Yea. And I said that makes no sense. To which you have to explain as to why that’s better than Plato’s definition (not holding my breath).
Function can’t become essence. Do you understand what Plato define essence as?
When did I say there isn’t? My point is how can you know one thing and not another? Because your philosophy is incomplete meandering garbage thats why.
Yea logic makes it knowable
Plato’s philosophy debunks empiricism. Along with common sense and all the other things I’ve said.
Nah sensory input doesn’t produce knowledge. Reason produces knowledge. If sensory input produces knowledge animals would be a shitload smarter than we are because they have superior hearing, sight, taste, smell, etc.
That there’s nothing wrong with my definition of ‘essence’.
I never said it was better, I just said it was coherent (and thus acceptable). You can have more than one definition for a word you know. You see it in the dictionary all the time.
I have no idea why my definition would make no sense to you. It’s rather simple: things are what they are. Things are always going to be something ultimately. My finger is, ultimately, the appendage that hangs off the end of my hand. A knife is, ultimately, a sharp, flat scrap of metal with a wooden or plastic handle. Things are always something - something particular - such that they can’t be, at the same time, all manner of other things. That’s all I mean to convey with my definition of ‘essence’. Why this makes no sense to you is beyond me.
My issue with Plato’s definition is not that it’s incoherent, or that it’s inferior to mine (whatever that would mean), but that I question the existence of its referent. It’s quite possible, you might be surprised to understand, that the perfect right-angled triangle (the one that exists in the world of forms) is really just a mental construct that so happens to be useful for identifying and analyzing real-world triangles however short of perfection they may be.
Exactly my point. You’re trying to define ‘knife’ functionally, and then getting all confused as to why the finger doesn’t become a knife.
Wow, my philosophy is incomplete meandering garbage, eh? Well, that really clears things up for me! Thanks for showing me the light! I now see the errors of my ways.
But seriously, why can’t you know one thing and not another? I know what I had for breakfast. I don’t know what you had.
Even if that were true, it hardly means that everything that exists (or is true) is knowable. It means some things are: empirical things and platonic things (perhaps only some platonic things). There are more things in heaven and earth, Duality, than are dreamt in your philosophy.
Perhaps, then, we should say that sensation can produce knowledge, and in our case it does. Surely you can’t deny that if I see traffic on the road, that leads to my knowing there is traffic on the road.
There is though. Plato uses essence to show what something is ultimately supposed to be and to show that the fact its not causes disorder as a result. And I said to you if the universe appears disordered to you then you got bigger things to worry about. The point being, something is what it is, but if its not compatible to things around it, then it doesnt make sense to say it is how it’s supposed to be.
If the flaw is with us then we are flawed. You can’t trade responsibility off like that. And if a thing isn’t being according to it’s essence then it itself is flawed. Although you dont see it in nature much because nature stabilizes itself (i.e. the observable universe appears ordered) it’s usually humans that end up destroying balance.
Fixed that one for you
Dont’t understand this part. Sounds like you agree with him.
Nah youre trying to replace function with essence. Or at times combine them… dont really know at this point.
Well not your complete personal philosophy I suspect. I doubt you’re an empiricist otherwise you’d just be a narrowminded inbred and this conversation wouldn’t have gotten this far
You can obviously, if we had all knowledge nobody would be philosophizing. The point was a philosophy that doesn’t explain things or “says” some things can’t be explained is a heaping pile of garbage as Plato shows.
Nah Plato’s philosophy encompasses physical things and all reality. Empiricism only encompasses the worthless shadow realm. Its not my philosophy it’s Plato and Socrates’s infallible greatness
“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” - Alfred North Whitehead
The greatest tag team in history
What is the road but a shadow of it’s eternal form? Even if you never saw traffic on the road you could stil probably conceive of seeing it just like people conceived of building a road or building cars. They obviously never saw roads or cars, but drew upon the ideas to create them.
Here’s my problem: I don’t see why things are ‘supposed’ to be a certain way apart from the purposes or function we impose on them. If I use my finger to cut bread, the function it is ‘supposed’ to perform is one that I intend. It isn’t “written in the stars” as it were. It isn’t the universe that intends for my finger to perform this function, not some mystical abstract world of metaphysical forms, it’s me. Without me, it’s just a finger cutting bread (well, I guess I would have to be there if it’s my finger, but you get the point), and the fact that it doesn’t do it as efficiently as a knife would doesn’t mean that it’s ‘supposed’ to be doing it as efficiently. It’s just doing whatever it’s doing, and whatever it’s doing, it’s doing it perfectly well.
Sure, nobody’s perfect.
What responsibility?
Which is why I would say nothing is flawed (in being what it is), for nothing can deviate from its essence (my definition).
