Platonism Without Plato

1/25/2018 Platonism without Plato – sam[ ]zdat
sam[ ]zdat
antecedents have consequences
Platonism without Plato
Pythagoras assigned cyclical motions to the planets. Circles are eternal, and thus the motion most
suited for the motions of the heavens. This essay is about circles, as well, albeit the more homely
human kind. It’s about racing so far in one direction that you wind up back at the get-go.
All theories have assumptions, all assumptions lead to their own conclusions. Inconsistency is not
bad for the sin of pride, it’s bad because it makes you wreck yourself in conversations. Worse is
inconsistency with power for reasons that are too obvious to lay out, [Goya etching here], etc.
https://samzdat.com/2018/01/26/platonism-without-plato/ 1/18
This blog has recently been focused on the epistemology of mathematics. It has interesting and
far-reaching consequences, but it’s often ignored as meaningless specialist nonsense and/or ivory
tower shit.
Those consequences are the real interest, and I’ve explicitly stated that the end is modern
phenomenology. But to get to [anything modern] you need Kant, to get to Kant you need Hume, to
get to Hume you need Idealism, to get Idealism you need Plato.
Platonism (in math) is, essentially, the position that mathematical objects are real. They are as
“out there” as a planet is “out there” (just not in space-time, spoiler alert). Because it’s hard to
really precise this, here’s (hilariously) an entire appendix of people defining it.
Naive versions of Platonism are astoundingly common when it comes to the epistemology of

mathematics. These aren’t “wrong” per se, they just lead to consequences counter to what we tend
to want. I’m pretty sure this is because mathematics is secure enough that it’s the very last
metaphysical “thing” we want to deny. The denial also leads to tricky questions about the physical
sciences, i.e. the point of this series. Thus, we’re a lot more willing to grant ontological primacy to
mathematics than we are to, say, “beauty” or “virtue.”
But also: Plato himself is a necessary nightmare to talk about. He’s a great example of why one
should read primary sources, because “platonism” is historically sideways. This is bad enough that
I have to write two separate articles. This one is on “Platonism.” The next will be on Plato.
When we talk about Platonism now, we’re not actually talking about a 4th century BC
philosophical school. We’re talking about a 20th century one. Godel absolutely stomped the early
analytic schools, and everyone wandered in a daze looking for a new position. Kind of, this is bad
history, don’t @ me. I’m not going to get into that because [long] and [besides the point], but it’s
consistent that Godel himself was a devoted Platonist.
It’s quite popular, so note that any criticisms I make will 100% have objections and counter-
arguments. Platonism is the plurality position by this survey (PDF) of philosophers. (Q: Abstract
objects: Platonism or nominalism? Results: Abstract objects: Platonism 39.3%; nominalism 37.7%;
other 23.0%.) Since it says “abstract objects” rather than “mathematical objects”, that probably
confounds full-blooded Platonism (“all abstract concepts exist”) with mathematical Platonism (“at
least mathematical objects exist”), but I’ve yet to meet someone who thought that the abstract
concept “beauty” is real but numbers are not. In other words, that 39.3% almost certainly covers
all mathematical Platonists.
If I get around to talking about the analytics (way later), I’m going to have to return to Platonism,
i.e. this is incomplete. I’m much more interested in arguments mustered for naturalism on Platonic
grounds, both as a personal preference and for subsequent articles. Less in arguing for or against
Platonism than in showing some of the consequences, and for those we basically assume it’s true.
After all, this series begins with the question: “Why does math work in reality?” and Platonism is
an answer to that question. It works because math is real, it doesn’t matter how frail the human
mind is, somehow we frailed our way into the Truth of the World, take it and run.
Still, there’s a reason that a shocking number of otherwise-impartial descriptions of modern

