Intent

[Pixie Dust]

Not to derail this conversation, but...

Is it a bald eagle or does type not matter for this discussion?

[Pixie Dust]

Le_Regard wrote:
The Eagle isn't stupid.

****, I was on the wrong page of the thread. A real discussion developed on the following page. Disregard my prior post.

[Julio Juliopolis]

Le_Regard wrote:

It could also be a lot like sitting down to play a videogame and it turns out the videogame is so much fun you never get back up again.

If we change that a little bit, say add that you forget it's just a video game and start calling it "reality", and that you occasionally do get up and leave the game for a short time before returning to it but call that "dreaming" and say it isn't real, then it's a pretty fair analogy.

I also don't know if INTENT can be responsible for everything that "occurs", now that I think about it. 

That's because you don't know that everything has consciousness and intent. When an apple falls off a tree, it's a result of the combined intents of the apple, tree, ground, earth, air, all the atoms and molecules that make up all those things, and the intents of whatever beings decided for the force of gravity to be at play in this dream-world, (aka reality).

I could also say responsible for everything we experience.  "occurs" seems to give it some measure of reality, like it occurred "for real" and not in an MMORPG.

Defining reality as what "we experience" seems to be very human-centric. Other animals have experiences which includes colors we don't see, and sounds that are too high-pitched for us to hear. Ever try to combine hundreds of images into 1? Insects with compound eyes do this. Their experiences are no less real than ours, and their reality probably looks considerably different. As Don Juan told Carlos, what people call reality is just a description. When you see, (and I hope someday you do), that everything has consciousness and it's own perceptions you'll realize just how much these descriptions can vary.

[Julio Juliopolis]

serloco wrote:I will give an example of a common intent we are taught to intend. The intent of illness and death. The child is taught that, lets say, 1 out of 7 people get cancer int heir lifetime. Now the child believes this, and knows he is a human subject to the same fate. The child learns over time to not only intend his death, but to not intend his death as well. The child intends that he is a common human, intends that he could get cancer and intends not to as well. The child's intent gets split. Same with catching a cold. When people say a cold is going around the average man intends the possibility that he catch one. He subjects himself to the same blueprint of his fellow man. Never intending his choice in the matter. Never examining the other possibilities to intend. 

I like this example. It not only shows the workings of intent but also the importance of language. Some socery-inclined people treat it as trivial to say things like "1 out of 7 people will get cancer in their lifetime". Those who are more careful with their words will find something else to say. Often I like to break it down to the very exacting truth. Do I know that "1 in 7 people will get cancer"? No. The only thing I know is that I thought I heard the guy on the news say that. That's all. If I want to break it down further I could say that "according to the teleprompter the news reporter was reading aloud, some report, (which was chosen on the basis of trying to get the most viewership), that may or may not have been reviewed by someone trained in statistics indicate that if long-range illness forecasting wasn't a psuedo-science, (due to the number of rather grandiose assumptions one must make to predict the cancer rate in say 2050), 1 in 7 people getting cancer might have been a good estimate". Getting to that level can be helpful sometimes although in normal conversation something shorter is usually sufficient.

[Pixie Dust]

JJ yep.  Consider too, there are levels of sight.  Degrees of how wide our eyes open.  People assume their eyes are fully opened, when many are closed.  People assume seeing from a sliver sized opening means their eyes are fully opened still.  Assumptions can be dangerous.

Then there are the rare ones who don't have eyelids.  

Vision is largely subjective and it's preferable to open eyes slowly...to prevent a break in awareness.  Breaks hurt.

[Le_Regard]

serloco wrote:
I asked the Eagle one day all about it. He wrote me many songs. Bottom line is he was created by sorcerers of ancient times. My God closed my gap and saved me from the Eagle. However the Eagle and I get along quite well. 

I can't rule out that the universe as we know it is in fact one giant Chicken/Egg paradox, but I have to tell you, that's a Chicken/Egg paradox.

The Eagle isn't a thing, it's not like a Spirit, it's more like the Mother of all Spirits.  It's the hypothetical SOURCE of all emanations, not an emanation itself.  So I don't know who creates these ancient sorcerers who created The Eagle, but in the C.C. mythology as I understand it the whole point of The Eagle is just a stand in symbol for an abstract Uncreated First Cause.  The Alpha and Omega of all things.

