5. Scot Berman, On Platonism

In this episode, Alex talks with Prof. Scott Berman (St. Louis University) about platonism. They talk about various competing views, such as nominalism, conceptualism, constructivism, contemporary and classic Aristotelianism, and how they stack up against platonism.
If you enjoy this content, please follow us:
/ thoughtologytube
www.patreon.com/home

[@ashikpanigrahi]

This was a brilliant conversation!!

[@minkleymcmoo5248]

Thanks Alex. Really enjoying this series. :)

[@imaxus1128]

this should be more popular

[@naturalisticallyinclined7702]

Book title: Plato's Revenge

[@allenanderson4567]

This is great, but I'm a little puzzled as to why Berman says 'being' for Plato is univocal. I might be missing something crucial, but different senses of "is" seem to be fundamental to the whole theory of Forms. The whole idea of Forms is to account for the common essences of things, and this at least seems to mean that Forms are identitatively what concrete particulars are predicatively (e.g., the word 'is' in "Fido is brown", and "the color brown is brown" mean two different things. The first is the 'is' of predication, the latter is the 'is' of identity. This is precisely the point third-man type arguments fail to grasp). And this, as I understand it, is why Plato can speak of Forms as "more real" than sensible particulars. There seems to be at least two distinct senses of "is" in Plato. I'm not sure how to make sense of the "levels of being" the theory of Forms seems to entail without there being different (read: non-univocal) senses of "to be". That said, everything else Berman says about Platonism makes me think that his book will be a much needed corrective to contemporary philosophical (mis)readings of Platonism. Thanks for this!

[@allenanderson4567]

So after reading some of Berman's papers (I can't afford the book at its current price, unfortunately) I think I understand how he might reply. For Berman the idea that there are distinct senses of "is" at play in "Fido is brown" and "the color Brown is brown" depends on a distinction that Aristotle makes, but Plato doesn't between substances and accidents or subjects and predicates as distinct logical types. For Plato, Fido doesn't have an identity distinct from all the Forms that happen to be instantiated at the region of space-time "Fido" refers to. So the name "Fido" literally refers to all the things currently true of Fido (including, brownness). So Berman would analyze the seemingly predicative statement "Fido is brown" as really being the identity statement "brown is brown". So "is" is only ever really the "is" of identity.

[@quad9363]

Title has a typo. It's spelled 'Scott'

[@jfvirey]

A non-mereological part, in non-technical terms, is a non-part-like part, or a non-part part, a part that's had and eaten at the same time, and in this respect it is superior to cakes.

[@harryalexander9844]

The only disappointment is that I can't like twice.

[@danglingondivineladders3994]

get another account

[@SimosFunk]

Go GO Big Sports Guy team
" The Broad Shoulders of Platonism " lol

[@Oners82]

Pedantic point - Britain is not the UK as Scott says at about 31:00, it is a part of the UK. The UK is Britain plus Northern Ireland.

[@danglingondivineladders3994]

*aaaactually* it also includes many island jurisdictions like the Isle of Man, Gibraltar and many others ok?

[@Oners82]

@@danglingondivineladders3994
Go back to school and learn how to write coherent sentences, okay?

[@Oners82]

@@danglingondivineladders3994
P.S. The Isle of Man is not a part of the UK, okay?

[@MBarberfan4life]

Interesting. Platonism has always struck me as weird.

[@yoooyoyooo]

Plato is not Planck