Platonism and the Objects of Science

Platonism and the Objects of Science
Author: Scott Berman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2020-02-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350080225

What are the objects of science? Are they just the things in our scientific experiments that are located in space and time? Or does science also require that there be additional things that are not located in space and time? Using clear examples, these are just some of the questions that Scott Berman explores as he shows why alternative theories such as Nominalism, Contemporary Aristotelianism, Constructivism, and Classical Aristotelianism, fall short. He demonstrates why the objects of scientific knowledge need to be not located in space or time if they are to do the explanatory work scientists need them to do. The result is a contemporary version of Platonism that provides us with the best way to explain what the objects of scientific understanding are, and how those non-spatiotemporal things relate to the spatiotemporal things of scientific experiments, as well as everything around us, including even ourselves.

From Plato to Platonism

From Plato to Platonism
Author: Lloyd P. Gerson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2013-11-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0801469171

Was Plato a Platonist? While ancient disciples of Plato would have answered this question in the affirmative, modern scholars have generally denied that Plato’s own philosophy was in substantial agreement with that of the Platonists of succeeding centuries. In From Plato to Platonism, Lloyd P. Gerson argues that the ancients are correct in their assessment. He arrives at this conclusion in an especially ingenious manner, challenging fundamental assumptions about how Plato’s teachings have come to be understood. Through deft readings of the philosophical principles found in Plato's dialogues and in the Platonic tradition beginning with Aristotle, he shows that Platonism, broadly conceived, is the polar opposite of naturalism and that the history of philosophy from Plato until the seventeenth century was the history of various efforts to find the most consistent and complete version of "anti-naturalism." Gerson contends that the philosophical position of Plato—Plato’s own Platonism, so to speak—was produced out of a matrix he calls "Ur-Platonism." According to Gerson, Ur-Platonism is the conjunction of five "antis" that in total arrive at anti-naturalism: anti-nominalism, anti-mechanism, anti-materialism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism. Plato’s Platonism is an attempt to construct the most consistent and defensible positive system uniting the five "antis." It is also the system that all later Platonists throughout Antiquity attributed to Plato when countering attacks from critics including Peripatetics, Stoics, and Sceptics. In conclusion, Gerson shows that Late Antique philosophers such as Proclus were right in regarding Plotinus as "the great exegete of the Platonic revelation."

Questioning Platonism

Questioning Platonism
Author: Drew A. Hyland
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0791484556

Given the conception of philosophy held by continental thinkers, and in particular their greater sensitivity to the kinship of philosophy and literature, Drew A. Hyland argues that they should be much more attentive to the literary dimension of Plato's thinking than they have been. He believes they would find in the dialogues not the various forms of "Platonism" that they wish to reject, but instead a thinking much more congenial and challenging to their own predilections. By carefully examining the works of Heidegger, Derrida, Irigaray, and Cavarero, Hyland points to the tendency of continental thinkers to view Plato's dialogues through the lens of Platonism, thus finding Platonic metaphysics, Platonic ethics, and Platonic epistemology, while overlooking the literary dimension of the dialogues, and failing to recognize the extent to which the form undercuts anything like the Platonism they find. The striking exception, Hyland claims, is Hans-Georg Gadamer who also demonstrates the compatibility of the Platonic dialogues with the directions of continental thinking.

Christian Platonism

Christian Platonism
Author: Alexander J. B. Hampton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 875
Release: 2020-12-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1108676472

Platonism has played a central role in Christianity and is essential to a deep understanding of the Christian theological tradition. At times, Platonism has constituted an essential philosophical and theological resource, furnishing Christianity with an intellectual framework that has played a key role in its early development, and in subsequent periods of renewal. Alternatively, it has been considered a compromising influence, conflicting with the faith's revelatory foundations and distorting its inherent message. In both cases the fundamental importance of Platonism, as a force which Christianity defined itself by and against, is clear. Written by an international team of scholars, this landmark volume examines the history of Christian Platonism from antiquity to the present day, covers key concepts, and engages issues such as the environment, natural science and materialism.