If this was like...  a class... and The Eagle were like a professor...  I suspect it would probably still pass you, but it might pass you with a C+ for that.

[Le_Regard]

Julio Juliopolis wrote:
Le_Regard wrote:

It could also be a lot like sitting down to play a videogame and it turns out the videogame is so much fun you never get back up again.

If we change that a little bit, say add that you forget it's just a video game and start calling it "reality", and that you occasionally do get up and leave the game for a short time before returning to it but call that "dreaming" and say it isn't real, then it's a pretty fair analogy.

I also don't know if INTENT can be responsible for everything that "occurs", now that I think about it. 

That's because you don't know that everything has consciousness and intent. When an apple falls off a tree, it's a result of the combined intents of the apple, tree, ground, earth, air, all the atoms and molecules that make up all those things, and the intents of whatever beings decided for the force of gravity to be at play in this dream-world, (aka reality).

I could also say responsible for everything we experience.  "occurs" seems to give it some measure of reality, like it occurred "for real" and not in an MMORPG.

Defining reality as what "we experience" seems to be very human-centric. Other animals have experiences which includes colors we don't see, and sounds that are too high-pitched for us to hear. Ever try to combine hundreds of images into 1? Insects with compound eyes do this. Their experiences are no less real than ours, and their reality probably looks considerably different. As Don Juan told Carlos, what people call reality is just a description. When you see, (and I hope someday you do), that everything has consciousness and it's own perceptions you'll realize just how much these descriptions can vary.

This is very substantial.

What you're describing as the combined intent of apple, tree, earth, etc., etc., Schopenhauer called "will".  He wrote a book about it, in German, called "The World as Will and Idea" or "The World as Will and Representation".  Or whatever the German for that is, I don't really know.

Two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule combine in true love and ecstasy because it is their will to be water.  I'm assuming the Carlos Castaneda books have been translated into German, but I don't know the word they use for Intent, so I don't know... maybe it's the same thing.

But Schopenhauer's "Will" doesn't just inspire hydrogen and oxygen to be water.  Will is "the thing-in-itself", "das ding an sich" if you like.  Schopenhauer writes this way because in the philosophy of KANT, we only know our own experiences.  We definitely know that a world is out there a real one, at least ONE real thing or maybe real THINGS, because we don't know.  We can't know.  But we know it as a brute fact because otherwise it would be like seeing a shadow cast by a tree but not believing in trees and not believing in the Sun.  That's what Kant says.  We know it's there because we infer from its effects, which is the fact we experience ANYTHING AT ALL.  And blahblahblah Space is just the absolute form of geometry and Time is just the absolute form of arithmetic and blahblahblah, but what's relevant here is that Schopenhauer was a bit more optimistic and thought that, in a certain sense, we COULD know the the thing-in-itself, quite directly, because it is Will, and we have that.  We are that.

However, Schopenhauer's project is generally considered pessimistic.  The only way to realize the Will of the universe is to basically suspend the individual Will that animates our own lives only.  We know the world by "willing it" to appearance or representation.  So if we just DON'T... if we just suspend all appearance and representation, "stop the world" if you like, stop THINKING the world into appearance, WILL shines out as self-illuminated.  But that doesn't leave us anywhere.

[Le_Regard]

I could be very wrong about this, but even insects understand the basics of three-dimensional geometry or they'd break themselves apart flying into walls much harder than intended.

[serloco]

watergaze wrote:
serloco wrote:The child is taught that, lets say, 1 out of 7 people get cancer int heir lifetime. Now the child believes this, and knows he is a human subject to the same fate. The child learns over time to not only intend his death, but to not intend his death as well. The child intends that he is a common human, intends that he could get cancer and intends not to as well. The child's intent gets split. Same with catching a cold. When people say a cold is going around the average man intends the possibility that he catch one. He subjects himself to the same blueprint of his fellow man. Never intending his choice in the matter. Never examining the other possibilities to intend.

It seems to me that belief not all too powerful though. It is not the same thing to believe that one can fly - deranged individuals have in the past believed they can fly and jumped to their deaths. What is the difference between fully believing in something and actually it being so... that is an interesting question imo.

