Philosophy Now Forum

uwot wrote: Tag!
Ahem! It isn't obvious; how do you know what any of us has read? The problem with keep reading further is that at no point do you reach anything that is founded on actual evidence: it's an argument from authority. Without independent evidence you only have people's word for it; it's hearsay and it doesn't matter how many people believe it. An example is the book of exodus; many people are convinced it happened, because it says so in the bible, but there isn't a shard of archaeological or historical evidence that any such event took place. Laughably, the same fruitcakes will often argue that some missing link is 'proof' that evolution is false. We all try and make sense of our environment, some of us look at the inspiration for stories, not just the stories.

Wyman wrote: I think the Renaissance is known for Europeans pulling their collective heads out of their asses and realizing that Plato probably did not dress like Middle Age Europeans. They also 'rediscovered' Plato from books they got from the middle east and realized that Aristotle was not the only game in town. If any conspiracy theory about Plato were to make sense, it would have to be that Plato's manuscripts were produced in the middle east.

Do you think the neo-Platonists, who existed prior to the Middle Ages, came before Plato?

WanderingLands wrote:Did you not realize that I was merely criticizing Gingko for not reading further of my information? Another thing, too, is that I am not merely believing what I have read, even in regards to ancient historical revisionism (you should see in my OP that I was open to the criticisms of people like Velikovsky and Fomenko). It's still subject that I am exploring and thinking about, and I am indeed still open to looking at various viewpoints.