Also, if wave functions aren’t properly characterized as Platonic, what Greek philosopher’s name should be used to characterize them? Perhaps Legolas? Or Gimli?
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Let me turn that around:
Also, if [you] aren’t properly characterized as Platonic, what Greek philosopher’s name should be used to characterize [you]?
Do you identify as Aristotilian, Pythagorian, or perhaps Socratic? 
But on a more serious note, further reading confirms that Platonic Forms are meant to eternal and immutable.
Let us do a further thought experiment. Imagine a chocolate bar. It has a quantum wave form/quantum system, so has a quantum wave function. You break a piece of chocolate off ther bar, and eat it. You have altered the system, and thus the wave function, of the bar. You continue to eat the bar, and eventually chew and swallow the last piece. The chocolate bar, and thus its quantum wave function, no longer exist – all that exists is a modification to the quantum wave function of your body, and more specifically your digestive system.
Quantum wave functions are neither eternal nor immutable – further evidence that they are not Platonic Forms.
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@Tim sees:
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No mention of platonic forms in either @Meerkat’s quote or their latest (now hidden) post more generally.
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Likewise no mention of quantum wave functions having INDEPENDENT existence.
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Likewise no mention of quantum wave functions being either eternal or immutable.
Thus @Meerkat_SK5’s latest post would appear to be ENTIRELY OFF-TOPIC!
For the avoidance of further doubt:
It occurs to me that a concise definition or list of properties of a ‘Platonic Form’ would be useful at this point. I am however finding it hard to put my hands on one. This may be because philosophers are seldom concise, but may also be because Plato himself apparently merely assumed, but never formally defined, the concept in his dialogues, and that the concept apparently differs between dialogue and dialogue.
The generally agreed properties of a Platonic Form would appear to be:
- Perfection (they are the ideal of the object)
- Timelessness (they exist outside time)
- Immutability (a necessary consequence of being perfect and timeless)
- Independent existence (they exist independently of the imperfect physical exemplars of their form)
Therefore, in order for something (e.g. a quantum wave function) to count as “scientific evidence for the existence of platonic forms”, scientific evidence would need to be presented that this ‘something’ has all these properties.
To avoid being off-topic, a post will either need to (i) explicitly address platonic forms or (ii) explicitly address these properties.
As these are also elements of mere abstraction, it appears to me that there is the additional burden of defining what distinguishes some physical description as a platonic ideal.
So when I bring evidence, it must mention the term “Platonism” or else it is not evidence. Alright, so be it:
The choice of classical states in OR events are influenced by (resonate with) what Penrose termed Platonic values embedded in the fine scale structure of the universe. The qualitative feeling of each quale, ie, good, bad, or otherwise, would depend on resonance and geometry of specific spacetime separations with deeper, Platonic levels of the universe. Most significantly, unlike the Copenhagen interpretation in which consciousness causes collapse, Penrose OR proposes that collapse causes consciousness (or that collapse is consciousness)
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…As described in the Anthropic principle (AP), the universe is fine-tuned for consciousness and life. But how and why these key values are so precise are unknown, and approached by several versions of the AP. In strong AP (Barrow and Tipler, 1986), the universe is somehow compelled to harbor and enable consciousness. The weak AP (Carter, 1974) suggests there exist multiple universes, and that only this particular one harbors conscious beings able to ponder the question. The weak AP is often aligned with MWI or multiverse concepts. Penrose OR avoids the need for MWI and supports strong AP, suggesting that over aeons, dimensionless constants defining the universe evolved and self-organized to optimize life, qualia, and consciousness.
…However in Penrose OR the choices (and quality of subjective experience) are influenced by resonate with what Penrose called noncomputable Platonic values embedded in the fine scale structure of spacetime geometry.
