On Platonism (Column 383)
With God’s help
Disclaimer: This post was translated from Hebrew using AI (ChatGPT 5 Thinking), so there may be inaccuracies or nuances lost. If something seems unclear, please refer to the Hebrew original or contact us for clarification.
In Column 376 I discussed the limits of a priori thinking. At the end I said I intended to continue dealing with non-verbal cognition (and the limits of linguistic representation), which occupied the following columns, and with Platonism, to which I now turn.
What is Platonism and what is an Idea (Form)?
In his Republic, Plato uses several images to explain his conception of forms, i.e., the Ideas. In Book VI he likens the soul to eyes that can see only things illuminated by the light of the sun, and writes in Plato’s name (d508):
Apply this comparison to the soul in the following way. When it is fixed on the place where truth and reality shine, the soul apprehends and understands them, and appears as if it possesses reason; but when it turns to a place mingled with darkness, the world of things coming-to-be and passing away, it only forms opinions and its edge is blunted, and it moves in its views from here to there and again seems as if it lacks reason.
According to Plato, there is a place where truth and reality shine—where our soul grasps them fully, purely, and in a refined way. This is the world of Ideas, which contains pure forms rather than material, fashioned objects like those in our world. Such clear understanding is not possible in “the world of things coming-to-be and passing away,” namely our world, for here reality does not appear in its purity. As they descend into the world—that is, as they become instantiated in material objects—Ideas are mixed with various dross (darkness), and therefore our grasp of them becomes less clear.
A little later, at the beginning of Book VII of the Republic, Plato presents the famous “Allegory of the Cave”:
Human beings live in an underground cave, whose mouth opens toward the light that spreads throughout the cave. They have been there since childhood, and their legs and necks are chained so that they cannot move, and they can see only what is in front of them, because the chains prevent them from turning their heads. Above them, at a distance, a fire burns, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a road that ascends upward, and if you look closely you can see a low wall built along the way, like a screen in front of which puppeteers display their dolls… [And those people] see only their shadows, or the shadow of others [chained beside them], cast by the fire onto the wall before them… For them… truth will be nothing more than the shadows of the passing figures.
The prison [the cave] is the world of the senses, the light of the fire is the sun… and the journey upward [along the steep path out of the cave] is the ascent of the soul toward the world of contemplation… the world of the Idea of the Good appears only at the end [after extended habituation], and can be seen only with effort… and it is the immediate source of reason and truth for the thinker, and it is the power upon which a person acting rationally in his public or private life must fix his gaze.
Plato explains that the tangible world is an illusion, or a kind of projection of ideal forms in a world of pure universals. One who wishes to understand the real world must focus his gaze on the Platonic world of Ideas, for only there can full understanding be achieved. There lies true reality. He takes for granted the existence of such a world, and our ability to behold it through the power of thought. The objects in our world are instantiations (a kind of projection) of the relevant Ideas.
A Platonic outlook, or Platonism, is a stance that believes in the existence of abstract Ideas, of which objects in reality are concrete realizations. Thus, in our world there are horses, but in the world of Ideas there is the Idea of horseness, which is a kind of concept. According to Plato, the Idea is not merely a concept, but an abstract entity that contains the information about horses. The information included in the Idea is not all the information that exists in concrete horses, but only the information essential to something’s being a horse (if you like, the information common to all possible horses). There is a particular horse whose height is 2.10 meters. In the Idea there is no information regarding the height of the horse, since a horse’s height is an accidental datum not tied to its being a horse, and therefore it varies from horse to horse. It may be that some information exists there regarding the range of horses’ heights (a horse cannot be five meters tall, nor ten centimeters), but the height of a concrete horse is not essential to horseness. Thus the information contained in the Idea is the essential information that defines a horse as a horse—that is, everything without which the horse ceases to be a horse.
Between the Idea of Horseness and the Perfect Horse
People sometimes speak of the Idea as a perfect horse, but for our purposes this is a double error:
- The Idea of horseness is not a horse, not even a perfect horse. This Idea has no tail and no cells. According to Plato, an Idea is an abstract entity that, in some way, contains all the information that exists in concrete objects. Therefore it is incorrect to see the Idea as a perfect horse, since it is not a horse.
Note that for the same reason the Idea cannot be imagined—at least not visually. The Idea has no body and no bodily form. It is, in essence, a complex of information (including visual information; in the computer age it is easier to grasp this as a kind of file of information), but this information is embodied in an abstract entity that can be contemplated, from which one can understand the essence of concrete objects (the disk).
- Beyond that, the information included in the Idea is not information about a perfect horse but about a pure horse. For example, suppose the perfect horse in your eyes is one whose length-to-height ratio is the golden ratio. The Platonic Idea, in its ordinary sense, does not speak of such a specific horse (even though sometimes it is used that way). The Idea is information about a pure horse, namely a horse that has only properties essential to horsehood and not accidental properties. The ratio between its height and length is not essential information about a horse, and therefore it is not included in the Idea. The Idea includes information about pure horseness without the accompanying, non-essential features that appear in concrete horses. The criterion that determines which information is included in the Idea is not perfection but essentiality.
These two clarifications sharpen the meaning of the Idea in the Platonic picture. Since, in Plato’s conception, the Idea is also an entity, it is therefore useful, for what follows, to define two distinct objects: is the Idea of horseness, whereas is the pure horse (not necessarily perfect). The first is an Idea, and the second is an ideal object—that is, an object endowed only with essential properties and no additional ones. I do not intend to say that such a horse actually exists. This is a Platonic definition, but it differs in essence from the Idea. It is a different kind of Platonic entity that is not an Idea. An Idea is a collection of properties, and the ideal horse is a horse (even if abstract). If we suppose that the information in the file is information about the equation 2+3=5, then the information is the concept, the disk that contains this information is the Idea, and some representation of the equation (for example, a formula describing it on paper) is the pure equation. The instantiations of the Idea are different cases in which two objects join with three to form together a collection of five objects. Each such situation is an instantiation of the Idea.
We have seen that the Idea of horseness is not a horse, while the pure horse is. But there is also an inverse difference between them: the pure horse does not exist in any sense (it is an abstraction of a horse), whereas the Idea does. It has, of course, no mass and no position in space, but it exists in some sense.[1] Plato’s description of this sounds quasi-geographical: the Idea is located in the world of Ideas. But “the world of Ideas” does not describe any location in the universe; rather, it is a different mode of existence. Below we shall see the implications of this distinction.
The Dispute Between Plato and Aristotle[2]
It is commonly thought that there is a philosophical dispute between Plato and Aristotle regarding Ideas. Aristotle did not believe in the existence of Ideas, even though he too used categories—that is, a partition of objects in the world according to certain abstract properties. But Aristotle saw categories as abstractions we perform in our minds, not as existing entities. Plato, by contrast, held that Ideas are a kind of real entities; thus what Aristotle saw as an intellectual process of abstraction Plato saw as a kind of observation.
As an example, consider the Idea of horseness again. A person encounters many horses throughout life. At some point an understanding arises in him that there is some abstract Idea that defines the concept of a horse—the Idea of horseness. Aristotle sees this process as a mental process: abstraction and generalization performed by the human intellect. Out of the concrete horses, the person constructs for himself an abstract concept of horseness. Plato, by contrast, sees the crystallization of this insight as the result of observation. A person manages to behold (not with his eyes, of course) the Idea and to understand from it what horseness is and what is common to all the objects we classify as horses. From then on, the diagnosis of some object he encounters as a horse is made by comparing the object with the Idea of horseness that he beholds with the eyes of his mind.
