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Does the idea of matter have a form?

Plato opposes the «IDEA» that has a form and is always perfect to the «MATTER» which is formless and always imperfect.

The problem is that, then, he must have an «idea of matter».

But the idea of matter must be formless, because ideas are perfect. But then we have an idea that is formless, and it taints the form of the realm of ideas.

Either ideas and matter never ever touch (and then the distinction is utter useless, for it makes no difference whatsoever) or their touching melts the very division (and thus makes it useless a fortiori).

Platonism is useless.

5 Comments

  1. I’m actually pretty startled that i had never heard this argument before, in a way it is so straightforward, someone must have thought that before….

  2. “And let me illustrate what i mean by most stupid level of epistemology. A frequent claim of realists is that if “There is no truth” was true than it would be false, etc. Word games. The very thing they claim the idea of “truth” guards against, and in almost the same phrase they condemn word games they go around playing one from the very “Intro do Word-Games 101″ manual. And what is bad is not that they are at word games, but that they are at such naive, boring, dumb, uncreative ones.” – You in Describing Reality (but you already know that)

    This post of yours might (or definitely) subscribe to the same Word Games you bashed in your previous post. You might want to clarify your position.

  3. Not at all.

    No matter what are the words used, Platonism is all about trusting something. You might call it reason, or intellect, or mind, or ideas. Platonists do believe those to be perfect, as opposed to world- experience- matter. Beyond the words, Platonism is about this basic act of trust, or conversely distrust.

    The problem is that they must use the trusted thing to acknowledge the untrusted one. And it goes against their rules. Not mine.

    On a related note, i have not criticized word games, i have criticized the naive and crude state of the games played by realists.

    • I wasn’t talking about what Platonism is, but how you specifically argued against it (which was problematic because you argued against your own method of arguing). But that’s okay, your last line clarified the contradiction (kind of).


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