/lit/ - Literature

>>16719350
Ew.

>>16719350
>dude let's ignore the fact that there's literally no justification for universal suffrage, democracy, liberalism and human rights, at least they work
woah

>demolishes 1000 years of erroneous "philosophy" proving Plato was right all along, and everything a footnote to him, ESPECIALLY through refutation of Rorty.

>>16719350

>Richard Rorty

Sounds like Scooby Doo saying Rick And Morty.

>>16719380
>>16719350
Some forty years ago, the late Richard Rorty wrote a provocative book
titled Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.
In that book, and in many subsequent books and essays, Rorty advanced the astonishing thesis that Platonism and philosophy are more or less identical. The point of insisting on this identification is the edifying inference Rorty thinks is to be drawn from it: If you find Platonism unacceptable, then you ought to abandon philosophy or, to put it slightly less starkly, you ought to abandon philosophy as it has been practiced for some 2,500 years. This is not, of course, to say that those trained in philosophy have nothing to contribute to our culture or society. It is just that they have no specifi c knowledge to contribute, knowledge of a distinct subject matter. What I and many others initially found to be incredible about the thesis that Platonism and philosophy are identical is that almost all critics of Plato and Platonism, from Aristotle onward, made their criticisms from a philosophical perspective. For example, to reject Plato’s Forms was to do so on the basis of another, putatively superior, account of predication. How, then, could Rorty maintain that the rejection of Platonism is necessarily at the same time the rejection of philosophy? Rorty’s insightful response to this question is that those who rejected Platonism did so from what we ought to recognize as a fundamentally Platonic perspective. That is, they shared with Plato basic assumptions or principles, the questioning of which was never the starting point of any objection. According to Rorty’s approach, Platonism should not, therefore, be identified with a particular philosophical position that is taken to follow from these principles, but more generally with the principles themselves. Hence, a rejection of Platonism is really a rejection of the principles shared by most philosophers up to the present. It is from these principles, Rorty thought, that numerous pernicious distinctions arose. As he puts it in the introduction to his collection of essays entitled Philosophy and Social Hope (published in 2000), “Most of what I have written in the last decade consists of attempts to tie my social hopes—hopes for a global, cosmopolitan, democratic, egalitarian, classless, casteless society—with my antagonism towards Platonism.” By “Platonism” Rorty means the “set of philosophical distinctions (appearance/reality, matter/mind, made/found, sensible/intellectual, etc.)” that he thinks continue to bedevil the thinking of philosophers as well as those who look to philosophy for some proprietary knowledge. Other important Platonic dualisms elsewhere rejected by Rorty are knowledge/belief, cognitional/volitional, and subject/object. These distinctions (among others) are the consequences inferred from the principles that together constitute Platonism.

>>16719400
Rorty maintained that the fundamental divide between Platonists (whether self-declared or not) and anti-Platonists is that the former believe that it is possible to represent truth in language and thought whereas the latter do not. Rorty’s antirepresentationalism thus extends far beyond a putative subject matter for philosophy. It leads him to reject the possibility of achieving the goal of truthful representations in the natural and social sciences generally. Hence, his argument is basically an epistemological one, or anti-epistemological, if you will. The manner in which Rorty has posed the problem facing any anti-antirepresentationalist makes its solution impossible—for Plato or for anyone else. If all our encounters with the putative external reality are representational—whether these representations be conceptual or linguistic—then there is no neutral, nonrelativistic conceptual or linguistic perspective from which to ascertain the accuracy of our original representations. Rorty is so confident that the entire history of epistemology is wedded to some form of representationalism thus construed that he thinks that the unsolvable problem for representationalism can provide an inscription for epistemology’s tombstone. On Rorty’s account, the differences among philosophers (and scientists) are far less significant than their shared commitment to representationalism. Hence, to identify Platonism and philosophy is not to fail to acknowledge that there are people who have called themselves philosophers and anti- or nonPlatonists. It is, rather, to claim that what binds them together is a shared error in principle, an error that is most egregiously and fundamentally found in Plato and all those who follow in his path. Overcoming this error is tantamount to overcoming the enchantment of Platonism, that is, of philosophy.
Rorty’s rejection of all types of representationalism does not permit him to distinguish the sciences from philosophy in any clear way. But his insistence on the dualisms that bedevil Platonism does suggest a subject matter for philosophy, broadly speaking. By “philosophy” Rorty means “systematic” thought as opposed to what he calls “edifying” thought. The manner in which Rorty uses the word “systematic” is broader than the use according to which one might say that Hegel is a systematic philosopher and Hume is not. By “systematic” he means “having a distinct content or subject matter.” Thus, anyone who thinks that it is possible for a philosopher to discover a single truth about the world requiring one or more of the above dualisms is embracing a distinctive or special type of error. She is entrapped by the lure of the systematic, that is, of a distinctive content or subject matter for philosophy.

