/lit/ - Literature

>>12625218
Nothing. No theory of beauty has explained the phenomenon better. No theory of beauty discludes Plato’s forms.

>>12625218
BECAUSE I DONT FUCKING GET IT FUCK FUCK FUCK, HOW AM I THIS FUCKING STUPID, EVERYTIME SOMEONE TALKS ABOUT THIS FUCKING SHIT, EVERYONES TALKING ABOUT IT LIKE ITS SO EASY FUCK

>>12625218
Because that top portion emanates from the head like all the rest. "Beauty" is largely subjective.
Plato/Socrates is a dumb dumb.

>>12625224
Okay anon, since you’re in a calm state of mind, I’ll try to muster an analogy for you which may or may not help you grasp it.

Think of it like a word that escapes your tongue. You were talking and you stumble upon an idea, yet you forget the word that aptly illustrates what it is you want to convey. So you stand there flustered, trying with all your might to sort through your now blank mind to recall this word which at one point you were so aquainted with. As you experience the situation you feel confusion. But this is the junction of possibilities. In looking for this word, you may establish new connections between knowledge and ideas, or maybe even new words alike. This is the realm of beauty; the reating plave of those imperceptible forms. The concept is the idea that you have forgotten. The entity is the word. The frame of the idea you are trying to express is constructed from speech, and the picture is the idea conveyed to your interlocutor. Does that help?

>>12625218
there is no evidence or reason for the existence of the ultimate beauty, the thing represented in the top panel.
It is also not necessary to explain anything.

>>12625260
t. brainlet empiricist with no creativity

>>12625246
Sigh. Where is your novel prize then? You can also clearly prove that mathematics is discovered. Go for it.

>>12625272
I mean invented. God, even spelling that out hurts. You think mathematics is invented. There. The pain.

>>12625246
I don't even know where to start. Dumbest poster on this board.

>>12625218

that's like asking what's wrong with G-d. Since we can't prove either one exists, you can only critique the possibility of the idea, not the idea itself. The theory of forms is the natural progression from mythology and yes, it is a mythos.

>>12625276
Isn’t the only difference between invention and discovery within the nature of the act that brings fourth a cognative or materialistic breakthrough? One must come first. I can discover a nee way to rerout water, and then invent irrigation ditches. I can discover a concept that has no word, and invent a word to fill that concept. Does this sound right?

t. mathmatician

>>12625289
Tell me where you disagree with this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzmbSBrwqzI

>>12625289
When we discover, we become aware of preexisting facts that were functional before our awareness. An invention only becomes functional after our awareness of the facts. Tegmark thinks that the universe runs on mathematics, is mathematical and functional with or without our awareness

>>12625306
I don’t.
>>12625258
Does a good job in expressing the difficulty in voicing such ideas. Back in undergrad I had a nah for overthinking things and trying to understand concepts in my own way, and this caused some interesting insight, but insight comes at very spontaneous times regarding the universal mysteries. They usually must be experienced. This is outside my specialty, but I’ve grown convinced that disorders such as depression are the result of insight and the sufferer’s failure to reconcile preconceptions with realiy. It’s quite beautiful really. Excuse me if I sound melodramatic. (Or like a brainlet)

>>12625334
Doesn’t it feel, like you stumbled into something that is already preordered in away?

>>12625218
Nothing except its a description of language rather than reality

>>12625351
but doesn't it propose reality as being language?

wasn't that the whole idea of pythagoreism, egyptian hermetism, etc?

>>12625315
Awareness is needed to decipher and discern, and the ability to decipher and discern predicates our state of perplexity on the matter. Therefore, mathematics may express universal truths in so far as we become aware of such truths through the practice of math. Here I have trouble not leaning towards solipsism. Help me out

dualism garbage

>>12625315
Mathematics are an unnecessary abstraction of its functioning, though. It does not need mathematics to work. It is the universe that gives rise to mathematics through fundamental laws, not mathematics creating it governing the universe.

Hierarchys are stupid, long live the MONAD

>>12625348
Can you ask that again? I don’t think I fully understand.
Is the question “Do you feel as if you’ve stumbled onto something with inherent order?”

If so, not at all. Where there is order there seems to be the illusion of perception or human intervention making said order. The few glimpses I’ve had the honor of taking showed me that there infinitely compounded systems juxtaposed onto oneanother. Becoming aware of them is one thing, discerning ans understanding them is the work of pure intellect with raw focus.

>>12625379
Based Leibniz poster
The Monadology is now required reading for anyone who has, or will participate in this thread

>>12625364
Do you think the Universe depends on human consciousness?

>>12625276
mathematics is invented, though.

>>12625383
You understood correctly. That’s the way I meant it. It’s not the answer I expected though. I’ll have to think about it

>>12625261
>creativity
at least you can admit platonism is fiction.

>>12625397
That’s the ego speaking. It’s the other way around my friend

>>12625407
Anon I sure hope you don’t ask questions expecting a specific response.

>>12625400
TIL we invented ellipses, for example. Luckily, planets just accidentally also invented ellipses.

>>12625416
Yet its implications are based in reality. Can you explain that for me?

Creativity has been at the root of some of the greatest discoveries and inventions in the history of humans

>>12625434
>this is your brain on dualism

>>12625434
>we
okay buddy

>>12625364
Things can exist without our awareness of them though.

>>12625218
the problem is that it's wasted on college freshmen who can't possibly grasp it. you need to build up to something like the theory of forms

>>12625443
Get out. No one ITT is talking about dualism. This has nothing to do with anything of the sort.

>>12625425
my autism was in overdrive. Sorry anon

>>12625462
Anyone. Admit defeat. It’s self evident anyway. No one in their right mind could dispute it. Unless you think Mercury invented its own ellipse.

>>12625246
This is like something an art hoe would say

>>12625470
>thread about platonism
>no one ITT is talking about dualism

>>12625482
It’s not about dualism. Maybe it’s even triadism or octogonism for all we know. Or monism. It’s about whether or not there are objects or ideas that exist outside of human thought. I don’t see how that supports or claims dualism

>>12625506
Imho, not much is wrong about Plato’s theory of forms. It’s just not very sophisticated or useful. It’s clever, considering it’s age.

>>12625477
sure, the underlying mechanics exist independently of humanity, but mathematics is a human abstraction to describe that phenomenon. The observation is discovered, but the actual structure that is mathematics was absolutely invented, same as any language is invented. The color red is observed, the word “red” was invented by humans.

problems with the idea of a realm of perfection parallel with our reality aside, the problem with the representation of the idea of the forms in that comic and as it is seemingly interpreted is that form and concepts are already lingual, rendered and renderable immediately in language, which is not the case.
the concept of beauty is not just this folder in my head with some typesheets and pictures stored in it. it is, rather, the non-verbal distillation of many complex experiences that are dispositionally-colored but have commonality among them, and this commonality is a an unstable feeling that those experiences are attended with.

>>12625517
Red is just our notation for a wavelength. Redness perception is a physiological reaction.

>>12625506
>there are objects or ideas that exist outside of human thought.
think for a second about what you just wrote here, spoilers: the answer is NO

>>12625218
nothing

third man argument sucks

>>12625528
>autism

>>12625517
Mathematics as you mean it is just notational baggage. I mean the pure form, abstract. Which is what we’d share with aliens, for example. They’d have a different notation.

>>12625530
Solipsism alert. Sure you want to commit to that
train of thought?

>>12625535
I see. Well this is pointless then. Bet you hate ‘scientism‘ in YouTube comments. Teach the controversy, eh.

>>12625542
This. Don’t do it anon. As far as objects and ideas are defined, you may be right. But what the idea expresses is far loftier and I would urge you to shet your preconceptions for a moment to experience what you’re depriving yourself of.

