/lit/ - Literature

They exist as an abstraction, but nothing more.

yes

>>4606622
No. It's all just one ghetto man, a giant gutter in outer space.

Not in a literal sense. I don't think there are actual perfect circles floating around on some higher plane we can only access by way of pure mathematic thought.

I think the notion of the forms puts the perfect cart before the ideal horse, so to speak.

>>4606622

No. Simply put, the Aristotelian criticism that the form of X, which shall be named Y, must then require some form Z that acts as the form of the quality that differentiates X and Y, and so on ad infinitum. This infinite regress produces an absurd becomes the reductio: each new form justifying the previous relationship in a sort of decision tree-like fashion.

>>4606628
What do you mean by exist?
By definition forms are abstract.

Only thing to believe.

Literally nobody does.
I guaran fucking tee you

Yeah man.

>>4606918
A friend of mine does.

>>4606622


dude, have you ever thought, like, what is the form of forms, man?

woooaaah.

the only way out of believing in forms is nominalism (giving up) or something more foolish

>>4607586

>foolish

Have a song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDtK7xUIDxk&feature=kp

>>4607600
The fact that so many books still name the Beatles "the greatest or most significant or most influential" rock band ever only tells you how far rock music still is from becoming a serious art. Jazz critics have long recognized that the greatest jazz musicians of all times are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times. Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe. Rock critics are still blinded by commercial success: the Beatles sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Jazz critics grow up listening to a lot of jazz music of the past, classical critics grow up listening to a lot of classical music of the past. Rock critics are often totally ignorant of the rock music of the past, they barely know the best sellers. No wonder they will think that the Beatles did anything worth of being saved.

>>4607639
You've listened to all four discs of Nuggets, haven't you?

>>4607600
absolutely not

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9WC-s1Auak

>>4607639

I try not to have prejudices against any form of art. If the work of someone tells me something about something, if I find it interesting, if it touches, or teaches me something, I appreciate it, and try to enjoy it as much as I can.

Here's some jazz for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8fnoVgNSvc

>>4607639
bad meme

i really and truly believe in the One courtesy of this kin of plato. emmanation is the only way i know of that can really explain the origin of things. if u wanna cum at me with big bang shit dont even bother

At least the meme triggered an excellent response. That album is legendary, and the answer pertinent. >>4607662

babbie's first plato

In the Gadamerian "asymptotic truth we are all seeking", yes

>>4607664
It'a called a copypasta, newfag

I'm a theist and my conception of God is pretty close to the platonic sense, as a transcendent embodiment of human virtues, highest being Love.

>>4607655
that is one of my favorite songs of all time. I used to listen to it night after night before I went to bed. I shit you not

>>4608728
the celer, I meant

Only as an extension of memetics. Beauty is a human construct, the conception of beautiful is purely you own, but the average of society's beauties looks plain.

>>4606622
I believe in object oriented programming.

And I believe in the instantiation of concrete objects from abstract blueprints.

This happens in our DNA. One might say that nature doesn't divide things into clear categories the way we do: That nature doesn't clearly delineate where a torso ends and a limb begins, that it's a gradual fade. This is true to an extent...

...but to another extent nature DOES delineate such things, in complicated information structures, mind you.

In our DNA, there are sets of genes, hox genes, whose function is to build structures like legs and arms and eyeballs. Watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sjwlxQ_6LI&t=1m35s

try to make it from 1:35 to 7:30.

Nature developed in such a way (whether designed by a God or not, that's not what I'm here to talk about) that complex structures like legs and arms are understood as abstract forms, and the genes responsible for creating those abstract forms can be traded across HIGHLY different species, like fruit flies and mice. The hox gene for building an eyeball in a mouse can also build an eyeball in a fruit fly, even though anatomically they are completely different from each other.

The abstract category "eye" however, is still understood, even across species.

This isn't exactly evidence for plato's idea of forms, but it does show that physical reality seems to be manifesting from abstract information structures which are programmed onto the tiniest pieces of physical reality.

Our genes behave like object oriented programming, and object oriented programming is the instantiation of concrete objects from abstract blueprints: an idea which is very similar to one plato proposed in a toga long before computer science or genetics was even a thing.

It is uncannily similar to Democritus proposing atoms (albeit with the wrong attributes) millennia before physicists confirmed the existence of atoms through experimentation.

Brilliant humans get hunches like these because they ponder long on observed reality and try to wind their way back to its fundamenetal influences.

>>4611703
>>4611703
shamelessly asking what people think of my post, it's the only one in this thread that actually takes scientific evidence into account when giving an assessment of forms.

I remember thinking about plato's forms (and universals) when I first learned about hox genes, I want to know whether you guys have heard about them before. Because I find it amazing that tiny pieces of proteins can have entire volumes written inside them on how to construct complicated structures consisting of thousands of cells, each filled with the very sort of DNA that did the encoding in the first place.

sad