The Basis of the Dispute
At first glance there is no reason to espouse a Platonic position. It looks like baseless mysticism. Why invent worlds and entities that no one has encountered and no one can encounter?! It is seemingly clear that this is an intellectual process of abstraction and not observation. So what, nevertheless, causes people (like me) to sail to the mystical realms of Plato? It seems to me that one of the main considerations underlying this stance is the question of taxonomy.
Throughout our lives we encounter many objects—non-living things, animals, or people—and we partition these objects into groups according to various categories. The question is how we should relate to these partitions. Thus, for example, we define the groups horses, donkeys, fish, birds, human beings, stones, liquids, and so forth. These partitions themselves are arranged on a hierarchical tree that determines a taxonomy of objects. For example, we may divide all objects in the world into four types: inanimate, vegetative, animal, rational; and each of these is divided into species, which themselves are divided into subspecies, and so on.
The question is: whence did these partitions arise? We could have divided objects quite differently. We could, for instance, have divided them according to their height, or according to the letters with which their names begin, or according to ARMA (compositions in different proportions of fire, air, water, and earth, as in the Kabbalah and Greek philosophy), or even simply collected them into arbitrary groups. In fact, why isn’t the partition I described above itself an arbitrary partition into categories? In what sense are these partitions “more correct,” or less arbitrary, than others? Do they claim anything about reality at all, or are they merely our subjective definitions—the manner in which it is convenient for us to regard the various objects in reality?
Aristotle would probably answer in terms of efficiency and intellectual effectiveness. The partition that helps us think about things and discover some kind of lawfulness in them is by sorting them into genera, species, subspecies, etc. This sorting is chosen for reasons of convenience and fit to our mode of thought, and perhaps also fruitfulness (we choose partitions that allow us to arrive at interesting laws). Our partitions are not truer than others in any essential sense. They are simply the most effective form for us.
By contrast, Plato sees these partitions as “natural,” that is, not something arbitrary. Reality is truly divided according to these categories. In other words: we did not invent them but drew them from reality. When I say that the object before me is a horse, I have said something about reality and not merely assigned it to a subjective definition born of my fevered brain. To be sure, to the same extent one can draw different categories from reality, like height or ARMA, and it is hard to see why we think that precisely these partitions are correct. Here Ideas enter the scene. Plato argues that the correct partition is one made according to categories determined by Ideas. Therefore, on his view, these are partitions that exist in reality itself and not only in our overactive minds. We contemplate the Ideas, and from comparing them with the objects before us we understand that among them are horses, donkeys, animals, liquids, inanimate objects, human beings, fish, and more. In this way we also see the relations and the taxonomic hierarchy among all these.
In the Platonic conception, all this is not our invention but the product of observation of the world of Ideas. It is forced upon us. Hence we all treat these partitions as natural and correct rather than arbitrary. For this reason, a contemporary Platonist would claim, our chemistry views all materials and objects as compositions of the elements of the periodic table, and not as blends in various proportions of the four Greek elements—fire, air, water, earth—or of Kabbalistic sefirot.
Our common feeling that there is a partition of objects that is more natural and correct than other partitions is the basis for adopting the Platonic picture and believing in the existence of Ideas. Without this we would have to regard all partitions as equally possible, and the adoption of one partition or another as arbitrary (perhaps stemming from our mode of thought and not anchored in reality itself). Therefore, in my opinion, this is not mysticism, but a demanded interpretation of our most natural and basic intuitions.
The only alternative to this “mysticism” is to relinquish those intuitions and to adopt an instrumental view that hangs these partitions on our accidental brain structure and on the explanatory effectiveness they have for us (because of that structure). This is Aristotelianism. According to Aristotle, other creatures constructed differently from us would likely use entirely different partitions, and they would be no less correct than ours. On his view there are, in truth, no horses or fish in the world. They exist only in our overactive minds. The objects of course exist, but the fact that they fall under the headings horse, fish, or rock is merely an arbitrary matter that derives from our mode of thought.
What Would Borges Say About This?
The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was a one-of-a-kind literary and intellectual genius.[3] His wild imagination, vast and comprehensive erudition, and philosophical and intellectual understanding were truly extraordinary, and unfortunately he does not receive his due. In his collection Ficciones there is a story called “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” which deals with the dispute between idealists and realists. Idealism (more precisely here, solipsism) is a view that does not believe in the existence of an external world. The solipsist sees all our impressions and understandings of the world as things that occur within us. For him there are no other people and no other objects, living or inanimate, besides ourselves. All events and objects are experiences that occur within our consciousness. Even if we are not idealists, we must admit that what we actually encounter are only cognitive impressions and not the things themselves. If so, says idealism, there is no reason to assume that there exists “out there” anything beyond these cognitive impressions. Occam’s razor is the solipsist’s totem, for it instructs us to make the fewest assumptions and posit the smallest number of entities possible. Solipsists use this principle consistently to the end (to a fault?).
The story describes a fictional planet named Tlön, which has been taken over by a group of idealists led by Bishop Berkeley (the well-known Irish idealist philosopher of the eighteenth century). Borges describes what transpired on that planet through literature (which he of course invented for the story) that documents it, and mainly through linguistic phenomena. It is one of the most brilliant depictions of this dispute, and the literary-linguistic illustration helps one understand it and its significance in depth (and above all the absurdity of the idealist view and its distance from our intuitions as reflected in our language).
Among other things, Borges describes the vernacular in one of Tlön’s hemispheres, in which there are no nouns at all. Instead of speaking of a moon rising over the river, they say: it-moons over the continuous flow. It is a language without nouns but only verbs and their inflections. The reason, of course, is that in the idealist/solipsistic worldview there are no objects; everything is mental occurrences within us. Therefore there is no moon, but there is the phenomenon of moon-ing (what we experience as the moon rising or dawning). There is no river, but only a phenomenon of continuous flow. From this you can understand that one cannot speak of a moon rising above a river, but of a moon-ing experienced above a phenomenon of continuous and persistent flow.
But Borges has further innovations, again presented through various linguistic expressions. He argues that in the language spoken in Tlön’s other hemisphere there are indeed nouns, but everyone knows they are a fiction. Therefore any collection of properties can serve as a noun. Thus, for example, when we speak of a ball, we mean the conjunction of the following properties: a round object, made of leather and filled with air. Alternatively, in our language, a bird is a living creature that flies in the air and has wings. By contrast, in idealist Tlön (regarding the prevailing philosophical views there) there are no objects; hence there is no impediment to defining nouns composed of a completely arbitrary collection of features—for example: the scream of a bird in the distance together with the color of the cloud that passed over my house at seven in the morning. That object can be called “Moses,” or, if you prefer, “Tzriḥanan.” In an idealist world there is no preference for objects defined “naturally” in our thought over these arbitrary objects. Our ordinary objects are, in their eyes, nothing but arbitrary constructions as well, so if arbitrariness is the order of the day, why limit ourselves to a “natural” set of properties?! No wonder, then, that any collection of properties can receive the status of a noun in Tlön’s language. There are countless “objects” (linguistic fictions) that arise and disintegrate instantly at the speaker’s breath.
