Philosophy Now Forum

I tend to romanticize with Plato's Theory of Forms because it gives supreme reality to the abstract concepts and ideas we encounter in life. Consider how one person views an individual as beautiful but another doesn't. Then consider how the perception of the individual's beauty can change over time as they get to know the "inner person." Are these interpretations of Plato's abstract of Beauty? Or is Beauty a spectrum?

If we don't believe Plato's theory then maybe the argument can be made another way. Neurophysiologist Roger Sperry said ideas are "just as real" as the neurons in our brains. John Wheeler said "It from Bit" to show how reality may be at its essence information. Dr. Giulio Tononi believes consciousness is the integration of information. DNA is of course coded information. If we understand ideas as information, than can't we consider ideas as fundamental to reality as atoms?

I kind of like this thought that everything is information because it puts it all on the same scale; matter, life, and even ideas. If we take Richard Dawkins and his "meme" than we can even postulate that ideas (memes) are quite possibly alive (at least abstractly). I'm a novice at big idea thinking so I'm looking forward to your thoughts on this!

More thoughts on this medium.com/the-multilarity/ideas-about-ideas-64c784fe808d

Ideas are patterns in your brain, at least we can assume that, but there remains a deal of neurological complexity I would think before it can be tested.

As patterns of your brain you can say anything about them that you can say about any other pattern. Only the constraints of the pattern are your constraints.

double post

jordansc5 wrote:I tend to romanticize with Plato's Theory of Forms because it gives supreme reality to the abstract concepts and ideas we encounter in life. Consider how one person views an individual as beautiful but another doesn't. Then consider how the perception of the individual's beauty can change over time as they get to know the "inner person." Are these interpretations of Plato's abstract of Beauty? Or is Beauty a spectrum?

I guess the short answer to your question would be a,"no". Forms do not exist inside of space and time. Space and time exist inside of the Forms. Another way of looking at this would be to say that Forms, like mathematics already exist, so it is just a matter of understanding their pre-existence.

The Form of beauty itself is eternal and unchanging. Unlike particular instances of beauty we observe as a characteristic of individuals. Obviously, such characteristics tend to change over time. Beauty itself does not change

jordansc5 wrote:
If we don't believe Plato's theory then maybe the argument can be made another way. Neurophysiologist Roger Sperry said ideas are "just as real" as the neurons in our brains. John Wheeler said "It from Bit" to show how reality may be at its essence information. Dr. Giulio Tononi believes consciousness is the integration of information. DNA is of course coded information. If we understand ideas as information, than can't we consider ideas as fundamental to reality as atoms?

A lot of people are prepared to argue, or even accept that ideas are the reality; just as real and any electrical process going on within neurons. So, the answer to your own question seems plausible.

However, this is where I have a problem. If physicalists want to explain consciousness as an emergent property of neural complexity, then for some reason we go along with it. Even skeptics might be tempted to say, "Well, yes, this seems like a reasonable explanation, after all, it is something that is a product of increasing complexxity."

The problem arises when we attempt to postulate this very same process as actually occurring with in the universe (as per Plato's theory of Forms). Now, if we accept the universe contains its own coded information and the universe is active in this process, then there is no reason not to accept consciousness as an emergent outcome of complexity. There is little or no difference between the physicalist who want to say feelings and emotions are outcomes of complexity and the metaphysician who wants to say that such feelings and emotions are a property of atoms just as spin and angular momentum are properties of complex interactions.

jordansc5 wrote:
I kind of like this thought that everything is information because it puts it all on the same scale; matter, life, and even ideas. If we take Richard Dawkins and his "meme" than we can even postulate that ideas (memes) are quite possibly alive (at least abstractly). I'm a novice at big idea thinking so I'm looking forward to your thoughts on this!

I also like the idea as well, except I have said it in a different way.

jordansc5 wrote:If we don't believe Plato's theory then maybe the argument can be made another way.

