World of Forms Revisited

My friend Tim responded to my world of forms post, and I wanted to respond to his comment.

He said: "I fail to see how a world of forms (supernatural/extraplanar) is based on a material world of observation. Correct me if I am mistaken, but I believe Pluto was under the impression we all came from the same place and will wind up in the same place, thusly, world of forms. My true question is this; With which part of forms do you agree and with which part of forms do you argue? (As you cannot say each of our forms is different and then say you are still in favor of forms as a concept)"

So first of all Plato doesn't think his world of forms is a physical place, as you say, but everything in this world as we know it (i.e., the things we see) are all manifestations and copies of those things in the world of forms.

As far as what exactly I'm saying, I'm refuting his concept of a single immaterial world of forms from which all things originate based upon two things. First of all, he says that a thing is more beautiful the closer it is to the actual form from which it is derived. For example, one cat is more beatiful from a second because the the first cast is closer to the perfect ideal form of cat (regardless of the fact that this ideal form of cat is not material). And then my second point is that I think Plato disregarded the fact that Beauty is a subjective thing. He of course would argue that it is not, that only philosophers who have "seen" the world of forms can know what is beautiful, but I think this is ignoring how things work in the real world (as Plato many times seemed wont to do, what with his idealistic beliefs). So since beauty is a subjective thing, and beauty is a reflection of the world of forms, I believe that each and every person has their own "world of forms." Essentially, I'm saying that at least beauty, and I think some other things but I will not get into those at this moment, is subjective and that from this I conclude that there is not singular world of forms as Plato describes it.

At least I think that's what I'm saying.

Aquinas' Fifth Way

St. Thomas Aquinas had five proofs for the existence of God (and by God he means a full Judeochristian, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient God). They all reside in his Summa Theologica in the first book if you're interested in reading all of them. Today I will explain the fifth and hopefully refute it as a proof for the full Judeochristian God.

His fifth way is very similar to Intelligent Design but not quite. Rather than saying that everything is so orderly, he instead shows that everything in the universe acts toward an end, i.e., everything in the universe has some sort of purpose that it pursues. For example, trees grow and attempt to populate and eat sunshine, etc., while mushrooms eat dead trees and grow and try to spread their fungus, etc. His argument then proceeds to the point that unintelligent things (such as trees and mushrooms) cannot possibly acts toward an end without being guided by something, for that is the definition of unintelligent things: they have no thoughts to guide them toward a purpose. Thus, Aquinas says, there must be some intelligent being that guides these things toward an end, and this being must be God.

First, I ask this question: what is the definition of a tree? or What does it mean for something to be a tree? This is not it exactly, but something generally along the lines of a plant that grows extremely tall, eats sunshine, attempts to populate, etc. So it is thus in the definition of being a tree that it has an end; if it did not have these ends or purposes, it would not be called a tree. Aquinas argue that is has these ends only if given it by something intelligent, rather than having been created by chance or happenstance. This idea of chance is something he doesn't really ever get into, so I'll just ignore it for now and assume that he's correct that it can only be done by design by an intelligent being.

So now I ask this: Why does this thing, this being that created trees have to be a omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and all loving? To me, it only gives us, if you accept that it was created by design, a being that is more powerful than humans are, a being that can create things on a whim, possibly from nothing. I see no reason to ascribe to this being the attributes of a Judeochristian God, but rather only a god, i.e., a being that is more powerful than humans are. It can certainly be intelligent, if you agree with Aquinas that you need an intelligent designer. However, I simply cannot see how it necessitates a full, Judeochristian concept of God.

World of Forms, Part 2

As I said yesterday, Plato ascribes beauty as the relationship of one thing to the form upon which is it based. The closer it is to the pure form, the more beautiful it is.

I agree with this, but I want to add something as well. It seems to me that beauty is a subjective thing when it comes down to it. Things that I find beautiful are much different than things that other people find beautiful. Additionally, the things that people find beautiful are constantly changing, that is, what people might find beautiful today may not be what they find beautiful tomorrow.

So how do we rectify having beauty be subjective while having a world of forms? I believe that each person has, due to a combination of nature and nurture (i.e. genetics and environment), their own world of forms that they create. Additionally, this world is constantly in flux. This makes a lot of sense to me, especially when you think about childhood development. Children will commonly group things together until told otherwise. For example, a small child might call a cow a dog, because it sees that the cow has four legs and a small tail, just as a dog does. However, once corrected, the child will then understand the difference between cow and dog, and thus the two forms are distinguished in his or her mind.

Of course, Plato could come back and say that beauty is not subjective, that there is only one world of forms, and those who disagree with the beauty of the real world of forms are not actually seeing beauty. But to me this seems poppycock: every single person has different perceptions of beauty, and as much as Plato liked to play up the importance of philosophers, we are not that important and all knowing I have to admit. If there is an objective beauty, it would be extremely difficult to determine what it would be, seeing as in a real world application there are so many different opinions. I do not think that simply because Plato was a philosopher did he know what the real world of forms was like and thus know "real" beauty.

