How do we gain knowledge of Forms? If Forms are not perceptible by the senses, how can humans come to know them? (This often leads to discussions of recollection/anamnesis, reason, and the dialectic).

Jeet thread

>>24515534
>How do we gain knowledge of Forms? If Forms are not perceptible by the senses, how can humans come to know them? (This often leads to discussions of recollection/anamnesis, reason, and the dialectic).
How do human beings come to know the Forms? Since the Forms are not accessible through our physical senses, by what means can we gain knowledge of them? This question leads to significant philosophical discussions about Plato’s theory of knowledge. One prominent explanation is the doctrine of recollection (anamnesis), which suggests that the soul, having encountered the Forms prior to its embodiment, remembers them when prompted by sensory experiences. Additionally, some philosophers argue that it is through the use of reason and rational inquiry that we ascend from the realm of appearances to the realm of true reality. The dialectic method, a systematic process of questioning and dialogue, also plays a crucial role in guiding the intellect toward an understanding of the Forms. These debates explore the relationship between sense perception, intellectual insight, and the possibility of innate knowledge in grasping the eternal and unchanging truths that the Forms represent.

>>24515531 (OP)
As Plato says, Beauty, and the attraction to it, Eros, opens up a vision of Being to the senses.

I don’t know why so many anons get sucked into the Plato rabbit hole. Yes the dialogues are fun to read but all of his arguments are unscientific/probabilistic, he contradicts himself so you can’t know what he thought (whoahhh so profound bro), many of his theories are retarded and/or mystical, etc. For over a thousand years no one read him the way you fags do, you’d have a dialogue and then an autist commentary that was 800 pages long and only used the dialogue itself as a jumping off point. The dialogues are not serious philosophy, you guys are wasting your time trying to divine the “real” theory of forms because there is none, and if there was one it’d probably be idiotic. Go read a real philosopher like Aristotle.

>>24515657
Wow what a great point, that’s totally a carefully reasoned argument and not some mystic pseudery pretending to be philosophy.

>>24515749
Plato sought truth through rigorous logical deduction and dialectic, aiming to uncover universal and necessary truths, not contingent empirical ones.

you are probably a retarded atheist and worship science

>>24515749
The "mystic" Plato readings are lame, but this is a trash take.

>>24515765
I love Plato, but, lol, no he didn't.

>>24515531 (OP)

>>24515531 (OP)

>>24515753
Read the Symposium and the Phaedrus if you're not yet educated enough to be familiar with the carefully reasoned philosophical arguments it's referencing.

>>24515749
You've clearly never read his later dialogues, which get much closer to the strenuous logic of Aristotle.

jeet chatgpt thread

>>24515765
nice chatgpt reply jeet

>>24515818
I’ve read them all many times. If you think 40 pages of “how can it be… and be one????” is the “strenuous logic of Aristotle” you have not read much Aristotle.
>>24515765
Other philosophers do the same thing only with intelligent, logical arguments. Look I know there are flashes of genius in there, but you guys are wasting valuable time. Don’t believe me, call me a pseud, whatever. Plato was a wanker and so are his fanboys. Even his most sophisticated arguments do not stand up to basic logic. The most interesting bits aren’t scientific arguments at all, they’re just musing. Seethe more.

>>24515831
>If you think 40 pages of “how can it be… and be one????” is the “strenuous logic of Aristotle” you have not read much Aristotle.
You're incredibly stupid. Yeah man, there's totally not an advancement in logic from the Republic to the Sophist. Plato totally didn't lay the groundwork for Aristotle, you're just so much smarter than everyone, even Aristotle when he credits Plato for certain things... You're the definition of a midwit.

What was interesting was how negation could be a like secondary form or something like that, there was like a hierarchy of forms by their logical or ontological independence or dependence

>>24515831
>The most interesting bits aren’t scientific arguments at all
Lol at you judging philosophy according to 'scientific arguments'. Do you even know what philosophy is? Embarrassing post all around.