But I’m not defining ‘function’; I’m defining ‘essence’.
Let me make it clear with an example:
The essence of a knife is: a sharp, flat scrap of metal with a wooden or plastic handle.
The function of a knife is: to cut food.
Thus…
The essential definition of ‘knife’ is: a sharp, flat scrap of metal with a wooden or plastic handle.
The functional definition of ‘knife’ is: something that cuts food.
No, Plato would add that although the concept of a right-angled triangle is indeed a mental construct, there is a metaphysical right-angled triangle in the realm of forms (outside the mind) and it is that triangle to which my mental construct refers. I say there is only the mental construct, no referent, no realm of forms outside the mind.
I’m saying function and essence can coexist. A knife can have both an essence and a function. It can be something particular and at the same time perform a particular task. A finger can be a finger essentially but at the same time perform the function of a knife (poorly). You can thereby call it a knife but here you’re defining ‘knife’ functionally (i.e. based on what the finger is doing). Nothing follows from this about the essence of the finger (which you now call ‘knife’).
You might want to call me a ‘soft empiricist’. I believe that empirical observations yeild knowledge, but I don’t believe it’s the only way of knowing, nor do I believe that all things can be known this way, nor do I believe that the knowledge thus yeilded is infallible (it’s pragmatic).
I have yet to be convinced of this.
It purports to.
Even tag teams can be beaten.
Yes… but… if I see traffic on the road, that leads to my knowing there is traffic on the road.
Then that’s just resentment/denial bro. The uneasy truth that there are things greater than mice and men.
Bro the universe couldn’t care less if you achieve your essence. Its you that suffers.
This comment seems kind of spontaneous. At first you come off as a control freak and then become a predeterminist/ fatalist. You ain’t though right? That stuffs almost as ridiculous as empiricism.
The flaw can’t be with its function it can only be from not using it according to it’s essence. A function is just whatever you wanna use it for so it’s flawed to begin with because its not it’s essence.
Yea it can. Are you saying we can’t ever do things in better ways, or become better at ping pong for example?
Fixed that one for you
So where did this mental construct come from? We’ve already established sensory input doesn’t produce knowledge (especially knowledge of abstract concepts).
Yea but that’s not what you were saying. You said function can become it’s essence which is not true.
If you went to the b-room and some guy told you you could only take half a piss you would be pissed off right?
K let me know when you think of things that can’t be explained with Plato’s philosophy
I’m in denial, eh? Well, that really shouldn’t matter to this discussion. I’ll need you to show me how not to deny Plato rationally (i.e. with a logical argument). I agree that there are things greater, but not platonic forms.
Couldn’t agree more.
Wow, how you come to these high flung conclusions about my character and beliefs is beyond me. I can assure you I’m none of the above. I just think you fail to get my point. I just mean that whatever a thing is doing, that’s what it’s ‘supposed’ to be doing (I hate to even use the word ‘supposed’ but whatever). If my finger cuts bread poorly, it’s supposed to cut bread poorly. Its function would be to cut bread poorly. A knife wouldn’t do because it cuts well. So my finger does exactly what it’s ‘supposed’ to do. It doesn’t need to be improved.
Sorry, bud, you’re still question begging. I’m still convinced there isn’t any platonic essence for it to function according to. The flaw is with us. We are using it for a function that would be better served with something else.
This is becoming an exchange of simple gainsaying.
No I’m not. Let me repeat exactly what I’m saying (with more emphasis on the key phrase):
Again, my definition of ‘essence’ is what a thing ultimately is. Are you saying that a thing can’t be what it is? Oh, wait, no you aren’t:
Again, you’re just gainsaying. You’re basically saying “My definition of ‘essence’ is the right one, yours is wrong” but have done nothing to show me why. Why should I accept your ‘fix’?
I don’t know where the mind comes from. I have a theory, but I’m not blinded by it to the fact that I don’t know if it’s true. But not knowing doesn’t mean that platonism must be true. You have established that sensory input doesn’t produce knowledge. I haven’t accepted that. Though I don’t know how sensory input leads to knowledge (but I can offer a theory), it seems a fact that it does. If I see traffic on the road, I know there is traffic.
How can you be such an ass as to profess what I am and am not saying. Has it ever occurred to you that you might have misunderstood what I’m saying (believe me, I wouldn’t hold it against you - but you’d probably hold it against yourself)?
I’d be pissed off because I know I can take a full piss. I don’t know that I can know everything. Furthermore, those philosophers who claim that we can’t know everything aren’t issuing a command (like “don’t know everyting!”), they’re expressing what they believe to be the truth. To deny it, according to them, wouldn’t make it false.
In any case, I don’t see how being pissed off at me is supposed to make me any more convinced of your point.