platonists use phrases like “bite the bullet” to describe their admissions. The consequences of the
argument are wild, and for that one actually can turn back to Plato. It matters less whether he
himself believed it than it does that he develops some of the results and, even if ironically, these
went on to have some super weird consequences.
You might ask why start with Platonism, then. Long story short: [history] happened, modern
Platonism is enough like what pre-modern philosophers were responding to that it’s basically fine.
There was a long historical bit here, but it’s been banished to an appendix for taking up space
without moving the argument forward.
I’ve praised the virtues of careful philosophical argumentation. In an act of stunning hypocrisy, I
will now write a very reckless article about Plato and Platonism.
This is because I want to.
II
This series began with the question how do we know anything at all? It presupposes that – at least in
the realm of math – we do know things. This is basically how Plato starts, something I pointed out
with the Meno: “It’s uncertain if we do know anything, but suppose that we do. What would it look
like for that to be possible?”
Platonism, as a school, gets extremely confused extremely quickly. It was originally an idealist
philosophy, but now it’s commonly invoked as a semi-defense of empiricism and naturalism. And,
again, it has very little to do with Plato. For the purpose of this essay I’ll pretend it does, next essay
I’ll explain why that was a bad thing to pretend.
If you know about Plato, you know about the forms. This is the “naive” variant. I’ll break my own
rules and give you the Stanford (read the Phaedo instead) if you want a careful overview.
Here’s the short version: The world of coming and going – material – is complete and utter
darkness. It’s quite literally Heraclitean Flux. We can have no certainty about it due to its changing
nature, which means if “knowledge” is a thing we have, it cannot come from empirical study alone
(or at all, depending). Every horse is uniquely imperfect in some particular way, it deviates from
the ideal “horseness.” Still, it partakes of “horseness” just enough that we can correctly identify
the flawed versions of horses as things-which-participate-in-horseness. “Horseness” is a Form, and
one could also phrase it as “The Form of Horseness.” True knowledge, then, is knowing “The Form
of Horseness” rather than “this particular horse.” Further, forms are normally understood as
epistemological and ontological. They’re the reason the intelligible world exists – were there not
the stability of forms, there would be no world to make sense of – while being the reason we
can understand the world. If we did not have access to forms in some way, we’d fail to identify the
common traits of horseness that allow us to distinguish horses from mountains.
This is full of holes, and I’m not going to defend it or the idea that Plato meant it seriously. It’s
a little less ridiculous than what I pointed out, because he’s often talking about genuine abstracts.
Thus, in the Meno, Plato asks what virtue is, and Meno replies with this:
Let us take first the virtue of a man-he should know how to administer the state, and in
the administration of it to benefit his friends and harm his enemies; and he must also be
careful not to suffer harm himself. A woman’s virtue, if you wish to know about that,
may also be easily described: her duty is to order her house, and keep what is indoors,
and obey her husband. Every age, every condition of life, young or old, male or female,
bond or free, has a different virtue: there are virtues numberless, and no lack of
definitions of them; for virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that
we do. And the same may be said of vice, Socrates.
To which Socrates replies that Meno has just given him a “swarm” rather than Virtue, and there
must surely be some form of Virtue by which all these specific acts are called and considered
“virtuous.”
Either way, Plato tends to pivot to mathematics whenever he brings up the Forms, and he does so
in really weird ways. The most obvious is (also) the Meno, where to prove inborn knowledge of the
forms he has a slave-boy perform geometry. More explicit is [everything in the Republic]. In both of
these cases, souls are regarded as immortal due to [Platonism things]. See the appendix for deets.
The most extreme is the Timaeus. Timaeus is a highly detailed monologue (by Timaeus) on the
creation of time, the heavens, and the earth, while also being the origin of the myth of Atlantis
(not joking). It starts with a distinction between eternal things and temporal things, and moves
into an account of how the Demiurge sets up all of it. Critical is the fact that underlying the world of
flux is mathematical harmony. The four elements are the Platonic Solids, meaning that matter is
constructed according to geometric patterns. The planets are set in specific proportions from the
earth, and these proportions just happen to be the Pythagorean Intervals. So on, so forth. The
implication of the Timaeus, of course, is that the “true” world, is ordered according to
mathematical forms of which “matter” is a kind of degradation. Philosophers then use
mathematics to get closer to understanding the true reality which underlies the visible world, and