>>16719415
Most of those who would reject a distinct subject matter for philosophy do not share Rorty’s disdain for the sciences as a locus of truth about the world. The terms “Naturalist” and “Naturalism” are today embraced mainly by those who in general have no compunctions or guilt feelings about their promotion of certain representations over others, especially in the natural sciences. But self-declared Naturalists divide over whether philosophy has a distinct subject matter. Nevertheless, even among those Naturalists who insist that philosophy is not replaceable by the natural sciences, there is no one who thinks that this subject matter is as Plato conceives of it. Plato tells us in his Republic in a clear and unambiguous way that the subject matter of philosophy is “that which is perfectly or completely real (τò παντελω˜ς o’´ν),” that is, the intelligible world and all that it contains, namely, immaterial Forms or essences, souls, intellect, and a superordinate fi rst principle of all, the Idea of the Good. If Rorty is right, then the denial of the existence of this content is the rejection of philosophy. Any form of Naturalism that does not endorse Rorty’s strictures against representationalism is still going to insist that if there is, indeed, a subject matter for philosophy, it cannot be Plato’s. In fact, the most consistent form of Naturalism in my opinion will hold that with the abandonment of the Platonic subject matter must go the abandonment of a distinct subject matter for philosophy. Indicative of what is at least the unclear putative non-Platonic subject matter for philosophy is the fact that there is virtually no agreement about its identity. How can there be a real subject matter for philosophy if no one agrees on exactly what it is? Even if, for example, one maintains that metaphysics— Naturalistically conceived—has a subject matter, it is doubtful that, say, any moral or political philosopher would identify philosophy with that. The disunity of subject matters among those who believe that philosophy has a subject matter but that it is not Plato’s is, as I will try to show below, one reason for thinking, with Rorty, that there is no real non-Platonic subject matter for philosophy and so no subject about which philosophers strive to acquire knowledge.

If you're still sub 30 you got a good deal, man. Rorty only realized this when he was like 40 something, some people realize it when they're at their wits end like Peter Unger (https://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/06/philosophy-is-a-bunch-of-empty-ideas-interview-with-peter-unger.html).). Use your time wisely now, reading continental philosophy, literature, poetry, etc.

>>16719400
it's always funny how the shills of a life-destroying civilization try to accuse plato and his heirs of making everything their goy

>>16719453
Mature philosophy has always meant praxis, angloids are just mad they play sudoku for tenure.

>>16719380
This Rick and Morty guy is extremely cringe but I'm interested in that (or any) based Platonist. Can you say more about him?