>>12625549
To add, I’ll just leave this here in case anyone was interested or undecided

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-the-universe-made-of-math-excerpt/

If maths is discovered, imho it cannot be ruled out that there exists beauty within that nonphysical realm as well. In whichever form. Alongside ellipses.

>>12625434
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
the ellipses described by the orbits of the planets are not mathematically perfect shapes. And, even more importantly, "the line described by the motion of a planet" is absolutely a fiction anyways. Look through a telescope. Now show me an elliptical orbit.
>>12625438
There is a spirit called Booboo. Booboo hates all that is wet, but he fears the dark. That is why anything that is wet under the sun dries out by itself. QED.

>>12625542
its not about solipsism, its about language. If you say objects, or ideas, or "nothing", or "everything" then you have already failed to transcend human thought, because these are human concepts and can never be more than human concepts.

>>12625579
See the last link I offered. I know what you mean but you haven’t thought that through. Approximations, etc. Physics works for a reason, it’s not by chance :)

>>12625218
How the fuck is a shadow an "imitation"? ITs an intrinsic element of an object.

>>12625584
Do you think a human and an alien mathematician could share an understanding?

>>12625587
i can get to a city that is 100km from where i live accurately with a map, does that mean the map follows reality or that reality follows the map?

>>12625592
>ITs an intrinsic element of an object.
so is a shadow

>>12625598
Exactly my point though. The map was invented. Terra incognito was discovered. Maps tend to agree, but differ in small ways.

>>12625609
And that they aren’t perfect is die to pertubations. In an empty universe, two objects would describe a perfect ellipse. Well, down up to but not including the quantum at least. Physics is the art of making rules out of emergent properties that mathematics cast onto reality.

>>12625594
Do you think two persons agreeing on something makes it more real?

>>12625628
I don’t see a connection to the hypothesis there. Two humans agreeing is two humans agreeing.

>>12625639
well my point is that aliens would find the inventions of mathematics useful too, so yes a human and an alien would probably share an understanding

>>12625639
But two vastly different beings coming to same conclusions vastly different means. All sentient beings use the same maths but with different notations. That’s fundamentally different than two humans agreeing that Smaug is real.

>>12625647
are you saying Smaug is not real?

>>12625655
Some interesting thoughts and counterarguments have been shared. We had a good run everyone.

>>12625668
i meant it seriously? Do you disagree Smaug has had a lot of real causal influence on the world? If you agree, how can you define Smaug as anything else than real?

>>12625587
>we live in a relational reality, in the sense that the properties of the world around us stem not from properties of its ultimate building blocks, but from the relations between these building blocks.

I had actually arrived at this conclusion by myself at some point. I was imagining the universe as a graph (the formal mathematical kind). Physics simply emerged from the topology of the links, and the nodes were just referrences to other graphs. You could zoom into a node and view this other graph, and reality was just graphs all the way down, like a fractal.

I didn't stick with this theory. The existence of consciousness suggests a totally different sort of universe.

Math works really well, and that's exhilarating because it gives us power of the material world, and power is exhilarating. The euphoria then interferes with our thinking and we can veer off into madness like Mr. Max Tegmark has done: "Oh, what if everything is math? That would mean my powers are not limited to the material world, but could potentially extend to the very fabric of reality!". This subconscious process is very clear to me in the article.

So yes, math is just language and platonism is just excessive, masturbatory linguistic play.

Isn't everything made of the same thing?
The structure is the only difference, the pattern that the particles are arranged in.

>>12625218
It's nonsense, OP

>>12625224
its condensing innate indo european inclinations of a spiritual worldview that are largely carried, if you arent european or indian then you probably wont understand, just as a non semite probably could not understand deep islamic theology

>>12625246
You sir, are so incredibly stupid that you got me out of bed while incredibly sick just to hobble over to my keyboard and bitch at you for being incredibly stupid.

Hats off to you.

>>12626154

But he's right.

What does it mean if you have a beautiful painting of something ugly?

>>12625984
Yet no one here can disprove it...

>>12625367
>he unironically thinks Plato was a dualist

>my reductive model of reality is actually reality itself because it makes it easy enough for me to understand

There is no such thing as an ellipse in reality. Not a single planet follows the perfectly described path inherent in the definition of an ellipse. They move "like" an ellipse.

>>12625246
Fuck off butterfag

>>12625224
But it's so simple

>>12625218

NOTHING

>The images are manifest to man, but the light in them remains concealed in the image of the light of the father. He will become manifest, but his image will remain concealed by his light.

>>12626281
>There is no such thing as an ellipse in reality. Not a single planet follows the perfectly described path inherent in the definition of an ellipse. They move "like" an ellipse.
You should actually read Plato. Any material example you can come up with (such as a planet moving in a somewhat elliptical orbit) is an imperfect instantiation of Plato's forms. This means you are correct in saying planets move only "like" an ellipse, as a perfect ellipse is not found in the ever-changing and imperfect material world.

>Isn't everything made of the same thing?
>The structure is the only difference, the pattern that the particles are arranged in.

So Plato was right actually?
Our world is made of one substance?
A metal spoon and a plastic bag are made of the same stuff, and the form is the only difference between them?
Where are these forms/patterns coming from?

>>12626397
I mean yeah, the spoon is made of metal and the bag is made of plastic, but metal and plastic are made of atoms, and at the end the arrangement of the particles is the only difference.

in Greek it's easier to think that "there's a thing called THE beautiful" (to kalon), whereas in English turning adjectives into substantives is less natural, we wouldn't necessarily agree that "the divine" is a thing, it's more of a concept. but for Greeks it veered more towards "a thing".

at any rate I like how this ties w/ issues of perception. experience is seemingly impossible without forms, but actually it's only impossible without archetypes, a specific type of form, or a bunch of forms together if you will.

>>12626154
Hobble gobble, you turkey.

>>12626397
take the OOO-pill

>>12625276
Mathematics is our representation of what occurs dumb nigger

>>12626462
No, mathematics is the thing. What occurs is just a crude imitation.

>>12625218
It assumes we have access to forms at all.

Kant makes the best case against platonism as a whole. Have can we even pretend to speak of things-in-themeseves when any and all info we have on them is perverted by manner of our reason and apprehension

why is this hack taken seriously here? plato is non-intellectual reading for people to dick around on the train to stop taking this charlatan seriously.

>>12626516
>It assumes we have access to forms at all.
Plato was very aware of this, and references it in a few dialogues, most particularly in Parmenides.

Why do people take the opinions of non-spiritually minded people seriously?

They don't have the aim to explain reality but through a very chaotic framework and it's seriously just based on

>Dude just trust me

Whereas spiritual explanations have a well grounded metaphysical groundwork to work from.

>>12626516

The Reason through which things-in-themselves refract is the same Reason through which you know them.

>The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.

>>12626581
That's Meister Eckhart, not Hegel.

>>12626636

Yes...I know.