thus the divine and/or the good.
It’s more complex than this, I don’t want to get into it, look back at the title of this piece to
understand why.
I’ll throw caution to the wind to point out a few further things: Plato is famous for banishing poets
from his Republic, and for only allowing extremely specific musical patterns. That comes directly
from Timaeus-style Pythagoreanism. The harmony of the spheres, if interpreted as a relation to the
eternal soul, must be maintained, i.e. math is ethics, because the soul must be “tuned” to partake in
the beauty of The Good. This is also a really common starting point for Natural Law and moral
realism (i.e. “moral facts exist objectively”), for reasons that ought to be pretty clear.
A less naive reading that I’m still unsure has anything to do with Plato is the following:
If you interpret Timaeus et al. figuratively, and you make a really careful and complex argument I
don’t care to make right now, you can almost arrive at a doctrine resembling modern physics.
Matter is not a unique, indivisible substance, but a composition of various elements which are,
critically, mathematical in nature. Thus, mathematics can be used to determine physical laws which
govern the universe, and given the eternal truth of math, these will be more “real” than mere
speculation. Moreover, the emphasis on ratios within the heavenly bodies shows that they too are
subject to these physical laws, which heavily implies that they’re composed similarly to the earth.
This is only kind of a stretch, and other philosophers had proposed similar.
Either way, that still leaves us with a Platonic implication of mathematics: it is real, it is
“embedded” in the universe somehow while not really being a part of space-time. Also: the naive
reading was the most popular for a very long time.
III
Given the Form of the Horse thing, it’s probably going to sound odd when I say that Platonism is a
really common assumption. When people talk about math as a human discovery – we pieced it
together from real parts of nature, and it’s not merely an approximation – the Platonic argument
is underlying that. It’s common enough that I have to be careful when discussing modern versions
of this, because there are Platonic and non-Platonic versions of arguments that look ridiculously
similar. I’m going to try and separate them piece by piece, but this is a blog and not a dissertation.
Recap: Mathematical Platonism means the following, a) math is independent of humans; b) pretty
clear from (a), but mathematical objects exist; c) these are abstracts, as in “mathematics is an
abstract concept.” Normally included in this is an argument that mathematical objects exist
outside space-time. (Note that other options are worse: there are ideal triangles floating
somewhere in physical reality, and apparently they cast geometry-beams into everything.
Personally, I find this a bit forced. That being said, I’m pretty sure that New Age websites use this
to explain how “Quantum Mechanics” proves that True Material Existence is One True
Consciousness of God on a different dimension or whatever.)
There are actually good arguments. I’m going to stick with Putnam’s work with Quine’s Argument
from Indispensability. I have no idea why, but the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a better
description than Stanford. Read that for rigor, my description won’t have it.
The argument goes something like this: The descriptions of the universe that best match the
phenomena are all based on the physical sciences, and those descriptions are the things we ought
to afford existence, i.e. electrons exist in a way that phlogiston and the Four Humors do not. It
would be strange for any necessary predicate of a theory to not “exist” in the same way, that is to
say, it would be odd for an electron to exist but a neutron not to, or to be merely as reliable as
phlogiston. If a scientific theory is a “real” description of the physical world, then things which are
indispensable to that theory should also be assumed to be real, for the obvious reason that,
without them, we would not have the theory, they’re part of it, it would be like allowing for cars
but rejecting combustion. Mathematics is indispensable to the natural sciences. Therefore,
mathematical objects are real.
This is, more or less, a variant on naturalism. Putnam argues that not accepting it is tantamount to
grave intellectual dishonesty.
There are other good arguments for mathematical Platonism, but Quine’s is the most common
(even if not explicitly stated) and it neatly fits into the “Platonism somehow became a defense of
naturalism” theme. It’s also implicitly invoked much more often than the more careful, Fregean
arguments.
It should be pretty clear that Platonism is also necessary for all manner of wild beliefs, see the
appendix, but arguing against sacred geometry is ugly in the way that beating up a child is ugly.
IV
First, the indispensability argument is good. Getting into the details of arguments for and against it
will take time, be boring, and, it’s an axiomatic certainty that they must therefore come in a
temporally later and more boring essay. I’ll note two points, neither of which disprove
Putnam/Quine but both of which reframe it.