Back to Platonism
The analogy between the dispute over objects and our discussion of Ideas is obvious. In an Aristotelian worldview there are no real Ideas. They are constructions of our thought with no anchor in reality itself. If so, there is no necessity to adhere precisely to the “natural” Ideas (or categories). In principle there could be an infinite number of Ideas and categories, and any creature or group can create categories for themselves at will (for example according to efficiency and fruitfulness) and use them—much like what happens among the idealists on Borges’s planet Tlön. Thus Aristotelianism arises. Platonism, by contrast, maintains that Ideas exist in reality (just as realists hold that objects exist), and therefore there are Ideas that exist and are correct, and other Ideas are arbitrary and do not reflect any truth, and hence it is not correct to use them. Natural intuitions reflect some truth and are not merely arbitrary constructions derived from the structure of our thought.
Incidentally, one could draw another analogy with the dispute between conventionalism and essentialism regarding concepts. The conventionalist sees a concept as our arbitrary and free creation, whereas the essentialist, by contrast, understands that the concept is formed through observation of the Ideas. A concept is essentially a kind of Idea, and so this is almost the same dispute as the one described above. For example, the concept democracy includes several features: a state with separation of powers, an elected government and a change of government every few years, civil rights, and so forth. The conventionalist sees this concept as arbitrary: one collects several features and assigns a general name to that collection. In his view one could also define the concept plutkoverbatzia (just a coinage of mine, of course) to describe states that are on a seacoast, cultivate peaches, and have more than five million inhabitants. However, that definition is neither useful nor fruitful, so he will not adopt it. The essentialist, by contrast, sees the concept democracy as a kind of reality. It is a natural concept, even though it was not known in the past. It was not created in modern times but discovered in modern times—or realized then. But the Idea existed somewhere in the world of Ideas even earlier (at least since the blessed Plato created it). Concepts that do not exist in the world of Ideas are not natural. Of course, in his view one can define an unnatural concept like plutkoverbatzia for practical and fruitful purposes, but it is an arbitrary definition.[4]
The Third Man Paradox[5]
In one of the later Platonic dialogues, Parmenides, Plato describes an encounter of the young Socrates with the old Parmenides. By means of a logical argument and a series of questions, Parmenides attacks the idea of a pure world of forms (a world of Ideas) as opposed to our world, which, according to Plato, is populated by shadows and imitations. He asks about the relation between the form and its appearances in our world. One of his main arguments is called the “Third Man Argument” (TMA), which to this day receives elaborate logical and philosophical treatment and arouses not a few disputes.[6]
I shall present here one formulation of it, following more modern analyses:[7]
We observe a set of objects, {x, y, z…} of the same kind. They all possess the same set of essential properties, for example, human beings. We denote the set of human beings by {H}. There are different people who belong to this set: x, y, z ∈ H.
What defines this set? Anything endowed with the essential properties (the form) of human beings belongs to the set. It has a brain and a heart; it recognizes, speaks, remembers, and thinks; it laughs and wills, etc. We denote this set of properties as: {}. This is essentially the definition of the concept “human being.” Beyond this, of course, each person has additional accidental properties that do not enter our account (such as height, gender, or skin color).[8]
Thus our real objects have the following properties:
x() ; y() ; z()
Each of them has all the properties of a human being, and in addition it has accidental properties that may differ from one to another.
Let F be the Platonic Idea of a human being; according to Plato, the form F is an existing entity. What are this entity’s properties? Parmenides argues that they are precisely the essential properties listed above: {}, and only those (because it is an Idea—recall the purity criterion mentioned above).
But if the Idea F has those properties, then it too belongs to the set of human beings (since any object that possesses those properties belongs to the set): F ∈ H. Assuming we had two human beings in the original set, we now have a third man (hence the name of the argument). According to Aristotle this of course does not happen, since in his view the Idea is not an entity but a mental abstraction.
Now we have before us a new set of entities: {x, y, z, F…}, all of which form the set of human beings. We repeat the process for this new set. The properties that characterize it are the same properties: {}. The new Idea (Parmenides presumes in Plato’s name that each distinct set has its own Idea) of this set is F′. Clearly this Idea too has the same properties, and therefore it belongs to the set, and we obtain a new set: {x, y, z, F, F′…}.[9] And now the process is repeated again, and so on ad infinitum.
This means that there cannot be a single Idea of a human being. There are infinitely many distinct Ideas, all of which have the same properties. Moreover, the set of human beings is also infinite. What is the problem with this? Some see the problem in the conclusion that the Idea of the set of human beings is not unique (Plato presumably assumes it should be unique). Others see the problem in the very assumption that there are infinitely many human beings (or infinitely many entities in general, which itself is problematic).[10] Still others see the problem in the fact that there are countless different Ideas that have exactly the same features. In what, then, do they differ from one another?[11]
I note that Aristotle himself saw the Third Man as one of the essential pitfalls in the Platonic doctrine of Ideas, and thus one of the proofs for his own position.[12]
Several Problematic Assumptions in the Third Man Argument
In light of the picture we described above, this argument appears completely refuted. First, Parmenides assumes that every set of objects uniquely and unambiguously defines a single Idea. It is not clear on what this assumption is based. On the contrary: the Idea of human beings describes every set of human beings—those who were here a thousand years ago as well as those who are here now, human beings living in Haifa, or human beings living in eastern Tokyo. All these have the same Idea as human beings. Of course they also have another Idea (with further specific properties beyond being human) as residents of Haifa or Tokyo. Any object can be included under several Ideas (and this is usually the case; it is hard to think of an object with only one property). Thus, for example, a table is also red, also has four legs, and is also made of wood. Each of these properties is an Idea: redness, being made of wood, having four legs. The concrete table is an instantiation of each of these Ideas, not just one of them. Therefore, even if we add the Idea F to the set of human beings, the process ends there. The Idea F′ is not different from F. It is the very same Idea.
But beyond this, the entire strange argument rests on a major error, and that is why I brought it here. Parmenides assumes that the Idea is also a human being, since it has the properties that define humans. Yet above I noted that horseness is not a horse (pure or ideal) but something entirely different. So too the Idea F is not a human being, and hence it cannot be added to the set of human beings. It may seem that it has those properties, but it does not have matter of the human sort. The set of human beings is a set of objects that have human matter, and each has the collection of essential properties of human beings. The Idea has only the properties of human beings but not the matter (it is not a material entity). Although for Plato the Idea is an existing entity, its “matter” is not biological, and therefore it is not a human being.
Even this is too generous a formulation. One can see that Parmenides’ mistake is far more egregious: he is not correct in assuming that the Idea F has the properties of a human being. The properties are features of human beings, but the collection of properties that constitutes the Idea did not produce a human being. Therefore the properties contained within this collection are not properties of the Idea (i.e., properties that characterize it), but properties contained by it. Think of the set of properties that generates the Idea “tableness”: {red, made of wood, having four legs}. We have already seen that this set of properties is not itself a table; hence it is also clear that it is wrong to say that this set of properties is made of wood or that it is red. The properties contained in it are not its properties. Thus the Idea of size is not big, and the Idea of horseness has no four legs (and cannot be ridden). The form/Idea of a triangle has no angles. The property “having three angles” is one of the features contained in it. By the same token, the Idea of “human-ness” has no intellect. This Idea includes the property “having intellect,” but that property itself has no intellect. The Idea of “human-ness” does not think; it includes the Idea of thinking (=having thought).