World of Forms, Part 1

So I'm going to stray off the elitist path for a while to discuss, mainly because I'm not getting anywhere substantial with my theory. Instead, I'm going to discuss Plato, mainly his idea of the world of forms. Today I'll give a brief summary and tomorrow I'll discuss my opinion of this view.

Plato believes that everything in the world is merely a copy of some greater, grander perfect idea of that given thing. For example, all cats are merely copies of this perfect idea of "catness", or the perfect "cat." Also, all chairs are merely copies of the perfect idea of "chairness", or the perfect "chair." He uses the analogy of the cave to explain this. Imagine you are chained to a wall, with your back to the wall, in such a fashion that you cannot turn around. Between you and the wall there is a fire (that does not hurt you in any way shape or form - it's far enough away). Between you and the fire are all the perfect images of the world, such that all you see are the shadows of these images on the wall in front of you. This is the way the real world is. We only see shadows of the true perfect things, and these true and perfect things are all kept in the world of forms.

Now he takes this one step further and says that beauty is a property of items based on their closeness in perfection to the perfect idea. For example, the closer a chair is to the perfect idea of chair, the more beautiful it is. This is the point that I will argue tomorrow.

It's been a while....

So it's been a while since I posted, and a lot has happened, mainly, people have commented on my blog. I've read them all, and I really wanted to respond to two of the comments.

First off is this one, posted by a former professor of mine (named Vole here) about the ice cream scoop situation. "It's not so clear to me that the elitist will go for five scoops at once. It depends on what we're being elite about. If the elitist ideal is to strive for the best life overall, then a scoop a day is likely to be better (because of diminishing marginal returns, you get more overall utility by spreading it out.) Only if an elitist insists the aim is peak happiness within a life, rather than the best life overall, will 5 today, none tomorrow be the way to go. We could insist on the latter interpretation of elitism - but why?"

Well, the main thing is I wish to be a more pure elitist, and choosing the former in your comment is being more of an average elitist. As long as the average of the lifetime has the highest peak value, it's the best. To me, this is dissatisfying. I would much prefer having a life with a single peak moment that far outshines any other moment. So until it comes to my attention that this stronger view has a huge problem with it (other than the problems already associated with any sort of elitist view) then I will attempt to propone it.

Additionally, Mathieu made some comments about sacrifice, saying that I was incorrect in my usage of the term. He says "to sacrifice means to give up a value for a disvalue." First of all, I'm not entirely certain that this is true due to the fact that value is a scale, not a dichotomy. You can have two things that you value, but you might value one of them moreso than the other. In choosing to do the one that you value less, it's not choosing a disvalue, it's simply choosing something that you value less. If this is what you meant by disvalue, I apologize, but I think of disvalue as something that is not valued at all. So to me, then, a sacrifice is choosing something of less value in your life over something of more value to you when you are presented with both options. And so in my example (in which I stipulate that the test is very important), the student values football (or whatever sport he might wish to play) more than he values studying. So when he chooses studying over football, he is making a sacrifice.

Reading Plato

I'm taking a break for a few days on the blog in case you didn't notice. Reading some Plato (the original elitist). Additionally, life is getting busy.

Which is preferred?

I was recently talking with a friend of mine, and I was attempting to explain my theory. I found a rather apt analogy for it.

Imagine you have won a prize: 5 scoops of ice cream. For the sake of the argument, let's say that 5 scoops is exactly the amount to fill you up (i.e., you won't get overly stuffed by eating 5 scoops at once but instead will be quite satisfied). Now you have a choice. You may either have one scoop of ice cream every day for 5 days or you may have 5 scoops of ice cream at once (remember that 5 scoops of ice cream will not make you feel disgusting). Which do you choose?

In talking with my friend, I found that I was clearly of a mindset to have 5 scoops of ice cream at once, and this is the sort of choice that elitism propones. It has a very high peak value at one point by sacrificing having anything at any other time. It's kind of a "go out with a bang" mentality, or as another of my friends would say, "go big or go home."

Now let's change the example slightly. Let's say that your second option is now to give one scoop of ice cream each to four other people (keeping one for yourself). Also, let's stipulate for this argument that the combined happiness/joy/wellbeing/whathaveyou of all five people having one scoop of ice cream is lower than that of you having 5 scoops of ice cream. To put numbers to it, let's say you eating 5 scoops of ice cream gives you a wellbeing of 6 and each person would get a wellbeing of 1 by eating one scoop of ice cream, thus totalling 5 (which is less than 6, of course). Now which do you choose?

The elitist (and myself) would still propone eating all 5 scoops yourself, especiallys ince even though the total of spreading out the ice cream is 5, it's actually 5 instances of a wellbeing of 1, which is far less desirable in an elitist's eyes. This seems plausible to me. However, I may be a bit biased.