My favorite is not a good argument, but it is funny: Certain branches of mathematics are not
currently indispensable for the physical sciences, even if they come from axioms that earlier
principles use. To his credit, this is why Quine tossed out a bunch of set-theory. But it’s not clear
that some of those branches won’t be useful some time in the future – plenty of higher branches of
mathematics were pure until someone found a use for them. You’re left in the position of declaring
existence or non-existence based on temporality, which is almost certainly wrong inasmuch as
things exist or do not exist, stop Schrodingering at me.
This isn’t a very good argument: science is well willing to recalibrate which things exist and which
don’t. The problem – and this is implicit in the phrasing of the argument – is that it makes the
argument a suggestion for what things we should believe exist, which leaves the door open for all
sorts of things to exist-non-exist.
It’s this next part that leads to phrases like “Quine bit the bullet and…”
First, if mathematical objects are “real”, then they’re certainly not physically real, i.e. they exist
outside space-time. It’s not exactly clear where they are, but equations are most definitely not
physical things. Frege, who admits and develops this part of the argument, quite literally refers to a
“third place” of existence, which is the math-realm.
Platonism isn’t necessarily wrong, as in it’s not obviously false, you can formalize it and the
argument will be valid. But, in arguing for the primacy of the sciences and the import of
mathematics, our Platonic certainty destroys materialism. This is normally phrased as an
argument against it, but one can consistently hold the position so long as they admit the following:
metaphysics is real.
This opens the door to some unfortunate consequences. I’ll phrase them as questions:
1) If there is a metaphysical math-plane, then how does it interact with the physical world? Is
there an ether? It’s impossible for us to empirically investigate a metaphysical medium, so we can
let this one linger. Resolving it normally means we try to logic at it until we understand some kind
of medium (the Timaeus proposes a very strange third-medium-thing to resolve it), but that takes
us to the next problem.
2) If we’ve already opened up the metaphysical plane, then it’s not immediately clear why we
should stop with math. If we take the indispensability argument as a should rather than an is,
i.e. we should provisionally accept the existence of certain branches of math, we’re probably worse
off here. That should is not a killer argument against undesirable metaphysics.
This is doubly true if one takes the position that logic and math are the same thing, and opens up
logical argumentation of non-mathematical abstracts (say, human freedom, virtue, God) to the
rigor of mathematical work. Aristotle vaguely tries this: one reading is that he deals with Platonic
forms by making them in the “formal cause” of matter, but that’s how you wind up with things like
the Prime Mover, i.e. a thinking thing thinking itself into existence because it thinks about
thinking.
3) Mathematical laws are seemingly eternal, so how do humans have access to them? Is there a soul
that communicates through the ether? I get that this was assumed by the argument, so it’s kind of
unfair. The point is this particular consequence is what leads to Pythagorean arguments for
resurrection and eternal consciousness.
4) Implicit in the prime mover reference: it’s ridiculously unclear where mathematical objects come
from. You can’t rely on the Big Bang for their creation, because the Big Bang needs math to Bang,
and they can’t presuppose-themselves-for-their-own-creation like weird autogenerative algebraic
deities (unless they are deities).
Those four points have responses, some more convincing than others. They’re not reserved to
mathematical Platonism; similar issues arise when one postulates any metaphysical reality.
Platonism in math just happens to be particularly appealing, because mathematics is “secure” in a
way that theological arguments are not, and yet mysterious in a kind of similar way. Still, one has
to respond in some way to the issue of math and reality, or else give up on the task of knowledge
forever (coming up soon).
Still, that last one is where everything falls to pieces.
V
Quine and Putnam bite the bullet, but they aren’t the circle I was referring to. I have no problem
with careful beliefs which are different from my own. The issue is with a lack of careful beliefs.
It’s at this point of the essay that I’m going to start getting accused of straw-manning.
Coincidentally, it’s also the point I began writing when another round of STEM vs. Humanities
broke out. I have no side in the fight, I like both, I get that by talking about philosophy I’ve already
sided in a few minds. I’m not going to convince them, who cares, [insult here].
Look, even if I have a habit of defending religion, I’m deeply sympathetic to the materialist project.
This is a labor of love, and the point of it is the following: these aren’t strawmen, they’re
materialist arguments that accidentally eat themselves, slippery Platonic arguments that result
from trying to make too broad of a case. Without some other argument, these are wide-open to all