More generally, properties characterize objects, not Ideas. The most basic error underlying the Third Man is a conflation between (which is the Idea of a human being) and (which is the pure human being—one endowed only with the essential properties of human beings). These two things are “objects” in a certain sense, but the first is an Idea—an existing object that is not a human being—while the second is an abstraction of a concrete object; it is indeed a human being, but it does not exist.[13] The first does not have the properties of a human being (rather, they are contained in it), but the second does (it is characterized by them).[14]
[1] To sharpen the point I add here that even a photon (a single quantum with a defined and unique wavelength) exists in a physical sense although it has no position in space and no mass. Therefore not every object that lacks position and mass is an Idea. The converse, however, is true. The photon interacts with other entities and affects physics; Ideas do not. They exist in a parallel world (of which our world is a projection).
[2] Important disclaimer: I am not an expert in Greek philosophy and have hardly dealt with it. As is known, the only place in the world where one currently tramples the Sages’ injunction and studies Greek wisdom is in the yeshivot (when studying the philosophy of Maimonides or Saadiah Gaon), and I, a small person, am exempt from the urge that leads people to this “transgression.” From this you will understand that everything I write here about Plato and Aristotle is not authoritative information but the product of my limited acquaintance with their ideas. But I am not much concerned to verify the precise views of these righteous figures. I merely use them here to present, side by side, two positions that are the subject of my interest. Platonism and Aristotelianism in this column are positions defined by me, not necessarily what Plato and Aristotle actually thought. I am fairly sure it is close, but I do not wish, and cannot, to commit to how close.
[3] I recommend reading his stories, and also reading about him in Leo Corry’s book, The Literary World of Jorge Luis Borges, in the “University on the Air” series.
[4] One could also say that if such a concept is fruitful, this is an indication that it is a natural concept with an existing Idea. An artificial concept will not be fruitful. I am not sure this is correct, though it is not implausible to me.
[5] The subject is discussed in Part III of Volume 11 of our “Talmudic Logic” series, The Platonic Character of the Talmud.
[6] 131ה–132ב, in the Libes translation, vol. 3, pp. 17–18.
[7] See: Pelletier, F. J., Zalta, E. N., 2000. “How to Say Goodbye to the Third Man.” Noûs 34, 165–202. For a broad survey see Palmer, John. “Parmenides.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. Summer 2012. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2012/entries/parmenides/ and the sources cited there, especially in chapter four.
[8] You can immediately understand that there can be views that see skin color or gender as essential properties, and therefore see the set “human beings” as an arbitrary combination of other natural sets: black-skinned, yellow-skinned, and white-skinned. From here discussions of racism, chauvinism, etc., may grow. The connection between Platonism and all these will be discussed below.
[9] By Leibniz’s identity of indiscernibles, the two entities F and F′ are one and the same. They have the same properties, and two entities that do not differ in their properties are the very same entity. But in several places I have argued that Leibniz is mistaken, and therefore here too we assume these are two distinct entities with the same properties.
[10] If there are infinitely many existing entities, then we are dealing with an actual infinity and not a potential one. But philosophers and mathematicians usually assume that the notion of infinity must be potential and not actual; otherwise paradoxes arise. See the Wikipedia entry “Hilbert’s Hotel.”
[11] This is, of course, a Leibnizian view, but in the previous note we already saw that this formulation of the argument relies on an opposing conception.
[12] See his statements in Metaphysics (trans. Chaim and Hannah Rosen, Magnes, תשמז) VII–IX 1039a2, p. 65, and also XI 1059b6–10. The label “the third man” comes from his description in Aristotle’s words. See Metaphysics XI 1059b6–10:
They place the intelligible objects as a kind of third things, in between the forms and the perceptible things—some particular third items in addition to the forms and to what is here-before-us; but there is no third man and no third horse in addition to the form itself and those in each case.
[13] About it one can certainly say that it has the properties of a human being, even though it does not exist—just as one can speak of the properties of fairies or of any literary beings. There is no impediment to discussing the properties of Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, even though such a person never existed in reality.
[14] In the aforesaid book we formulated the Third Man paradox for instead of , since for it one can indeed formulate the argument as presented above (for the pure human being does have human properties), and we showed that even there the regress does not arise. It is quite easy to see that in this case the Idea F′ is the Idea F; and, of course, here too F should not be added to the set of human beings, for it is a pure human being and not a concrete, existing person (this is in contrast to the Idea, which does exist in the world of Ideas).
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I wonder why Maimonides was drawn to Aristotle? There is something that seems so ”Jewish” in Plato's philosophy. I got stronger 🙂 .
Gotha upside down.
In Judaism, the ”spiritual” (the divine, etc.) can only be embodied through the concrete text, which essentially carries practical commands and is given to a specific people within a real history. Just as Aristotle's form can only exist to the extent that it is embodied in the concrete material.
And the test: remove the material from the formal-spiritual (the Torah) and it becomes meaningless.
Have I become weak?
Correction: The formal-spiritual (divine)
Doron
The Torah belongs (at least in the Bible) to the angels as well, a fact they argued with Moses about. Therefore, when we take away the substance and reality from the Torah, the Torah remains in its purity, only without the expressions of this world.
Dvir
I understand what you're saying, if I argue with you about the Ferrari you bought with your money, then it's mine too. That's fine with me.
By the way, I have no idea what a ”a is.
The wa”a= the present amina.
If you argue with me about my Ferrari, it means that by definition there is no problem for you to have a Ferrari. Otherwise, the argument is stupid.
The fact that the angels argued with Moses means that the Torah is not something that belongs specifically to this world by definition. Rather, the Torah can also belong to the angels.
Now everything is clear. I am convinced.
In the 32nd of the Omer 5620
To the friend and the devir – Greetings,
The angels indeed have the correct understanding that the ideological foundation in the Torah is ‘larger than life’, but Moses is also right in his answer to them, that the Torah was not intended only for the higher spheres, but was intended to elevate and refine those who are immersed in the world of matter and desires, and to raise them, little by little, to a nobler reality.
Therefore, with Plato's ideas, Maimonides cannot ‘go to the grocery store’. In this world, he needed a man of science who describes nature and its laws in the most precise way, and in his time it was Aristotle. And above all, the Maimonides needed the Torah and its individual laws, the purpose of which is to shape the personality of man to be a faithful bearer of divine ideals, as the Maimonides explains in detail in the third part of the ‘Teacher of the Perplexed’
With greetings, Lipa Feivish Sosnowitzki Dahari
Plato's ideas are the shadows of mental processes.
Anyone who believes in ideas is trapped in the cave of ideas and does not understand that these are shadows and that there are other things that cause them.
A. According to you, an idea is the equal side of all horses. But apparently there is also a possibility of an idea of objects that do not have an equal side (which is necessary and sufficient), for example, an idea of a creature of the type ‘horse or dog’. You referred to the fact that there are many horses (‘one encounters quite a few horses’), the question arises if there was only one horse in the world then there would be no idea or would it just be more difficult for people to identify it (separate the essential from the accidental)? It is not clear to me why to deal with many horses and define the equal side, apparently it is possible/needs to deal with the idea of horseness also on a single horse.
B. What is a pure horse. A horse has a height between 10 and 500 cm, what does a pure horse have? This abstraction is not understandable. I also did not understand the meaning of the words that the pure horse is a horse. But since according to you the pure horse does not exist, then perhaps there is no point in dealing with it.
