James N Rose wrote:
>
> You have glossed over the issue I was establishing.
>
I am sorry if I did. That was not my intention. I still
think you are mixing "platonic apples" with "not so
platonic oranges", but let us see if I can make out
what you are saying.
> Godel pretty well specified a disconnect between
> certain ceptualizations - uniform agreements
> even with varieties involved - in that specificities
> are subject to alteration upon inclusion of
> external (not currently available) information.
>
I can't really follow your language here. What Godel's
theorems collectively showed is that any well formed axiomatic
system will contain statements which, though true, cannot
be deductively proved as theorems in that system. There are
many ways of expressing this in terms of consistency,
undecidability, incompletness what have you. But the
bottom lie is the same. I don't see what you may mean by
"specificities subject to alteration"!...
>
> Platonic thought - to satisfy the extensive nature and
> the inclusive scope you indicate in your remarks -
> requires that all possibilities, all variants, all
> potentia, be taken into consideration, in order
> to (asymptotically) such "ideal" of whatever designated.
Not really! The Platonic World only contains true mathematical
statements, not all the variety that you seem to believe it requires.
In other words it contains presummably less information than most
textbooks of mathematics which include unproved conjectures etc...
As far as non mathematical "ideals" the same is the case: there
are many different chairs each one a different corruption of the
same ideal form of "chairness", get it? The Platonic world is
very sparsely populated, unlike your brain and mine...
> Or, to restrict it according to the regulations
> you jibe about in remarks further along in your
> reply (a table can be sat upon, but it is not a
> 'chair').
>
> The ideality of 'apple' includes the former condition
> of being 'ideal' only when the totality of environments
> are included - the exterior realm which Godel says
> can -never- be holistically involved in any ultimate
> _experiential_ sense.
>
Just the opposite: the "idea of the apple" is exactly what makes
it, the idea, independent of all or any environment unlike this
specific apple or that other one ! That is the reason it
need not be involved in any ultimate sense, as you put it!
>
> So if Godel counted himself a Platonist, he necessarily
> had to conclude that no platomic ideal (conditions-of-knowledge)
> could have any relevance with the material (conditions-of-being)
> since there would be no way to secure - permanently
> and reliantly - what 'ideal' would be expansive enough,
> and, because any window to 'ideal' cannot help but
> be rooted in (conditions-of-being) .. the expeiential.
Again you are mistaken. The conditions of knowledge only condition
us "knowers", they do not condition the ideas which exist independently
of whonever knows them. The Platonic World is "the unconditioned" as
the philosophers of the XIX centuries refered to it to distinguish it
from
the realm of experience.
>
> I.e., there would be no way of knowing if any
> 'knowing' a mind held had any real mappings
> with a purported 'ideal'.
But there isn't! Mathematics is the only form of conviction that
we can appeal to in that respect and the fact that math seems to have
some bearing in the systematization of our experience in the
"computational"
realm, as Deutsch puts it, is the only thing that informs our knowledge,
unless you believe in platonic "anamnesis"...
>
> My personal arguement with Platonism is
> that Plato never took into consideration
> the requisite conditions relative to information
> conveyance and the issues established by
> Heisenberg and quantum mechanics. Not only will
> information influence and alter other information,
> but there is unavoidable connectivity in order
> for there to be information conveyance (knowability)
> in the first place.
Of course Plato did not take Quantum Mechanics into account!
But I think he had a good excuse: he lived 2300 YEARS before
Quantum Mechanics! On the other hand QM only indictes one
form of realism called Local Realism to which Platonic Ideas
do not subscribe. This is another subject altogether...
>
> There is mechanism and process involved (one of Plato's
> prime beliefs). In fact, all-is-process.
>
> "There is no one thing, no some thing, nor such a thing
> whatsoever. But it is from motion or being carried along,
> from change and from admixture with each other that everything
> comes to be that which we declare to ?be? (speaking
> incorrectly), for nothing ever ?is?, but always becomes."
> (Plato, Theaitetos 152d)
This is the Heraclitean side of Plato and does not have exactly
the status you want to give it as it precedes the aristotelian
distinction between Beung and Becoming. Still this would
describe the world of appearances not the world of Forms.
You should read Gadamer's "The Beginning of Knowledge"
which analysis this issue extensively.
>
> In a sense, in fact, to be true to such an extreme
> idealism - unless one were willing to compromise -
> if there 'no such a thing whatsoever', then there
> would be no corresponding 'ideal' ... whatsoever.
Again: ideas are not things! That is what he means. Plato
wrote dialogues which makes it very easy to find contrasting
views exposed by different intervinients. Many times these
exposed the views he is criticising..
>
> But, to keep to the argument, even in the Cave,
> intervening air and lightwaves are conveyors
> of ideal to real .. which must perforce have
> relation with both the ideal realm and the real
> realm .. or whatever conveyor you might agree
> correlates with the physical indicia of waves.
Plato had no notion that light was a wavelike phenomenon,
I am afraid. Please let his work and his allegories have
a context! That is not what the Cave is about and I am
sure you know it...
>
> > >
> > >
> > > Another discontinuity.
> > >
> > > If you climb Mount Everest and sit down on it,
> > > does the mountain now satisfy the platonic ideal
> > > of "chair"?
> >
> > No, why should it? The form of a chair is not the
> > form of "anything I sit on"! You can sit on a table
> > or on your head for all I care... This is a different in
> > "extension" which is much easier to grasp than one
> > of intention, but it is the same think.
> >
> > > Thanks in advance for your thoughts,
> > >
> > > James Rose
> >
> > I am afraid you are obviously confused about the basis of
> > platonism and the dispute with kantianism, if you will.
> > I suggest you read Stanley Rosen's "Antiplatonism" in
> > his collection "The Ancients and the Moderns" for a
> > recent and detailed review of the issue you raise, namely
> > conditions-of-knowledge as conditions-of-being, a
> > sibject prone to post-kantian confusions....
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > -Joao Leao
>
> James Rose
>
> > --
> >
> > Joao Pedro Leao ::: jleao.domain.name.hidden
> > Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
> > 1815 Massachussetts Av. , Cambridge MA 02140
> > Work Phone: (617)-496-7990 extension 124
> > VoIP Phone: (617)=384-6679
> > Cell-Phone: (617)-817-1800
> > ----------------------------------------------
> > "All generalizations are abusive (specially this one!)"
> > -------------------------------------------------------
--
Joao Pedro Leao ::: jleao.domain.name.hidden
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
1815 Massachussetts Av. , Cambridge MA 02140
Work Phone: (617)-496-7990 extension 124
VoIP Phone: (617)=384-6679
Cell-Phone: (617)-817-1800
----------------------------------------------
"All generalizations are abusive (specially this one!)"
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Received on Mon Jun 16 2003 - 14:37:57 PDT