Yeah, but naturalizing it (to where it can become a part of science) is sort of like replacing a hypernym with one of its hyponyms. The former was meant to assimilate the latter, not vice versa. To elaborate:

The role of eternal, immaterial or non-extended / intellectual entities has already been irregularly misunderstood at times as having application in the mechanistic functioning and relational explanations of the sensible world (at least at its macroscopic level). Accordingly failed or undemonstrable. As Kant clarified, these are instead the conditions for making possible a world of becoming or "a place" for fleeting phenomenal events. IF sticking more to the ancient context rather than his own special emphasis on certain concepts being forms of thought.*

* Necessary for the noumenal mind's cognition slash understanding of a changing realm of appearances, wherein its represented influences of "things in themselves" are brought into spatiotemporal, interdependent co-existence as a world. The brain emerging as the natural-scheme representation for its transcendent counterpart.

If we create a tree in our mind, from out of sense data or just out of our memory are either or those trees real? Or is it the tree itself, a few steps away, made from atoms? It is difficult to exclude any of these elements from reality so I would have to say that it is all of the above, therefore I must respond to the topic in the affirmative.

A key problem in non-scientific thought is the problem of fixing terminology so that the words can be used as tools to unlock ideas. There isn't consensus on the simplest of words, scarcely a fixed co-ordinate in the humanities (or the arts or social sciences). A wild array, a gamut, of definitions that we continue to argue over is the greatest impediment to unlocking ideas. Trying to do a mathematic equation where it is not clear what ANY of x y and z are? We should try to fix some words meanings for the sake of the social sciences (arts, humanities..whatever it is called).

jordansc5 wrote:I tend to romanticize with Plato's Theory of Forms because it gives supreme reality to the abstract concepts and ideas we encounter in life. Consider how one person views an individual as beautiful but another doesn't. Then consider how the perception of the individual's beauty can change over time as they get to know the "inner person." Are these interpretations of Plato's abstract of Beauty? Or is Beauty a spectrum?

If we don't believe Plato's theory then maybe the argument can be made another way. Neurophysiologist Roger Sperry said ideas are "just as real" as the neurons in our brains. John Wheeler said "It from Bit" to show how reality may be at its essence information. Dr. Giulio Tononi believes consciousness is the integration of information. DNA is of course coded information. If we understand ideas as information, than can't we consider ideas as fundamental to reality as atoms?

I kind of like this thought that everything is information because it puts it all on the same scale; matter, life, and even ideas. If we take Richard Dawkins and his "meme" than we can even postulate that ideas (memes) are quite possibly alive (at least abstractly). I'm a novice at big idea thinking so I'm looking forward to your thoughts on this!

More thoughts on this medium.com/the-multilarity/ideas-about-ideas-64c784fe808d

This is like 2000 years of outdated stuff, that doesn't really fit our modern understandings of thoughtprocess.

What you talk about doesn't deal with skitzo people that can't grasp the difference between reality and made up reality. A thought is only a thought. Skitzo people thinks thoughts are absolute real, thus will commit terrible things when "voices" in their head tells them to do this and that, or hallucinates.

Hex you're missing the point as usual.


Presumably you haven't read anything about the ancient/classical philosophers. But what he said involves them. He's not saying what you think he's saying, if you have never read about the cave and sophists and so on you should probably not wax lyrical about a subject.

it is of course outdated as anything 2500 years old would be, but not for the reasons you gave, for the reasons he gave, perhaps.

Everyone else it seems is on the same page because they know the fundamentals, you are not Hex, you are not willing to learn it seems what his point was. Now a days everyone can learn about anything, it was not always the case. I suggest though you take advantage of it and learn something about philosophy.

The thing about ideas is that they are in code. And as such are distinct from reality. Take an arrangement of rocks, for example. their form and appearance are a part of reality. But if you or I can interpret a code within them we may be able to extract an idea from them. As for example, if they are arranged in such a way as to spell out the words "Ideas are not real".