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Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

prospectmagazine.co.uk

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Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#91

Post by layer8 »

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…

I disagree about math and logic being somehow constrained by our lack of imagination or cognitive processes. However, I also don’t think that “existence” is a real thing. What exactly is it supposed to mean? All else being equal, what is the difference between something that exists and something that doesn’t (but conceivably could exist)? The fact that we are able to perceive it in our universe? That would be a strangely subjective notion. The fact that it is part of the universe we live in? But the non-existent thing is part of its own universe that we just happen to not live in. So that reduces back to the subjective notion.

It seems more parsimonious to me to not assume that there is a strange boolean flag “exists” attached to things, and that everything logically possible just is, and we are merely part of the logically possible things.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#92

Post by mjburgess »

fmajid wrote: post #75
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…

I think it's more accurate to say that Socrates was improperly sensitive to the climate spartan dictatorship had brought about, esp. that he had been a mentor to some of those involved. If he had been more politically-minded, he'd have given some actual apology or shown at least some sensitivity. Instead, of course, he resented being forced to attend to non-philosophical matters.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#93

Post by analog31 »

fmajid wrote: post #75
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…

Indeed, I wonder if Plato was responsible for "everybody kmows democracy is a failure" up until quite recently.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#94

Post by coldtea »

>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.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#95

Post by scoofy »

I mean, sure, this should be considered effectively trivial, but it's just click-bait.

Look, I have too many degrees in my failed attempt to become a philosophy academic to just skip leaving a comment here. Apologies for the wall of text:

The entire point of most of "Modern Philosophy" is pushing back on the ideas presented in "Ancient Philosophy," most of which come from Plato (and then Aristotle). Beyond that "Analytic Philosophy," in a sense, take direct aim at the way Plato sees the world altogether, and effectively asserts that he has everything backwards. Plato looks at the world and tries to derive the concepts he finds, where the Analytic tradition basically suggest that concepts, themselves, are us just pointing at things and unifying the things we see with shared words.

You can really see push back with the Existentialist, who basically build their entire theory an anti-Platonic sentiments. The essences that Plato relies on and effectively rejected completely.

I really thing the point of why Plato is so important is that his ideas are, what I consider at least, the default ideas humans have about the world. They represent the instinctual conceptions of philosophy that need to be effectively unlearned by exploring ideas that are counterfactual to them, or demonstrate how they create contradiction. This is important! The reason why we have ZF set theory is because Pythagoras got some things right and got some things wrong and we built from there.

Plato being wrong about things shouldn't be surprising, it shouldn't be controversial, and it shouldn't mean we stop studying it.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#96

Post by BrandoElFollito »

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 did not keep anybody anywhere.

People decided to blindly believe him, without reasoning nor checking.

Given that 80% of the world today believe on some form of god, this must be something ingrained in our minds to follow something instead of being skeptical.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#98

Post by fmajid »

mjburgess wrote: post #92
fmajid wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think it's more accurate to say that Socrates was improperly sensitive to the climate spartan dictatorship had brought about, esp. that he had been a mentor to some of those involved. If he had been more politically-minded, he'd have given some actual apology or shown at least some sensitivity. Instead, of course, he resented being forced to attend to non-philosophical matters.

In the Athenian system, after a conviction, the prosecution and the defendant would offer competing sentences for the crime. The prosecution recommended death, Socrates said he should be housed and fed for life by the state. The jurors were so incensed he was sentenced to death with a higher majority than had voted him guilty.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#99

Post by corimaith »

daseiner1 wrote: post #19
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…

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…

The idea of Platonic forms (and rejection of it) is better thought of as the debate between Universalism and Nominalism. Does there exist an perfect, "ideal" representation of a Chair, or is a Chair just a human construct made of it's constituent parts?

Funnily enough, Computer Science is quite platonic, the concept of OOP with classes and instances is pretty much a direct analogy between a platonic form and it's instance, and conceptually we have ideas like the Turing Machine that can be defined as universals that would exist in any culture. In contrast, much of "Continental" Philosophy and the associated Postmodern and Critical Theory movements are very much motivated by the rejection of universalism and the "great other" for a more cynical view of power dynamics shape the discourse of language itself.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#100

Post by monkeyelite »

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.

I don’t think you are responding to my full comment.
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