D. You lean heavily on the elimination of the barrier between thinking and cognition. But the idea that consciousness receives information that comes from abstract objects is itself difficult to grasp how when and why certain abstract objects appear before the eyes of the mind. This idea of a horse, how do you look at it and what the connection between it and looking at a concrete Rocinante is. It doesn't seem understandable (although I haven't yet managed to form a stable opinion on the subject). And that's what bothers me the most about the whole idea of Platonism.
E. You hinted at the end that realism has implications. First of all, I like implications (as long as they're not in the psychological sense). I understand that the intention is that, for example, for me, human life is important and asking whether a fetus is a person or not, in other words, the moral question depends on a conceptual question. I heard something like that from you in connection with the moral question about targeted killing. But I think that categorically this conceptual-ontological discussion *is* in no way capable of generating moral instructions under a normal and logical moral concept. The question is whether a fetus's life is important and it is impossible to hide the moral claim under the cover of the ontological claim, it is simply irrelevant. Even if he were a “person” the moral question would remain whether the life of a person he passes through is important. As far as I can think of, I see no possibility of deriving a normative implication from a realist concept. Therefore, realism functions only as an explanatory matter, without implications (normative or even predicative) regarding unknown things. I remember that in another answer on another matter you called for a single explanation proposal for a matter that is not in dispute “retrospectively” and if you do indeed think so, then I will continue (unless matters are clarified in the next post, and then I will wait and see).
C. I haven't begun to understand the argument from taxonomy. And I also don't understand (and I didn't understand in two carts) what Borges wants from life. My intuition (Yocheved is her name) doesn't say that there is an idea of a horse, but that there are many animals in all kinds of shapes and all kinds of qualities, and I group some of them under the name horse for reasons of similarity in qualities and connections between them. Although I didn't say anything here except a statement, but just for the record.
F. I need to think more about the third person issue
G. That we have lived and sustained :). It's a shame there wasn't an update on Telegram about this post.
A-B. I didn't understand. A horse or a dog don't have an idea, since it's an artificial creature like Borges's. It's an invention and not something from reality. If there were one horse in the world, there's no reason why there wouldn't be an idea, but then we wouldn't have reached it. When I say the common denominator of all horses, I mean all horses that can come to mind or be, and not all those that actually exist. Therefore, even the purebred horse is a horse in this sense.
C. If you don't have an intuitive feeling like I described, then you are indeed an Aristotelian. If in your eyes I am not a person but a collection of molecules, and my definition of a person is arbitrary because it is convenient for you, then we have a disagreement. If you don't see the difference between a stork and a bird beyond my subjective interest, then we have a disagreement again.
D. I didn't see a question here, and I also don't understand your difficulty.
E. I don't remember what hint you are talking about. I agree in principle, and I even wrote this in my article on organ donation (to May 2011, whether brain death is death or not, the question of whether it is appropriate to kill such a person for the sake of another). However, the definition of the concepts still reflects the moral implication, meaning that if it is not appropriate to kill such a person, this will be expressed in the ideological perspective through the fact that I will “show” that such a person is not alive.
G. I didn’t understand about Telegram.
A. If I understand correctly, you claim that there cannot be an “or” in an idea (a horse is condition A and also condition B and also a ‘spot on the nose or a long ear’) because then there is nothing common to all of them. If you do claim so, then why.
B. I will leave (with a sigh) the matter of the pure horse.
C. Conscious entities like a person, a horse, and a bird are a slightly different matter because consciousness is really one thing that dominates a collection of particles. Let's talk about a bottle cork. Is there a separate object called a cork that somehow lies on a certain collection of particles and that unites them (I don't understand what I'm writing here) or are there several particles here that together behave in a certain way and therefore it is convenient to think of it and call it a cork. This is about a single cork and the same goes for a collection of corks.
E. Indeed, not ‘in the end’ And not a ‘hint’. I wanted to address the end of note 8 regarding a possible connection between racism and Platonism. I don't understand or agree with what you wrote. Perhaps morality can be extracted from an observation of the concept of the good and the right, but not from an observation of the concept of life. It is possible that a person in a state of brain death is ‘alive’ and there is still no moral problem in ending this life. What creates this dependency?
G. There is a ‘Telegram channel for post updates’ through which I keep up to date with new columns. For some reason, no notification arrived for this column (and the previous column), and I only learned that it existed when I saw a response to it in the list of recent responses. The last message is for column 381.
A. It seems to me that you also understand very well the difference between the ideas of the ”or” that have no real basis. But it is impossible to give an answer to your question. The only answer is that I “see” (in my intuition) that there is no real idea here. This is exactly what Borges describes.
C. I tend to think that there is an idea of congestion.
E. I answered. In principle, one could say that the definition of him as a person contains within it the prohibition of killing him. But as I wrote, I agree with the body of your words (I referred to my article on the subject).
G. I forwarded it to Oren.
A. Let's leave the example of a horse or a dog. You claim that all ideas do not have an element of or. I don't understand why there can't be such an element and why you are even required to make such a claim that the idea is the intersection of all horses.
In note 13 you attribute properties to literary entities. Do you mean that the entity was created in the abstract world suddenly by the power of the author's thought? The alternative, non-Platonist opinion is obvious, of course, and it is not clear to me whether you deviated from it and if so, why. This interests me especially because of a personal twist as follows. When I was a child, I read a lot of books (stories) and in every book, every night, there came a point when I already wanted to sleep but it was hard to fall asleep from curiosity. One night I realized that it didn't make sense that the author decides on the sequel more than I do. I can also decide on the sequel just like him! So I quickly imagined a sequel in which all the plot threads are unraveled in an optimal and miraculous way and everyone is happy and content. Then, calm and satisfied, I went to bed. And since then I have continued to use this miracle drug every time. It may sound ridiculous, but in practice, psychologically, it really calmed my curiosity. A childish thought that greatly affected me over time. Among other things, within a few years (not immediately, for some reason), unfortunately, my enjoyment of stories and films was severely affected. I can't stop thinking about the screenwriter and the author and feeling the arbitrariness and reshaping with the power of thought and imagination. As a matter of direct feeling, I stopped ‘immersing’ in books (literature) and the experience changed significantly to that of a curious observer from the outside (much less fun). This matter is cataloged in my section of thoughts that should be suppressed and repressed, but it doesn't really work for me and somewhere I would be happy to get rid of this matter (whether rightly or not). My nose tells me that from the connection you present between Platonism and the characteristics of literary characters, I can derive something.
First, regarding Telegram, you should contact the channel administrator there. This is his initiative and we have no connection with him.
I did not state categorically that there is no “or”, but generally if there is no essential connection then there is no idea. For example, a democratic state can be seen as ”or” or “also” (there are several models of democratic states): The cutting of all horses is not a definition but a result. If these are the essential features that characterize horses (without which they are not horses) then they will appear in all horses.
Literary entities are further examples of the realization of the idea, but not in the real world but in an imaginary world. A purebred horse is an imaginary entity but it is a horse and is characterized by the characteristics of horseness. I did not understand what you are asking about this..
A. You say that you did not determine in a blanket manner that there is no ‘or’ and in the process of speaking you repeat and determine this. What is the fundamental problem with the fact that the essential features that characterize (and only) all horses are, for example: 1. Four legs 2. A sloping belly 3. A spot on the nose or a long ear. If these are the essential features, then this would not come from cutting all horses. I don't know why you returned to a purebred horse, but I don't understand what that means at all and I can't deal with it.
