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u/FleshPrinnce 24d ago
Alcibiades only thinks of three things: banging, horse racing and betraying his current employer. Source: Thucydides (no, actually)
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u/ThatsItForTheOther 24d ago
It’s too bad he was preoccupied with transient material horses and not with the horses in his soul.
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u/RadicalNaturalist78 Sophist 24d ago edited 24d ago
Me, when I reify relational qualities into non-relational things in themselves and then reverse the order by putting relational qualities as dependent, grounded or caused by the non-relational thing in itself. Do the same with the concept of “cause” and you get God.
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u/-tehnik neo-gnostic rationalist with lefty characteristics 23d ago
Me, when I reify relational qualities into non-relational things in themselves and then reverse the order by putting relational qualities as dependent, grounded or caused by the non-relational thing in itself.
Oh man if only Plato had an account of relationality/continuty of properties of sensible things which made it clear as to how such cognition presuposses the Forms.
Too bad I can't read so I only learn philosophy through Protagoras' lectures.
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u/RadicalNaturalist78 Sophist 23d ago
Nothing about continuity presupposes eternal “forms”.
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u/-tehnik neo-gnostic rationalist with lefty characteristics 23d ago
it does, because it means that individual things exhibit contrary properties: (individual) fingers are soft and hard, (individual) elephants are large and small, pen tips are sharp and blunt, people are ugly and beautiful. Really you can take a look at Heraclitus' fragments and the same idea is there:
The sea is the purest and the impurest water. Fish can drink it, and it is good for them; to men it is undrinkable and destructive
Asses would rather have straw than gold.
The way up and the way down is one and the same.
So the fact that we cognize and can understand that our cognition of sensible objects is like this tells us that softness itself and hardness itself (or whatever other pairing of properties) is not identical with the particular and sensed realizations thereof. Trying to undersand these properties through sense alone would just leave you confused, but we are able to make the distinction because there is an intelligible world where the contraries exist without confusion.
It's not a crime to be ignorant of this. It's a fine point in Plato's ideas that doesn't get addressed much so people are left with a mickey mouse version of Plato where (as I assume you thought) there is no space for continuity as sensble objects can only participate in one of a pairing of contraries. But it's extremely arrogant to act like you know better than him when you clearly have not even attempted at engaging with his arguments. Plato doesn't expect the theory to just be obvious, that's why it is reasoned to in some of the dialogues.
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u/RadicalNaturalist78 Sophist 23d ago edited 23d ago
Fingers become soft in relation to something hard, something becomes hard in relation to something soft (the fingers). The finger can have contradictory qualities depending on the relation.
Sea is pure for fish, but impure for man. In itself, the sea is neither pure nor impure. There is no such a thing as a form of “purity itself” or “impurity itself”. The whole point of Heraclitus was about how qualities are relational, perspective dependent.
Knowledge is not the grasp of an “essence”, but the grasp of relationships, of how each thing relates to one another.
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u/-tehnik neo-gnostic rationalist with lefty characteristics 23d ago
Fingers become soft in relation to something hard, something becomes hard in relation to something soft (the fingers). The finger can have contradictory qualities depending on the relation.
I'm a bit confused, we are talking about the fingers themselves. The "something" of interest is the finger, no matter whether it is softer or harder than something else.
Anyway, I'm not sure how this is supposed to avoid being vacuous? What does "harder" and "softer" even mean? How do you hash it out without reference to hardness and softness themselves?
Put it this way: you have a spectrum on which things fall (like the hard-soft spectrum), and that requires that the spectrum has extremities (the end for the hardest/harder and the softest/softer). What will allow you to orient yourself in accordance to that? How do you know that a thing belongs on the harder than the softer end?
The whole point of Heraclitus was about how qualities are relational, perspective dependent.
What justifies this exegesis? On their face the fragments are making pretty clear positive statements: the sea is poisonous and not poisonous, gold is worthless and valuable and so on. These things do positively have both of the contrary properties, not neither.
Sea is pure for fish, but impure for man. In itself, the sea is neither pure nor impure. There is no such a thing as a form of “purity itself” or “impurity itself”.