>>24515831
>Other philosophers do the same thing only with intelligent, logical arguments. Look I know there are flashes of genius in there, but you guys are wasting valuable time. Don’t believe me, call me a pseud, whatever. Plato was a wanker and so are his fanboys. Even his most sophisticated arguments do not stand up to basic logic. The most interesting bits aren’t scientific arguments at all, they’re just musing. Seethe more.

retard, wrong, you are too black to understand Plato, Go read some reddit posts retard

>>24515749
>>24515770
>>24515773
There is quite literally Nothing wrong with mysticism in metaphysics

>>24515531 (OP)

>>24515837
1) I didn’t say there’s no development in Plato.
2) I didn’t say Plato didn’t lay the ground for Aristotle.
3) I didn’t say Plato can’t be credited with certain ideas.
4) I didn’t say I was smarter than everyone. But I’m definitely smarter than you.

I think all the buttblast I’m getting reflects how the Platofags know, deep down, that I’m right. They shit up any thread about ancient and medieval Phil - they think since they’ve read all the dialogues and a couple of Aristotle’s treatises (half-understood) they’re pretty much experts. Again, Plato’s arguments are mostly bullshit sophistry (getting confused about how words like “being” have multiple meanings; thinking learning = remembering because something can’t come from nothing; and so on). Platopseuds lap it up, then will claim it’s all 4d chess, or that you can’t read philosophy without following the Mystick Sage Path (tm), and so on.

>>24515856
There’s nothing wrong with being a mystic who is also a metaphysician. There is something wrong with cloaking mysticism in shitty arguments and pretending it’s philosophy. Ofc the Platopseuds won’t know the difference because they don’t know anything else.

>>24515873
You've been filtered. Plato could couch an argument in all sorts of qualifications that show he's aware of the rhetorical nature of it, and even scatter suggestions about why, and you've missed it because of your autism.

>>24515531 (OP)
Plato, especially in dialogues like the Meno and Phaedo, proposes that knowledge of the Forms is not learned through experience but recalled. He suggests that the soul is immortal and has encountered the Forms prior to birth.

>>24515873
>thinking learning = remembering because something can’t come from nothing; and so on
And yet anamnesis as a concept has survived into the modern era in the form of instincts and archetypes. Just another demonstration of the multifaceted importance of Plato which has completely gone over your head.

>>24515933
Nta, but that's a terrible defense. "He's influential" doesn't mean anything philosophically.

>>24515945
I didn't say 'he's influential', I said one of those supposedly silly ideas that anon mentioned is in fact a very well respected idea in the modern world, only the garments are changed. I'm crediting Plato with being a first discoverer, not with being influential. Learn to read RETARD.

you're arguing with a jeet who uses chatgpt to give him replies.

>>24515955
It's not the same idea, dude. Instincts aren't the soul's apparent memory of the Forms in Hades, neither are archetypes. Those are at best just similar to there being a finite set of natural kinds within a class. Not anywhere near the same.

>>24515955
Jungians do not think you literally remember something from a past life lol. It’s amazing how I called out the Platopseuds for being pseuds, and they all come out of the woodwork to give us evidence.
>>24515893
“He’s a master writer, 4d chess, he’s rhetorical, filtered, you have autism.” Christ almighty I know Plato uses rhetorical and literary techniques, the problem for him as a philosopher is that NONE of his arguments are actually any good.

>>24515992
>>24515964

Based autism

>every thread on /lit/ is getting derailed by the same autist who thinks Aristotle is a nominalist, Aquinas, Gilson, Gerson, DBH, Bonaventure, etc. idiots, and himself a genius and expert because he got a degree in classics two decades ago. And everyone who disagrees with him is a "tradcath," but also Indian "jets"

Hmm, has it occured to him that the population of traditional Catholic Indians is probably not that big?

>>24515964
I’m not the jeet and ChatGPT doesn’t write like this. Go and read Georgia’s again bro that’s how you learn philosophy lmao. Do an outline even you faggot.

>>24516016
you singled yourself out lol

>>24515980
Plato was the first to describe the human mind's intrinsic knowledge of ideas, whether it's simple concepts like proportion, symmetry, order and disorder, etc, to profounder ideas as well, which must necessarily come before our observation of them in specific objects. Carl Jung openly traced archetypes as an idea back to Plato, through St. Augustine (if I am not misremembering) translating the Greek eidos as 'archetype'. So you're just out of your depth here.