>only myth exists for thousands of years
>dumb peasants and priests telling stories like "The cosmic spookyman Peter cried out the oceans and shat out the lands"
>nobody minds
>bunch of oiled up greek pederasts sitting around in a glen one day invent autism
>start doing fruity world puzzles as the latest cool hobby
>literally nobody until this point had thought about how "sun" and "son" sound the same but are different meanings or if you say "The mountain is big" you really mean "The mountain is big compared to me but not compared to the world"
>greek homos cool off after schlonging each other by going "Haha my SON is in the SKY, pranked you"
>invent more and more autistic games
>"If you is sitting and that be a truth how can it still be true a second later when you isn't sitting no more"
>autistic greeks spend over a century chortling over this
>all still sitting in that same glen drinking straight olive oil
>have to take break from thinking to conquer entire ocean
>get back from war
>new generation of burly spergers start taking the game IRL seriously like an esport
>start going "Seriously though are meanings permanent or what? What is a meaning? What is time? I've never thought about what time is, and it's freaking me out, why are we even able to ask what things are if the nature of knowledge of things in their very being is itself unclear"
>decide to turn entire daily life into autistic word game
>start trying to raise their children to become the ultimate spergers
>literally turn global politics into a board for experimenting their game
>come up with 4, maybe 5 basic solutions to "What is thought" and "What is the world that thought relates to"
>argue about it for a while
>run out of ideas
>all kill each other
>entire rest of human history is just rehashing and returning to those same 4 or 5 basic ideas
>a few hundred autistic gay greeks thought up all the possible permutations in the span of a few generations
>we literally still don't know what an idea is or how ideas refer to the world or what the world is, 2500 years later
>we still don't even fucking know whether there's a supersensible realm or not
>still can't even clearly formulate the question of whether the laws governing the fundamental ontological things in existence themselves have ontological status
>we now write 900-page mega-books that take 30 years of erudition and 10 years of effort to produce just to say "It's probably like that one guy said in that one surviving sentence of his"

>>12625272
>yOu CaN't DiSpRoVe It!

That's a mark against it; it's an idea you can't actually engage with meaningfully. It's not even wrong.

>>12626706
> the Greeks had a more original take on reality, because they weren't disturbed/diverted by a whole lot of concepts and ideas coming from a tradition before them, making them lose sight over how their experience in this world reveals itself - on its own terms

>>12626706
This is why He was an actual completion and Blessing to those damn Greek autists.

>>12626725
>they weren't disturbed/diverted by a whole lot of concepts and ideas coming from a tradition before them

Imagine being this guy actually thinking this.

>>12625218
because everything we have ever sensed, talked about, or understood is reductive of what it truly is.

>>12626706
>>"Seriously though are meanings permanent or what? What is a meaning? What is time? I've never thought about what time is, and it's freaking me out, why are we even able to ask what things are if the nature of knowledge of things in their very being is itself unclear"
kek

>>12626462
No, didn’t you read anything here? That’s physics. Mathematics is the fire that casts physics.

>>12625218
Nothing, Plato was right about literally everything

Restatement of mine in order to fix thread derailment. Beauty resides within that realm of mathematics. Golden ratio, fractals, perfect harmonies, musical scales, etc. The mathematical realm is real. The mathematical realm also contains useless (here at least) physically impossible mathematics, it’s a form of overkill. Like real numbers possibly are.

>>12625246
subjectivity is only applied to the entities, the pure form is not subjective

>>12626964
>it’s a form of overkill
not really...
I mean we need more and more complex math as we go deeper in physics (quantum world, gravity, time, black holes, etc.)

>>12626964
It has to have the capacity to ‘cast’ physics into every strange universe in the multiverse.

>>12626998
Yes, that as well. We have no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes.

>>12626461
Not that anon, but I already have.
>Omniscient
>Omnipotent
>Omnipresent

>>12626964
How.
demonstrate any of this. Show even a twinge of a possibility of a proof.
The mere existence of beauty is not an argument. Invoking the idea of some higher-order phenomenon or realm to explain the nature of puzzling phenomena in our world is absolute madness.
Yes, beauty is a complex phenomenon. But it absolutely does not demand the existence of platonic ideals or any such metaphysical nonsense.
Beauty is complex because the human mind is complex. The brain is billions upon billions of independent elements, trillions of connections.
And here you are trying to explain the nature of beauty with human language. A system of symbols devised to warn others about approaching tigers and the edibility of defferent plants.
I note the way you platonists speak in nothing but aphorisms, everything is a given in your theories. You need to get down to basics and really re-examine your philosophy.

>>12625218
More like what's right

>>12627055
Don’t get wrong there. Beauty is mostly inhuman and not tied to language.

>>12627055
Also, nothing is invoked. Absurd mathematics are being done right now. Complex numbers, higher dimensions. Even real numbers. Absurd to us. The quantum world is even more absurd yet, and Newton would say the same about it as you just did. He’s grasp it of course, given time.

>>12627055
I feel like beauty isn't really the best example to prove his theory.
He just wanted to show us the most fundamental mechanisms of our reality, and prove that the forms of the things are more real than the actual things.

>Beauty is complex because the human mind is complex.

And why is the human mind so complex?
Why is the universe so complex?
Why is everything getting more and more complex?

>>12627126
beauty is 100% human in that it is a phenomenon that happens within the human mind. You're right that it is not tied to language. it begins as an authentic, unsymbolized experience. We then use language to describe it. In this sense, language is always categorization. One experience of beauty is not identical to any other, within the same individual and without.
The platonist says "the fact that we categorize all these experiences as 'beauty' proves they share some fundamental, eternal, ideal, numinous, bloo bloo bla bla..." But this is horse logic. When we use these big words to describe our experiences we are always approximating. As children we learn to describe experiences with the same words others use when they are describing similar experiences. That's basically what language acquisition is.
>>12627136
>Absurd mathematics, Complex numbers, higher dimensions
as I already stated, math is just language.

consider this:
> I don't dislike you.
WH-WHAT?? a double negative? negations are already a purely linguistic artifact, but a double negative? That fact that sentences such as these exist and are useful in describing our experiences surely mean that faeries are real!

That's basically the platonic argument. Math is surprisingly useful. Astoundingly even. And the fact that the square root of negative one is useful in some equations about electricity is pretty interesting.
But none of this can be be used as proof of anything. What sort of fucking logic is that anyways? Do you apply this kind of reasoning anywhere else in your life? If you stub your toe twice on the same piece of furniture is this evidence of the eternal form of the stubbed toe?

>>12627150
>prove that the forms of the things are more real than the actual things.
I'm still waiting for that.
>why is the human mind so complex?
>> The brain is billions upon billions of independent elements, trillions of connections.
if the consciousness that is you were experiencing an amoeba, for example, it would be significantly less complex.
>Why is the universe so complex?
again, because it's big. Lots of stuff in it.
>Why is everything getting more and more complex?
citation needed

>>12627235
>>Why is everything getting more and more complex?
>citation needed

retard

>>12626964
Numbers dont exist so you cant be right

>>12627253
what? are you talking about human technological progress? are you talking about our political situation?
Apply my theory of "more stuff, more complexity". Correlate human population with whatever you're calling complexity. Go on.

>>12625218
It is based on nothing.

>>12627307
Evolution is also just an imagination, the human brain was always this complex, even when we were little microbes.

>>12627307
>Apply my theory

fuck off

>>12625246
What do you mean when you say that something is beautiful?

>>12627329
funny you should say that, but I shouldn't be surprised. It's actually very fucking rare for people to really understand evolution.
It's a common misconception that evolution is a process that always increases complexity. And it's reinforced by the usage of the word outside the context of biology.
Evolution is very often a reductive process. Take a look at wikipedia's List of organisms by chromosome count, for example. It almost seems random. Even the relationship I proposed between brain size and complexity of behavior in the organism isn't a universal rule.

There are very interesting theories that evolution works in cycles. Cambrian explosion into mass extinction. And both of these processes contribute to the phenomenon equally.

There is also the matter of what is complexity to begin with. Is a living organism really more complex than an equivalent amount of mud? both are infinitely specific arrangements of matter, but for a living thing the specificity are little "differences that make a difference", whereas a different pile of mud is in no way distinguishable from any other.
But distinguishable from whom? "makes a difference" to whom? Humans of course. The concept of complexity is inherently anthropocentric.

>>12627338
I even put the "theory" in quotes to indicate I was being jokey about it. Jesus Christ, this website...