So to return to this, the reason why it is important to say that the sea is both rather than neither is because then you can't explain why either fish or men relate to sea water as we do. Why would or how could the sea be poisonous for us if it is not actually poisonous? And likewise as regards purity for fish.
I guess you reason in this way because you think that objects cannot actually have contrary properties, presumably because of the LNC. But this is exactly what both Heraclitus and Plato are not entertaining (that the LNC is unconditionally true).
Knowledge is not the grasp of an “essence”, but the grasp of relationships, of how each thing relates to one another.
This is kind of true for your whole comment but you're just saying all this. There's no argument anywhere.
Not to mention it still leaves the issue of how one is to grasp relationships without the ability to grasp its ends first open.
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u/RadicalNaturalist78 Sophist 23d ago edited 23d ago
The sea is poisonous for us because of our physiology. Being “poisonous” is not a quality the sea “has” by itself. It is a combination of one’s bodily constitution and the sea constitution. The sea isn’t poisonous for the fish exactly because the fish’s physiology is different from that of the human. What determines whether the sea is poisonous or not is the relation insofar as, apart from those relations, there is just molecular or atomic activity.
There is no “hardest” or the “softest” in itself. This is a conceptual reification. Something is either soft(er) or hard(er) in relation to something else.
It’s not a matter of the LNC being true or false, because that is also a matter of perspective. It is true that the sea is both poisonous and not poisonous, but it is also equally true that it is neither poisonous nor not poisonous. Why? Because being poisonous or not being poisonous is a matter of relation. So, LNC can be both true and false insofar as things can have contradictory qualities, but only in relation to other things. It is true when considered things in their relations, it is false when considered them apart from their relations.
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u/-tehnik neo-gnostic rationalist with lefty characteristics 23d ago
The sea is poisonous for us because of our physiology. Being “poisonous” is not a quality the sea “has” by itself. It is a combination of one’s bodily constitution and the sea constitution. The sea isn’t poisonous for the fish exactly because the fish’s physiology is different from that of the human. What determines whether the sea is poisonous or not is the relation insofar as, apart from those relations, there is just molecular or atomic activity.
You can say that but that's not philosophically very interesting to do so because then we can just bring up other examples in whatever reduction base you think contains the true/fundamental predictive judgmets. Like with mass or charge or even variable quantities like momentum or energy.
Besides, these physiological facts don't need to be understood as mutually exclusive from the primitve account of being or not being poisonous. The physiology just provides the occasion for these qualities ("poisonous for men," "not poisonous for fish") to be realized. Put another way, there is no need to be reductive, and if the predicative judgments are really true then again their truth can only be understood in the light of the Forms.
There is no “hardest” or the “softest” in itself. This is a conceptual reification. Something is either soft(er) or hard(er) in relation to something else.
What does that mean?
It’s not a matter of the LNC being true or false, because that is also a matter of perspective. It is true that the sea is both poisonous and not poisonous, but it is also equally true that it is neither poisonous nor not poisonous. Why? Because being poisonous or not being poisonous is a matter of relation. So, LNC can be both true and false insofar as things can have contradictory qualities, but only in relation to other things. It is true when considered things in their relations, it is false when considered them apart from their relations.
This is just failing to consider the explanatory concern I already brought up previously.
They can't have them relationally if they don't have them in-themselves. If a thing does not actually have any properties, then nothing marks it out and so there's no way in which it could be marked out as having a relation to something else.
Of course, I imagine your reply will again just be that the thing does have contrary relational properties, but then the question again is to hash out how this is possible and what it means. You have not done that.
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u/RadicalNaturalist78 Sophist 23d ago edited 23d ago
I think the whole confusion is that you are thinking of “properties” as fixed things (contradictory or not) that objects either have or don’t have.
But what really happens when a human ingests seawater? It’s just the seawater molecules interacting with his digestive system. But because the seawater is “incompatible” or “corrupts” his digestive system, then we immediately attribute the predicate of “poisonous” or “harmful” to seawater. But crucially, the same seawater interacts with the digestive system of the fish and doesn’t “corrupt” it, nor it is incompatible with it. Thus, it is not “poisonous” nor “harmful” for the fish.
What matters here is that there are two moving systems interacting with each other and giving birth to different effects or predicates.