>>16719443
>i'm gonna post the whole first chapter
The inclination to dismiss this view is, one might suppose, easily supported by adducing, for example, the philosophy of physics or of biology. There is, it will be said, nothing necessarily Platonic about their content, though the content is distinctly philosophical. The use of the word “philosophy” for the theoretical foundation of a natural science in fact goes back to Aristotle. He distinguishes “first philosophy (πρωτη` φιλοσοφία)” and (implicitly) “second philosophy.” The former is in line with Plato’s position regarding knowledge of the intelligible world, the latter with the theoretical foundation of natural science. Aristotle argues that the science of immovable being is the science of being qua being, that is, the science of all being. How exactly this is so remains a fundamental crux in Aristotelian scholarship. Here, I only wish to emphasize that Aristotle does not seem to suppose that the distinctness of the subject matter of first philosophy, namely, immobile being, means that the science of immobile being will have nothing to say about mobile being, among other things. In this, Aristotle is following Plato in his sketch of what philosophy is. Plato says that not only is the philosopher devoted to the intelligible world or to perfect being, but he is also able to see the things that participate in it for what they are. 10 I take it that this is just an application of the general principle ubiquitous throughout the dialogues that philosophy is relevant to our understanding of the sensible world, even though it is a different sort of study (µάθησις) with a different subject matter.
Stoicism provides an illuminating perspective on the Aristotelian claim. Since Stoics deny in principle the existence of anything not composed by physical nature, they would have to face the Aristotelian challenge that, for them, physics must be first philosophy.

>>16719468
And though Stoics conceive of the principles of physics differently from Aristotle, it is indeed the case that they do not recognize a science distinct from the science of nature. Stoic metaphysics is just Stoic physics; they do not recognize a science of being qua being or of the intelligible as opposed to natural world. Is Stoicism, then, merely edifying philosophy? I would say that the history of Stoicism divides between those who, like the early Stoics, examined the principles of nature and those who, like the Roman Stoics, aimed to be edifying. The former were in principle doing nothing different from the theoreticians of early natural science like Aristoxenus and Eratosthenes and the latter were doing nothing different from psychotherapy. These are not intended to be pejorative comparisons. I aim only to offer some confirmation for Rorty’s hypothesis that Platonism is philosophy and anti-Platonism is antiphilosophy. This ultrasharp division will have its most interesting results, I think, when, keeping it in mind, we consider various attempts by half-hearted Platonists to make strategic concessions to Naturalism and, mostly in our times, attempts by half-hearted Naturalists to make strategic concessions to Platonism.
Rorty’s division of philosophy into the systematic and the edifying is, accordingly, a useful one so long as we understand that only the former claims to have a distinct subject matter. Edifying philosophy as methodological or substantive criticism refers to something entirely different both from what Plato and Platonists had in mind and from what Naturalists who reject Platonism have in mind, too.

>>16719472
Rorty’s rejection of Platonism, identified with systematic philosophy, rests firmly upon his antirepresentationalist stance. He takes the contrast
between antirepresentationalism and representationalism as even more fundamental than that between antirealism and realism, a contrast, he adds, that only arises for the representationalist. 11 What the antirepresentationalist “denies is that it is explanatorily useful to pick out and choose among the contents of our minds or our language and say that this or that item ‘corresponds to’ or ‘represents’ the environment in a way that some other item does not.” 12 The reason for insisting on the uselessness or explanatory irrelevance of such supposed representations is evidently that, in order for representations to be of any help, we must be able to understand what it means for them to be good, accurate, or true representations. For a putatively useful representation is not just any representation, but one that successfully represents. Yet, as Rorty argues, there is “no way of formulating an independent test of the accuracy of representation—of reference or correspondence to an ‘antecedently determinant’ reality—no test distinct from the success which is supposedly explained by this accuracy.” 13 Once the futility of laying down criteria for accurate representation is recognized, the tendency to postulate a form of antirealism as an antidote to the pseudo-problems of realism is rendered nugatory. Antirepresentationalism is thus not to be thought of as a form of antirealism or idealism in disguise but as a way of seeing why the whole debate between realism and antirealism has been utterly fruitless.