>>12627414
>both are infinitely specific arrangements of matter

you just proved that Plato was right
>the forms of the things are more real than the actual things
the difference between them is the arrangements of matter

>mfw the dumbies not understanding how reality is layered

Smell the onions boys.

>>12627499
My eyes are watering as I read this thread

>>12627499

>>12625218
The hierarchy
1. The feeling that you are experiencing beauty
2. The concept of beauty
3. The projection of the concept onto the objects of inspiration
4. Beauty as a form transcending any one material object
The feeling is the foundation of the form, not the other way around. Beauty was invented, not discovered.

>>12627473
on the contrary. Clearly you only read half my post.
yes, the arrangements are the only difference, but these differences only matter from the anthropocentric point of view.
Why does Plato speak of the eternal form of Man, for example, and not of the eternal pile of mud? And most importantly, if he aims to describe "absolute reality" why shouldn't he?

>>12627593
>these differences only matter from the anthropocentric point of view

really? if forms don't matter and everything is just mud, then how are your writing these posts? how are we aware of anything at all?
I'll answer it for you,
the mud is arranged in a pattern (Plato called that pattern soul)

>>12627235
If many people are enjoying a sunset, is beauty being created anew in each mind or are they sharing something outside of humans?

>>12627584
>>12625525
??
though what you describe sounds a lot like discovery

>>12627329
I disagree. All life (indeed all matter) draws its spirit from the same source, but it was not until humans that the conscious mind developed enough complexity to recognize itself. No other creature can process enough information to recognize their impending demise. Look into the ideas of "behavioral modern" humans. Something clicked after Homo Sapiens had already evolved that catapulted us from clever animals into a super-organism beyond the individual.

>>12627554
Yes I agree with plato.
But the idea of transcendence and eminence is but a theory inside a theory. I believe thats where it falls apart.

>>12627584
All (imperfect) bodily experiences of beauty are in reference to beauty itself. Without beauty itself, such bodily experiences would be impossible, thus, the form of beauty precedes such experience.

forms are neither transcendent nor immanent

>>12627636
not him, but the guy who claims that maths, and beauty for the sake of this thread, are discovered and preexisting, rather than invented. Penrose has a more sensible version of the realms. His version has three.

>>12627654
ah.
say a little more.

>>12627636
You can't discover something that exists only as an abstraction. It is similar to colors. Where does red end and orange begin? Is the color maroon real? Did we discover periwinkle, or invent it? All such abstractions can only be bound by an arbitrary cut off. They must be forced into a finite box because we have finite minds. The box is the invention.

>>12627670
Wavelengths

>>12627670
>arbitrary cut off.
Also known as language

>>12625246
How do you know that it’s beauty that is subjective and not just that people mis-identity beauty out of ignorance?

>>12626462
>my reflection doesn’t exist, only I exist

>>12627680
Musical scales and harmonies work for objective reasons. Other things probably as well, just far too complex. Flowers are another more easy example.

>>12627644
The whole hierarchy is manifest simultaneously. There is no causality in abstraction. The beauty wasn't there waiting to be perceived. The only illusion is that anything is separate from anything else.

>>12627670
i don't think i agree, we can certainly make abstract discoveries. for instance, there have been many discoveries in mathematics, which is just the field of study of quantitative abstractions.
i think any conceptual investigation is basically an endeavor to make abstract discoveries. the issue is making those discoveries explicit, or concrete. this is easier to do in math because there are definite procedures. in a field like aesthetics, which is a synthesis of concrete and abstract experiences and reflections, it is much more difficult to relate what is meant.
>>12627657
this kind of model, while interesting, still seems a little 'over-burdened'.
whitehead, i think, had a more elegant solution that doesn't involve multiple distinct 'worlds', but only one reality with a dual 'aspect' (very similar to leibniz in some respects, but also very different in its subtleties).

>>12627682
Actually only your "self" exists.. neither the true image or image reflecting represents the whole. They are but capsules for the self's actual essence.

>>12627688
>>12627680
Oh wait. We agree. Well, added to the discussion anyway.

>>12627640
You didn't say anything with that.
Homo Sapiens is also a pattern...
When Plato talks about "eternal Man", he means that form, not the actual representation of it.
You can believe that the world is just a huge pile of mud, but it won't invalidate the fact that there's also an order in the universe, and there's no order without forms/patterns.

>>12627691
That they’re distinct nags me as well. Unnecessary complexity. But there’s something to it. Care to share an image of Whiteheads idea? Shame Tegmark hasn’t come up with one. Although, he’d probably just say it’s all maths deep down and that’s the entirety of it.

>>12627677
Yes, different wave lengths of light appear as different colors. There is an infinite number of wavelengths possible though. Why does one color end here and another begin there? For example dogs and humans perceive color differently. Theoretically an eye could see every wavelength as a different color. Do you see what I'm getting at? Forms are just convenient names for communication. They are nothing beyond a symbol. They don't mean anything by themselves.

>>12626706
>a few hundred autistic gay greeks thought up all the possible permutations in the span of a few generations
>we literally still don't know what an idea is or how ideas refer to the world or what the world is, 2500 years later
>we still don't even fucking know whether there's a supersensible realm or not
>still can't even clearly formulate the question of whether the laws governing the fundamental ontological things in existence themselves have ontological status
>we now write 900-page mega-books that take 30 years of erudition and 10 years of effort to produce just to say "It's probably like that one guy said in that one surviving sentence of his"

Really knocks you down a few pegs doesn't it

>>12627720
>infinite number of wavelengths possible though.
Objectively wrong

>>12627727
Is it? Couldn't you have a wavelength of 1m, 1.1m, 1.11m, 1.111m... and so on?

>>12627720
Yes. Also, image board discussion limits here. Threads derail too easily in discussions like these. You see, an agree with what you just said. I’m on a fucking iPad and I’d have to jump back several comments each time and guess the author and his respective nuanced opinion and stage of argument. I think about 10 anons are participating. I believe you supported the idea of some form of platonic or mathematical realm but also think such objects or ideas are invented for some reason?

>>12627694
Of course, I’ve just realised that you’re arguing against butterfly so I agree with you

>>12627689
You should read Plato, I think you'd enjoy it.

>>12627746
A wavelength doesn't have an infinite reducible size, so no.

>>12627622
That's great, we're actually making progress now.

physically, we are arguing right now just like a ball of mud runs down a hill: Physics.
But then you acknowledge the soul, which is important, but you imply it is necessary for beings to have a discussion ( it isn't ) and that it arises from the arrangement of particles in the human body ( yikes ).

It's actually really jarring, the juxtaposition of platonism, this super metaphysical philosophy, and a materialistic theory of consciousness.
Here's a summary:
There is no scientific basis for ascribing the phenomenon of consciousness to any physical process. Let's not argue over this point, you've either researched this or you haven't.
Simultaneously, there is no reason to believe consciousness is a necessary part of the brain processes we have observed.
The dualistic position, then, is that consciousness evidences the existence of a second substance, totally separate from matter and energy.

So forms DON'T matter, everything IS just mud, and we ARE writing posts, but the mud-mud is, presumably, also doing things which are of great significance to it as well.
"how are we aware of anything at all" is a totally separate question. We cannot grasp the nature of consciousness through scientific means in the same way that an eye cannot look at itself, so that settles that (for now).

A mathematical theory of everything is finite in size and can generate everything we know.

>>12627636
I refer you to the first block of this post >>12627235

>>12627747
I believe in the reality of the realm of forms, but that this realm and the material realm came into being at the same time. There is no causal connection. The realm of forms is the translation of the material realm and vice versa. Like when you translate something from English to Spanish, there is always something lost in translation.

>>12627764
>there is always something lost in translation.
not meaning

>>12627764
Forms came into existence first, actually.

>>12627754
So what you are saying is that potential wave lengths step up in increments of the Planck length then? The upper bound then is the size of the universe, but does that too have an upper bound?