Maybe you could share with me your experience reading a story book or watching just a movie that tells a story. How do you free yourself from the little voice that everything is completely arbitrary. If in the story the character didn't make it to the train and is disappointed, you can simply think that she did. From the idea that the writer does not control the story, we arrive at the idea that there is no ‘story’ and there is no ‘character’ And the whole literary thing just fades away.
A. Now I understand the problem. In principle you are right, I do not accept “or”, because otherwise it is not one idea but two. Although you can define the idea of animals, which includes two-legged and four-legged animals. In such a situation there is an idea of a two-legged animal and a four-legged animal, and the idea of an animal as a whole is “or” this or that.
I do not experience any difficulty. I do not have to think that it is real in order to enjoy. Draw me a situation and I enjoy it. So what if it could have been different? And in general, it seems to me that it is worth freeing yourself from the detached intellectual gaze in order to enjoy it. If you enter the situation and forget that it is a story, the question will not bother you.
There is pleasure in the situation, like seeing a beautiful picture or eating a bamba. But there is no curiosity, no sadness, no joy, and no emotions at all. All that remains is the beauty of the picture and the collection of interesting musings that good writers always sprinkle along the way. Because when the relief comes from the fact that the patient is well, the thought immediately attacks that ’just the same’ he remains sick. Curiosity about what will happen next becomes completely meaningless. This is a very significant change (for the worse) of the reading experience. It is clear that it is worth letting go and forgetting that it is a story, that is the whole problem and it turns out that it is not easy. I thought that perhaps a Platonic philosophical perception of literary characters would help in this matter.
Platonism believes in the existence of ideas but not in the illusions of inventing ideas in a place that is dominated by fiction.
What is the point of discussing the traits of a literary character like Raskolnikov? To say that if there was a person who behaved like the character, then he would probably have the trait of psychopathy? To say that the trait of psychopathy is a successful first-order approximation of what the author had in mind when he created the character? To say that the author skillfully tapped into an abstract character who already existed before him and who possesses these traits (this is something I don't understand, but let's assume). Why is the topic of traits for literary characters in a column titled Platonism? By the way, there is a lot to talk about the aforementioned book itself, and perhaps one day there will be.
This was an example of the claim that even non-existent objects have properties, as opposed to the idea that an object does exist and has no properties.
Can you explain the statement that even non-existent objects have properties?
I don't know if this is a statement. Maybe an assertion or maybe a definition. I have nothing to explain about it beyond the obvious. A character in a book has attributes. That's obvious, isn't it? You assume that attributes only characterize existing objects, but I don't see why to reduce it that way. Again, it seems to me that this is a definition, and therefore the implications should be discussed rather than the definition itself.
What implications could this have? I haven't read the article on organ donation yet, but for now I understand in general that the question of whether or not realism is real has no normative implications, nor any other implications. An interesting ontological question, nothing more. But if there are implications, then yes, indeed. (If the character did exist, then there could be a psychological implication on the reading experience).
A sentence like ‘Peter Pan is naughty’ I understand something like this: “The actions attributed to the character Peter Pan are actions that are characteristic of people with the trait of naughtyness”. A sentence like “Peter Pan wears a green shirt” means “The author wrote that Peter Pan wears a green shirt”. Do you interpret these sentences differently?
Regarding the third man, there are implications (can it be quantified beyond that?). But later I will discuss possible implications, such as what the mitzvah of loving one's neighbor or hating sin/sinner is aimed at. Is there such a mitzvah if there are no sinners at all (to hate sin and the idea of the sinner), or if there are no Jews at all.
All the fun is the opportunity to be exposed to what went through the mind of this specific creator. That's what's intriguing. You really get into a person's mind.
Therefore, in my opinion, the work should not be separated from the creator, otherwise everything is really arbitrary.
Now I see, N. This matter bothers me quite a bit. It is clear that the author knows how to draw more interesting and beautiful situations than I can fantasize. But curiosity about what the author will decide to write is not the kind of curiosity (the gripping, electrifying, and absurd) “what happens to the character”. Of course, great writers still fill the entire book with little gems of interesting human insights and rounded, well-built characters even without any interest in the entire plot. There are many examples, but for me, for example, “Ilyich’s Death” is a clear example that is all fragments of the jokes. The shift from focusing on the whole (in the naive era) to picking mushrooms among the paths (in the current era) is honestly a bummer.
And by the way, the general theme of evil actions for the sake of utopia (the road to hell is paved with good intentions, in the continuation of the Platonic series) I have a feeling that it is a widespread theme, and I just remembered that I will forgive you, my dear, that in the last book of Harry Potter, it is said that Dumbledore, the revered wizard, flirted in his youth with a dark wizard friend who preceded Voldemort, and his motto was “For the Common Good” which he engraved on the huge prison he built to imprison all his opponents. And in the book, Dumbledore's repentance from justifying local evil actions for the sake of a globalist utopia is presented as a strong decision between evil (that wizard, and the early Dumbledore) and good (the later Dumbledore).
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/he/wiki/%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%A2%D7%9F_%D7%98%D7%95%D7%91%D7%AA_%D7%94%D7%9B%D7%9C%D7%9C
To the kind and mysterious person who runs the Telegram channel for updates on posts from this site (the “Rabbi Michael Avraham RSS” channel), if you happen to see this message – you probably send messages manually when you see a new post coming out (which is why you missed the last two columns). If so, then that's a shame. It's very easy and convenient to send automatic messages on Telegram. If you happen to read this message, please respond here and we'll automate it together (a matter of minutes).
There is a WhatsApp group for updates on posts and lessons only (no discussions). Recommended –
https://chat.whatsapp.com/BcNY7TI1sYT6s4FOeFKz2Y
By S”D A’ Ziv Tsha”ef
If Aristotle recognizes only tangible beings – does he not accept the existence of God? And if he accepts the existence of an abstract God – what prevents him from assuming that the abstract God also created abstract beings?
Best regards, Ignorance
As mentioned, I am not an expert on Aristotle. But I do not see the difficulty. Aristotle does not claim that abstract beings cannot exist. He merely claims that there is no reason to assume their existence if there is no necessity for it.
In the words of S”D’ Ziv Tsha”ef
Even a person who wisely creates a work of art, acts from an idea that is before his eyes, which the action comes to realize in material. All the more so that it is clear that this can be said of the Creator of the world, whose material creations come to carry out an idea, an idea that precedes its execution.
Another indication of the physical being being a tool for the realization of a spiritual idea is that material bodies undergo a constant process of ’ metabolism’ ‘generation after generation’ but humanity as a whole remains and develops. The streams go to the sea but the sea is not full. Some of its water evaporates and returns as rain that pours water back into the sea. The molecules of the streams and the sea are constantly changing, but the water cycle remains stable.
Another indication of the existence of an ‘Idea’ at the foundation of physical reality, Plato brings from the fact that souls find incomparably great satisfaction from spiritual values – wisdom, goodness, justice, and beauty, etc. – much more than the fulfillment of any material desire. And as the sages say, the soul does not find satisfaction in all the pleasures of the world since it is a ‘daughter of a king’ from the highest.
With greetings, Amioz Yaron Schnitzelࢭ
On the Eve of the Day of the Dead
H. Soloveitchik distinguishes the existence of a nation between a ‘covenant of fate’ based on a common fate of the nation's members, a fate that brings the public to the need to unite in order to satisfy the existential needs of all individuals. And in contrast, the ‘covenant of destiny’ in which the nation is formed for the sake of an idea that the nation is going to implement.
