Plato, Forms, & Universals

[Anonymous No.22155465]

How are Plato’s forms different from universals?

Are Plato's forms a sort of substance onto themselves, with independent “realness” irrespective of any concrete objects? Is that the key difference from mere universals? Is that what is meant by self-predication?

[Anonymous No.22155859]

bump

[Anonymous No.22155937]

>>22155465
A universal is basically anything that isnt a particular sensation. Forms are universals that get mediated by mathematical objects into becoming that which the mind perceives in the particulars we perceive.

the problem is plato never explained what the forms are, mainly because the dramatic dialogue format was shit for it (basically the only time he doesn't just get the people in the dialogue to accept Socrates's statement that there are forms for granted is in the Parmenides where Socrates is young and doesn't himself know what the forms are).

[Anonymous No.22155987]

>>22155937
the point is that all we know about the forms is that
1. nous perceives them
2. they're different from all their examples (basically the process of trying to find a universal definition of words is where you get the idea of "the form of itself")
3. they're mediated by mathematical objects (presumably this is introduced to avoid the third man problem. it's important to realize that the forms are not mathematical objects and that's why "mathematical platonism" is a stupid term)
4. the good is like the coolest form that makes all the others ones (socrates "pursued the universal through ethics" according to Aristotle which is why the ethical forms are the ones people in the dialogues are the most ready to accept the existence of and why most of the dialogues are about ethics)
5. they have Being
6. they exist in mind before time and space are created by the demiurge (they are eternal, this is basically what it means to say that "they have being" and the point of it is to avoid difficulties of Parmenides and Heraclitus, since Plato thinks Heraclitus is right that the sensible world is always changing, but also that Parmenides is right that becoming implies becoming into something that is not, yet being can't come from what's not or come into what's not, so he introduces the forms to mediate between the changing sensible world and the world of Being that is supposed to be unchanging)
7. if you apprehend them you can't do bad things because you just can't ok
8. they are in some sense "causes" of sensible things according to Phaedo

when you say "what is the difference between universals and forms" you have to specify what universals you are talking about because everyone has a different idea of what universals are. they are different from aristotelian universals because aristotelian universals are dependent on primary substances, but similar to aristotelian universals in that both are what you have to apprehend to understand the real cause of something, and both require mind to apprehend. are you can be a nominalist who admits that universals are real but says they are in the mind, which means they don't exist prior to time and space and don't have more being than sensible shit. or you can say universals are best understood as relations, or that the mind is forced to create them as a reaction against the raw differences in perception, etc.

[Anonymous No.22155996]

>>22155987
>the form of itself
the form itself*
that is every time socrates bitches about how they told him something that was good but didn't tell him what "the good itself" was

[Anonymous No.22156020]

>>22155987
>3. they're mediated by mathematical objects (presumably this is introduced to avoid the third man problem. it's important to realize that the forms are not mathematical objects and that's why "mathematical platonism" is a stupid term)
How does mediation by mathematical objects avoid the third man problem?
>5. they have Being
Is this is what is meant by self-predication? That what is also implies what is said of by them? What exactly is controversial of self-predication anyway?
>7. if you apprehend them you can't do bad things because you just can't ok
This is perhaps the least controversial claim about forms IMO lol, at least speaking from personal experience.
--
>they are different from aristotelian universals because aristotelian universals are dependent on primary substances
So, more of a "bottom-up" approach, connected to empirical experience, than a "top-down" approach, connected to a noetic account of what makes anything intelligible at all, in a "hierarchy of being"?
>are you can be a nominalist who admits that universals are real but says they are in the mind, which means they don't exist prior to time and space and don't have more being than sensible shit. or you can say universals are best understood as relations, or that the mind is forced to create them as a reaction against the raw differences in perception, etc.
I would say the latter, except that the only reason it can be made is because forms already exist in the background. I wish Aristotle kept the forms as a conceptual space, only to bracket them aside as "difficult to describe with discursive knowledge but fundamentally necessary for a complete account", instead of doing away with them entirely.

[Anonymous No.22156091]

