4. Does a world of forms exist separately from the world of concrete, individual things?

Question

4. Does a world of forms exist separately from the world of concrete, individual things?

Answer 1

No, and no, and yes.

I don't think there's any broad case to be made for a Platonic treatment of universals as such.

Nor do I think its helpful to morality to think of virtues as disembodied essences -- Justice, Courage, Temperance, the Good.

On the third hand, there IS a strong case to be made that numbers and the equations made from them ought to be considered as an independent world, which mathematicians discover rather than invent.

This case is based largely on the experiences reported to us by the greatest mathematicians since the days of Pythagoras.

Heinrich Hertz put it well. "One cannot escape the feeling that these mathematical formulae have an independent existence and an intelligence of their own, that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoverers, that we get more out of them than we originally put into them."

Who was Hertz that we should pay heed to his views on math? A physicist who obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Berlin in 1880, and whose work helped refine the mathematical theory of electromagnetism developed before him by Faraday and Maxwell. He earned his bones in terms of the relationship between physical reality and abstract formulae employed to describe it. If he believed (as have many others of equal eminence) that the formulae have an independent sort of existence, this isn't testimony that those of us who have shown less facility in their use than he should take lightly!

Answer 2

Well - what does it mean by exist? If you answer that... what is existence... you will know what might and what might not exist.

Answer 3

No. "Forms" are the shape taken by matter, but there is no reification of such things as Kant's noumena or Plato's "Ideas." Unless like Plato and Kant your epistemological precepts are mystic enough to make you think they exist.

But that would be simply "unsubstantiated" belief, wouldn't it, the same as belief in a deity.

Which leads to the conclusion that since many believe in a diety, many could believe in the reification of noumena and forms.

Answer 4

Well, yes the forms, the 'Platonic forms', as they appear in quantifiable 'extracts' do exist, whether in some sort of sixth-D quality, barely schematized, form.  A little more (just a little) self-explanatory is the 5-D, the world, in the furthest reaches of good and evil axes, a bipolarity of essences and pure to substantiation.  (Not to be confused with a presidential declaration, vis-a-vis, the Axis of Evil.  The president's list is not conclusive or exhaustive, or in any way, shape or form,  realistically operative to understanding)

My personal experience, not to be taken wholly or definitively exhaustive, by way of faith in unquantifiable inside-outing, or all-space-filling qualities, break down in discrete packages as per RB Fuller, tied forever to their own abstractive values with previously uncharacteristic and perfect qualities, variously essentially and existentially ideals of form.

Answer 5

a form cannot exist without also being a certain quality. for example, the form/shape of a triangle cannot exist without also being a certain color. whereas its color is its quality.

Answer 6

The idea of forms has no basis in fact.

Answer 7

Jim the Fee, here

the "world of forms" - are we dicussing thoughts about what to do with the concrete, hands on, items that our thoughts finally brought into being?  It would seem that most everything that man/woman has invented had to have existed as a thought in the world of forms.  Then materials were put into the mix and a new invention was the end result.

So, it is safe to assume that everthing that we have accomplished on this planet as senitent beings began in the world of forms (the thoughts, ideas, 'what if....', guesses)

about that "thing" before the thing came into being.

The problem is - how do we get to the world of forms?

Maybe it happens in our dream states.  Maybe it is a Eureka

event?  May be it is an apple falling on a head and the person who was struck thought "what just happened!!"

So the two worlds intertwine, swirling in a magnificent dance

of creativity and man/woman is the better or the worse for it!!!

And that is all I have to say about that!

Cheers,

Jim the Fee