>>16719481
It would be facile in the extreme to maintain that Plato’s epistemology is nonrepresentationalist and that therefore Rorty’s criticisms do not touch it. Linguistic and conceptual representations in fact play a central role in Plato’s thinking about cognition in general. Indeed, it is not too far off the mark to say that not only is Plato’s epistemology in some sense representationalist but that his metaphysics is representationalist as well. What I aim to show, however, is that his metaphysical representationalism rests upon a nonrepresentational encounter with the external world. To put this claim another way, we could say that, for Plato, mental content is not primarily representational; representations themselves arise from nonrepresentational mental content. Thus, the tertium quid between representations and external reality that Rorty refuses to recognize is nonrepresentational mental content. This mental content is nonrepresentational, but its content is the content of reality. Representations, whether to someone else or to oneself, are expressions of that mental content. Thus, the supposed divide between epistemology and metaphysics, making the latter unattainable and the former useless, does not even arise.
Rorty’s attack on representationalism encompasses the natural and social sciences, too. Most Naturalists or anti-Platonists throughout history do not share Rorty’s antipathy to representationalism. Whether it be the Naturalism of Democritus or Hume or any from among dozens of contemporaries, the representational capacity of modern science is more or less unquestioned. It is, of course, possible for anti-Platonists to try to reconcile a consistent antirepresentationalism that does not see any difference in principle between astronomy and astrology and a representationalism that insists on the difference but not in realistic terms. Rorty’s pragmatism or the nuanced antirealism of, say, Bas van Fraassen are only two from among many possibilities. It seems to me, however, that the Platonic response to antirepresentationalist and representationalist Naturalists is different in each case. Thus, Plato’s response to Protagoras is strategically different from his response to Anaxagoras. I shall in the course of this book address both types of response in various places. But despite the different strategies, the responses share the attempt to vindicate a distinct subject matter for philosophy, namely, the intelligible world.

>>16719486
Rorty is in a way right to make his attack on epistemology the epitome of his attack on philosophy. Part of my task is to show that an effective response to this attack amounts not merely to a defense of the possibility of philosophy but of Platonism as well. Or, to put the point tendentiously, the defense of philosophy and of Platonism is one complex defense, with a number of interrelated parts. Philosophy, understood as having a distinct subject matter, begins with a distinction between appearance and reality, one of Rorty’s fundamental rejected dualisms. Stated otherwise, this is the distinction between epistemic and nonepistemic appearances. For if reality is just as it appears, or if things do not appear otherwise than as they are, a distinct subject matter disappears. At this elementary stage, philosophy is indistinguishable from any other explanatory discipline. And, indeed, the indistinctness of philosophy and natural science among the pre-Socratics has always been remarked upon by historians of ancient philosophy. 14 Rorty is correct that if the grounds for a distinction between appearance and reality are not established or are undercut, then natural science can fare no better than philosophy. As we shall see in the third chapter, Plato in his Phaedo takes the decisive step of separating the subject matter of philosophy from natural science by critically examining the explanatory model prevalent among his most illustrious Naturalist predecessors.
The initial reply to Rorty is, accordingly, one to be made both by philosophy and by natural science prior to their division. It is a reply that seeks to defend the cogency of explanation in general and whatever form of representationalism is required for explanation. Suppose that someone offers an explanation for a natural phenomenon, say, a volcanic eruption. Apart from the acceptance of this explanation, one may reject it in favor of another explanation or, like Rorty, reject it on the grounds that any explanation requires an illicit representationalism. Rorty is obviously in no position to reject any explanation on the basis of a better one; he must reject all explanations, whether the explanans falls within the realm of natural science or the realm of philosophy. His rejection, springing from his critique of representationalism, leads him at various times into quietism, relativism, skepticism, or pragmatism. I take it that the quietism is equivalent to disengagement from all philosophical and scientific discussion, which simply places him among the vast majority of people in the world for whom this book and any other even remotely like it is not written. As for the relativism and skepticism, I shall have much more to say in later chapters. That leaves the pragmatism to be dealt with here.