>>12627749
Actually, just to clarify, the fact that mathematics is man-made doesn’t disprove that mathematics is innately present in the universe. That mathematics is a representation of ‘what occurs’, just as our reflection is a representation of us ourselves ‘occuring’, means that mathematics is reality that is merely filtered through human perception. I’m pretty drunk so maybe not making much sense and I don’t know if you l’re agruing with me or agreeing with me but that’s just my two cents.

>>12627764
Stop now. Read Plato. The material realm you refer to is nothing but an imperfect instantiation of forms. Because of this, forms will always precede matter.

>>12627753
I have and do. Maybe my memory is hazy here though.

>>12627773
Range of wavelengths have an objective standard, the size of the universe doesn't affect. But yes the universe isn't unlimited either.

Your starting to sound like a dude lmao

>>12626636
It's index.jpg you brainlet. Seriously try reading some STEM for a while.

>>12627763
You were talking to me in that first paragraph. Second as well. Probably the guy you identified as believing in a mathematical realm, and discovery. Tegmark, Penrose image. Beauty within platonic realm. Real numbers physically irrelevant. Maths only partially useful in this universe. Oh, and to add some spice, your red is my red.

>>12627755
>>There is no scientific basis for ascribing the phenomenon of consciousness to any physical process.

That doesn't mean that consciousness is magick or something.

>>12627780
Tell him about the plank length instead of letting him speculate

>>12627775
You could just as easily say that forms are an imperfect instantiation of matter.

>>12627717
the total vision is too complex to render diagramatically. not in a 'hehe it's 2deep4u' way--i just really don't even know how i would begin.
rather than a realm of forms white head offers, as part of a greater metaphysical scheme, the alternative notion of 'eternal objects', which are pure potentials that 'lend' definiteness of quality and relation to actual occasions. though essentially co-existent with concrete occasions, eternal objects are nevertheless necessarily abstractions from those occasions.
it may help to think of their being a mutual participation between the mental and the physical poles of every occasion, which populate reality at every conceivable
level'. and again, by 'mental' and 'physical' we are not to presuppose distinctive substances, but more like two (logical) moments of the same process.

>>12627789
>magick
Don't make it into a strawman to dismiss it.

>>12627769
That is the only thing you can lose

>>12627800
okay, so what is consciousness?

>>12627803
We literally can't have this conversation unless we bring into it the reality of religious truths which I know you're going to dismiss.

>>12627784
sorry, meant to reply to >>12627631.
>>12627631 -> >>12627763.

>>12627789
if by "magick" you mean non-physical, immaterial, not-energy, not-complex-interactions-of-physical-phenomena, than yes. it is magick.

>>12627797
Interesting. I’ll have to read more about that. At first glance, it sounds like a string theory of realms

>>12627763
so, sure, we are attempting to 'approximate' some element of a seemingly shared experience.
the question then becomes 'what is that element?' and, when we get a little deeper into it, 'what is the ontological status of that element?' this seems straightforward with the most common objects of experience, but much less so with things like numbers or infinite sets or electro-magnetic waves or electrons or things like that

>>12627780
This is from the wikipedia article on the electromagnetic spectrum. The range is objectively defined, but how can the number of all the points within a theoretically unbound range be finite?

>>12627811
Yeah that was me as well. lol. 89 anon is someone else

>>12627816
woops

>>12627813
it is close, i think. at one point in process and reality whitehead says all relations are 'vector-like'
since all occasions are either immediately or mediately related, all reality is the process of occasioning, then the never completed 'totality' of relations that is reality is also vector-like

>>12627794
No, read Plato.

>>12627816
Because the size is of an individual wave length is limited. Let's say you shoot out a laser for a time of 1 planck unit. It literally can't get any smaller than that.

>>12627809
oh, so you believe in religious truths?
I was trying to bring you there, but I thought you're just sarcastic

>>12625334
>I’ve grown convinced that disorders such as depression are the result of insight and the sufferer’s failure to reconcile preconceptions with realiy.

if you're still here anon, can you explain this a little bit more? is it a lack of insight that depressed people have, or too much of it?

>>12627235
Beauty is more than likely a shared experience with multiple different species if not all. However, where and when we encounter it differs just as with other shared experiences such as fear.

Now, why on Earth do chemical compounds organize towards beauty transmitters and emitters I know not. But I prefer it to the alternative.

>>12627838
Of course I do. I have had many religous experiences

>>12627642
>transcendence and eminence is but a theory inside a theory.
Says the carbon molecule that sees things unlike most of the other carbon, which gets to be carbon unlike most atoms...

>>12627837
Even then, it must have a theoretical finite upper bound. The set of all natural numbers is still of infinite size. Setting the smallest possible wave length as size 1, AND saying wavelength can only increase in steps of that same size still just looks like 1,2,3,4... forever towards infinity. Whatever the final "objective category" you ascribe to the longest wavelength is will be infinite in size. Even if the circumstances of our Universe place this wave in a box limiting its size the only thing preventing you from creating a bigger wave is that box.

>>12627859
Thats not what I was saying lol

>>12627861
Bro I'm sorry but you don't know what you're talking about.

>>12625218
replace 'form' with 'Aeon'

>>12627837
>It literally can't get any smaller than that.
Is there a reason for this or is it a narrative structure born of our own limitations - such as the undivisible atom?

>>12627866
Not him, but he’s only saying that wavelengths aren’t like real numbers. No one is really interested in a maximum size for this discussion. Only in the fact that here for us, there are distinct wavelengths. Not unlimited amounts of wavelengths for red, but limited.

>>12627885
Also, I just fucking lost my nail clippers again.

>>12627885
To add: black body radiation. Discrete quanta, or else unlimited power output.

>>12627814
>>12627849
The source of any common experience that an individual then goes on to describe as 'beauty' is evolutionary.
it's funny how you >>12627849 mention different species as though this proves the universality of the concept of beauty, but the species you're actually referring to are all on the same evolutionary branch as us and share some of our neural anatomy with us.
Yes, there is a common experience of beauty which is distinct from fear, which is also common. But this commonality is restricted to vertebrates ( or where ever you want to draw the line ) and it has clear evolutionary sources. This is more easily shown in the case of fear: frightful things are those things which are likely to be dangerous, harmful or reduce our chances of survival in general. While beautiful things are the opposite, they promote our well-being.
> a lot of beautiful things, rainbows for example, have nothing to do with survival or well-being, they are just beautiful!
Yes! because the brain isn't a computer. The smell of popcorn reminds me of a some specific song, and we're afraid of things which aren't particularly dangerous and appreciate things which are not aligned with our well-being. It wasn't necessary for these mechanisms (beauty detection, fear detection) to evolve to be super-precise. They provided some significant benefit, so they stuck. Who knows what weird useless senses our ancestors might have had in some lost evolutionary cul-de-sacs long ago.

Yet another thread derailed into oblivion

>>12627912
i am not speaking of a 'genetic' account of how organisms such as us came to acquire a sense of the beautiful, but rather what the ontological status of the concept of beauty, and how that concept is able to participate in our experience.
the problem is broader than just beauty. it is the same with wavelengths, and with emotional variations, and numbers, and so on.

We should do a strawpoll. Reality of nonphysical realm(s) and is maths or beauty discovered or invented.

>>12627866
That isn't what I was saying actually. I was saying that in the context of the electromagnetic radiation that a form could be represented by an infinite number of things. The line then between forms on this spectrum is meaningless (arbitrary). Bounding it so that it truly is one thing on this range and another thing on this other range is meaningful only in the context of some goal, it is not of some higher truth waiting to be uncovered. Forms are just as fluid as the material realm they describe. No forms exist outside the totality of time and space, just as no time and space exists outside the totality of forms.