>>24515992
>Jungians do not think you literally remember something from a past life lol.
Holy shit you're incredibly stupid. Do you think I really said that in my post? Do you really think that? No wonder you had trouble understanding Plato.

>>24515753
The erotic element and 'knowing by becoming' are all throughout ancient thought, and it is explored very rigorously, not only in Plato, but Boethius, Plotinus, Aquinas, Augustine, Maximus, etc.

>>24515992
>the problem for him as a philosopher is that NONE of his arguments are actually any good.
You're confusing philosophy with good arguments, in the first place. Philosophy is properly the search for wisdom one recognizes one doesn't have, arguments are always then a means and not the end or whole activity. In the second place, Plato's use of rhetoric and sophistry isn't just important because "he clearly uses them," but because he uses them for several purposes, defensive (against popular prejudices towards philosophers like his executed teacher), offensive (against both the sources of the aforementioned prejudices and the sophists as rival claimants), and pedagogical (potential students have to work through things for understanding, not just merely repeat their teachers' conclusions). Plato began to write likely within the decade after Socrates' execution, when philosophy needed to be defended and explained to the city in terms that might make it less offensive, whereas Aristotle wrote after some forty to fifty years of Plato's work in defending philosophy, and under Macedonian protection in a subject Athens. Plato opens up *only* if you put the work in, and interrogating why he uses rhetorical, poetic, and sophistical modes in this or that place of a dialogue opens access to what the issues are, especially when he indicates in plenty of places that he's perfectly aware of what those modes consist in and involve, for good and bad. Can anyone say such a reader is coping about sophistical arguments in Plato when he lays them out in the Euthydemus, or rhetorical arguments when he covers those in Gorgias and Phaedrus?

>>24515831

>>24516012
I don’t think Aquinas and bonaventure were idiots. I do know Aristotle was not a realist about universals. You haven’t even read the Metaphysics, clearly. Whether Aristotle was a nominalist depends on what you mean by nominalist.
>>24516031
No you didn’t say that, me and the other anon were pointing out that it’s a retarded comparison. You seem very flustered.
>>24516077
How many times do I have to say that there’s nothing wrong with mysticism and philosophy, only bad arguments cloaked in mysticism? I get it, this is way too subtle for you.

Nothing but midwits as far as the eye can see. Bleak.

>>24516031
>Plato was the first to describe the human mind's intrinsic knowledge of ideas, whether it's simple concepts like proportion, symmetry, order and disorder, etc, to profounder ideas as well, which must necessarily come before our observation of them in specific objects.
That's still not anamnesis--Recollection isn't "I intrinsically know x," but "What is x? I must've forgotten, so I'll use question and answer as a procedure to recollect what my soul knew x to be in Hades." Don't give me none of that "well, they're tantamount" shit, they're not the same. As for Jung, again, if it's not the soul by itself seeing all of the beings that can be known, with those soul-known beings being recollected in the bodily here and now through question and answer, *then it's not recollection*.

>>24516097
>Aristotle, the paradigmatic example of immanent realism, wasn't a realist
>He might be a nominalist

>>24516101
>That's still not anamnesis--Recollection isn't "I intrinsically know x,"
Of course it is you utter imbecile. In this life, you intrinsically have knowledge, you have the very possibility of knowledge, because you're recollecting something in your soul. Plato ascribing it to lived past lives instead of genes does not change the fundamental observation, which is all the more pertinent because, as already stated, knowledge of the forms is the potential for knowledge of anything at all, it is human cognition itself. For example, our identifying what is and isn't beautiful is the result of recollecting the form of beauty. Anamnesis is not dependent on question and answer alone, and if you think that it is then you have the reading comprehension of a child. But please, read Jung yourself and see him say all of this.

You're so seriously lacking a basic philosophical education that you cannot see everything that Plato first discovered that still remains unrefuted. You seem to hardly even understand what the theory of forms is.

