Is Plato Right?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2024
- In this video I ask a question that's been on my mind - is it possible to philosophically explain the reality of universals without accepting Platonism?
Have questions? You can reach me at thomascahillquestions@gmail.com.
As a Platonist myself, I think Plato is right.
Very interesting, can't wait for the next one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, there are a few imprecisions with the question at hand. Are we speaking of book as a “name” of a particular substance, are we speaking of book as a “name” of something ostensively referred to as that name? If the former, then we are going to need to be clear about formal abstraction by which we abstract the form (I.e., that which produces accidents in the thing) and assign a name to the form as “x is a book insofar as it produces y qualities”.
If the latter, then it will be said that a book is a book insofar as, including certain degrees of intuition, whatever fits the grammatical and definitional assortment of words to form the name, fits into that name IFF whatever is ostensively supposed by that qualia.
there needs to be precision, because when we say that “universal concepts” are not material, we are speaking imprecise. Sure, I can’t hold up “bookness” (which is ostensively incoherent), but Ockhamists and various nominalists about universal concepts have NO problem admitting this.
We see patterns universals are not a thing about the universe but a fact about us we create categories because we have expectations on certain paterns
But if “universals are not a thing about the universe,” how can two things be said to be the same? How can Book 1 and Book 2 be said to both be “books” if “book-ness” is not something that can be applied to them?
Everything that enters in the mental category of book is a book, but the mental category of book is a construction, two books are the same as books because both coincide with our expectation of what a book is, if we came up with a concept called tablepencil and defined that object as a table with a pencil on it, the tablepencilness, would just be my expectation of objects that fit in to the tablepencil definition, the only reason why the concept tablepencil is not used is because it's more useful to think of pencils and tables as different objects but they really aren't, if we accept universals as something that exists by itself, I think that's accepting the platonic world of ideas probably by definition.
I agree that bookness has to exist by itself in some way, but if it's not in the world of ideas it has to be just in our minds.
I also think from what I said before that substances in the aristotelian sense don't exist,only accidents that then we group into mental categories that then we give names to.
@@franciscoortizgreco7851 You say you "agree that bookness has to exist by itself in some way," and put that book-ness solely in the mind. Would you agree that it is the same concept of book-ness in the minds of multiple people thinking about books?
I would prefer to say that my concept of book-ness happens to be similar to yours but my and your concept exist independently but because of language and societal consensus, both my and your book-ness have the same features, but it could happen that they weren't the exact same and there was an object that would fall under my definition of what a book is but not yours, a better example could be the concept of sandwich, some people would consider a hotdog to be a sandwich while others don't and that's because their concepts of sandwich-ness differ, so the universals only exists in the minds of the ones who came up or receive the concept, on a subjective manner.
Maybe I should correct myself and say that book-ness doesn't have to exist by itself, if we don't accept the world of ideas I think it probably follows that while the particular is objective the universals don't exist without a subject to create them to have expectations about the world.
@@franciscoortizgreco7851 Is it possible for someone to have an incorrect concept of book-ness? If I, for example, defined a book as "a large gray four-legged mammal that lives in parts of Africa and Asia and has a trunk," would I have a wrong understanding of what a book is?
With books and physical objects, we could know the universal based on seeing many books and making an induction based on the results. The universals are real, but I am not born with their knowledge. I acquire it based on sensation from which its form is recognized. For things that do not exist physically, like beauty, the Platonic doctrine is the only answer that can account for universals, at least I think so.
But how can sensation “recognize” the “form” of a physical object? Sensation is a physical process, and forms, as universals, are immaterial. How can a non-material power (the senses) take in a material principle (a thing’s form)?
@@Thomas-Cahill Good point. That's the question. There would have to be some power of the mind (which is non-material) that allows for recognition.
I agree that the intellect needs to be immaterial in order to grasp immaterial concepts (that's actually what my next video's going to be about), but I'm not sure if that explains how we're able to recognize immaterial concepts in physical objects. Would you agree that the only way we take in information from the physical world is through the senses?