How 'bout, oh I don’t know, everything. Platonism isn’t really an explanation for anything. The only thing it might explain is how we come to see (conceptually) abstract things or identify objects as belonging to a general class. But if you want an explanation for, say, black holes, it does nothing to say its an interstellar object that’s a shadow of its ideal form. Einstein did a better job than Plato.
Oh, they’re eternal, are they? Well, let me know when we get to eternity. I think I’ll reserve judgment 'til then.
Coulda’ fooled me.
Anyway, as much as I’m enjoying this gripping discussion, this will be my last post for a week… I’m goin’ to Cuba!!!
No, they hoped they had explained it away.
But both Marx and Nietzsche worked with essentialism themselves, very much so in fact. I don’t know about Sartre, I don’t think he did - but then I don’t think he described anything outside of his moods, which were very non-essential, very random.
But both Nietzsche and Marx worked with ‘archetypes’. Man, animal, superman, slave, master for Nietzsche, and simply the classes and their inherent properties and historically necessary fates for Marx.
Whenever you actually work with definitions, which Sartre was trying to avoid except the most nihilistic ones, then you can’t get around essentialism. So science is entirely based on essences - like, for example, the fixed properties of different materials, shapes, patterns, what not - the human mind when it functions practically is helpless without essentialism. Try to think a about surviving without making use of essences as concepts. Try to even think in other terms - if you succeed you have a poetic career in front of you.
Plato was more or less right, except that he exaggerated.
He drew ‘triangleness’ and ‘roundness’ of Pythagoras to also imply ‘catness’ and ‘treeness’ - and from that he concluded that every phenomenon has a ‘ness’. There are phenomena of which it is not useful to categorize them because the difference in modalities between different versions is more significant than the similarities. But to say that there is not such a thing as ‘catness’ or ‘treeness’ is to close your eyes to the daily reality one is walking in. Maybe it’s just over cultivated people, who spend no time in nature, that can deny essentialism. Culture produces many useless objects and ideas impossible to categorzize, because they are one of a kind and don’t reproduce, because they are useless.
My definition: everything that reproduces has by definition, an essence. What is reproduced is an essence. Whatever can be understood as an abstraction and then reproduced has an essence.
Nietzsche objected to the idea of essence as something more exalted and perfect than the actual phenomenon. That is reasonable. Plato’s world of Ideas is a wrong way of explaining essences. It was in assuming essences exist outside of the things they are essential to that he got us all confused. Then again it is very difficult to understand for an alpha like Plato how essences arise from the properties of matter, instead of vice versa.
Excellent post. However, I think, for purposes of the discussion, it’s important to keep in mind the difference between using essences as conceptual tools and “essentialism” as an overall philosophy - which i think is something you allude to in your last bit about Nietzsche.
Essence is initially abstracted from what is already there, not vice versa - it can become an archetype we aspire to realize - but as an archetype it is still initially an abstraction from the immediate phenomena of our experience. the tree comes first, then we idealize it into the form of the tree, which helps us recognize,and informs our view of, other trees, which in turn inform the idealized form, it’s an ongoing process but the essence only exists in our collective head - an archetype composed of definitons, memories, associations - Plato mistook the process of information gathering and refinement of that “essence” with “emerging from the cave” - all that is, though, is an allegory for learning more about what we are experiencing - and what’s at least one primary way by which we go about learning more about what we are experiencing? (and i say this as much in response to the rest of he thread as to the previous post)- well, empircism. Empiricism, among other modes of interpreting experience, informs essence in this way - but the key fact remains that things exist and are experienced as existing prior to being essentialized. We can learn about things by studying their essence, but there can be no facets of the essence which don’t already come to us in the form of material phenomena. We can imagine a perfect bird, but only by projecting onto it an idealistic form of birdness extrapolated from all our prior material experience of birds. We can imagine perfection, but only by negating that which we’ve already perceived to be flaws among the components of our material experience.
I already have bro. I don’t really argue to convince people anymore as it is typically a futile endeavor. Every once in awhile you get someone who truly seeks truth, but ultimately most people never learn. They just spend the totality of their existence in pathetic obscurity like flies sloughing along a heaping pile of cow feces.
I partially do it to improve my articulation skills and partially because every once in awhile someone posts something that helps me uncover new knowledge; believe it or not.
Avoid it all you want, but it’s not going away. Explain how something could be doing something better if that’s what its supposed to be doing.
Yes and if the flaw is with us that means the flaw can be fixed no? If you say no then I correctly labeled your statement as predeterminist/fatalist previously.
Listen bro, you can define something and give it a label all you want, but that doesnt change the fact that it could become something better. I’ll redefine it too then, I’ll call it’s perfect state wakabaka, but that doesn’t change jack shit.