These Platonic values, patterns, or vibrations in the makeup of the universe, may encode qualia, and pertain to mathematics, geometry, ethics, and aesthetics, and the 20 or so dimensionless constants governing the universe. Ch20-9780124201903_aq 1…1 (galileocommission.org)
And this as well:
…when Weinberg promotes a “realist” interpretation of quantum mechanics, in which “the wave function is the representative of physical reality,” he is implying that the artifacts theorists include in their models, such as quantum fields, are the ultimate ingredients of reality. In a 2012 Scientific American article theoretical physicist David Tong goes even further than Weinberg in arguing that the particles we actually observe in experiments are illusions and those physicists who say they are fundamental are disingenuous:
“Physicists routinely teach that the building blocks of nature are discrete particles such as the electron or quark. That is a lie. The building blocks of our theories are not particles but fields: continuous, fluidlike objects spread throughout space.”
This view is explicitly philosophical, and accepting it uncritically makes for bad philosophical thinking. Weinberg and Tong, in fact, are expressing a platonic view of reality commonly held by many theoretical physicists and mathematicians. They are taking their equations and model as existing on one-to-one correspondence with the ultimate nature of reality.
…We will use platonism with a lower-case “p” here to refer to the belief that the objects within the models of theoretical physics constitute elements of reality, but these models are not based on pure thought, which is Platonism with a capital “P,” but fashioned to describe and predict observations.
Many physicists have uncritically adopted platonic realism as their personal interpretation of the meaning of physics. This not inconsequential because it associates a reality that lies beyond the senses with the cognitive tools humans use to describe observations… Physicists Are Philosophers, Too - Scientific American
What lie? Physicists have understood fields as the underlying reality since before Feynman.
Anyways, fields are no more platonic than particles.
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Are you unable to read?
What part of
… did you fail to comprehend?
Mere assertion, citing no scientific evidence – so irrelevant!
Makes no mention of Platonic forms or their properties (let alone scientific evidence), therefore off-topic!
Mere assertion, citing no scientific evidence – so irrelevant!
Mere assertion, citing no scientific evidence – so irrelevant!
I.e. quantum woo, from Stuart Hameroff, a “crackpot” anesthesiologist, with no expertise in quantum physics.
Makes no mention of Platonic forms or their properties (let alone scientific evidence), therefore off-topic!
Makes no mention of Platonic forms or their properties (let alone scientific evidence), therefore off-topic!
No notation to indicate that this is a direct quote, so
this is plagiarism!
[Addendum: plagiarism corrected by moderator action.]
It also offers no “scientific evidence for the existence of platonic forms”, so is irrelevant!
I did not know that you changed the rules midway through this thread.
Keep in mind, Platonism (traditional) and platonic idealism are NOT the same thing because Plato was a dualist, which is not the same thing as idealism. Dualism is more along the lines of quantum woo and philosophy, which is what the properties you listed suggests.
In that case, I agree with @structureoftruth and @Eddie. There is no way to prove or disprove traditional Platonism with a capital “P” nor can anyone confirm/disconfirm all those properties at once.
In contrast, I was just trying to provide support for platonic idealism as mentioned in the original post.
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No @Meerkat_SK5.
I merely clarified the rules in response to your endless irrelevant bullshit.
That the properties of platonic forms are relevant is implicit in my OP when I stated:
If something is not a property of platonic forms then it is clearly not relevant to this question.
I would further point out that it was you who raised the issue of the properties of platonic forms, in this post, so you can have no credible objection to this clarification.
Given that platonic forms have properties, to provide “scientific evidence” that something is a “platonic form” you MUST demonstrate that this thing has these properties.
Let’s start with immutability.
To provide “scientific evidence” that quantum wave functions are “platonic forms” you MUST provide scientific evidence that quantum wave functions are immutable. (Then you will need to provide scientific evidence for the other properties.)
Can you provide scientific evidence for this?
If not, then everything you have to say is irrelevant.
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No, because ,before this, your entire OP was on platonic idealism and the Orch-OR theory. So this gave the impression that you wanted scientific evidence for specifically platonic idealism rather than traditional Platonism.
I don’t want to get involved in a discussion of whether a certain way of looking at wave functions is “Platonic” or even “platonic”. The term “Platonic”/“platonic” is slippery and used in all kinds of ways, some of them only loosely connected with Plato’s writings. Sometimes, especially when used by people whose main background is scientific rather than philosophical but who have some interest in philosophy, it seems to be used very broadly, so that almost any broad mathematical feature of nature indicates that reality is “Platonic”. In that sense, one could argue that all of modern natural science, from Galileo through to quantum theory, is a “Platonic” endeavor. But then, the view that everything in nature has a fundamentally mathematical structure might just as easily and even more accurately be called “Pythagorean”. Since the word “Platonic/platonic” is used so elastically, it often makes discussions less clear rather than more clear.