>>16719501
Many critics of Rorty, ultimately sympathetic to his overall approach, have struggled to express his insights in a way that does not blatantly and unequivocally make the extramental world drop out of the epistemological equation. Their convolutions in trying to do this while at the same time acknowledging Rorty’s Davidsonian and Quinean insights into language and thought are a consequence of their sharing with Rorty the assumption that all that the extramental world could be is that which is representable by language and thought. These representations do not bear the marks of reality and reality does not bear the marks of representations. Thus, pragmatism becomes the mode of commensuration, the only means by which any linguistic or conceptual interaction with the world is possible. 15 Pragmatism is, for Rorty, essentially like an animal’s response to changes in the environment. 16 Adaptability and “coping” replace representation.
The Platonic response to the affirmation of pragmatism on the basis of a rejection of representationalism is that the criteria for evaluating practical solutions require a mode of cognition unavailable to the antirepresentationalist. It is a mode of cognition that is not representational, because it is presumed by all representation. Plato’s response to Rorty’s pragmatism will deny his assertion that there is no difference between “it works because it is true” and “it is true because it works.” As I have formulated this response, it is open to the charge of being far too hasty. I will, though, try to show that this mode of cognition is both ubiquitous and is, in fact, only possible if there is an intelligible world really distinct from the sensible world. In other words, the Platonic response to pragmatic Naturalism is to be sharply distinguished from any response rooted in representational Empiricism. The Platonic response to Rorty’s version of Naturalism will also be the lever for the distinction of philosophy from the natural sciences.

>>16719486
>reading a decrepit representationalism in a true blue mystic

Anyone whose ever had "brunch" should be barred from writing philosophy.

>>16719514
I have argued in a previous book that Plato was a Platonist. 17 [From Plato to Platonism] By this I mean that, according to our best evidence taken from the dialogues, the testimony of Aristotle, and the indirect tradition, Plato had a distinctive systematic philosophical position. The position was built on the foundation of his rejection or correction of the philosophical positions of most of his predecessors. On the basis of this rejection, Plato argued, broadly speaking, for radically different answers to the questions that constituted his philosophical inheritance. First and foremost, this required the postulation of and argument for a distinct subject matter for philosophy, one that all his Naturalist predecessors either did not recognize or incorrectly conceptualized. Second, this required a systematization of the postulated subject matter. 18 At the apex of the system is a superordinate fi rst principle of all, the Idea of the Good, whose essential explanatory role in philosophy is explicitly affirmed by Plato. 19 The explanatory function of this principle and the difficulties encountered in expressing this are one of the central themes of this book. Third, although the system did not need a rationale other than that knowledge of it was intrinsically desirable, still indispensable support for the truth of the system had to be sought in its explanatory role in solving this-worldly problems. It goes without saying, I think, that much of the material in the dialogues is concerned with human problems the solutions to which do not necessarily or obviously require recourse to the above system. So much would any honest Naturalist hold. It is a commonplace in both Plato and Aristotle that in practical affairs what is of primary concern is getting the right answer. Understanding why the right answer is so is secondary. But as Plato so vividly shows in book 10 of Republic, getting the right answer without knowing why it is the right answer, that is, being virtuous without philosophy, is likely ultimately to be disastrous. Even if most cannot ever attain to knowledge of why the right answers are so, there must exist such knowledge, and a well-ordered society must contain someone or other who has it.

>>16719443
Yes, because Plato was the one that invented the individual. If you want to base a philosophy beyond the Platonic individual you'll need philosophy to create it.

>>16719525
The project of constructing Platonism, which Plato probably thought was identical to the project of doing philosophy, was an immense task.
I suppose that the dialogues are records of the state of the art of the ongoing collaborative project initiated in the Academy. The history of Platonism in antiquity is the history of the contributions to this ongoing project. Unquestionably, that history includes deep disagreements among self-declared Platonists as well as fellow travelers. One simple reason for this—and the reason why these disagreements sometimes appear more serious than they actually are—is that the principles of Platonism are underdetermining for the solution to may specifi c philosophical problems. To take one simple example, the proof for the immortality of the soul, which is a proof that the soul in some way inhabits the intelligible world, does not yield a clear answer to the question of whether the soul when inhabiting that world has or does not have parts. Or if it does have parts, in what sense does it do so. Indeed, embracing Platonic principles does not entail anything about the identity of a person and his soul. In this book, I am not going to be much concerned with these disagreements. I do not intend to write a history of Platonism in antiquity. I am much more concerned with the disagreements insofar as they reflect on the principles themselves, that is, on how to conceive the architecture of the intelligible world and on the basic inventory of its inhabitants. In this regard, I am more than happy to call upon members of the Old Academy and all those Platonists up to Damascius to reap the benefits of their reflection upon Platonic principles. But I am going to focus especially on the contributions of Aristotle and Plotinus simply because their contributions to the project are immense and indispensable. Along the way, several others, in particular Proclus, will make what I hope will be timely guest appearances.