>>12627912
Fuck I hate liberals

>>12627951
Forms aren't fluid, they are absolutes.
You have no understanding of metaphysics. Please stop posting

>>12626461
The queenside castle pill?

>>12625246
>all those mad metaphysics cucks to this post

>>12627951
Not him. But are you inferring from the physical to the forms? Can’t do that. There are more manifestations than forms. Just like maths is “larger” than physics.

>>12625218
Beauty comes from the moral concept of beauty, which is the sublime eradication of form and order. Prettiness and the picturesque might have a form in some abstract world, but it is not a moral or transcendent reality which produces them.

>>12627680
We invented the word “beauty”

>>12627393
Likely something different than what another means. Just because there’s overlap in what we find beautiful is still no reason to believe it’s anything else but subjective.

>>12626994
The “pure form” is a subjective spook, my friend.

>>12626154
*were dumb dumbs.
Fixed it for you. I wrote it in haste.

>>12627974
Oh, but useful applicable maths is smaller than the framework of physical knowledge. Hah.

>>12627981
Begone by the power of the golden ratio and the tritone

>>12625246

>implying you can recognize same instances of a concept without having a pre-cognition of that same concept independent from experience
Good luck proving that

>>12627995
Melt into your constituent part! By the powers of Grey Skull!

>>12627946
...yea, I don't know what else I can say.
>but rather what the ontological status of the concept of beauty, and how...
these aren't even complete sentences.
I know you're not talking about biology or genetics. You wanna make it about ontology. You wanna talk about these things in the same manner that they did in the Greek forums.

What I'm saying is that the newer language of biology, of science, is a better, more complete language for understanding the phenomena we're describing. Objectively so. It doesn't need to invent a whole metaphysical realm to explain the same thing.

>>12627981
>We invented the word “beauty”

How do you know that our invention of the word ‘beauty’ is not merely a linguistic reflection of the form? As mathematics offers a reflection of physical reality fit for human consumption, could not the term ‘beauty’ simply be a similar tool for reflecting the form?

>>12627981
Holy fucking cow, you cow stop posting.

>we invented the word “beauty”
We're not talking about language here hun, we are talking about an objective form beyond our senses.

>Likely something different than what another means. Just because there’s overlap in what we find beautiful is still no reason to believe it’s anything else but subjective.
All things beautiful radiate from the essence of what "beauty" is.


>The “pure form” is a subjective spook, my friend.
No, a Pure form is an objective quality, an ideal that we cannot find on the material world.
Just because we do not agree on what the degree of what totality it's capable of does not mean it is not objectively there.

>>12628002
My constituent parts consist of a limited selection of beautifully vibtrating bits of music and thought.

>>12625525
>problems with the idea of a realm of perfection parallel with our reality aside, the problem with the representation of the idea of the forms in that comic and as it is seemingly interpreted is that form and concepts are already lingual, rendered and renderable immediately in language, which is not the case.
>the concept of beauty is not just this folder in my head with some typesheets and pictures stored in it. it is, rather, the non-verbal distillation of many complex experiences that are dispositionally-colored but have commonality among them, and this commonality is a an unstable feeling that those experiences are attended with.

>t. Wittgenstoned

>>12628002
You think about meaty cock on the reg

>>12628005
>Objectively so.
kek

>>12627997
>what is culture and language

>>12628019
He’s omitting some facts like bees like flowers without experience. Or retards enjoy music.

>>12628017
Only when Matmos hooks them up to some electronic thingies.

>>12628010
The simple words I have used still stand as my argument. Forms are concepts in the head which are subjective.

>>12628014
>we are talkin about fictitious things
>all beauty radiates from what I perceive to be beautiful
Things that are concepts are from your head. The Pure form is a SPOOK

>>12628023
No, you do. I never bring it up

>>12628044
Yeah, no. They’re there. Does that butterfly signify a regendering process?

>>12627981
You're unimaginably dense.

>>12628030

>>12628044
>>we are talkin about fictitious things
>>all beauty radiates from what I perceive to be beautiful
>Things that are concepts are from your head. The Pure form is a SPOOK

NO beauty radiates from anything any one perceives as beautiful, as long as it's morally just.

The realm of our thoughts is a more real reality than the one we act in.

You don't
Know
The
Basics

>>12628019
there's nothing 'wittgensteinian' about any of that.
it's poorly articulated, though, i admit
>>12628005
you aren't even understanding the problem, let alone the several answers to it that have been offered, in sketch form, in this thread. not all of them are full-throated defenses of the platonic position, either, which you also don't seem to be able to discern.

>>12627951
you would get a lot out of whitehead, i think.
he's been 'memed' a lot on here, lately, but he's a wonderfully weird thinker

>>12628100
Just to make it clear. I’m not the same anon to whom you suggested whitehead in this thread earlier on. But I assume you’ve noticed that

>>12628040
bees do experience, and so do flowers
just not in as complex a manner as humans

>>12628056
The name was nicked from an old Zalgo thread. I didn’t even see a butterfly at first. The symbolism that can be taken from it goes beyond transformation. Though I’ve changed a lot in my life, I have always been female.

>>12628067
People who bend their heads to accept lies for reality are the truly dense.

>>12628071
Enough. The fungus in your head has destroyed your reason

>>12628109
>Enough. The fungus in your head has destroyed your reason.
These are literally basics to platonic philosophy you numb skull.

How the fuck can you argue against platonism with even understanding it?

>>12628103
i hadn't, actually. not paying terribly close attention.

>>12628120
Easily

>>12628069
Who needs language when you have mspaint meme mister

>>12628122
Image board limitations. Reddit would suck for this well. Would need something like a mind map of comments and opinions.

>>12628044
You just brought up meaty cock. You’re thinking about it right now. You’re sliding your tongue over my meaty cock.

>>12628109
I have your dick pics, tranny faggot

>>12628142
Actually, your calling them meaty, makes me thinking of sausages frying in a pan.
See how wishywashy forms can be?

>>12628157
The perfect cock is out there, somewhere.

>>12628157
Uhffff you’ve GOT to be kidding me. Are you not self aware

>>12628162
I believe I am. How do you mean?

>>12628169
I feel like you’re basically saying you love meaty cock

>>12628174
Farthest from the truth.
I’m not hungry, for either, it was just word association.
I e seen plenty, more than enough, and I don’t care. Enough

Emergent unravelling of the mathematical or thought-form core of all things. A beautiful cascade of particles and forces falling through time, down the slope of entropy. That core contains all maths and all forms and all possible beauty. As to the model of any possible realms, this thread has brought no consensus.

>>12628190
No I think you’re a virgin. Answer me honestly

Have you ever sucked a penis before?

>>12628198
If that’s your criteria, than yes, I am.

>>12628226
Is tripfag a girl who used to want to be a boy? Or used to be a boy? And why don’t you penetrate into the subject matter more deeply instead of derailing it all.

>>12627967
Seems like we have a little disagreement over what the form "form" represents don't we. Dare I say the concept is a bit fluid? How do I know though, its not as if I can compare your perception of the concept to my own directly. Dogma is a dangerous thing anon, whether its from Plato or your local preacher.

>>12628245
I’ve always been female. Never wanted to be anything else.
I did tell OP what was wrong with the theory and no one has anything to counter it with anything but faith

>>12628255
You are tripfag.

>>12628226
Imagine giving my cock a simple kiss, not sucking just lightly brush them up on my penis head.

>>12628258
That’s not true, observation isn’t faith. There are recurring patterns in nature across a wide spectrum. The golden ratio might be the closest thing to a form that we can know, apart from obvious maths or natural numbers and primitive shapes.