manner of metaphysical speculation, which is especially bad when most are framed as arguments
against metaphysics.
I’ll take A Universe from Nothing as an example, though it’s not the only one. When released there
was an (inevitable) flare up in the atheist/theist debate. Almost the entire argument was over (4).
Now, I actually liked that book, but the more flamboyant aspects of its debate were a series of
ourobouros arguments.
At the heart of it is the claim that physics disproves God by neatly resolving the question of the
universe’s origin. “Why is there something rather than nothing?” and the answer is “mathematical
laws.” This is satisfying only if one assumes a Platonic position, because those are, ontologically,
parts of the universe. There’s no more question, you don’t have the deep concern that math is
merely describing perceptions. Again, I’m personally quite satisfied with perceptions. They just
aren’t arguments against theological stances, and trying to make them so is dishonest.
However, if one takes the Platonic position, things are likely worse. You’re left with the fact
that “mathematical laws” are ontologically a thing, which means they came from somewhere, can’t
presuppose themselves to exist, and so why are they there rather than not being there? Hilariously, it
makes some kind of God look pretty attractive: at least it resolves the question of mathematical
ontology, and allows us to use that as a solid base for the natural sciences. Though one might be
tempted to view this as a deistic, hands-off God, (3) might be interpreted in the following way: we
can commune with the metaphysical plane somehow, which means we have privileged access to the
divine realm and it clearly has some “place” in our souls, which means…
The non-Platonic position means that mathematics is merely descriptive, it’s a contingent-on-
human-knowledge way to understand reality. Thus, it has absolutely nothing to say about what’s
ontologically “real” or true, i.e. you lose the ability to claim that it resolves the question or says
anything certain about reality. This may be unsatisfying, but at least it doesn’t lead to self-
destruction.
No.
The point is to destroy metaphysics. Stop letting it in to own the libs.
VI
Coming clean: I hate Platonism. If it’s to be extracted, that takes some effort.
So begins a general theme of this series: you cannot have your cake and eat it too. Or, well, the
only people who can have their cake and eat it too are mystics and absolute skeptics. This makes
sense. If you doubt the principle of non-contradiction, then there really isn’t a reason that you can
have a not-eaten and eaten cake at the same time.
Broadly, it’s about the way certain conceptions of mathematics sneak into our daily language. The
point of this isn’t to straw-man [someone], it’s to point out just how embedded in our language
Platonism is, that everyday defenses of mathematics and physics have somehow all begun to
assume Platonism, and that this is really bad. If you want to move into any discussion of psychology
or ethics or politics from a materialist platform, you can’t have third-space-objects floating around
implying an eternal soul.
Last essay I implied that some of these arguments would fall, but I couldn’t get around to explaining
why without an extended discussion of Platonism and [everything above].
So: We want to answer the question, “Why does mathematics work?” and we want to be precise
about it. Here are some problems with the easy answers. To avoid straw-manning, I’ll offer the
non-Platonic versions after the criticisms, with the recognition that these leave us in a state of total
confusion regarding the original question.
VII
1) The simple evolutionary answer goes: Our environment is mathematical, and so any selection
pressure for [bundles of years] meant that brains which “understood” the math of the
environment were best able to interact with it. Thus we arrive at the human capacity to
understand math as well as an explanation for why that math works with the physical
environment. Platonism is implicit here: mathematics exists independently within nature, or else
it could not operate as a selection pressure on conscious organisms.
The implication here – a bad one – is that “truth” is in any way related to evolution, when
[absolutely everything] should tell you that it isn’t. The genetic legacy is brute utility over truth:
badgers don’t use trig, jocks beat up nerds, something something signalling. That we adapt to our
environment does not mean we adapt to understand it, fuck this up and you’ve reproduced the
Catholic Church’s favored view of evolutionary complexity, no I am not joking.
This actually isn’t an argument against that view, inasmuch as the guided evolution principle can be
maintained, i.e. by Catholics. It’s just a consequence that (most) people who want to make the
argument definitely don’t want.
This is not to say that evolution plays no part in mathematics’ relationship to the environment. It
almost certainly does. The critical difference is whether we evolved for the purpose of solving
physical tasks rather than metaphysical ones. We see the color blue does not mean that light waves
“are” blue, it’s an interaction between our eyes and the light. The color provides useful
information – these are lightwaves of a type that we visually categorize as blue – and it’s