Platonism and Anti-Platonism in Mathematics

Platonism and Anti-Platonism in Mathematics
Author: Mark Balaguer
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2001
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780195143980

In this book, Balaguer demonstrates that there are no good arguments for or against mathematical platonism. He does this by establishing that both platonism and anti-platonism are defensible. (Philosophy)

Platonism, Naturalism, and Mathematical Knowledge

Platonism, Naturalism, and Mathematical Knowledge
Author: James Robert Brown
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2013-06-17
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1136580387

This study addresses a central theme in current philosophy: Platonism vs Naturalism and provides accounts of both approaches to mathematics, crucially discussing Quine, Maddy, Kitcher, Lakoff, Colyvan, and many others. Beginning with accounts of both approaches, Brown defends Platonism by arguing that only a Platonistic approach can account for concept acquisition in a number of special cases in the sciences. He also argues for a particular view of applied mathematics, a view that supports Platonism against Naturalist alternatives. Not only does this engaging book present the Platonist-Naturalist debate over mathematics in a comprehensive fashion, but it also sheds considerable light on non-mathematical aspects of a dispute that is central to contemporary philosophy.

Platonism at the Origins of Modernity

Platonism at the Origins of Modernity
Author: Douglas Hedley
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2007-12-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1402064071

This collection of essays offers an overview of the range and breadth of Platonic philosophy in the early modern period. It examines philosophers of Platonic tradition, such as Cusanus, Ficino, and Cudworth. The book also addresses the impact of Platonism on major philosophers of the period, especially Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Shaftesbury and Berkeley.

Aristotle and Other Platonists

Aristotle and Other Platonists
Author: Lloyd P. Gerson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2017-12-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1501716964

"Aristotle versus Plato. For a long time that is the angle from which the tale has been told, in textbooks on the history of philosophy and to university students. Aristotle's philosophy, so the story goes, was au fond in opposition to Plato's. But it was not always thus."—from the Introduction In a wide-ranging book likely to cause controversy, Lloyd P. Gerson sets out the case for the "harmony" of Platonism and Aristotelianism, the standard view in late antiquity. He aims to show that the twentieth-century view that Aristotle started out as a Platonist and ended up as an anti-Platonist is seriously flawed. Gerson examines the Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle based on their principle of harmony. In considering ancient studies of Aristotle's Categories, Physics, De Anima, Metaphysics, and Nicomachean Ethics, the author shows how the principle of harmony allows us to understand numerous texts that otherwise appear intractable. Gerson also explains how these "esoteric" treatises can be seen not to conflict with the early "exoteric" and admittedly Platonic dialogues of Aristotle. Aristotle and Other Platonists concludes with an assessment of some of the philosophical results of acknowledging harmony.

Defining Platonism

Defining Platonism
Author: John F. Finamore
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780996930536

This collection of essays surveys a wide range of methods of Platonic interpretation, ranging from the dialogues themselves, to Middle and Neoplatonic interpretations of Plato's writings, to modern uses of Platonism. As a philosophical movement, Platonism is broadly conceived, covering schools and philosophers beginning with Plato and his immediate followers and extending through contemporary philosophers. The history of Platonism begins, of course, with Plato himself. But his adoption of the dialogue style and his active engagement with students in his Academy, where he certainly used dialectic techniques, led almost immediately to questioning what Plato's doctrines actually were. His student Aristotle raised questions of interpretations and invoked esoteric teachings not present in the written works. The earliest heads of the Academy struggled with Plato's texts as well, creating rival interpretations. These early discussions gave rise to later ones, and Platonism became simultaneously a dogmatic philosophy and a source of sometimes-heated debate of what the master intended. From its inception, Platonism was a dynamic philosophy, open to varied interpretations on different fronts while also maintaining a common core of beliefs. Platonism gave rise to methods of interpretation that centered on historical, ethical, political, or metaphysical questions engendered by Plato's writings. The ancient commentators reflected the teachings of their predecessors, and with only a few schools in the Greco-Roman world, many of their students studying under the same teachers, meant a heightened continuity in the tradition of interpretation. This volume honors the seventy-fifth birthday of John Dillon, the great scholar of Platonism whose scholarship had a pivotal role in defining Platonism as a philosophical movement in contemporary academia.

God Over All

God Over All
Author: William Lane Craig
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2016
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0198786883

The book is a defense of God's unique status as the creator of all things apart from himself in the face of the challenge of mathematical Platonism. It is based on William Lane Craig's Cadbury Lectures given at the University of Birmingham in March 2015.