>>16719536
At the beginning of this introduction, I posed the opposition between Platonism and Naturalism as the opposition between philosophy and antiphilosophy. The latter opposition is obviously more contentious than the former since most Naturalists believe that there is room for philosophy within a Naturalist framework. I emphasize again that I am using the term “philosophy” as Plato uses it in Republic and am taking that as equivalent to what Rorty calls “systematic philosophy” and Aristotle calls “first philosophy.” It is the existence of this that all Naturalists deny. Those who wish to preserve a subject matter for philosophy without identifying that with the intelligible world may want to argue that there is distinct work for, say, metaphysics or epistemology or ethics, without necessarily committing to anti-Naturalism. That is exactly what the Platonist denies is possible. In a number of places in the dialogues, Plato produces reductio arguments against relativists and materialists who take such an approach. His strategy, as we shall see, is to show that it is their implicit Naturalism that makes their position unsustainable.
In this book, I shall frequently make ancient Naturalists serve as proxies for contemporary Naturalists. I recognize that this approach is contentious because, among other things, it does not allow the Naturalist recourse to the spectacular achievements of modern science. It will be said that particularly with regard to human beings, quantum mechanics, evolution, microbiology, genetics, and neuroscience, to say the least, are necessary for the Naturalist to make the most forceful possible case against the putative Platonic alternative. A contemporary Naturalist no longer needs to rely on ancient, outdated science. This would seem to be undeniable. And to the extent that it is true, this book could only be part of a larger project. Nevertheless, I have discovered that time and again the anti-Naturalist arguments of Platonists are made at a sufficiently high level of generality so as to preclude dismissal based solely upon the scientific discoveries that they could not have anticipated. In any case, it is my hope that the account of Platonism that emerges from these pages will serve to sharpen the debate among contemporary proponents of Platonism and Naturalism. 20

>>16719536
Nigga stop posting entire books

>>16719544
Contemporary Naturalists are legion; contemporary Platonists are somewhat fewer in number. The often stellar work of members of both these groups frequently suffer, I think, from a piecemeal approach to the issues addressed here. For example, many contemporary Naturalists argue in various ways that materialism or nominalism is false, but seldom try to show that antimaterialism and antinominalism are connected to each other and to antiskepticism. Conversely, an argument for materialism is only rarely connected to a defense of some positive epistemological doctrine. Rorty’s legitimate complaint that Naturalists do not appreciate the consequence of their Naturalism needs to be recognized and addressed. Similarly, a benign appeal to antinominalism is seldom acknowledged to entail some form of antimaterialism. 21 I think Platonism is a comprehensive worldview as is Naturalism and each should be treated as such. Of course, the Naturalist only needs to embrace a methodological Naturalism, thus turning over the entire intellectual enterprise to natural science. For the self-proclaimed Naturalist philosopher who thinks that there are real philosophical questions and answers to be asked and answered within a methodological Naturalist framework, success or failure of comprehensiveness is probably going to track plausibility in their conclusions. 22 For example, a defense of nominalism needs to be not just a defense of the claim that things do not really have properties, but it must also include a defense of how the thinking that appears to have universals as objects can occur. That is, not only does materialism entail nominalism, but materialism needs to be part and parcel of the defense of nominalism.
>last paragraph in pic related
there were entire pages of footnotes, but you'll have to read it yourself

>>16719551
CAN'T STOP THE WORLD AND START AGAIN
YOU HAVE TO FEEL WHAT'S ONLY REAL
YOU'VE GOT TO TAKE LIFE BY THE HAND
LET THE SUBSTANCE CLOSE YOU IN
HOPE TO ONE DAY COME ALIVE
YOU HAVE TO TAKE LIFE BY THE HAND
HOPE TO ONE DAY UNDERSTAND

