist public facing justification for policy has ever been offered. And while its true that the fa…

> There has been literally no moment in the history of the united states that I can think of where anything like a truly materialist public facing justification for policy has ever been offered The key word there is public facing. Can you imagine a White House staffer suggesting a course of action based on a spiritual prompting? In Islamic culture that does happen. In ancient Greek culture that happened all the time.…

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.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#80

Post by EMIRELADERO »

nathan_compton wrote: post #79
monkeyelite wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There has been literally no moment in the history of the united states that I can think of where anything like a truly materialist public facing justification for policy has ever been offered The key word there is public facing. Can you imagine a White House staffer suggesting a course of action based on a spiritual prompting? In Islamic culture that does happen. In ancient Greek culture that happened all the time.…

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 always cared about those ideals (human rights and such) since I can remember, yet I hadn't even heard of the concept of God before the age of eleven. I vividly remember thinking "Damn, they gave the creator of this Universe the same name as the word they use when venting in frustration!"

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