Plato argued that the physical world we see around us is only a shadow of the true reality. According to him, there are “Forms” (or “Ideas”), which are perfect, unchanging concepts or archetypes of things we see in the physical world. For instance, the Form of a "tree" would be the perfect idea of what "tree-ness" is, while all actual trees are just imperfect manifestations of that ideal.

Delete this now

>>24529371
He was wrong

>>24529369 (OP)
seems like so much of education and philosophy and 'wisdom' ends up coming down the idea that the invisible world is more important or more true or more meaningful than the visible one.
i think the world we see is, if not more important, at least equal.

>>24529379
By "world we see" do you mean our internal concepts that we project unto the imperfect sensory impulses we receive or do you mean the external source of those sensory impulses which we can never truly fully know due to the physical constraints of our sensory organs?

>>24529387
that phrase 'world we see' can only ever mean the former

>>24529387
"the world we see" often casually refers to the external world as we experience it, without necessarily delving into the nuances of perception

>>24529369 (OP)
Information is fundamental, matter is derivative. Take for instance an apple: it has a size, a shape, a color, a weight, and a texture. Remove any one of those descriptors and the apple ceases to exist. You can’t have a weightless apple, or one of undefined size, or boundless shape. The apple only exists when all its constituent pieces of information are present.

>>24529425
Good one

>>24529379
i don't think that's necessarily what you should take away from this sort of thing. gnosticism is lame and gay. the material world we inhabit is beautiful and worth exploring because it derives from beautiful and explorable things. if the invisible world is good, then the visible world it creates is also good, albeit imperfect. seeing a tree makes you think about tree-ness and feel the good vibes of tree-ness, so you should go outside and look at trees

>>24529369 (OP)
the tree is just an iterative attempt at converging on one of possibly multiple optimal forms
there exists an optimal tree form, at least in the sense any sufficiently intelligent being may stumble upon it
like in neuron dendrites ('dendros' meaning 'tree'), tree branching can be thought of as a minimum spanning tree weighted by a balancing factor between distance to the nearest point and distance to the origin
in other words, by optimising the placement of leaves, introducing noise to the system, and tuning the balancing factor, one can generate an optimal form on the macro scale
evolution is just an iterative process to approach these optimal forms, and its success is due to the reality of these forms

>>24529469
we instinctively like the tree, we enjoy being around nature. does us good. we intellectually enjoy tree-ness. to me, instinct is superior.

>>24529499
the theist should be happy with this interpretation
after all, these forms are only optimal within certain conditions, and would not exist without noise and primordial creation
logic in general is downstream of conditions;
one can claim a comparison-based sorting algorithm will not beat O(n log n), but being comparison-based is the important condition

>>24529425
a blind person can hold and bite into an apple without knowing its colour, so clearly, the apple doesn't depend on that piece of 'information' to exist.

>>24529369 (OP)
Plato was making a metaphor. He was talking about knowledge. According to him, there is opinion and true knowledge. Those in the cave only opinate, they ones who search for the truth and escape the doxa are the ones who know.

>>24529531
The information exists even though the blind person cannot observe and comprehend it. Gtfo with your solipsist strawman.

>>24529425
>>24529425
>Remove any one of those descriptors and the apple ceases to exist.
If I removed the color of an apple it will still be existing.

>>24529680
You’d have a gray apple, or a white apple, or a black apple, or a glassy apple, but no you can’t remove color without eliminating the apple. A perfectly transparent space would be massless.

>>24529659
if anything, the person treating the informational description of the apple as more real than the apple itself is being solipsist. the apple’s redness (or greenness) is a property we can detect and label, but the apple itself isn't made of information. it's made of matter. you can't eat information.

>>24529369 (OP)
Sort of. The invisible world is often understood as being the origin of the physical world though and I think that’s where a lot of the confusion comes from. The popular reading of Plato’s cave being that the material world exists only in order to be escaped or shunned as a form of degraded knowledge. In reality Plato’s conception of the invisible world was one which ran parallel with the physical one and not above it. The reflections of being in the material world which come from the invisible world are still faithful reflections which offer up knowledge to us. Not to mention that the invisible world is entirely comprehensible to the philosopher; the act of philosophy itself understood as partaking in the invisible world and not the physical one. The physical world is obviously degraded but the forms still make themselves known to the unphilosophical man as well. Even if they are imperfect they are still serviceable. And when they are taken into thought and contemplated by themselves they approach their invisible forms naturally because this is the act of reason itself. The sum total of human knowledge will always approach the invisible like an asymptote.

>>24529718
can you have matter that is not configured in any way?

>>24529369 (OP)
Can someone explain to me why this notion in particular is such a stumbling block for the areligious and middlingly educated? Is it because Plato's notion of Forms is the first thing that a materialist mind can believe in which transcends his worldly experience and that first step is the highest?

>>24529755
that’s like saying can you have a melody without pitch and rhythm - no, but that doesn’t mean the melody is made of music theory. the description follows the thing, not the other way around.

>>24529760
The “thing” exists because of its limits. If I had a banana without a shape it would engulf the entire universe in an instant and we’d all suffocate pretty quickly. Those limits exist whether or not they are observed. I can leave a banana alone in a room and be confident it won’t suddenly become the size of the universe.

>>24529770
the banana doesn’t swell to fill the universe because it’s made of matter with inherent physical properties. its limits are real, not informational. enforced by physics, not by observation or description. we describe limits because they exist, not the other way around.

