God Qualities

[Silmarien]

How does Platonism relate to Panentheism? I ask because its through Panentheism that I experience the Life Force of God.

It's hard to say, since panentheism is a very vague concept. Platonism tends not to value physical things in and of themselves, so the beauty of the natural world is more likely to be viewed as a reflection of some greater, abstract beauty. Platonism does tend to lean towards nondualism, though, where all of reality is kind of a descent and return to the source, so in that sense I would call it panentheistic. (Much of Christian and especially Islamic mysticism draws strongly upon Platonism.)

 

[dlamberth]

It's hard to say, since panentheism is a very vague concept. Platonism tends not to value physical things in and of themselves, so the beauty of the natural world is more likely to be viewed as a reflection of some greater, abstract beauty. Platonism does tend to lean towards nondualism, though, where all of reality is kind of a descent and return to the source, so in that sense I would call it panentheistic.

Panentheism is more mystical and thus experiential in it's expression which is why it can't be nailed down to concepts. The value, or good if you will, isn't necessary seen in the physical, but rather "What's behind the Veil" is the terminology I've heard used. So I'm drawn to the language you used as a "reflection of some greater, abstract beauty."

You also pointed towards nondualism in the direction platonism leans towards. I tend to interpret nondualism towards mysticism at some level of understanding. But I don't go around thinking of Platonism as being mystical in nature, but in looking at these examples, am I wrong in that?

(Much of Christian and especially Islamic mysticism draws strongly upon Platonism.)

This I knew. But it's often argued against by others.

 

[Silmarien]

You also pointed towards nondualism in the direction platonism leans towards. I tend to interpret nondualism towards mysticism at some level of understanding. But I don't go around thinking of Platonism as being mystical in nature, but in looking at these examples, am I wrong in that?

Yes, Platonism is actually extremely mystical. I would say that Plato himself is more focused on what it means to live a good life, with any number of transcendental ideas appearing in his dialogues, but once you get to the later Platonists, mystical union with the One explicitly becomes the goal. It's highly intellectual in nature, but also very ascetic, and towards the end started getting pretty occultist too.

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

That is one of many competing theories of values and morality, and not an established fact. I honestly don't find it very persuasive at all, since even talking about social needs and material realities presupposes the possibility that certain options are better or worse than others. I think the Platonists are right that the Good precedes value judgments, rather than the reverse.

The fact that different cultures disagree on what is or isn't good doesn't actually mean that morality is malleable. I would say that oppressing people is always bad, and that insofar as cultures engage in systematic oppression, those cultures are behaving badly.

And yet, a majority of Americans would possibly find nothing wrong with the US occupation of Afghanistan (or at least find it justifiable), while simultaneously regarding the Soviet occupation that happened twenty years earlier to be entirely villainous.

I think the Platonists are entirely wrong. It's like claiming that language precedes homo sapiens, that the words were there before someone articulated them, that our mind's way of categorising things into groups and dichotomies taps into some eternal sphere instead of constructing the particular compartmentalisation each specific language describes.
Poppycock.

 

[Silmarien]

And yet, a majority of Americans would possibly find nothing wrong with the US occupation of Afghanistan (or at least find it justifiable), while simultaneously regarding the Soviet occupation that happened twenty years earlier to be entirely villainous.

How is that relevant to anything?

I think the Platonists are entirely wrong. It's like claiming that language precedes homo sapiens, that the words were there before someone articulated them, that our mind's way of categorising things into groups and dichotomies taps into some eternal sphere instead of constructing the particular compartmentalisation each specific language describes.
Poppycock.

Words are representations, but the sorts of things they describe were there before someone articulated them, so insofar as Platonism is the claim that our mental concepts map onto genuine reality, I really don't see the problem. You end up with a complete epistemological mess that cannot explain the success of modern science if you try to insist that mental concepts are things that we impose upon reality instead of themselves actually reflecting reality.

Sorry. Anti-realism is really not my thing.

 

[Noxot]

there is a deeply required need for subjective morality because morality is not actualized unless we actualize it. the conditions of people and this world put a limit to potential goodness. But that all the more cries out for subjective actualization of higher moralities.

And you can see the struggle in humanity to try to do just this. because even if they reject traditional Notions of God and sin described in the Old Testament by various irrational laws they still usually have some kind of God like truth or humanism that they strive for. And they would consider it to be progress because it's better.