not opposed to some inner working of the world. Colors aren’t arbitrary, they are analogous to
light-waves-of-such-and-such-frequency. They simply aren’t lightwaves-in-themselves.
I get that this seems like a minute distinction, but positing access to the thing in itself, and making
that a mathematical relationship, results in [everything above].
I feel like I should bold this, but I’d rather see who attacks me for denying Darwin: evolution plays
pretty strongly into my preferred view of mathematical epistemology.
2) The Anthropic Principle is originally a response to the question: “Why is there something rather
than nothing?” It replies that if this world did not exist in exactly the way it does – that is to say,
with the perfect and precarious conditions necessary for conscious life – there would be no
creatures to ask the question. Ignore the fact that it’s tautological and answering a different
question than it thinks it is (“how” rather than “why” for those following at home), we’ll save it for
another day. The problem comes when the principle gets transmuted into an epistemological
argument. So rather than answering “Whyhow are we here?” it’s addressing “Why do we live in
an intelligible universe?” This is, as you might have noticed, not a question the principle was
designed to answer.
In the original formulation, it doesn’t much matter how we understand the universe. It simply has
to exist in its current state that we might be here to throw rocks at glass houses. In the
epistemological formulation, we understand the universe because the particular order it has is the
one we know, namely, a mathematical order a la our current understanding of force-laws. The
ontological foundation of the universe is then, quite specifically, a mathematical one that must
prefigure consciousness (so exists independent of our cognition).
This is a really similar problem with (1). Order and logic and mathematics are not the same thing, but
they’re getting conflated. The universe certainly has some kind of order (if it was pure chaos,
nothing would be here), but that does not mean we should understand it. A->B, fine, why does that
entitle you to understand the “->”. Accounts are human, they can be wrong, they can overfit the
data. I’m going to reserve the word “order” here for [all kinds], and “logic” for how humans
perceive order.
The certainty of logic does not follow from the existence of order. Order is equally necessary for
the existence of the Grand Canyon, inasmuch us there have to be consistent natural laws for water
to wear it down into a pretty tourist trap, but the Grand Canyon has no claim on understanding
why that’s the case. Needless to say, order is necessary for cats, automobile, and lightning. None of
those things understand their existence by virtue of existing.
I once called extreme forms of the Anthropic Principle soteriological, and this is why. If the AP
comments on evolution as a process of increasing truth-gathering, which is what the argument
above leads you to, then you’re assuming a teleological principle indistinguishable from the guiding
hand of God. If, further, you assume that consciousness and intelligence are good – say,
biotechnology to enhance longevity is only possible with a measure of intelligence – then you’ve
got a guiding principle of salvation, physical or no.
This is going to pattern match to a few comments on that last piece, but it’s not the same
argument. Those were the non-Platonist version. Good arguments which incorporate the principle
go:
1. The universe must have some kind of order for anything to exist (AP).
2. Mathematics is the best human system of order – whether it’s an approximation or not is
uncertain, its existence as an ordered system is at least analogous to whatever kind of order we
see in (1).
3. Since mathematics is our best version of “order”, it makes sense that it best describes the
ordered (1) universe, and thus has the strongest claims on physical utility.
This is a much more subtle and interesting argument. I’m not going to address it here, but it is
worth considering.
VIII
For both of these, one can say that math is simply our best approximation of the order of the
universe, but: a) that’s not Platonism, because it admits of the nominalist position that math isn’t
“real” so much as descriptive; b) it takes us back to square one, as in “Man, math is super effective.
What, uh, is it?”
It’s (b) which is the real problem. And so, we move back into the question: why does math work and
how do we know it.
The current essay will not resolve that, sorry.
top image from Alphaville by Godard
Appendix on Plato
Given [everything above], it might sound weird to start with Platonism. I’m opening with 20th
century arguments to get at earlier arguments right after talking about the necessity of history.
Here are four responses: 1) Plato himself becomes important for [everyone later], but he needs to
be separated from Platonism; 2) The story of how Platonism became Platonism actually explains
his historical influence; 3) There aren’t really any arguments for Platonism until recently. There
are only arguments for neo-Platonism; 4) The theme of this series is “how does math work” and
Platonism must be addressed.
All of these are true. The most important, though, is this: reading Plato is, itself, much more