Similarly, Rabbi Kook distinguishes between the perception that the state is a ‘society of great responsibility’ whose goal is to promote the well-being of individuals, a well-being that will not be achieved without cooperation. And in contrast, the perception of the ‘State of Israel’ According to the Torah, as a state whose purpose is to be a ‘kingdom of priests and a holy nation’, to call on the name of the ’world and to spread the faith of the Torah and its values in the world by creating a model society that will be a ‘light to the nations’..
As we do our ‘annual self-examination–, the perception of the state as the ’foundation of the throne of the ’world’ imposes on us a much greater demand: not only to examine whether what is done here is ‘good for the Jews’, but to examine how far we are progressing toward the purpose of setting an example to the nations of the world.
In one respect, we were able to set a positive example for the countries of the world this year: our ability to quickly recognize the seriousness of the Corona threat, and the relatively rapid defense through the vaccination campaign that vaccinated most of the country's residents, an achievement that I hope other countries will come close to.
Best regards, Aisha
Even in the wedding blessings there are two parallel blessings asking God to make the bride and groom happy,
One blessing emphasizes the existential aspect. Here are two ‘beloved ones’, whose joy is in the feeling of the man and his wife ‘in a pre-Eden’, when each saw in his spouse his whole world, the lost rib that completes him into one flesh.
But after it comes the blessing that sees married life as the fulfillment of great ideas, ideas of ‘joy and gladness… love and brotherhood and peace and joy’. Ideas that are put into practice in real life by the marital bond. When the building of peace and unity in one Jewish home – It is not just their personal-private joy, but the laying of the foundations for the building and redemption of the entire nation, to a state in which the “cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem” will be rebuilt again, and the “voice of joy and the voice of joy, the voice of the groom and the voice of the bride” will be heard again.
The natural existential joy combined with the profound insight that private joy is one brick in the rebuilding of the love and brotherhood of the entire Jewish people – they are what make the relationship deeper..
With best wishes, Aisha
Oops. I'll ask to delete.
In the book of D. Bayer 2017
It seems that Plato's words, that the reality perceived by the senses is only a "shadow" of something abstract, are close to Kant's words that man cannot know the "thing in itself", but only its phenomena.
Best regards, Yaron Fishel Ordner
On the 15th of Iyar, 2017
According to the lecture (cited in Wikipedia, entry ‘The Movement of Ideas in Israel’, note 7) the words of the Zohar that some of the Greek sages ‘dekribin to the Orcha Dehaimanota’ – are said about Plato, who believed in the spiritual foundation of creation.
With greetings, Yifau”r
Thank you very much, interesting article, I wanted to but I didn't understand a fairly basic point in the selection.
As I understand it, the argument that Borges presents is that idealistic perceptions do not really correspond to our most basic intuitions to the point of absurdity, and therefore we have no reason to accept them. (He does not present better evidence, although it is not clear that it is necessary or possible).
But I was unable to understand how he deals with the simple problem that Berkeley presents following Kant, that really all that is revealed to us are only the data of the senses, not the phenomena themselves as a result of our being perceivers.
And so finally, why is it not true that the mind does not experience the object in itself but only its appearances *in a verb form*.
So really the language that is appropriate for us to speak does not have nouns but only with verbs and their conjugations like the phenomenon of tourism? Or other verbs that are performed in our sense mentally.
We simply assume that behind those phenomena there is a real object that is represented through them, but this is an axiom that the brain translates for linguistic use.
Through sensory data we encounter reality itself. Of course, one can raise skeptical claims, but this is how common sense understands it.
Allow me to answer.
If everything is a “verb form” then it means that our discourse is also “movement” or “becoming” only. This is a return to Heraclitus and the paradoxical idea that nothing has a stable and fixed meaning since “everything flows” (including this sentence itself).
In short, it is an idea that cancels itself out on the spot.
Therefore, in practice, no one really holds this idea seriously.
But in terms of truth, this is the form of the wording that most accurately reflects the idea of perception, isn't it?
And maybe it's not either Plato or Aristotle, but rather a continuum between the two? The process begins in our heads, but we are part of God from above.
Thus, language can be both schematic and substantial, and there is no contradiction in that.
In my opinion, following Plato, it is impossible to make claims that are not based on the assumption that there is an absolute fixed element in reality (more correctly: a fixed element that exists beyond the revealed reality).
In any case, it turns out that all our perceptions are a mixture of a temporary and changing element that exists within us (and perhaps also in phenomena) and an eternal element that exists beyond the revealed.
Any other claim instead loses its internal coherence (i.e., it becomes meaningless).
Why following Plato? Plato managed to partially formulate what we already knew before him.
Even Einstein, with his relativity thing, only managed to partially formulate what everyone who opened the Pentateuch with Rashi already knew before him.
Regarding what you wrote about the taxonomic view:
“The only alternative to this “mysticism” is to give up these intuitions, and adopt an instrumental view that plants these divisions in our accidental brain structure and the explanatory effectiveness they have for us (because of this structure). ”
I wanted to ask how these intuitions differ from other intuitions, for example, an intuition that what I see in the world really exists there. That is, I don’t understand how the mere existence of intuitions leads you to conclude that there must be some idea in the world that justifies it? It is simply true and that’s it. Without any ideas.
The question is what is the basis for any divisions appearing to us as ‘correct’, and in what sense they are correct. That is how we are accustomed to thinking, and that is it. When some claim seems ‘correct’ to us, it means that it corresponds to some state of affairs in the world itself (this is what the statement that claim X is true = it correctly describes the state of affairs in the world means). Do you have any criticism of someone who classifies animals differently and does not agree with your classifications? I would have some criticism of him, and I would say that he does not grasp something in reality.
I agree with everything you wrote, but I don't understand how it follows from what you wrote that ideas exist? This intuition can be true even without ideas existing. Just as my intuition that my eyes are reliable is true without there being anything in the world that must exist as a result.
The question is, do concepts like fish or mammals exist in the world or are these categories of our thinking?
Maybe so, maybe not, but how does this relate to the intuition about taxonomy? That is, maybe this intuition is correct, and there is still no existence of such concepts as abstract "objects".
Does the creation story that says they were created before man make any difference to this question? At least according to this myth, if we accept it, their existence does not depend on man. Therefore, they may not be just mental categories. However, man is called upon to give them names. Taxonomy. The midrashim that accompany this story tell of names that are combined with existing ideas.
In the end, the existence of beings and ideas is a question of belief in some creator and in creation, isn't it?
I hope I was able to make myself clear. Sorry for invading this dialogue.
On the 15th of Iyar, 2021
To the Lord,
Regards,
From the words of the Torah, ‘And God said, Let there be light’ it is proven that Moses, ‘the light’, preceded his actual existence. The end of the matter is a preconceived idea.
With best wishes, Yaron Fishel Ordner
In line 1
To reinforce your words, …
Oren,
I don't know what else I can add. I explained what I had to explain.
Taxonomy,
I didn't understand your argument. Are you claiming that if the ideas were created before man, then they exist? That's a tautology.
Yaron,
I assume you're familiar with Rabbi Zvin's article, on the methods of the B'Sh and B'H. One of the examples he gives there is the Gra'a regarding the creator of the lights/light of fire. His argument is that the lights of fire are the actual fire, and the light of fire is singular because it refers to the power of fire itself (the idea).
I thought maybe that's the message of the creation story. There are ideas, there is a world, and there is man. So in the end, it also boils down to a matter of faith.