Do some people just try to blindly believe something (is that the same thing as erasing opposing beliefs that we were spoon-fed so there is no more contradiction?) and would actually jump to their death if they tried? or would they fly? .

There you go doing as the child did, and placing yourself in the same boat as the drug addict. We need not share every perception and every experience. Just because the druggie had no power in his belief does not mean you can not hunt and store the personal power needed to claim victory. Power must be hunted, staked, claimed and stored. Of course a normal, average, junkie, with a severely dusty link cannot fly. 

There are many books written about the power of belief. Many resources to hunt and stalk as well as your own experiences. Belief is an extention of our will. You mention hopes and dreams and intentions, but belief is right in that list as well.

[serloco]

Julio Juliopolis wrote:
serloco wrote:I will give an example of a common intent we are taught to intend. The intent of illness and death. The child is taught that, lets say, 1 out of 7 people get cancer int heir lifetime. Now the child believes this, and knows he is a human subject to the same fate. The child learns over time to not only intend his death, but to not intend his death as well. The child intends that he is a common human, intends that he could get cancer and intends not to as well. The child's intent gets split. Same with catching a cold. When people say a cold is going around the average man intends the possibility that he catch one. He subjects himself to the same blueprint of his fellow man. Never intending his choice in the matter. Never examining the other possibilities to intend. 

I like this example. It not only shows the workings of intent but also the importance of language. Some socery-inclined people treat it as trivial to say things like "1 out of 7 people will get cancer in their lifetime". Those who are more careful with their words will find something else to say. Often I like to break it down to the very exacting truth. Do I know that "1 in 7 people will get cancer"? No. The only thing I know is that I thought I heard the guy on the news say that. That's all. If I want to break it down further I could say that "according to the teleprompter the news reporter was reading aloud, some report, (which was chosen on the basis of trying to get the most viewership), that may or may not have been reviewed by someone trained in statistics indicate that if long-range illness forecasting wasn't a psuedo-science, (due to the number of rather grandiose assumptions one must make to predict the cancer rate in say 2050), 1 in 7 people getting cancer might have been a good estimate". Getting to that level can be helpful sometimes although in normal conversation something shorter is usually sufficient.

Yes for sure, you can not trust the news. You can not trust nor follow the ways of your fellow man, or you will be intending the same outcomes as them. Very weak.

[Le_Regard]

serloco wrote:
There you go doing as the child did, and placing yourself in the same boat as the drug addict. We need not share every perception and every experience. Just because the druggie had no power in his belief does not mean you can not hunt and store the personal power needed to claim victory. Power must be hunted, staked, claimed and stored. Of course a normal, average, junkie, with a severely dusty link cannot fly. 

There are many books written about the power of belief. Many resources to hunt and stalk as well as your own experiences. Belief is an extention of our will. You mention hopes and dreams and intentions, but belief is right in that list as well. 

Ha!  There you are, inhabiting a universe you share with junkies.

I think the really core moral contradiction with all of this, in any kind of metaphysical system, if I may so summarize, is that if You're really All-Powerful, it's obvious to anyone that You're kind of being a jerk for not just INTENDING them all to not be junkies in the first place.

[Le_Regard]

lol INTEND away human suffering, see what happens.

[Julio Juliopolis]

Le_Regard wrote:
Julio Juliopolis wrote:
Le_Regard wrote:

It could also be a lot like sitting down to play a videogame and it turns out the videogame is so much fun you never get back up again.

If we change that a little bit, say add that you forget it's just a video game and start calling it "reality", and that you occasionally do get up and leave the game for a short time before returning to it but call that "dreaming" and say it isn't real, then it's a pretty fair analogy.

I also don't know if INTENT can be responsible for everything that "occurs", now that I think about it. 

That's because you don't know that everything has consciousness and intent. When an apple falls off a tree, it's a result of the combined intents of the apple, tree, ground, earth, air, all the atoms and molecules that make up all those things, and the intents of whatever beings decided for the force of gravity to be at play in this dream-world, (aka reality).

I could also say responsible for everything we experience.  "occurs" seems to give it some measure of reality, like it occurred "for real" and not in an MMORPG.