>>22156020
>How does mediation by mathematical objects avoid the third man problem?
the only reason we know that mathematical objects aren't forms is because of some off-hand remarks by Aristotle. Plato never explained any of it. But the only indication that he had any solution to the problems with the forms laid out in the parmenides is that he modified the doctrine by combining it with mathematics. the problem is the problem of individuation. if you have many things participating one form, then the form is ingressing into all of them and becoming many itself, when it should only be one. but since mathematics deals with quantity and space it clearly has something to do with individuation, since particulars are "numerically one." so you put mathematics inbetween the forms and sensible things to individuate forms without the forms themselves splitting up.
>Is this is what is meant by self-predication? That what is also implies what is said of by them? What exactly is controversial of self-predication anyway?
idk, I don't know when self-predication is talked about outside of its use in the third man argument to say that a form has its own property and therefore it must itself participate a form to get that property (unless there were only one good thing, then the good wouldn't have to participate good to get goodness because the entire point of the forms is to explain how a plurality of different things have the same property. if the good is a primordial unity of being in nous, and only becomes many not through itself being split up but through mathematical objects doing some kind of schizophrenic pythagorean shit, then this would avoid the argument)
>So, more of a "bottom-up" approach
yes
>I wish Aristotle kept the forms as a conceptual space, only to bracket them aside as "difficult to describe with discursive knowledge but fundamentally necessary for a complete account", instead of doing away with them entirely.
according to Aristotle, intellect (which basically = God) still basically creates everything in the world, so it is true that the only reason we can learn about universals is that intellect is a "real" force in the universe.

[Anonymous No.22156106]

>>22156091
>since mathematics deals with quantity and space
what about order? number also deals with ordering things

[Anonymous No.22156132]

>>22155465
I can jerk off to a form. I can't jerk off to a universal.

[Anonymous No.22156135]

>>22156106
Everything that has to do with number in Euclid is done geometrically, with lines. Pythagoras also visualized numbers in terms of shapes, for example, "triangular numbers" (a number of dots that can be arranged into a triangle) and "Square numbers." They didn't understand numbers the way we do which is usually through the number line, so the concept of ordinal numbers probably didn't get past every day use.

[Anonymous No.22156153]

>>22156135
also when Aristotle defines time, for example, he doesn't say that it is an ordering/sequence of events, but the "measure" of motion, and mensuration is pure geometry

[Anonymous No.22156635]

>>22156091
>the only reason we know that mathematical objects aren't forms is because of some off-hand remarks by Aristotle.
Plato is quite clear that mathematical objects belong to the domain of dianoia in The Republic.

[Anonymous No.22156643]

>>22156135
you don't need a number line for ordinal numbers
>>22156153
measure the diagonal of a unit square

[Anonymous No.22157212]

formic bump

[Anonymous No.22157836]

>>22155465
Plato's metaphysics is an abject failure and his fan fiction is just kind of dancing around the edges of philosophy, but why can't his forms just be a type of universal? He has, conceivably and arguable, a system, and the thing termed form could serve as a thing we would define as universal. Also, fuck Plato and his underhand fan fiction methods.

[Anonymous No.22157840]

>>22157836
Care to make an argument?

[Anonymous No.22157862]

>>22157840
care not to be a faggot?

I'm not a platonist of any stripe, and ultimately I don't think he had a coherent system, but let's say there is a universal that is present in all related particulars. Like red in all red balls.

The aspect or detail of redness per se is what it is. You can't grasp it alone because you necessarily deal with these perverse particulars that are constituted by multiple things, not just redness. Like drinking mud and telling me about water. Fuck off, subhuman.

[Anonymous No.22158593]

bump

[Anonymous No.22159724]

bump

[Anonymous No.22160184]

>>22155465
Read Saint Maximus the Confessor's book On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ!

[Anonymous No.22160420]

>>22160184
Why? How does that have anything to do with forms?

[Anonymous No.22160442]

>>22160420
He shows the right way and the wrong way to use Helenic philosophy such as Platonism within the Orthodox Christian context.

[Anonymous No.22160550]

>>22160442
But what does this have to do with forms? And didn't Orthodox Christianity try to distance itself a little bit from Platonic philosophy after Palamas?

[Anonymous No.22160760]

>>22160550
Platonic forms are not exactly right in the Orthodox view, but they are sort of close to the truth in a way. The real understanding of forms in the Orthodox view is called the Logoi.

[Anonymous No.22161141]

>>22160760
The thing is, I don't even know what Platonic forms are beyond a vague notion, so I have no way to compare them with the Logoi.

[Anonymous No.22161147]

They are universals, they're just a more developed form (heh) of them because Plato actually tried to craft a system by which a universal even makes sense. This is why there's a Realm of the Forms, why there's a multitude of Gods, henads, monads emanation, blah blah blah.

Most Realists just stop at "yeah Redness exists but idk how lmfao".

[Anonymous No.22161150]

>>22160184
>op asks a question about platonism
>READ E-CELEB LARP FLAVOR OF THE MONTH BOOK INSTEAD OF PLATO
This is why you got bullied in highschool.

[Anonymous No.22161182]

>>22161150
Saint Maximus the Confessor isn't an eceleb larp flavor of the month book. He is an Orthodox Christian saint from AD 580.

[Anonymous No.22161578]

>>22161182
just admit you love gay guyer

[Anonymous No.22162978]

boomp

[Anonymous No.22163405]

>>22161182
>Orthodox Christian saint from AD 580.
ah, so the eceleb larp flavor of the month

[Anonymous No.22163765]

bata bing bata bump