>>12628284

>>12628255
Just because you disagree with something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

>>12628302
K, fluidity talk made me think that. Note: real numbers don’t exist in nature. Reality is pixelated

>>12628136
You actually stupid

>>12628293
>Imagine giving my cock a simple kiss, not sucking just lightly brush them up on my penis head.

fucks sake

>>12628318
She’s thinking about it right now, I can tell

Tripfag, post your face now as youre thinking about it. This is the perfect moment

>>12628340
Tbh this behavior is even worse than her attention whoring

>>12628310
Just because you agree with it doesn't mean it does either.

>>12625218
Absolutely nothing. It's as close to what is likely the truth as we've come. The world of forms is consistent with the Lord as well. It works.

>>12628354
What?

We are talking about Platonic philsophy, do you even know what it's claims stand on?

>>12628311
What do you mean real numbers don't exist in nature? That time and space are composed of discrete units at the fundamental level? You can't claim this until there is a perfect mathematical model to describe all of space and time where the fundamental level is atomized in this way. I'm not saying you are wrong or even that I disagree with you. To rephrase my earlier assertion again. No form can exist that did not occur, is not occuring, and will never occur in any observable material object. The form only exists if it CAN be manifest into the material realm. Otherwise this phantom form would be a null set that all together with the infinite number of other phantom forms form a singular null set of "not a form". There is no way to distinguish that which cannot be from another thing that cannot be so they are in effect all one and the same.

>>12628400
It’s been long proven already.

>>12625218
Read Aristotle.

>>12628400
>The form only exists if it CAN be manifest into the material realm. Otherwise this phantom form would be a null set that all together with the infinite number of other phantom forms form a singular null set of "not a form". There is no way to distinguish that which cannot be from another thing that cannot be so they are in effect all one and the same.

Imagine being this retarded

>>12628404
How? I'm genuinely interested. How can we know that we have seen every level of reality if we cannot fully explain those which we do see?

>>12628404
I mean that real numbers don’t exist in nature, not that space and time are discrete. Wavelengths are, though.

>>12628420
Suesskind recons were nearly there.

>>12628415
How would you describe a form that has no analogue in the material world? It wouldn't exist, it would be beyond the scope of describable existence. If you cannot describe it, and you cannot experience it, than "it" does not exist.

>>12625218
Nothing. In Greek they’re called ideas.

>>12628435
>Suesskind recons
String theory isn't air tight. I'm not saying its wrong, but you might as well cite Newtonian gravity as proof of something. Its principles are not axioms to reason on.

>>12628442
All or it’s and trajectories describe almost perfect ellipses. We can imagine the perfect underlying ellipse principle that is never quite perfectly manifest. It’s only perfect in maths. Or as a form.

>>12628497
*orbits

>>12628490
Suesskind thinks we’re nearly there and that things don’t get smaller forever. He says new complexity will be discovered on the way back up.

>>12628258
HESIOD: 'Can you tell me in briefest space what is best of all?'

HOMER: 'A sound mind in a manly body, as I believe.'

>>12625246
you sometimes post images of degenerate art,

This thread is just awful. We have a smattering of crypto-christlarping neoplatanists, pseuds who read GEB and think they can use the Golden Ratio as empirical evidence for metaphysical forms, the usual derailment from our resident tripfag, and then this complete doggerel >>12627755 .

>>12625434
>Implying planets move in ellipses

That's an abstraction we created, there is no such thing as an ellipse in your universe. The trajectory of planets and the pictures you see on books and computers are merely approximates of an ellipse.

Our universe is ultimately too chaotic (multi-body-gravity, unpredictable meteoric strikes, forces we don't understand moving us away from other objects, butterflys flapping wings) for our math to be right.

BUT, we're often close, because these things were designed to be close when reality and the tool we made to analyze it line up fairly closely, or when we MAKE them line up (as in banking/compound interest)

As the famous quote says,
>All models are wrong. Some of them are useful.

>>12628608
Uh...wtf did I just read.

don't forget the zoomers who can't be bothered to type a response but have plenty of time for insults and namecalling.
>>12628605
>>12628314
>>12628069
>>12628067
>>12627963

>>12628605
Disagree. Except that one comment was a bit obscure, yeah. Big deal.

>>12628608
We calculate as if they’re real though. Works well enough.

>>12628605
Save that strawman for the next guy fawkes night

Would we even be having this argument if Plato wasn't stupid enough to apply what is clearly a very general theory to something as incredibly narrow and variable as "beauty"?

Heh, Plato
Didn’t know that it was amateur hour

Imagine pissing on the smouldering embers of a dying fire just out of spite because you missed the fun part.

>>12628644
How would you describe a string of reaponses that takes 20 or so posts to arrive at an admission of religiosity as justification for a belief as anything other than crypto-religious?

>>12628608
you still don't understand.
yes, ellipses are abstractions. that is precisely what is *NOT* in dispute.
i am going to go make a couple calzones.
in the meantime, see if you can figure out what has actually been said to you the past few hours.

>>12626178
id call it a painting of your mom lol

>This is from the same chapter-in-progress as my previous post. It’s an attempt to work through Whitehead’s concept of “eternal objects,” and show how this concept is related to Deleuze’s notion of the virtual. I kind of feel this is not much more than “Whitehead 101,” but it is only by working things out as slowly and painfully as I am doing here, that I am able to get the concept straight in my own mind. Page numbers refer to Process and Reality. Footnotes omitted.
>Alongside events or actual entities, Whitehead also posits what he calls “eternal objects.” These are “Pure Potentials” (22), or “potentials for the process of becoming” (29). If actual entities are singular “occasions” of becoming, then eternal objects provide “the ‘qualities’ and ‘relations’ ” (191) that enter into, and help to define, these occasions. When “the potentiality of an eternal object is realized in a particular actual entity,” it “contribute[es] to the definiteness of that actual entity” (23). It gives it a particular character. Eternal objects thus take on something of the role that universals (48; 158), predicates (186), Platonic forms (44), and ideas (52; 149) played in older metaphysical systems. But we have already seen that, for Whitehead, “concrete particular fact” cannot simply “be built up out of universals”; it is more the other way around. Universals, or “things which are eternal,” can and must be abstracted from “things which are temporal” (40). But they cannot be conceived by themselves, in the absence of the empirical, temporal entities that they inform. Eternal objects, therefore, are neither a priori logical structures, nor Platonic essences, nor constitutive rational ideas. They are adverbial, rather than substantive; they determine and express how actual entities relate to one another, take one another up, and “enter into each others’ constitutions” (148-149). Like Kantian and Deleuzian ideas, eternal objects work regulatively, or problematically.

>>12628824
>To be more precise, Whitehead defines eternal objects as follows: “any entity whose conceptual recognition does not involve a necessary reference to any definite actual entities of the temporal world is called an ‘eternal object’ ” (44). This means that eternal objects include sensory qualities, like colors (blueness or greenness) and tactile sensations (softness or roughness), conceptual abstractions like shapes (a helix, or a dodecahedron) and numbers (seven, or the square root of minus two), moral qualities (like bravery or cowardice), physical fundamentals (like gravitational attraction or electric charge), and much more besides. An eternal object can also be “a determinate way in which a feeling can feel. . . an emotion, or an intensity, or an adversion, or an aversion, or a pleasure, or a pain” (291). “Sensa” – or what today are more commonly called “qualia” – are eternal objects; so are affects or emotions; and so are “contrasts, or patterns,” or anything else that can “express a manner of relatedness between other eternal objects” (114). There is, in fact, “an indefinite progression of categories, as we proceed from ‘contrasts’ to ‘contrasts of contrasts,’ and on indefinitely to higher grades of contrasts” (22). The levels and complexities proliferate, without limit. But regardless of level, eternal objects are ideal abstractions that nevertheless (unlike Platonic forms) can only be encountered within experience, when they are “selected” and “felt” by particular actual occasions. For this reason, they are well described as “empirico-ideal notions.”