It just seems rather obvious that there are better and worse ways to go about interacting with others. It might be fuzzy to some measure but I think it would be good to make a distinction between unrefined animalistic programming and someone reaching for something better and embodying it.

 

[dlamberth]

It might be fuzzy to some measure but I think it would be good to make a distinction between unrefined animalistic programming and someone reaching for something better and embodying it.

This reminds me of the question: What does it mean to be a more human, Human Being.

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

How is that relevant to anything?

Because it illustrates that moral judgments require context - and people making them. There is no morality without people, just as there's no language without people*.

*There are some forms of proto-morality to be detected in the behaviour of other species that live in social groups, but without the necessary abstraction and symbolic layer, I'd consider that not *quite* the same as homo sapiens's complex moral codes.

Words are representations, but the sorts of things they describe were there before someone articulated them, so insofar as Platonism is the claim that our mental concepts map onto genuine reality, I really don't see the problem. You end up with a complete epistemological mess that cannot explain the success of modern science if you try to insist that mental concepts are things that we impose upon reality instead of themselves actually reflecting reality.

Sorry. Anti-realism is really not my thing.

The whole point of Platonism is that abstracts are MORE real than concrete objects, that the categories we impose upon physical reality as a lens to filter our perceptions through exist independently from us, that the universal idea of "CHAIR" is a reality outside of our minds that may even be MORE "chair-ish" than any actual piece of furniture that you can actually sit on.
To name one example: Of course, the light spectrum exist whether we observe it or not, and our eyes are geared towards compartmentalising its wavelengths into certain distinctive perceptions (unless you suffer from color blindness). But there's nothing objective about the abstract terminology we use to differentiate and name it. There's no objective blue-ness existing outside of a mind to name it as such. Just an unnamed part of the light spectrum that we identify as such.

 

[Silmarien]

Because it illustrates that moral judgments require context - and people making them. There is no morality without people, just as there's no language without people*.

*There are some forms of proto-morality to be detected in the behaviour of other species that live in social groups, but without the necessary abstraction and symbolic layer, I'd consider that not *quite* the same as homo sapiens's complex moral codes.

Platonism isn't the claim that complex moral codes exist without people, or that people can make moral judgments even if they don't exist. The claim "Tree X is larger than Tree Y" cannot be made if there are no minds to make it, but that doesn't mean that one tree isn't objectively larger than the other.

The whole point of Platonism is that abstracts are MORE real than concrete objects, that the categories we impose upon physical reality as a lens to filter our perceptions through exist independently from us, that the universal idea of "CHAIR" is a reality outside of our minds that may even be MORE "chair-ish" than any actual piece of furniture that you can actually sit on.
To name one example: Of course, the light spectrum exist whether we observe it or not, and our eyes are geared towards compartmentalising its wavelengths into certain distinctive perceptions (unless you suffer from color blindness). But there's nothing objective about the abstract terminology we use to differentiate and name it. There's no objective blue-ness existing outside of a mind to name it as such. Just an unnamed part of the light spectrum that we identify as such.

You're begging the question. As a Platonist, I do believe that abstracts are more real than concrete objects. The chair example is a little bit antiquated, but the example of the light spectrum is quite valid. You've actually pinpointed a very deep problem with materialism there--if there is nothing objectively blue about a part of the light spectrum, how and why does the mind identify it as such? Why do specific phenomenal experiences accompany purely physical perceptions? It seems to me that there are three possibilities: 1) blueness does exist in the physical world, 2) the mind has the power to map physical perceptions onto preexisting abstract realities, or 3) the mind is conjuring up all sorts of value-laden phenomenal sensations of its own accord. The third option in particular leads to any number of concerns--the hard problem of consciousness comes into play, but I think there's also a serious issue with universals as well, given the regularity with which the individual mind associates specific parts of the light spectrum with specific colors. If abstraction is arbitrary, why does our experience of it remain constant?

There are any number of really serious problems in philosophy, and you're overlooking all of them just to engage in some sort of weird, out of place polemic against a specific view. The initial question was how to define Platonism rather than whether it was correct, so jumping in to rant about it strikes me as a little bit silly.

