Date: Sun, 10 Nov 1996 20:00:05 -0800 (PST)
From: LH Engelskirchen <lhengels-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: BHA: platonic forms


 
 
I still am not persuaded by Tobin's effort to establish the
empirical as part of the actual nor by his attempt to establish the
meaningful as a separate ontological domain.  I'll speak to these
complicated points as best I can below, but I think we've reached
the point where we should leave this exchange -- which has been
enormously fruitful -- on the table and continue with the reading. 
I'm sure that as we read we will confront it again and again and
can continue to thrash out our differences in hope of reaching
common accord.  I do not propose we abandon the conversation.  I
propose we evaluate it in light of our ongoing progress.
 
So my vote is to have Hans E post the next reading.
 
Or perhaps he can wait just an eyeblink for us to review the
chapter we have concluded and allow anyone to offer observations on
the chapter as a whole.  In particular I think it would be
worthwhile for all interested in the current exchange to review the
chapter we have been over with an eye to what light it sheds on
Tobin's proposals.
 
* * *
 
Triangles.
 
"In what sense," Michael asks, "would one wish to say of any
concepts that they were not 'real?'"  
 
In the sense Platonic forms are supposed to be real.  
 
The Santa Claus you saw was real.  He was even a real Santa Claus. 
He was not an ageless plump jolly gnome with a bunch of flying
reindeer and a toy shop at the North Pole.  (Question:  what is the
first thing that comes to your mind when you think of the
particular red that is the color of Santa's coat? . . . . . . . .
Classic Coke?  You're right.  Before the early thirties or so,
Santa came in all manner of colored garments, green, etc.  Then
Coke ran an advertising campaign . . . which all goes to prove that
it took Coca Cola capitalism to make Santa real!)
 
I think what first has to be distinguished is logical connection
and the connection of things.  Mathematical proofs are certainly
real.  They record an activity of thought.  They may correspond or
fail to correspond to the rules of thought they presuppose. 
Because of referential detachment, the minute I announce a logical
proposition, it becomes part of the intransitive domain.  It can be
evaluated, etc.  If I say, "all men are mortal, Socrates is a man,
Socrates is mortal," I'm not usually saying anything about a figure
who lived in ancient Greece.  Instead, I describe a process of
thought.  Thought is activity.  It takes time and energy.  But the
concept of a dog doesn't bark.  In order to transform nature, apart
>from telekinesis, ideas must be embodied in material action. 
Theory becomes a material force when it is seized by the working
class.  Reasons become causes in the actions of individuals.  
 
So that makes two ways in which ideas can be real -- by virtue of
referential detachment they may become part of the intransitive
domain and themselves be studied by a science of the way people
think.  Secondly, they can become manifest as the causes of
actions.
 
What they cannot be is in themselves part of a separate meaningful
domain.  
 
Here, I think folks have to grapple with the passage from the
POSSIBILITY OF NATURALISM that I quoted a couple of times.  The
passage is difficult, I grant you; I am not convinced it is
unclear.  In any event, the point made in that passage -- that the
objects of philosophy's discourse have no existence, belong to no
ontological domain separate from the reality studied by science --
has already been developed in the chapter from RTS that we have
just concluded.  Compare with the assertion in PON that the objects
of philosophy's discourse, concepts, are only proxy referential
because they refer not to things directly, but just to the things
studied by science, with the assertion at p. 36 of RTS that 
 
"Ontology, it should be stressed, does not have as its subject
matter a world apart from that investigated by science."
 
Ontology does not study Platonic Forms.
 
"Rather, its subject matter just is that world, considered from the
point of view of what can be established about it by philosophical
argument."  
 
Chris's point about stars is important -- what looks like a
triangle may not be so at all.  Now the constellations, I'm told,
are an artifact of our imagination, ie the stars are a product of
random distribution in the heavens.  What this means, in relation
to Chris's point, is that the concept of a triangle, which is a
product of our activity of thought, appears to express a property
of three stars in the heaven -- a way they relate to one another. 
But as we learn more about the heavens, we find this isn't so at
all.  We proposed a way of expressing the relations of objects
which science studies.  We didn't discover the relation as an
object in a separate ontological domain from the stars themselves. 
It turns out we were wrong.  The concept was in error.  It has
reality as a product of thought, an intransitive existence, and we
can study the history of our error.  But whether true or false the
concept as such and before referential detachment gives it an
intransitive existence does not express a dimension of being
separate from the properties of the stars it is meant to express. 
 Actually, the triangle might work in navigation.  In that context
it expresses a relationship which is real among those sources of
light and observers on earth.  But the relationship does not exist
in an ontological domain distinct from these entities.
 
Howard


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