Whether Plato was actually a dualist is debatable. Certainly in some of his writings he sounds dualist, but in others he doesn’t. And in any case, he doesn’t write in his own name, but presents various views in the mouths of characters in his Dialogues, which makes it uncertain when we are hearing Plato’s own view. Further, it depends on how one defines “dualism” – another slippery term. Certainly popular Platonism tends to be dualistic, in the sense of affirming a “soul” separable from the body. Whether Plato was actually a Platonist in that sense remains a matter of debate for a number of Plato scholars.
As for “idealism”, that’s another term that is slippery. There are philosophers called “idealists” who don’t endorse “Plato’s theory of Ideas” as usually formulated. Yet under some meanings of “idealism” it’s possible to be both a Platonist and and idealist, and even a dualist as well.
Sources like the Stanford Encyclopedia are fine to get one started on such topics, but they shouldn’t be treated as the final word on anything. Philosophical vocabulary is constantly changing, and the only way to be sure one is on the same page with someone else is to ask: “What do you mean by dualism?” “Could you define the term ‘idealism’ for me?” “How are you using “Platonic” here?” etc.
I’m less interested in the question whether or not quantum theory or some other modern theory is “Platonic” or “idealistic” or “dualistic” than in whether or not it’s true, i.e., an accurate description of what nature is really like. If it’s true, or at least plausibly true, or has much empirical confirmation, or is heuristically fruitful, etc., those are more important concerns that attaching “ism” labels to it.
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I wish I could answer your questions but I am afraid it would be deemed off-topic by Tim and therefore flagged. @Tim has clarified his response in post 24.
Does Tim now have authority to stop you from posting? Has he been promoted to moderator? If not, you should just post what you want to post, and ignore him.
I’ve many times started discussions here, and begged people to stop going off-topic and stick to the question I asked, but no one has ever listened to me, and no moderator has ever stepped in to bring people into line. And Tim never, in any of those cases, jumped in to tell others to stay on the topic I introduced. So if he’s complaining about off-topic posts, he’s not in a credible position.
Balderdash!
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You have FAILED to delineate a meaningful difference between “Platonism (traditional) and platonic idealism”, and have in fact failed to even mention this purported difference in your months (years?) of vacuous blather about platonism until four hours ago.
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My OP concluded with a question about platonic forms, and my replies to you have addressed the properties of platonic forms – so I am clearly not swapping between platonic idealism and traditional Platonism (however you wish to define the two).
(Parenthetically, I could not find any indication of any widely-accepted delineation between “traditional platonism” and “platonic idealism”. It also seems to me that “platonic idealism” would seem to be a form of dualism.)
Now that we have @Meerkat_SK5’s dose of irrelevant blather out of the way, I will return to asking that they
answer the damn question:
I’ll comment on what I assume to be Penrose’s thinking about this.
Penrose seems to believe that human mathematicians have abilities that computer systems cannot have. That’s pretty much the basis for his book “The Emperor’s New Mind.” This view of Penrose has been challenged, but not actually disproved. It’s probably not the kind of idea that can be disproved.
Penrose is a mathematical Platonist, and his position seems to be that it is this Platonism that makes the difference that he believes he can see between mathematicians and computer systems.
I can see another possible difference between computers and mathematicians. Mathematicians use a lot of geometric thinking.
Computers can do axiomatic geometry. Once the geometry is axiomatized, it becomes a logic problem. And computers do very well at logic problems. However, coming up with suitable axioms itself requires some geometric thinking. And that’s where mathematicians may have abilities that computers lack.
As I see it, geometric thinking builds on our human experience of interacting with the world. And the ability to interact with the world comes from our evolutionary history.
To me, it seems entirely reasonable that our consciousness grows out of our abilities to interact with the world. And that seems far more likely than that it depends of Platonism.
Yes, I would think the link between “human mathematicians hav[ing] abilities that computer systems cannot have” and platonism to be rather tenuous – though I have not read Penrose’s book.
I simply chose the quote as the first I came across of Penrose’s solo work (as opposed to Penrose’s work in concert with Hameroff) using platonic language, in order to assure myself that the language in their combined work wasn’t simply Hameroff’s. It is, I suppose, possible that Penrose is only platonic in his thinking with respect to mathematics, but not physics – but that seems unlikely under the circumstances.
What is Reality?
Realism is the view point that external things are real and exist independently of mind in the form of either materialism or idealism. Materialism is the viewpoint that material things shape our ideas and ideologies. In contrast, idealism states that ideas come first and then changes in material things are pursued in accordance with those ideas.
Substance dualism is the view that material things and ideas are both fundamental substances of existence (I.e. supernatural vs natural) Furthermore, this viewpoint states that the mental can exist outside of the body, and the body cannot. Where the immortal souls occupy an independent realm of existence distinct from that of the physical world.
I am using it the same way that mainstream scientists used it for their theories:
In the reputable online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Mark Balaguer defines platonism as follows:
“Platonism is the view that there exist [in ultimate reality] such things as abstract objects—where an abstract object is an object that does not exist in space or time and which is therefore entirely nonphysical and nonmental. Platonism in this sense is a contemporary view. It is obviously related to the views of Plato in important ways but it is not entirely clear that Plato endorsed this view as it is defined here. In order to remain neutral on this question, the term ‘platonism’ is spelled with a lower-case ‘p.’”
We will use platonism with a lower-case “p” here to refer to the belief that the objects within the models of theoretical physics constitute elements of reality, but these models are not based on pure thought, which is Platonism with a capital “P,” but fashioned to describe and predict observations.
Physicists Are Philosophers, Too - Scientific American
Over the weeks and months I have been on here, I have clearly defined what I meant by Platonism from the works of Owen and Penrose.
Excuses excuses. I just did a quick google search on it and found a mainstream acceptance on it as I showed Ron and Eddie.
Moreover, idealism and dualism are completely different separate categories. For instance, It is not that the brain requires a mechanism to interact with mind, but that brains and bodies are representative of the constraints mind is subject to when operating within space-time. The brain is the image of a process, not the cause of a process. Thus, the natural vs. supernatural dichotomy is a hallmark of substance dualism, but I am arguing for idealism where classical space time emerges from Digital information and only exists as a mental construct. In other words, the brain is the mind rather than the mind is the brain
Even if I did provide evidence for this, you will just move the goalpost again like what you have done before in the past.So why bother?
Anyone capable of performing a search[1] can see that neither you nor anyone else ever mentioned “platonic idealism” here before @Tim did.
So you’ve just been caught in another lie.
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If it came in dribs and drabs “over the weeks and months” (never, as @Roy pointed out, even explicitly mentioning “platonic idealism” until this thread), then it clearly was not a “clear definition”.
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None of your muddled, incoherent and endlessly repetitive blatherings have been “clear” about anything.
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In any case the issue I raised was NOT the lack of a definition for “platonic idealism”, but rather your FAILURE “to delineate a meaningful difference between ‘Platonism (traditional) and platonic idealism’”.
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And to support your case, this ‘meaningful delineation’ would have to render platonic forms part of Platonic Idealism, but the properties of platonic forms part of Traditional Platonism – an ABSURD CLAIM!
Your quotes, at best, demonstrate that Platonism has developed since Plato’s time – not that there is any meaningful delineation or incompatibility between the two.
I never claimed that “idealism” simpliciter and “dualism” simpliciter were the same category. But platonic idealism is not “idealism” simpliciter.
The OED defines “dualism” as
A theory or system of thought which recognizes two independent principles.
In philosophy, the “two independent principles” are most commonly mind and body – but they need not be. There is an analogous duality, within platonic idealism, between imperfect, everyday exmplars of an idea, and that idea’s platonic form.
False!
The question that concluded my OP was about platonic forms, and this question is about platonic forms (and more specifically, one of their properties).
No moving of goalposts!
I am getting very tired of your baseless accusations.