Following Oren's words, Tam asked: Is it true that the taxonomic argument does not recognize "similarity" but only "identity". That is, two things are similar if and only if they have an identical common element. Therefore, in order to recognize that two objects are both "fish", there must be something identical in common between them (isn't that the idea) and it is not enough for them to simply be similar in all sorts of things.
I think that's true regardless of what I say.
You wrote above:
“Do you have any criticism of someone who classifies animals differently and disagrees with your classifications? I would have criticism of him, and I say that he does not perceive something in reality.”
I claim that I can have criticism of him even without there being some idea of correct classifications that exists in the world (i.e. he does not perceive something, but it is not something that exists in reality). That is, for something to be true and subject to criticism, there does not have to be some existing entity in reality that would give it an anchor or validity. For example, I claim that our intuitions should be trusted. And if someone claims otherwise, I will have criticism of him. However, I do not claim that these intuitions must exist in reality in order to be trusted.
But your intuitions speak to reality, otherwise there really is no basis for criticism. What do you compare the taxonomic claim against to know whether it is correct or not? Classification is a subjective matter, and there is no right or wrong here unless there is an idea.
This is an understanding that I understand to be objectively true intuitively, without comparing it to anything in reality. I'm trying to understand why you assume that there must be an idea or comparison to something in reality for something like this to be justified. After all, there are many other intuitions of yours that you accept as true without comparing them to anything in reality. For example, the intuition that accepts your thinking tools as correct. Is there any comparison in this intuition to anything in reality? Or any idea that exists to back it up?
In my opinion, there is no such thing without comparison. If you think that your senses or tools of thought are reliable, it is based on a comparison to reality itself. Reliable means that they correctly reflect reality.
Again, even if in practice I do not base my conclusion that my senses are reliable on observation, my argument is that the very meaning of the claim that they are reliable means that if I compare their data to reality, it will come out the same. If there is nothing to compare, there is no meaning in saying that something is ‘true’. At least in this sense, every claim to truth is based on comparison, otherwise it is a subjective statement.
“But the fact that they fall under the heading of horses, fish, or rocks, is just an arbitrary matter that stems from our way of thinking”
I didn't understand what”s so difficult about Aristotle's method, let's say F is black and G is white.
Let's take the common properties of the objects we call “horses” let's say QWERTYU for the sake of it. Let's take the common properties of the objects we call “rocks” let's say ZXCVBNM.
The first Adam walked in the Garden of Eden and saw QWERTYU+F QWERTYU+G ZXCVBNM+F ZXCVBNM+G – F was called black, G was white, QWERTYU was called a horse, and ZXCVBNM was called a rock.
The question is why he didn't give names to other collections of features. For example, countries that are close to the sea and grow figs and have fewer than ten million inhabitants would be called Lippian countries.
And what does Dupleton mean? The answer is that those countries don't have a special idea?
Indeed. I explained it.
My point was that a person gave names to the physical objects that he saw visually several times. It is clear that he has no interest in giving names to certain entities or to things that are composed of several objects (that he saw visually). However, he sees intellectually that there is something here that deserves to be given a name, that is, a certain essence or a certain collection of objects that has content.
What about ideas of objects that change according to their use, did they exist before the invention of how to use them? Also, there can be different uses for the same object by different people, so the number of ideas should be as infinite as the number of potential uses, but an infinite number of actual ideas would enter the hotel paradox (unless you say that the person using the object in some way creates the idea of that use).
I didn't understand anything.
The idea of an object is derived from the way it is used (there is no other common denominator between a plow and a harrow in the category of earth-working tools). Therefore, the question arises whether the idea of the plow existed before the plow was invented? After all, a person or group may use a plow to scratch their backs, and therefore the uses are infinite (assuming that the future is not predetermined and it is not known how humans will realize their infinite potential possibilities for using objects) and are even somewhat subjective. Therefore, if you say that the idea of the plow preceded its invention, it turns out that there are actually infinite ideas, which leads to the hotel paradox. If the idea is only created with the invention of the plow, it follows that the inventor did not anticipate the idea in order to invent the plow, but created it, which is similar to the Aristotelian approach.
What does all this have to do with uses and objects? You are talking about the idea versus its realization in our world. You could equally well have asked whether the idea of democracy existed before the first democratic state was created. I think so. And it really does not depend on the question of whether humans would never have created a democratic state.
I did not understand what bothers you about an infinity of ideas. And what does this have to do with Hilbert's hotel?
In short, I did not understand your babbling.
I will explain this again with your permission,
Unlike a horse whose essence does not depend on the relationship of humans to it and therefore the number of essences of its kind can be finite (horse, donkey, etc.) and exhaustive, the essence of objects is derived from the use that humans make of them. Since the number of uses that a person can make of any object is infinite, the number of ideas of objects according to your method (according to what you answered in the previous answer) should be infinite. Thus, using a piece of painted cloth to sew a garment will create for it the idea of a piece of clothing (which can also be shared with a piece of nylon) and in contrast, over the years, they may get used to using exactly the same piece of cloth as a handkerchief and thus create a different idea for it (which will be shared with a piece of paper). It is also possible that they will get used to using the same piece of cloth as a sample of paint and thus we associate a third idea with it together with a piece of wood painted in the same color. As a rule of thumb, the uses that can be invented are infinite, and therefore if the ideas exist before the invention of the uses, then at any given moment we have a concretely infinite number of ideas. Metaphorically place each of the infinite ideas in the infinite rooms of Hilbert's hotel and you're done for…
You're right that the same question can arise from ideas of ideas like democracy, but it seems to me that the ideas of objects illustrate this better.
I didn't understand anything. The idea of a plow is a tool designed for plowing. If someone wants to use it as a comb, it's an idea of a comb. So what's the problem? And why is an infinite number problematic? It's not concrete, but potential. If you don't have a problem with an infinite number of uses, why would an infinite number of ideas be problematic?
I'm not sure you see a problem here. I probably don't.
A. I used existing ideas so that it wouldn't be too difficult to explain unfamiliar ideas, but it's clear that people can invent uses that didn't exist before, which are ideas that weren't actually used.
B. The uses are potential (it's not certain that a use will be found), whereas according to you, the ideas actually exist even if the use doesn't manifest itself in the world, so they are a concrete infinity.
B. No connection. Potential infinity is something else entirely. There is no problem here.
I don't understand this, can you explain or refer to sources please?
If we take as an example the idea of car manufacturing companies, it is clear that there is no limit to the number of companies that can be established and named with the infinite number of existing letter combinations, this is a potential infinity, since an infinite number of companies will never actually be established. On the other hand, if you claim that the ideas of all those companies always exist, since it is not predetermined which companies will be established, there must be an infinite number of concrete ideas.
On the other hand, I think it is possible to provide a solution to this question if we assume that the person who founded the company is the one who created the idea. By the same token, the idea of parenthood that you mentioned in column 497 did not exist before there was a sexual culture, and the idea of the Jewish people was created only when there was such a people in practice. None of this requires that the idea does not exist (but perhaps it rules out the idea that it was created from observing it), and therefore it can also have legal validity (as you claimed in column 497).
You don't even understand what potential versus concrete infinity is. It has nothing to do with whether objects actually exist or not. There is a concrete and potential infinity of objects and ideas. There is no connection at all.
Honestly, there is no idea behind all the nonsense and nuance. The idea of a three-wheeled truck, the idea of a car with four.
All this is just chatter. You can read a little bit in the first part of the second conversation.