Defining reality as what "we experience" seems to be very human-centric. Other animals have experiences which includes colors we don't see, and sounds that are too high-pitched for us to hear. Ever try to combine hundreds of images into 1? Insects with compound eyes do this. Their experiences are no less real than ours, and their reality probably looks considerably different. As Don Juan told Carlos, what people call reality is just a description. When you see, (and I hope someday you do), that everything has consciousness and it's own perceptions you'll realize just how much these descriptions can vary.

This is very substantial.

What you're describing as the combined intent of apple, tree, earth, etc., etc., Schopenhauer called "will".  He wrote a book about it, in German, called "The World as Will and Idea" or "The World as Will and Representation".  Or whatever the German for that is, I don't really know.

Two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule combine in true love and ecstasy because it is their will to be water.  I'm assuming the Carlos Castaneda books have been translated into German, but I don't know the word they use for Intent, so I don't know... maybe it's the same thing.

But Schopenhauer's "Will" doesn't just inspire hydrogen and oxygen to be water.  Will is "the thing-in-itself", "das ding an sich" if you like.  Schopenhauer writes this way because in the philosophy of KANT, we only know our own experiences.  We definitely know that a world is out there a real one, at least ONE real thing or maybe real THINGS, because we don't know.  We can't know.  But we know it as a brute fact because otherwise it would be like seeing a shadow cast by a tree but not believing in trees and not believing in the Sun.  That's what Kant says.  We know it's there because we infer from its effects, which is the fact we experience ANYTHING AT ALL.  And blahblahblah Space is just the absolute form of geometry and Time is just the absolute form of arithmetic and blahblahblah, but what's relevant here is that Schopenhauer was a bit more optimistic and thought that, in a certain sense, we COULD know the the thing-in-itself, quite directly, because it is Will, and we have that.  We are that.

Very interesting. I haven't read Schopenhauer or Kant but I find it curious that they were still into imagined shapes being more "real" than the approximations of them we actually find in the world. I'd have guessed that idea, (although once a popular notion), would have died not long after Plato. That aside, the idea of will as a thing-in-itself needs a bit more explanation for me to get it though as I can imagine several different ways that could be interpreted. I've never thought of will that way myself before.

However, Schopenhauer's project is generally considered pessimistic.  The only way to realize the Will of the universe is to basically suspend the individual Will that animates our own lives only.

If that means what I think it does than I don't see why it would be pessimistic. Perhaps people should try taking it in chunks. Instead of dropping one's will entirely, just take a short vacation from it. Take a few days and let your decisions be governed by authentic desires only. That's how the universe communicates it's will to us, (maybe xD). If you feel a genuine desire to eat, then eat. If you feel a specific craving eat that, if not find something. If you want to watch TV, watch TV. If you find you no longer have a desire to keep watching TV, (even if it's right in the middle of a show!), then stop. Don't continue doing stuff from habit, that just leads to dullness and boredom. When you find someone is going to interact with you don't approach it with your assumptions about how they'll behave, trying to manipulate the situation to encourage or avoid certain actions by them, instead just see what your authentic desire says when you see them and go with that. It may be scary to think about trying to live your life like that, but it should be okay for a weekend. In fact, it would make that weekend both interesting and entertaining.

We know the world by "willing it" to appearance or representation.  So if we just DON'T... if we just suspend all appearance and representation, "stop the world" if you like, stop THINKING the world into appearance, WILL shines out as self-illuminated.  But that doesn't leave us anywhere.

I'll have to take your word for it, as I haven't stopped the world enough times to know and my memories of the events tend to go up to the point where I stopped the world and pick up immediately after I "started" a world.
Related... I heard this on the radio this morning.

[Le_Regard]

Julio Juliopolis wrote:
Le_Regard wrote:




This is very substantial.

What you're describing as the combined intent of apple, tree, earth, etc., etc., Schopenhauer called "will".  He wrote a book about it, in German, called "The World as Will and Idea" or "The World as Will and Representation".  Or whatever the German for that is, I don't really know.

Two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule combine in true love and ecstasy because it is their will to be water.  I'm assuming the Carlos Castaneda books have been translated into German, but I don't know the word they use for Intent, so I don't know... maybe it's the same thing.