No bro, I’m saying relabelling something doesn’t change anything. Redefining connotes with it an explanation of why it’s like that; you haven’t provided anything of the sort. I have, however, shown that its nonsense regardless
Ok bro, then provide your theory. I can’t read your mind. If not you’re just doing like you did previously; relabelling something it is because I said so.
I can because I understand what you’re doing bro. Just stating something is because I said so.
Yea Plato’s philosophy makes it false and obsolete. That and the fact that it makes as much sense as a retard at McDonalds
Nah it explains everything. Not specifically, but a basic general blue print. Einstein didn’t explain but the worthless shadow realm. Even so, he was probably the most spiritual scientist of the last century and knew there were things far greater than what he was doing.
“The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.”
( Albert Einstein - The Merging of Spirit and Science)
Ideas are eternal. See how it all comes full circle?
We were all fooled at some point bro, but reason saved us. At least those who chose to accept it.
I already have bro. I don’t really argue to convince people anymore as it is typically a futile endeavor. Every once in awhile you get someone who truly seeks truth, but ultimately most people never learn. They just spend the totality of their existence in pathetic obscurity like flies sloughing along a heaping pile of cow feces.
I partially do it to improve my articulation skills and partially because every once in awhile someone posts something that helps me uncover new knowledge; believe it or not.
Avoid it all you want, but it’s not going away. Explain how something could be doing something better if that’s what its supposed to be doing.
Yes and if the flaw is with us that means the flaw can be fixed no? If you say no then I correctly labeled your statement as predeterminist/fatalist previously.
Listen bro, you can define something and give it a label all you want, but that doesnt change the fact that it could become something better. I’ll redefine it too then, I’ll call it’s perfect state wakabaka, but that doesn’t change jack shit.
No bro, I’m saying relabelling something doesn’t change anything. Redefining connotes with it an explanation of why it’s like that; you haven’t provided anything of the sort. I have, however, shown that its nonsense regardless
Ok bro, then provide your theory. I can’t read your mind. If not you’re just doing like you did previously; relabelling something it is because I said so.
I can because I understand what you’re doing bro. Just stating something is because I said so.
Yea Plato’s philosophy makes it false and obsolete. That and the fact that it makes as much sense as a retard at McDonalds
Nah it explains everything. Not specifically, but a basic general blue print. Einstein didn’t explain anything but the worthless shadow realm. Even so, he was probably the most spiritual scientist of the last century and knew there were things far greater than what he was doing.
“The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.”
( Albert Einstein - The Merging of Spirit and Science)
Ideas are eternal. See how it all comes full circle?
We were all fooled at some point bro, but reason saved us. At least those who chose to accept it.
I opened this thread because of my genuine intellectual curiosity for its topic but after reading most of the first page I realized why there can not be a forum called ILP, likewise any forum specifically designed to discuss philosophy.
A Yogi Berrism seems fitting for this place, no one eats at that restaurant anymore, its too crowded.
I have found more intellectual discussions in illegal torrent network forums, and that seems funny to me because one would expect shady characters in a network of member only media thieves as opposed to an open forum for discussing philosophy, but in fact the opposite was the reality, the torrent leechers are like the French philosophe’s spreading and collecting knowledge through their encyclopedia’s at any risk, and this thread is analogous to noise with no intellectual gain.
that’s not much by way of an argument - in fact it’s not an argument at all - why even bother replying if you’re not going to mention what “truisms” you’re referring to - certainly none that i know of - or explain what on Earth “universal assent” is supposed to refer to?
If it’s so blatantly false, it shouldn’t be too difficult to demonstrate it as such, no?
a Seinfeld-ism seems fitting in response to this post: “yadda yadda yadda”
you know, it doesn’t take much intellectualism to post a disparaging message about an entire thread, the lion’s share of which you didn’t even read - but hey, if it’s really haughty, highbrow pretension you’re after, then ILP is better off without you.
I don’t have time to teach you basic philosophy you can look up yourself. Then again, if you really wanted to know it you would have looked into it before randomly posting blatantly false information or, at the very least, read the other parts of this thread where it has already been discussed.
It doesn’t take much cogniscience to post fallacious information, in a thread you ironically also didn’t read about topics that nonetheless have been previously discussed. That is, in compliment to spamming up nearly the entire first page.
I’m noticing a pattern here: Do you ever actually argue your positions or do you simply indignantly reassert them and insult those who disagree until someone calls you on it and then bail out on the discussion?
I read the entire thread - nowhere do you successfully refute any of that which you claim is false. You’re again citing arguments and proof which you have yet to provide. I guess its all about tailoring to the sewage you want to believe for yourself as well …