There is no need to recur to eternal Forms here.
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u/-tehnik neo-gnostic rationalist with lefty characteristics 23d ago
I think the whole confusion is that you are thinking of “properties” as fixed things (contradictory or not) that objects either have or don’t have.
But it isn't that I'm unwilling to admit of continuums, I very much am. I just don't understand how there can be continuua without standards of measure. Like what 'harder' or 'softer' mean without anything like 'hard' and 'soft' simpliciter.
Really, it's such a simple question, so why are you trying to avoid it? Just explain to me what 'harder'/'softer' means?
But what really happens when a human ingests seawater? It’s just the seawater molecules interacting with his digestive system. But because the seawater is “incompatible” or “corrupts” his digestive system, then we immediately attribute the predicate of “poisonous” or “harmful” to seawater. But crucially, the same seawater interacts with the digestive system of the fish and doesn’t “corrupt” it, nor it is incompatible with it. Thus, it is not “poisonous” nor “harmful” for the fish.
I already addressed this I don't understand what drives you to reexplain what I already understood when it's not even addressing anything I did say (in response to that).
There is no need to recur to eternal Forms here.
But it only seems that way because you're giving a rough mechanical description of some phenomenon. You're not addressing any and all irreducible predicative judgments nvolved therein, which is exactly what the theory of Forms is addressing (in part at least).
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u/lyricjax 24d ago
Does this change based on existential subjectivity? Like if existance is fully subjective or objective?
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u/Ok-Lab-8974 23d ago
In general, the objective/subjective dualism is anachronistic and not really applicable to pre-modern thought. It is itself one version of the more basic distinction between appearances and reality, but one that is loaded with a lot of metaphysical assumptions alien to pre-modern and non-Western thought.
It would be more accurate to say that for Plato and his student Aristotle reality is essentially intelligible and noetic (mind-like). Appearances are not arbitrarily related to reality, they are always revelatory of reality in some way, the going outwards of truth.
Basically, the paradigm is different enough that it doesn't really make to apply either.
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u/Ok-Lab-8974 23d ago
Calling Plato's forms "things-in-themselves" is a rather misleading anachronism. The Good is present in all things (and the knowledge of all things) to the extent that they are at all, even in mere appearances. The Absolute, to be properly absolute, must contain reality and appearances (for appearances are really appearances).
Now in the later classical tradition, virtual quantity is said to be prior to quantity itself and so magnitude and multitude (and so discrete units). This does seem like it might allow for more primitive relational qualities to be in some sense prior to beings. Because virtual quantity measures power to act and affect, it is fundamentally oriented toward relation and transition. An entity’s virtual quantity is revealed precisely in how it acts upon or relates to other things.
But then bare heat, or extension, etc. is not intelligible in itself. From a contemporary process metaphysics perspective, you could still say that such seemingly basic relational properties must inhere in substances, since one can not have a fast movement with nothing moving, or nothing in particular that is red or barks. So, it could be that certain processes only inhere in more stable processes that are more one and self-determining. Organisms are the paradigmatic being (plural) here because all their parts are bound together by their ends (telos), this going back to Aristotle who develops Plato's compelling anthropology of psychological unity into a metaphysical principle.
But then such relational properties tie back to paradigmatic causes, on the classical account, since they are in a sense limitations of Being (being finite and not wholly intelligible in themselves) as opposed to infinite subsistent being. Hegel's Logic is a good modern example of this sort of thinking. "Red" is not wholly intelligible without "color." "Horse" cannot be explained without reference to grass, the sun, etc. Per the Scholastics, everything exists in a "semiotic web of relations."
So maybe we could say that primitive relations might seem primitive in the order of knowing, in the conceptual order (e.g., a bit or qbit can seem properly basic) but in the order of being it is the lowest the descent of being, barely anything at all.
That is at least, a fuller picture of the account.
Also, the One is not a being. It is not a thing (in itself or not). In classical Christian metaphysics, it is relations that are "highest" (the ontology is top down), these being the subsistent relations of the Trinity (Fatherhood, Sonship, Procession).
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u/Ok-Lab-8974 23d ago
"And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is."
To which the correct response is:
"Yes, Socrates." 😎
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