But Schopenhauer's "Will" doesn't just inspire hydrogen and oxygen to be water.  Will is "the thing-in-itself", "das ding an sich" if you like.  Schopenhauer writes this way because in the philosophy of KANT, we only know our own experiences.  We definitely know that a world is out there a real one, at least ONE real thing or maybe real THINGS, because we don't know.  We can't know.  But we know it as a brute fact because otherwise it would be like seeing a shadow cast by a tree but not believing in trees and not believing in the Sun.  That's what Kant says.  We know it's there because we infer from its effects, which is the fact we experience ANYTHING AT ALL.  And blahblahblah Space is just the absolute form of geometry and Time is just the absolute form of arithmetic and blahblahblah, but what's relevant here is that Schopenhauer was a bit more optimistic and thought that, in a certain sense, we COULD know the the thing-in-itself, quite directly, because it is Will, and we have that.  We are that.

Very interesting. I haven't read Schopenhauer or Kant but I find it curious that they were still into imagined shapes being more "real" than the approximations of them we actually find in the world. I'd have guessed that idea, (although once a popular notion), would have died not long after Plato. That aside, the idea of will as a thing-in-itself needs a bit more explanation for me to get it though as I can imagine several different ways that could be interpreted. I've never thought of will that way myself before.

However, Schopenhauer's project is generally considered pessimistic.  The only way to realize the Will of the universe is to basically suspend the individual Will that animates our own lives only.

If that means what I think it does than I don't see why it would be pessimistic. Perhaps people should try taking it in chunks. Instead of dropping one's will entirely, just take a short vacation from it. Take a few days and let your decisions be governed by authentic desires only. That's how the universe communicates it's will to us, (maybe xD). If you feel a genuine desire to eat, then eat. If you feel a specific craving eat that, if not find something. If you want to watch TV, watch TV. If you find you no longer have a desire to keep watching TV, (even if it's right in the middle of a show!), then stop. Don't continue doing stuff from habit, that just leads to dullness and boredom. When you find someone is going to interact with you don't approach it with your assumptions about how they'll behave, trying to manipulate the situation to encourage or avoid certain actions by them, instead just see what your authentic desire says when you see them and go with that. It may be scary to think about trying to live your life like that, but it should be okay for a weekend. In fact, it would make that weekend both interesting and entertaining.

We know the world by "willing it" to appearance or representation.  So if we just DON'T... if we just suspend all appearance and representation, "stop the world" if you like, stop THINKING the world into appearance, WILL shines out as self-illuminated.  But that doesn't leave us anywhere.

I'll have to take your word for it, as I haven't stopped the world enough times to know and my memories of the events tend to go up to the point where I stopped the world and pick up immediately after I "started" a world.
Related... I heard this on the radio this morning.



It's not correct to say that Kant thought imagined shapes are more real than the approximations we find of them in the world.  I'm not even sure Plato thought that.

This is important actually.  All of Plato that we have is in dialogue form.  It's basically theater.  We know what he made his characters say, and we can't ever know what he really thought himself.  He may have had reasons for writing Socrates the way he did other than history accuracy. 

But for Kant, we just DON'T KNOW.  The highest standard of reality is just an unknowable thing, and we only know its appearances.  But also... and I might mess this up a bit because translating Kant into Carlos Castaneda's world is not that easy, but the basic idea is that we CAN know with some certainty the WAYS that we assemble all these appearances into something like a reality.  Logic and math are involved in this, the creation of concepts is involved in this, fancy words like "the transcendental aesthetic of space and time" are involved in this, but this is very roughly Kant's version of the Platonic forms.  We can kind of sort of "know how we know", and at least know what we can know and can't know, even if we can't ever prove we know anything.

For Kant's it's like every one of us are this beautiful intellectual machine, all basically the same in the broad sense that 2+2=4 and the measure of the interior angles of a triangle will always equal the measure of two right angles, always, no matter who you are or what kind of experiences you've had.  But this beautiful machine doesn't DO anything until experience happens.  Until phenomena appear.  And then the machine gets spun into motion connecting all these phenomena and.... generating the world, more or less.

But why you generate a world out of X stream of phenomena and I have to generate it out of Y, I don't know.  But it does appear to me that many, very many people, are experiencing streams of phenomena such that no, they can't just take a VACATION whenever they want to.

The world is full of people and animals that very often "feel a genuine desire to eat" and can't just go to a restaurant and fix it.



I was only 10 seconds into that video when I immediately thought of this one, by the way.