>>12628831
>Whitehead’s use of the word “eternal” might seem to be a strange move, in the context of a philosophy grounded in events, becomings, and continual change and novelty. And indeed, as if acknowledging this, he remarks that, “if the term ‘eternal objects’ is disliked, the term “potentials’ would be suitable” instead (149). But if Whitehead prefers to retain the appellation “eternal objects,” this is precisely because he seeks – like Nietzsche, Bergson, and Deleuze – to reject the Platonic separation between eternity and time, the binary opposition that sets a higher world of permanence and perfection (“a static, spiritual heaven”) against an imperfect lower world of flux (209). The two instead must continually interpenetrate. For “permanence can be snatched only out of flux; and the passing moment can find its adequate intensity only by its submission to permanence. Those who would disjoin the two elements can find no interpretation of patent facts” (338). Actual entities continually perish; but the relations between them, or the patterns that they make, tend to recur, or endure. Thus “it is not ‘substance’ which is permanent, but ‘form.’ ” And even forms do not subsist absolutely, but continually “suffer changing relations” (29). In asserting this, Whitehead converts Plato from idealism to empiricism, just as he similarly converts Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant
>When Whitehead says that forms as well as substances, or eternal objects as well as actual entities, must be accepted as real, he is arguing very much in the spirit of the radical empiricism of William James. For James, experience is the sole criterion of reality; we live in “a world of pure experience.” Classical empiricism has great difficultly in making sense of relations, as well as of emotions, contrasts and patterns, and all the other phenomena that Whitehead classifies as “eternal objects.” Since these cannot be recognized as “things,” or as direct “impressions of sensation,” they are relegated to the status of mental fictions (habits, derivatives, secondary qualities, and so on). But James says that, in a world of pure experience, “relations” are every bit as real as “things”: “the relations that connect experiences must themselves be experienced relations, and any kind of relation experienced must be accounted as ‘real’ as anything else in the system.” Whitehead argues, by the same logic, that eternal objects must be accounted as real as the actual entities which they qualify, and which select them, include them, and incarnate them. Eternal objects are real, because they are themselves “experienced relations,” or primordial elements of experience.

>>12628837
>But even though eternal objects are altogether real, they are not the same thing as actual entities. Like Deleuze’s virtualities, they are precisely not actual. This is because, in themselves, they are not causally determined, and they cannot make anything happen. Eternal objects “involve in their own natures indecision” and “indetermination” (29); they always imply alternatives, contingencies, situations that could have been otherwise. This patch of wall is yellow, but it might have been blue. This means that their role is essentially passive. “An eternal object is always a potentiality for actual entities; but in itself, as conceptually felt, it is neutral as to the fact of its physical ingression in any particular actual entity of the temporal world” (44). You might say that yellowness “in itself,” understood as a pure potentiality, is utterly indifferent to the actual yellow color of this particular patch of wall. Yellowness per se has no causal efficacy, and no influence over the “decision” by which it is admitted (or not) into any particular actual state of affairs. Eternal objects, like Deleuze’s quasi-causes, are neutral, sterile, and inefficacious, as powerless as they are indifferent.
>At the same time, every event, every actual occasion, involves the actualization of certain of these mere potentialities. Each actual entity is determined by what Whitehead calls the ingression of specific eternal objects into it. “The term ‘ingression’ refers to the particular mode in which the potentiality of an eternal object is realized in a particular actual entity, contributing to the definiteness of that actual entity” (23). Each actual entity creates itself, in a process of decision, by making a selection among the potentialities offered to it by eternal objects. The concrescence of each actual entity involves the rejection of some eternal objects, and the active “entertainment,” or “admi[ssion] into feeling” (188), of others. And by a kind of circular process, the eternal objects thus admitted or entertained serve to define and determine the entity that selected them. That is why – or better, how – this particular patch of wall actually is yellow. By offering themselves for actualization, and by determining the very entities that select and actualize them, eternal objects play a transcendental, quasi-causal role in the constitution of the actual world.

>>12628843
>Whitehead also explains the difference, and the relation, between eternal objects and actual entities by noting that the former “can be dismissed” at any moment, while the latter always “have to be felt” (239). Potentialities are optional; they may or may not be fulfilled. But actualities cannot be avoided. Indeed, “an actual entity in the actual world of a subject must enter into the concrescence of that subject by some simple causal feeling, however vague, trivial, and submerged” (239). An actual entity can, in fact, be rejected or excluded, by the process of what Whitehead calls a negative prehension: “the definite exclusion of [a given] item from positive contribution to the subject’s own real internal constituion” (41). But even this is a sort of backhanded acknowledgement, an active response to something that cannot just be ignored. Even “the negative prehension of an entity is a positive fact with its emotional subjective form” (41-42). An actual entity has causal efficacy, because in itself it is entirely determined; it is empirically “given,” and this “givenness” means Necessity (42-43). Once actual entities have completed their process, once the ingression of eternal objects into them has been fixed, they “are devoid of all indetermination. . . They are complete and determinate. . . devoid of all indecision” (29). Every event thus culminates in a “stubborn matter of fact” (239), a state of affairs that has no potential left, and that cannot be otherwise than it is. An event consists precisely in this movement from potentiality (and indeterminacy) into actuality (and complete determination). The process of actualization follows a trajectory from the mere, disinterested (aesthetic) “envisagement” of eternal objects (44) to a pragmatic interest in some of these objects, and their incorporation within “stubborn fact which cannot be evaded” (43).

>>12625218
>Plato's theory of forms
is there a theory that humans (males) are so equal in their philosophies that since plato was one of the first to have come that is is impossible to beat him since everyone else could only conjure the same opinion as him

Beauty is the Holy Trinity

>>12628608
this:
>the relations that connect experiences must themselves be experienced relations, and any kind of relation experienced must be accounted as ‘real’ as anything else in the system.
is what you need to pay attention to.
this isn't a debate between science and philosophy; it's an interrogation of the presuppositions of science.

>>12628333
>she

>>12628351
>her

>>12628967
>>12628972
This is me, newfag–> >>12628142
I have been coming here for ages, and I didn't start out even telling anyone this little detail, but they kept asking. Apparently by my writing they found out. I had no reason to deny it, and it snowballed from there. Stop shitting up the board with your tranny obsessions. Take it to 8 chan

>>12629007
>for ages
Several months at best.

>>12629007
/lit/ is my board, go back to /g/ faggot

>>12628675
>calzones
Disgusting

Any man with enough Ricotta, cheese, marinara, dough, and meat to make a calzone should be making pizza like God intended and save the Ricotta for a proper cheese plate

>>12629014
No. Years. I forget when, but before /pol/ got its name it used to be /news/ and I left there for here and never went back.

>>/lit/thread/S8363386#p8369334

>>12629036
Mine.

>>12629094
oh i agree, they weren't for me
don't care for ricotta.except in cheesecake tho

>>12629106
What inspired you to tripfag?

>>12629106
... impersonating a tripfag on a singaporean wax disk recording exchange?

you really are broken aren't you? wow. i've loved watching your decline.

>>12627794
You literally can't by the definition of forms

>>12629146
Sorry gramps, but no one ITT actually reads Plato. Take a hike

>>12629156
Only liberals avoid him

>>12629189
Atheists really

>>12629241
>posting n

He's one of my most beloved Philosophers even tho I disagree with him on major points

Also I'm Catholic.

>>12629007
And then she pipes up again.

This is ridiculous. Are you trolling me or something? Do you want to be dominated by me? I mean every single inch of your posts is you asking for me to make these posts. Usually I would be called delusional but this is ridiculous