modern than anything else.
Here’s a not very careful history of what happened to Plato:
Pythagoras was the first person to use the word philosopher. By tradition, he discovered the
Pythagorean theorem (no surprises) and the Platonic solids (foreshadowing). He (or his school)
also discovered Pythagorean tuning, which led to their theory of the “harmony of the spheres.” All
of this led them to believe that the world existed in perfect mathematical order, that they’d
uncovered God.
When we moderns say something like “humans aren’t mathematical,” we mean to say, “humans
have dignity beyond mere material, we aren’t bland deterministic objects, human feelings can’t be
calculated so easily.” True or not, the point is that modern people view mathematical explanations
as something lower, undignified, the work of stuff and things. It was the opposite for the
Pythagoreans. Humans are fickle, chaotic, unpredictable. Euclidean geometry is divine. It’s
consistent, predictable, and, critically, eternal. No one law will change, every circle is a perfect
circle, every relationship holds true for forever. “Humans are mathematical” is precisely the opposite
of the world of things – it’s an elevation into the realm of the eternal, into that spot wherein there
is no change. Into truth.
It’s genuinely unsurprising that Pythagoras formed what may have been a cult (or may have been
an early attempt at an academy or something entirely other. No one is sure.). Either way, its
metaphysics was all geometric, based on the perfect order of the eternal truths. Notably, the
Pythagoreans believed in the reincarnation of the soul. I’m relatively sure this came from the
necessity of an eternal aspect of humans to explain how we can interact with eternal metaphysical
things. See also: the Platonic myth of knowledge by reincarnation.
Pythagoras is the closest to what Platonism is normally interpreted as, and that’s not an accident.
Plato’s characters are normally real people, and the real Timaeus was a member of the
Pythagorean school. This makes sense. If read literally, it comes off more like a
Pythagorean Genesis than a work of philosophy.
There are a thousand reasons to doubt a literal reading of the Timaeus, not least of which is the fact
that it conflicts with most other dialogues. This was, unfortunately, impossible to know until
recently.
Stoicism was the most popular philosophical school in the Roman Empire, and at some point in
there the Stoics had incorporated Timaeus into their physics and metaphysics. Whether or not this
makes sense is irrelevant, the point is simply that it made Timaeus the most popular Platonic
dialogue. Since the Stoics claimed to come from Socrates, and Plato claimed to come from Socrates,
one imagines them branding it as the secret teachings of the great master.
The Neoplatonists come in around ~200 AD. They claimed to be the true followers of Plato, and
argued that Stoic ethics missed the real heart of Platonism, which was essentially a mystical
program to connect with the One. They more or less took Platonic myths (and forms) at their
word, were heavily influenced by the Timaeus (which, again, they took to be the clearest
explication of Platonic doctrine), incorporated Neopythagoreanism (itself undergoing a revival)
and became the standard-bearers of “Platonic Philosophy.”
Flash to the end of the Roman Empire, and the only accounts of Platonic philosophy until the 13th
century are: a) Neoplatonic treatises, b) Timaeus.
The end result of this is that the only thing anyone knew about Plato for a really long time is,
actually, Pythagoras. Thus, most attacks on “Plato” had very little to do with what Plato thought,
but a whole lot to do with Platonism.
It should be noted that “Platonism” in this way also gave birth to: gnosticism, hermeticism, sacred
geometry, (some kinds of) numerology, most esoteric socieites, and, from all of that, Philip K. Dick.
Share this:
 Twitter  Facebook 2  Google
 Like
Be the first to like this.
Related:
On a Particularly Difficult Question
In "Attempt"
Euthyphro Dilemmas as Mathematical Objects
In "Books"
Notes on Values
In "Attempt"
Author: Lou Keep

samzdat.com View all posts by Lou Keep
Lou Keep / January 26, 2018 / Attempt
sam[ ]zdat / A WordPress.com Website.

Platonism Without Plato - Sam Zdat

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Platonism Without Plato - Sam Zdat

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

1/25/2018 Platonism without Plato – sam[ ]zdat

Naive versions of Platonism are astoundingly common when it comes to the epistemology of

Still, there’s a reason that a shocking number of otherwise-impartial descriptions of modern

This is because I want to.

Still, that last one is where everything falls to pieces.

The point is to destroy metaphysics. Stop letting it in to own the libs.

The current essay will not resolve that, sorry.

top image from Alphaville by Godard

Here’s a not very careful history of what happened to Plato:

but a whole lot to do with Platonism.

 Twitter  Facebook 2  Google

On a Particularly Difficult Question

Euthyphro Dilemmas as Mathematical Objects

Author: Lou Keep

Lou Keep / January 26, 2018 / Attempt

sam[ ]zdat / A WordPress.com Website.

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen