What are platonic concepts?
In: 13
You know what a table is, right? Like if you see a table sitting there, you can point at it and say “table”. Well, how do you do that? What factors are there that make you identify it as a table? Is it the number of legs? Some tables have 4 legs, some have 3. Some tables even have one big leg in the center. So it’s not number of legs. Is it size? Nope. Some tables are big, some are small. Is it shape? Nope. Some are square, some are round, some are weird shapes.
So what is it that makes you recognize it as a table? Plato argued that there was some kind of ideal table. All other tables were poor copies of this one perfect table. And our minds recognized this ideal table, out there somewhere in space or another realm or something. And when we saw a table here, we understood what it was supposed to be by recognizing the qualities it shared with that ideal table.
The same thing would apply to trees, houses, birds, rocks, basically everything had an ideal version. Plato’s ideal. A *platonic* ideal.
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