If rorty got platonism why was he a pragmatist

>>16719555
Aren't you tired of his nonsense yet

based Gerson poster

reminder that beyond being means non-composite, not non-existent

>>16720407
>The very idea of empirical knowledge is a stellar example of philosophical subordination to natural science since the objects of this knowledge are just the objects with which science is concerned. What else could knowledge be knowledge of if the subject matter of philosophy is handed over to religion? The culmination of the concession by Platonists to the supreme cognitive status of empirical knowledge is that epistemology becomes a branch of ethology.
>Naturalized epistemology is the polar opposite of Platonic epistemology understood as the ne plus ultra of cognition, that is, cognition of τὸ παντελῶς ὄν. The burden of this book has not been primarily a defense of the latter, but a defense of the claim that the former is the only consistent alternative to the latter. If one maintains that cognition is necessarily representational, then it is difficult also to maintain that neuroscience and clinical psychology are not the primary tools for the examination of these representations. The dilemma posed for the antirepresentationalist is stark: either one has to make do with the examination of the representations, in which case it is within natural science that this suitably occurs, or one has to claim that it is what the representations are representations of that should be in focus. But to insist on the latter alternative is to face the inevitable aporia that the putative objects of representation are only accessible via representations. The Platonist’s only escape from this dilemma is to deny that knowledge is or is primarily representational. This claim, as we have seen, must be embedded within a larger, antimaterialistic metaphysical framework.
>If Richard Rorty and I are right in maintaining that Platonism is philosophy, and if I am also right that Christianity has coopted Platonism to a large extent, then it is hardly surprising that much of what passes for philosophy today is actually work on the theoretical foundations of the natural sciences, in particular the natural sciences that have human beings as their subject matter. From this perspective, it is also hardly surprising to find exiguous the output of work on moral normativity that is not rooted in biology and psychology. Perhaps the simplest way to put the Platonic point here is that ethics without metaphysics may aim for but can never attain universality. Bereft of metaphysics, ethics is bound to be as parochial as those who pursue it. And the only metaphysics that will do, of course, has as its subject matter the intelligible world at the apex of which is the Idea of the Good.

>>16720457
Just become a naturalist already

>>16720522
naturalism leads to absolute agnosis

Wittgenstein figured that out already.

>>16720543
yeah Rorty basically made his career out of explaining Wittgenstein and Heidegger

>>16720543
and Plato figured that out in Cratylus

>>16720538
Read actual naturalist philosophers instead of Gerson's caricature of their ideas
Platonism is a really old fashioned way to do metaphysics, abandon your a priori made up metaphysics of the Forms and focus on the actual contents of our experience.

>>16720569

>>16720554
which is the beauty of it

>>16720610
wholeheartedly agree. i love rorty, philosophy and the mirror of nature is one of my favorite philo books. his late work I don't care for but early rort is awesome

>>16720582
Derrida is not a naturalist, Gerson doesn't understand what the doctrine actually is. It has nothing to do with postmodernism or spurious denials of objective reality.
In fact extreme skepticism and "perspectivism" is largely a reaction to dogmatic metaphysical systems like Neoplatonism that rely on speculation, guesswork and intuition. Naturalists avoid both scepticism and dogmatism by focusing on what can be concretely known via the senses.

>>16720629
>Naturalists avoid both scepticism and dogmatism by focusing on what can be concretely known via the senses.
>concretely known
>avoid dogmatism
>focusing
>avoid dogmatism

>>16720554>>16720610
>>16720622

so rorty is a careerist arm chair intellectual babbling about other armchair intellectuals

woah, no wonder intellectual wanabees love him

>>16720554
utter bullshit rorty spent his whole career trying to convince people donald dsvidson was a pragmatist, but he wasn’t so rorty failed

>>16720569
If you think there is something such as ''outdated metaphysics'' you are an idiot who does not know what you're talking about.