>>24516097
>No you didn’t say that, me and the other anon were pointing out that it’s a retarded comparison. You seem very flustered.
Not a response. Obvious copout.

>>24516139
Again we’re arguing about words. Aristotle was an immanent realist in the sense that he thought universals were objectively real thoughts which stood in potency to particulars. But the pseuds here think that he thought a universal was a metaphysical entity called an essence which is literally limited by matter - ie Thomism. I am well aware of passages where he seems to say this, and others where he says the opposite. There is a genuinely Aristotelian way of speaking of essences being limited by matter. But the point is that, *in being* or in substance, particulars are prior to anything universal, including the essence considered as a universal. This is a complicated and interesting debate. But here you just have pseuds, like you, saying “I heard Aristotle was a realist!”, which in a sense of course he was. Again, “nominalist” has multiple meanings. So it’s not a matter of right and wrong, it’s simply that you guys are absolute idiots who haven’t seriously studied his works, haven’t read much Aquinas, haven’t read any Occam, and are self-righteously repeating things you’ve heard in this awful, deafening echo chamber of zoomer midwittery. Aristotle says about 40 times that universals are not real. (Literally). To make him an immanent realist in the crude or Thomist sense is to ignore these passages (to say you can have a universal essence that isn’t a universal). I’d love to have a real conversation, I actually know quite a lot about this subject, but it’s a waste of time with you fags. I’ve had you people using “one over many” arguments to defend the quasi-Thomist view (real Thomism is more nuanced). Do you realize how absurd that is, to use the one over many to interpret Aristotle? No, you don’t, because you’re a pseud.

>>24516146
>Of course it is you utter imbecile.
No, it's not, and stomping your feet over it won't make it so. Plato doesn't offer ananesis as an answer to how we *already* know things, he offers it as a response to whether it's possible to recover that which you presently don't know. Look back at the Meno, the whole first third is Socrates trying to get Meno to investigate what virtue is, before Meno throws his hands up in the air in frustration and gives a Gorgiabic argument for how it's impossible to discover anything--you either don't know it, and so can't even recognize it when it's avaible to be known, or you already know it and there's no point to seeking it.

What you're saying is what *Meno* argues for, you just know it already. That's not recollection.

>For example, our identifying what is and isn't beautiful is the result of recollecting the form of beauty.
No, it's not. In Plato, that's just falling back on opinion. Again, see the Meno and pay attention. Meno gives examples of what virtues there are at the very beginning. By your account, he already knows what virtue is. That's not what Plato thinks. The example of someone discriminating between beautiful and ugly, to Plato, first requires interrogating whether that's just an opinion, and needs to be followed up by seeing whether one can *say* what Beauty itself is in a definition, which might still require testing.

>>24516171

>>24516172
These guys are complete idiots.

>>24516171
Dude, just fucking log off

>>24516187
>>24516173
Yeah I get it this is all far too “autistic” for the Platopseuds. You are the people who ruin philosophy online.

>>24516198
What is autistic is writing posts to "totally own" people over things no one wrote or even suggested, while also not even knowing what the term "nominalism" broadly refers to, and then trying to cover this up with an appeal to equivocation.

>>24516208
Define "Aristotle"
Define "is"
Define "a"
Define "nominalist"

>>24516171
>>24516198
Ntas, but I don't get why you're here if you don't want to get into the inside baseball with your interests. I get not having patience for something like "could Aristotle deduce a pencil?" style discussions, but if I'm in a Plato thread, and someone says, "I thought Plato stood for x," I try to work through relevant passages with citations and some explanation. Like when you say, "Aristotle says about 40 times that universals are not real. (Literally).", that seems both interesting and worth stating some Bekker numbers for, or giving examples of "passages where he seems to say this, and others where he says the opposite," with some explanation of why you conclude accordingly. As a "Platopseud" (fuck you, btw), it's not as if I don't sympathize with having to distill a huge corpus, but, shit, if you're miserable here and don't want to deign to spell things out, I don't see why you don't just start a substack and cultivate a small group to talk with away from here.

