Ur-Platonism
Posted: Fri May 21, 2021 7:09 pm
I’m interested what you guys think of this attempt to categorise philosophies into two camps. Although it’s of course on over generalisation, it’s essentially a wider Platonic umbrella versus a nominalist/naturalist umbrella.
One thing I find interesting is that Bernardo often calls himself a naturalist. One definition of the naturalist position is that “all knowledge of the universe falls within the pale of scientific investigation”.
For me this is quite a useful distinction between philosophies. The naturalist camp is the reason we have physicalism. Maybe Bernardo calls himself a naturalist so that he can contest physicalism on it’s own ground so to speak, and this does give it a clarity and rationality that is a strength. However this idea that science can be applied outside the ‘world of representation’ is one of the things I feel uncomfortable about in some of the discussions here. It seems to me that’s like building a shed with hammers and nails, and the trying to paint it with hammers and nails. Once you get to philosophy, reductionism and empiricism seem to take the heart out out of our capacity to reason. Instead for good philosophy, instead of breaking things into the smallest bits (which is fine for science, because you have a pre-existing canvas which is matter), you need to establish a wider frame that everything else relates to.
I would also say that it then leads to mistaken assumptions about god, although I don’t expect anyone here to agree to that. But I am interested what people think about this broad division into to ‘camps’…
https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2019/1 ... e.html?m=1In From Plato to Platonism, he suggests that the common core of “Ur-Platonism” can be characterized in negative terms, as a conjunction of five “antis”: anti-materialism, anti-mechanism, anti-nominalism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism. Together these elements make up a sixth “anti-,” namely anti-naturalism […]
In Aristotle and Other Platonists, Gerson proposed a positive characterization of the tradition, as comprising seven key themes: 1. The universe has a systematic unity; 2. This unity reflects an explanatory hierarchy and in particular a “top-down” approach to explanation (as opposed to the “bottom-up” approach of naturalism), especially in the two key respects that the simple is prior to the complex and the intelligible is prior to the sensible; 3. The divine constitutes an irreducible explanatory category, and is to be conceived of in personal terms (even if in some Ur-Platonist thinkers the personal aspect is highly attenuated); 4. The psychological also constitutes an irreducible explanatory category; 5. Persons are part of the hierarchy and their happiness consists in recovering a lost position within it, in a way that can be described as “becoming like God”; 6. Moral and aesthetic value is to be analyzed by reference to this metaphysical hierarchy; and 7. The epistemological order is contained with this metaphysical order.
One thing I find interesting is that Bernardo often calls himself a naturalist. One definition of the naturalist position is that “all knowledge of the universe falls within the pale of scientific investigation”.
For me this is quite a useful distinction between philosophies. The naturalist camp is the reason we have physicalism. Maybe Bernardo calls himself a naturalist so that he can contest physicalism on it’s own ground so to speak, and this does give it a clarity and rationality that is a strength. However this idea that science can be applied outside the ‘world of representation’ is one of the things I feel uncomfortable about in some of the discussions here. It seems to me that’s like building a shed with hammers and nails, and the trying to paint it with hammers and nails. Once you get to philosophy, reductionism and empiricism seem to take the heart out out of our capacity to reason. Instead for good philosophy, instead of breaking things into the smallest bits (which is fine for science, because you have a pre-existing canvas which is matter), you need to establish a wider frame that everything else relates to.
I would also say that it then leads to mistaken assumptions about god, although I don’t expect anyone here to agree to that. But I am interested what people think about this broad division into to ‘camps’…