/lit/ - Literature

>Sam H*rris: let’s assume

>>17584836
>Diogenes

Read The Abolition of Man by CS Lewis

>>17584836
Diogenes is a brainlet. He accepts the existence of cylinders and yet no cylinder exist in the physical world, only objects whose shape more or less obey to cylinderness. If all of them were destroyed cylinderness would still exist in the idea plane. It works the same with cups. Cupness is eternal in the realm of ideas. It existed before any cup was physically made and will exist long after.

The whole "is/ought" thing seems like it doesn't matter. Someone tell me how I'm wrong.

>>17584836
>Morality as a measure of how much an action 'sucks'

Sugoi... so this is the full power of atheism.

>>17584836
>>17584874
Diogenes was a good rhetorician, but not a great philosopher.
>>17584876
It's the "descriptive/prescriptive" distinction. Harris privileges the descriptive, and justifies the prescriptive through the descriptive. It's a completely meaningless exercise.

>>17584836
>Entire foundation of his morality rests on the idea of "objectively bad experiences".
>This configuration means that should we find even one individual who enjoys these experiences, the entire moral system falls to pieces
For if we find this man who enjoys the burn of a hot stove, then we must ask what shaped his mind in such a way, and what subjective experience makes humans in general consider such an experience "bad".

That is all fine and dandy and big boy Plato may be correct. Yet I can imagine multiple red chairs, which means there must be a red-chairness. Furthermore I can imagine something between chair and table, a chairtable if you will. So then there must be a chairtableness.
Even more so it is logical to assume that both chairness and tableness are preceded by a storage-surfaceness, since proto-chairs and proto-tables must have existed before chairs and tables.

>>17584994
I really don't get Plato's theory of forms isn't this just common sense that ideas of things exist

Was plato really just saying "Ideas and abstractions are pretty cool!"

>>17584836

pic related is proof that academia and social status as an intellectual is absolutely worthless

>>17585025
No he was saying the perfect idea precedes all possible earthly manifestations of it.

>>17584836

this is basically a westernized zen koan but most people are too foolish to get it. forms are empty because they are constantly under change, along with anything perceptible

>>17585032
o ok so he was saying perfect ideas > things

>>17585045
Yes better and also older. That those forms formed the different physical objects.

>>17584876
IMO
> The is-ought gap within the either-or dialect reveals a dominant singular Idea; in either case the Idea of equality is lost in logical contradiction when the latter is defined by hierarchy; aside from the ironic contradiction of the Idea of Hierarchy itself being the formula par excellence.
Aka it’s a worthless discussion in semantical lexicography

After reading that harris tweet I finally see why everyone thinks he’s so retarded

>>17584876
People make this fallacy all the time. Go on /pol/ for ten minutes.

>>17584874

if forms are equivalent to essences, then they have to be completely interdependent on every other form, since you have to use some aspect of your mind/senses to separate "this" from "that". but if forms were independent, then every single concept would have a form, along with it's variations, reductions, and combinations. but we already know that everything changes, including our mental conceptions about what things are, so it follows that each form is dependent on an individual's intellect on what that particular form is. so forms can't exist independently (or at all)

>>17585088
Think about it in geometric terms. The Pythagorean theorem is the same truth wherever you go on earth. Pythagorean theorem precedes every human attempts to form a 3 4 5 triangle with a rope. It precedes every human being even thinking about it . It is worth for every being whatever time and place.
And just as the rest of mathematics it has nevertheless no physical existence. A line doesn't exist. A rope infinite both sides has no physical sense.
It is a non-physical truth that precedes all things physical.

>>17585173

any descriptive math is dependent on the quantity of what you’re counting, how you’re counting it, and has an induction that is dependent on all the numbers proceeding it. mind is the only thing that exists, the forms that mind create have no existence. using geometry to be as reductive as possible is still wrong, because then you’d be implying that any combination of forms to get a shape (like a square is four lines) exists without the mental conception of four lines, and the individual line exists without a series of individual points...you could just end up making an infinite regression of increasingly minute forms without getting to what it actually is

>>17584876
I'm with you. "Ought", "Should", "We need to ___", it all feels like passive-aggressive speech by politicians trying to guilt trip people into societal change. It is absolutely infuriating.
I'm not gonna say you shouldn't use that language, but I am gonna say that I'm not gonna listen.

Sam "let's assume are no ought's" Harris

>>17585236
If that was the case mathematics would work differently according to culture, individuals, eras. But they don't. They're objective and yet knowable only by the mind, have no physical existence and yet underlie the physical world while preceding it.

>>17585299
It’s not objective, mathematics is just a language inherent to human beings like natural language.

>>17585401
An alien species born in a far away planet in another galaxy would have the same geometry than ours, there as here Pythagorean theorem is true and if it draws a 3 4 5 triangle with a rope it will get more or less a right angle.

>>17584876
Because it's the core of morality. Especially if you're an atheist. Let's assume you don't believe in an omnipotent, omniscient God governing the universe. So, how do you determine "good" from "bad"? How do you determine whether a given action is "right," versus it being "wrong"? Objective reality can be observed, measured, and catalogued. That's the "Is". The "Ought" involves what we should do, versus what we should not do. What actions should be permitted, and even encouraged, and what actions should be discouraged, even banned. What should be legal, versus what should be illegal. What should be encouraged in civilization versus what should be frowned on.

How do you go from objective measurement and observation of reality to determining what actions should be permitted and what should be forbidden? How do you derive "Ought" from "Is"? This is extremely important, because it concerns the core of how civilization should be constructed. Theists use God to bridge the Is/Ought gap. What do atheists do?

>>17584985
>For if we find this man who enjoys the burn of a hot stove, then we must ask what shaped his mind in such a way, and what subjective experience makes humans in general consider such an experience "bad".
I swear to God I have heard this exact sentence before, possibly even typed it
Is this a /lit/ copypasta or am I shifting timelines again?

>>17584836
which dialogue is that from

>>17584874
Cups didn't need to be made to exist.

If Ben Stiller was a pseud

>>17585532
I dont get this, say I can move across a 3d space, with an infinite options on where to go, why would my starting poistion matter?

>>17585521
Cupness existed before coconuts appeared on earth. Coconutness existed before coconuts appeared on earth.

>>17585559
because in order for you to get to where you want to go you need to consider your starting position in order to move in the right direction (your destination) not knowing your starting position is thus just as hindering as not knowing your destination.

>>17584836
I genuinely don't understand how a man as smart as Plato could believe in the theory of forms. Things are always composites. A cup is not a singular object. A cup is the name for a collection of smaller phenomena. Did Plato really never think that collections of things exist and have names, while just being collections that have no intrinsic singularity to them?

>>17585477
Do you even Euthyphro Dilemma? Ideas like piety or justice or whatever can exist independent of divinity.

>>17586019
But if they don't have a grounding in something eternal, they are open to dismantling and deconstruction.

>>17585956
The cups are a metaphorical device for the ideals we have in our minds vs. the imperfect, mere approximations we can physically create. Ever trying drawing someone's portrait? You see them physically in front of you and they obviously exist in our reality but if you and someone else attempt to draw that person odds are the two of you will come up with different looking versions of the subject, and neither will be a perfect capture of that person but you both know the drawings are both of that person. Even with photographic cameras you'll get variation of the same subject.

>>17585956
Just draw triangles. No matter how many triangle you draw you will never draw an actual triangle, because physically triangle don't exist. They exist in realm of ideas. The idea of a triangle precedes every attempt to draw one.

>>17586032
>implying ideas aren't eternal when they obviously are
Every culture has notions of piety and justice despite variation of what constitutes something being pious or just. And Plato's forms consider that the sensible world can only approximate the eternal forms.

>>17586085
Don't ideas stop existing when there are nobody left to have them?

>>17584874
Cups and Cylinders are topologically identical. It is possible to construct a mathematical form of which "cupness" and "Cylinderness" are special cases. This maybe repeated ad nauseum. In which case, either all forms are actually one form and the argument is therefore reduced to "there exists an idea", a banal and tautological statement, or we can accept that forms are post hoc neural encodings of perception, the exact opposite of Plato's arguments.

Plato's Unity of the Virtues itself refutes his idea of Ideal Forms.

>>17584985
There are many cases of genetic human mutants that lack noiception. They would not find hot stoves unpleasant.

Alternatively, when the holocaust actually happens, jews, including Sam Harris, would find ovens "objectively unpleasant", but we won't.

>>17585477
>Because it's the core of morality
For kikes
>Especially if you're an atheist
aka Invert kikes
>Let's assume you don't believe in an omnipotent, omniscient God governing the universe
Only kikes do
>So, how do you determine "good" from "bad"?
Lmfao the absolute state of kikes

>>17585956
think of forms as programming classes

>>17587162
Every single thing you think is right and wrong was built by people who think like that poster. Your brain was tinkered with and engineered by people like him, and the only reason you believe what you believe is because of people like him. You are a machine coded and programmed by people like him. That is the state of everyone in the modern West.

>>17584836
>muh funneh stove
Cringe

>>17584836
He's saying the emptiness is a mental construction, not that Plato's head was metaphorically empty

>>17584836
>but Diogenes reached over and, tapping Plato’s head with his finger, said “I think you will find here is the `emptiness’.
Based Diogenes the non-dualist.

>>17587088
>or we can accept that forms are post hoc neural encodings of perception
>accept that things didn't exist before the nervous systems
Nah