>>24516187
shut up retard

If in Plato's cave we only see shadows on the wall why should we able to gain knowledge of the forms through their shadows?
It doesn't make sense

>>24516172
Have you not read the Phaedrus? Have you only read the Meno? And you seriously claimed to have read all of Plato's dialogues, yet somehow have no clue about Plato's development of anamnesis. Why are you wasting my time arguing about Plato when you don't even know the most basic shit about him? And the same is true about Jung. You pretended like you knew something about him, yet his own words contradict your description. It's pathetic.

>>24516324
Imma turn that back around on you and ask if *you've* read the Phaedrus, because here's what the Phaedrus has about recollection (249b-c):

>For a human being must understand that which is said in reference to form, that which, going from many perceptions, is gathered together into one
by reasoning (logismo--calculation, reasoning out). And this is the recollection of those things that our soul
saw once upon a time, when it proceeded along with god and looked
down upon the things that we now assert to be, and lifted up its head
into the being that really is. And therefore, justly indeed, *only the
philosopher's thought* is furnished with wings; for through memory
he is always to the best of his power near those things, through being
near which god is divine.

That's not innate knowledge, that's the same deal as the Meno's presentation, where the Meno's "through question and answer" = "by reasoning." This is also *limited to the philosopher, not people in general, "only the philosopher's thought is furnished with wings."

What you're also missing is that Socrates puts a transformative spin on it so that later it becomes, outside of the Stesichorian palinode and in the long second half on rhetoric, "sight [which] comprehends things dispersed in many places to lead them into one idea, so that by defining each thing, he makes clear what, on each occasion, *he wishes to teach about*" (265c), i.e., just an approach to teaching.

None of which lines up with your argument. You have a misinformed view of recollection and its relation to the notion of having intrinsic knowledge. These passages and the Meno say otherwise.

>>24516324
Imma turn that back around on you and ask if *you've* read the Phaedrus, because here's what the Phaedrus has about recollection (249b-c):

>For a human being must understand that which is said in reference to form, that which, going from many perceptions, is gathered together into one by reasoning (logismo--calculation, reasoning out). And this is the recollection of those things that our soul saw once upon a time, when it proceeded along with god and looked down upon the things that we now assert to be, and lifted up its head into the being that really is. And therefore, justly indeed, *only the philosopher's thought* is furnished with wings; for through memory he is always to the best of his power near those things, through being near which god is divine.

That's not innate knowledge, that's the same deal as the Meno's presentation, where the Meno's "through question and answer" = "by reasoning." This is also *limited to the philosopher, not people in general, "only the philosopher's thought is furnished with wings."

What you're also missing is that Socrates puts a transformative spin on it so that later it becomes, outside of the Stesichorian palinode and in the long second half on rhetoric, "sight [which] comprehends things dispersed in many places to lead them into one idea, so that by defining each thing, he makes clear what, on each occasion, *he wishes to teach about*" (265c), i.e., just an approach to teaching.

None of which lines up with your argument. You have a misinformed view of recollection and its relation to the notion of having intrinsic knowledge. These passages and the Meno say otherwise.

>>24516361
Again, you're simply projecting your own highly contrived interpretation onto what is obvious, and what has widely been credited to Plato in the modern world, such as by C.G. Jung. In your previous post you went so far into lunatical disagreement with the obvious that you actually had to make the case, perhaps without realising it, that non-philosophers cannot identify anything at all. Since to identify, in the Platonic scheme, is to recognise a form, which is possessed through past lives and sight of the heavenly. There is a very direct leap, via Augustine's archetype, to the Jungian archetype and modern psychology in general. You can cope all you want, but you're never arguing against the central claim being made.

>>24516393
>In your previous post you went so far into lunatical disagreement with the obvious that you actually had to make the case, perhaps without realising it, that non-philosophers cannot identify anything at all.
Those were literally words from the Phaedrus that I quoted. Huff and puff all you want, but I've been talking about the dialogues, and I can discuss and quote and cite specific passages if I need to, and you're basing your position off of feelz.

>>24515531 (OP)
They avail themselves. It's in the name.