 

[cloudyday2]

You're begging the question. As a Platonist, I do believe that abstracts are more real than concrete objects. The chair example is a little bit antiquated, but the example of the light spectrum is quite valid. You've actually pinpointed a very deep problem with materialism there--if there is nothing objectively blue about a part of the light spectrum, how and why does the mind identify it as such? Why do specific phenomenal experiences accompany purely physical perceptions? It seems to me that there are three possibilities: 1) blueness does exist in the physical world, 2) the mind has the power to map physical perceptions onto preexisting abstract realities, or 3) the mind is conjuring up all sorts of value-laden phenomenal sensations of its own accord. The third option in particular leads to any number of concerns--the hard problem of consciousness comes into play, but I think there's also a serious issue with universals as well, given the regularity with which the individual mind associates specific parts of the light spectrum with specific colors. If abstraction is arbitrary, why does our experience of it remain constant?

"Blue" is an interesting example that @Jane_the_Bane mentioned. I suppose we could see "blue" as simply a range of light frequencies that stimulates a "blue" cone in the human retina. How can we make "blue" abstract?

 

[Silmarien]

"Blue" is an interesting example that @Jane_the_Bane mentioned. I suppose we could see "blue" as simply a range of light frequencies that stimulates a "blue" cone in the human retina. How can we make "blue" abstract?

Looking back, I think I misinterpreted what Jane was saying. I thought she was saying that the phenomenal experience of blue-ness was abstract, which was actually a little bit odd, since people don't normally refer to sensory data as abstractions, even if they ultimately are, since we have no good reason to think that the qualitative aspect of sensory data exists in the external world.

Now I think Jane was trying to say that blue-ness isn't a property that belongs to objects themselves, which I would tentatively agree with, but in defense of the Aristotelians, objects may well have the potential to manifest certain colors when hit by light waves in certain ways. I'm not sure why she thinks it's illegitimate to distinguish between different parts of the light spectrum, though--there are objective differences between the various frequencies. In any case, I think what we're really dancing around here is the question of universals and particulars.

 

[cloudyday2]

Looking back, I think I misinterpreted what Jane was saying. I thought she was saying that the phenomenal experience of blue-ness was abstract, which was actually a little bit odd, since people don't normally refer to sensory data as abstractions, even if they ultimately are, since we have no good reason to think that the qualitative aspect of sensory data exists in the external world.

Now I think Jane was trying to say that blue-ness isn't a property that belongs to objects themselves, which I would tentatively agree with, but in defense of the Aristotelians, objects may well have the potential to manifest certain colors when hit by light waves in certain ways. I'm not sure why she thinks it's illegitimate to distinguish between different parts of the light spectrum, though--there are objective differences between the various frequencies. In any case, I think what we're really dancing around here is the question of universals and particulars.

I was thinking back to the color wheel in art class where red and blue mix to from purple, etc. I was wondering why red, blue, and yellow were considered primary colors. Of course there are the red, blue, and green cones in our eyes. Maybe there is also chemistry at work. Red ochre has been used since prehistoric times. Maybe the three colors in our retina evolved because external chemicals tend to be those colors. Or maybe it is easier to evolve a blue sensor in our eyes rather than a purple sensor. ... So even though at the surface blue seems like an arbitrary range of light frequencies, there may be more to the color "blue" than meets the eye. Or maybe not. LOL

 

[Bodhicitta]

Inspired by another thread, I thought it might be interesting to ask, "What qualities make a god good or evil?"

You have the cart before the horse. Besides, a conceptual description by a human non-god mind is of little value.

A better approach is to ask which qualities of our mind & life permits or invites knowing what sort of entities?

 

[NeedyFollower]

Inspired by another thread, I thought it might be interesting to ask, "What qualities make a god good or evil?"

(And if anyone says "loving", I'll ask you to explain exactly what that means in detail.)

That is interesting but not sure if it is fruitful for a number of reasons . One is man's limited ability to understand or have the same perspective of God . Two , not being able to see the end nor the whole .
( For example , we may be like cancerous cells in a healthy body which only wants to replicate and be left alone until we invade the whole of society . ) So we perceive a good surgeon as an evil doctor .
It is interesting when Jesus says " If you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children , how much more so will our Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask ? "
In other words ..it is difficult for the human to understand good from a divine standpoint . We do have clues that our enemy , satan ( the adversary ) never wants us to understand the divine nature and satan is basically a "humanist ." As Jesus told Peter .." Get behind me satan for thou savorist the things which be of man and not the things which be of God.
So God is a quality and man is a creation .