Plato's forms

You can use science to answer the question, "Why is blood red?", but you cannot answer the question philosphically (to do so would require that you explain why the laws of physics exist in as the convention which we know them to be). "Why is blood red?" is a part of deeper questions.

For those who believe in God, the question is, "Why did He choose to make the universe, and life as He had chosen to create it, the way that it is? (If you do not believe in God, blood will still be 'Red'). This asks a still deeper question: We understand red to be 'red' because we had been taught that the color which we see, as red, had been named 'Red'. It could have been named 'Zap''. It had been named 'Zap', the question would have been posed, "Why is blood, zap?" The same convention that red is named "Red" is obvious if you speak a language in which red goes by another name.

This holds true for our word for God. Likewise, so too, "THE BIBLE". And too, the words in The Bible. Also, truth. The matter becomes a personal interpretation of everything in reality, including that there is such a thing as reality, and that reality remains consistant over time. Existentialist angst aside, reality is NOT consistant over time. As you grow up, from infancy, your understanding of realty changes, (assuming that you develop in to adulthood).

Therefor, the question, "Why is blood red?" can not be answered as an absolute. For that matter, our understand of what is and is not religion, and our understanding of God cannot be assured. (As an absolute).

Strange creatures, we.

Assuming that you believe in God (or Gods, as the case may be), and that God in your faith has a similar convention to our generic concept of God per se. We, each in our own faiths, need a convention of God and of many other things in life, or else we could not function either as a being or as a member of the (your) faith. Usually, we assume reality to be a universal set of conventions, and seldom attempt to function outside of these common conventions, so that we can function. Technically, our conventions of what we perceive reality are what to be have assumed. Functioning outside of these sets of conventions, except for philosophy or for inquiry, is insanity.

Both differences between faiths, denominations, sects, or other divisions within your faith, that which we differ from one another (for seeking an absolute truth, "THE TRUTH"), can be both the cause of mutual freindship, or hatred, division, war, death, dysfunction, and destruction (insanity). Do we need the very faiths that we hold to be 'universal' which can unite us or divide us to answer these questions, establish a set of conventions which we accept to be God, and everything else in faith? People who either do NOT believe in God, or are uncertain as to which path to take to find the truth may argue, perhaps, that this supports their belief that there is no God. It cannot prove that to others, it can convince them of their own beliefs.

BigToe said:

Well I was looking around this forum and was disappointed to see the lack of ancient philosophy discussions. So I figured to start things off, why not start talking about Plato's forms. Do you know what they are? How do you feel about his theories on them? What would you add to the theories or take away from them? Can you answer, in his reasoning, why blood is red?

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Thanks for the philosophy post.

I tried to start one with Jesus parables but don't think it's taking off

Ok, I just read something on Plato's form and was not too certain about what it is. Can you give some elaboration.

Disclaimer: I have an extremely shallow understanding of Plato's philosophy of forms.

To me it seems backwards: the forms are templates we form in our mind to classify things, but the actually physical things they correspond with are a "more real" existence than the forms in our mind. To me Plato's philosophy seems to put human understandings of things above the things themselves; mind over matter if you will. I'm of the matter over mind school: mind is a subset of matter; the concepts in our heads are less complete representations of actual reality, and our minds themselves are part of the physical reality they are trying to understand.

Nathan David said:

Disclaimer: I have an extremely shallow understanding of Plato's philosophy of forms.

To me it seems backwards: the forms are templates we form in our mind to classify things, but the actually physical things they correspond with are a "more real" existence than the forms in our mind. To me Plato's philosophy seems to put human understandings of things above the things themselves; mind over matter if you will. I'm of the matter over mind school: mind is a subset of matter; the concepts in our heads are less complete representations of actual reality, and our minds themselves are part of the physical reality they are trying to understand.

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I see it the other way around actually. Mind is over matter in the sense that before an object matter can exist it must first exist in the mind. All things begin with thought before they ever become an object of matter.

Shekinahs said:

I see it the other way around actually. Mind is over matter in the sense that before an object matter can exist it must first exist in the mind. All things begin with thought before they ever become an object of matter.

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Can you give an example of something existing in a mind before it existed in reality?

Nathan David said:

Can you give an example of something existing in a mind before it existed in reality?

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All the inventions. Cars, planes, anything someone imagined before creating.

Shekinahs said:

All the inventions. Cars, planes, anything someone imagined before creating.

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Fair enough. How about natural objects, what we call "rocks", "mountains", rivers", "oceans". We have abstract concepts in our head referring to all of these; we know a mountain or an ocean when we see it, but the objects themselves existed for billions of years before there were people to perceive them.

Yes, Nathan, but each rock and mountain we see is but an imperfect and changing copy of the ideal rock and mountain.

We see many different objects and we call of these rocks. Why is that? It is because they all remind us of the idea of rock. This idea is perfect and eternal, and all things that are rocks are only rocks because they somehow partake of "rockness".

Hmm... this is a bit confusing. I think I can make it better with another concept: equality.

We see many things that are similar, and we call them "equal". However, we never see two things which are actually equal. We never see true and pure equality in the world. And yet, we have the idea of equality, which pair of things share in a higher or lower degree.

Basically, we have two worlds: the physical, mutable and imperfect world of things and the metaphysical, unchanging and perfect world of ideas.

According to Socrates, ours souls once knew and lived in the world of ideas. But when we get bodies, they are trapped in this world and our memories of the ideas are wiped out. When we see the copies (all imperfect) of these ideas, we recall them. After you've seen many rocks, you eventually recall the idea of rock (I guess the word essence could help to clear the meaning of idea).

The philosopher is the man who rejects the finite and corrupted world we live in and all its vain pleasures to spend his time dwelling on the perfect realm of ideas through the use of his mind, the only place where truth can be found.

This is how I understand it, more or less.

And I like it too.

Why is it a weak argument?