>>24529774
You have it backwards, the physics are a set of rules, that’s information. The reality of the object is bound by its properties. Those properties exist independent of your observation. We live in a world where things exist independent of us, and those things exist because they have defined properties. Information is fundamental, observation is tertiary. This world isn’t in (Your) mind, this world is in God’s mind.

>>24529777
>physics are a set of rules
that’s already an interpretation. physics is just our way of describing regularities in how matter behaves. the apple falls because of gravity - and we invented the word 'gravity' after we saw things fall.

>>24529787
The information is “objects fall toward heavier objects” —not “I have observed this tendency.” The information preexisted the observation. You aren’t special for putting a name to it.

>>24529800
that is a description of how matter behaves, not a separate ‘thing’ floating above or behind the matter. it exists because matter behaves that way.

>>24529718
Noted

>>24529760
pitch and rhythm are also configurations. sound waves that create a melody are themselves configurational, with wavelength and amplitude and a waveform that can be expressed as a fourier series. all matter, being excitations of quantum fields, are themselves waveforms with configuration, information.

>>24529805
>a tomato is a tomato
And yet you still think you’re disagreeing with me

>>24529817
describing something doesn’t mean that description is the thing itself. the melody isn’t the music theory; the waveforms aren’t the ‘stuff’ we interact with directly. there’s still a difference between the map and the territory.

>>24529821
what came first the chicken or the egg

>>24529828
Eggs don’t make themselves tardyboi

>>24529855
no, the chicken lays them

>>24529857
You’re catching on quick buddy

>>24529859
argument there is one needs the other

>>24529870
Chicken doesn’t need the egg……….

>>24529879
how does the chicken come to be without the egg?

>>24529882
I’m not your biology teacher, just pay attention in school and you’ll figure it out kiddo

>>24529893
always reassuring to see someone duck the question like this

>>24529898
This isn’t /sci/, this is /lit/
You can learn all about evolution on the internet or just wait until your teachers teach it in science class

>>24529907
it's a rhetorical question. we’re talking about what ideas mean, not how to pass a test. one of the oldest questions known to man, and your answer is 'wait for science class'? bold.

>>24529916
Information and ideas are two different things from our perspective. Information exists independent of observation, while ideas are formed after observation. Ideas are our ways of understanding the information that we take in. The world exists independent of our observations of it, and the world exists as an amalgam of information. Matter is a set of definitions which delineate a specific local object. Matter is made of information, not of ideas.

>>24529936
definitions aren’t what things are made of - they’re how we talk about them

>>24529369 (OP)
Lmao nigga that's just coping to not confront the real world

>>24529945
Not true. The sky is blue no matter how you choose to describe it. There are objective truths in this world outside of your subjective purview.

>>24529957
funny, the sky where i am right now is black

>>24529967
That’s called “night”
It happens every so often
Don’t be afraid, it’ll be over soon

>>24529967
Didn't know you lived in Beijing

>>24529972
'blue’ and ‘night’ are ways we describe certain physical realities, like words in a dictionary record language but don’t create it.

>>24529975
egypt right now but i'm from ldn

>>24529977
I feel like you’re on the verge of a real breakthrough here

>>24529985
something like the apple doesn't depend on that piece of 'information' to exist? >>24529531

>>24529825
the map and the territory are different, correct. I'm not talking about the map though. the territory would still be itself, with its topography and landmarks, even without a map. and even if you flatten the landscape down to dirt, it would still be territory, it wouldn't be 'nothing', as how matter without configuration is nothing.

>>24529997
Why are you backtracking..? You were doing so well before

>>24530007
by saying the same thing as i said before?

>>24530003
without the territory, the map has no meaning

>>24530012
The reality of the apple depends on its size, shape, texture, color, etc. being present. The reality of the apple is independent of our observations or descriptions of it. You got so close, then backtracked on the fundamentality of information to the apple’s existence, reverting to a quasi-materialist Platonic dogma where the “apple-ness” is fundamental and its manifestation is only derivative. I don’t understand how you could come so close and then reflexively jolt back to an incoherent worldview.

>>24530025
where did i lose you? i believe what i emphasised is that those properties aren’t themselves ‘information’ in some fundamental metaphysical sense; they’re characteristics of matter.

>>24530032
Matter is our perception of a conglomerate of information. The information is fundamental, the matter is derivative. Information does not require observation to exist. Physical laws are an example of universally present information that does not require observation to exist. All matter is defined by its limitations and boundaries. No boundless object can physically exist. No physical object can exist without boundaries.

>>24530041
this is reversing cause and effect, n'est-ce pas?

>>24530059
I don’t speak French and no it’s not. Take a while to read and learn and try to understand before posting again.

>>24530063
how can information exist independently of a system to instantiate it. just because we can describe something doesn’t mean our description is the thing.
isn't it amazing how quickly ‘information is the foundation of reality’ turns into ‘lol stay in school’

>>24530069
The “system” is the universe as a whole, a creation in the mind of God. The information is fundamental to Him, not to you or me. We are like characters in His dreams, fragments of His mind splintered off and given agency to explore the world that He created for us.

>>24530075
saying the system is god’s mind doesn’t answer the question, it just shifts the problem of ‘what is fundamental’ into mythology

>>24530078
Fundamental is consciousness, just not yours or mine. We are little bits and pieces of it. Just like every other created thing. It’s not mythology, it’s the most basic and coherent description of our reality.

>>24530080
if everything is just ‘bits of consciousness,’ then the word becomes meaningless