Stop the world and melt with whom?  It's not enough...  it will never be enough until we melt the whole thing.  But that's not practical, usually, and in any case, probably the gods choose the shapes they do for a reason.

[Julio Juliopolis]

Le_Regard wrote:
Julio Juliopolis wrote:
Le_Regard wrote:




This is very substantial.

What you're describing as the combined intent of apple, tree, earth, etc., etc., Schopenhauer called "will".  He wrote a book about it, in German, called "The World as Will and Idea" or "The World as Will and Representation".  Or whatever the German for that is, I don't really know.

Two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule combine in true love and ecstasy because it is their will to be water.  I'm assuming the Carlos Castaneda books have been translated into German, but I don't know the word they use for Intent, so I don't know... maybe it's the same thing.

But Schopenhauer's "Will" doesn't just inspire hydrogen and oxygen to be water.  Will is "the thing-in-itself", "das ding an sich" if you like.  Schopenhauer writes this way because in the philosophy of KANT, we only know our own experiences.  We definitely know that a world is out there a real one, at least ONE real thing or maybe real THINGS, because we don't know.  We can't know.  But we know it as a brute fact because otherwise it would be like seeing a shadow cast by a tree but not believing in trees and not believing in the Sun.  That's what Kant says.  We know it's there because we infer from its effects, which is the fact we experience ANYTHING AT ALL.  And blahblahblah Space is just the absolute form of geometry and Time is just the absolute form of arithmetic and blahblahblah, but what's relevant here is that Schopenhauer was a bit more optimistic and thought that, in a certain sense, we COULD know the the thing-in-itself, quite directly, because it is Will, and we have that.  We are that.

Very interesting. I haven't read Schopenhauer or Kant but I find it curious that they were still into imagined shapes being more "real" than the approximations of them we actually find in the world. I'd have guessed that idea, (although once a popular notion), would have died not long after Plato. That aside, the idea of will as a thing-in-itself needs a bit more explanation for me to get it though as I can imagine several different ways that could be interpreted. I've never thought of will that way myself before.

However, Schopenhauer's project is generally considered pessimistic.  The only way to realize the Will of the universe is to basically suspend the individual Will that animates our own lives only.

If that means what I think it does than I don't see why it would be pessimistic. Perhaps people should try taking it in chunks. Instead of dropping one's will entirely, just take a short vacation from it. Take a few days and let your decisions be governed by authentic desires only. That's how the universe communicates it's will to us, (maybe xD). If you feel a genuine desire to eat, then eat. If you feel a specific craving eat that, if not find something. If you want to watch TV, watch TV. If you find you no longer have a desire to keep watching TV, (even if it's right in the middle of a show!), then stop. Don't continue doing stuff from habit, that just leads to dullness and boredom. When you find someone is going to interact with you don't approach it with your assumptions about how they'll behave, trying to manipulate the situation to encourage or avoid certain actions by them, instead just see what your authentic desire says when you see them and go with that. It may be scary to think about trying to live your life like that, but it should be okay for a weekend. In fact, it would make that weekend both interesting and entertaining.

We know the world by "willing it" to appearance or representation.  So if we just DON'T... if we just suspend all appearance and representation, "stop the world" if you like, stop THINKING the world into appearance, WILL shines out as self-illuminated.  But that doesn't leave us anywhere.

I'll have to take your word for it, as I haven't stopped the world enough times to know and my memories of the events tend to go up to the point where I stopped the world and pick up immediately after I "started" a world.
Related... I heard this on the radio this morning.



It's not correct to say that Kant thought imagined shapes are more real than the approximations we find of them in the world.  I'm not even sure Plato thought that.

This is important actually. 

?

All of Plato that we have is in dialogue form.  It's basically theater.  We know what he made his characters say, and we can't ever know what he really thought himself.  He may have had reasons for writing Socrates the way he did other than history accuracy. 

He presented arguments through the voices of others. We can surmise what he likely thought, even though we can never know for certain even if he had written it directly. The "Platonic solids" which he spent so much time with he associated with the 4 elements, (Air, Earth, Fire, and Water), which he and his contemporaries believed made up everything in the universe. At the molecular level Plato suggested the elements held the shapes of the Platonic solids, which though named after him were well-known prior to his mention of them. Plato might mot have presented the exact idea that those shapes were more real than what is in the world, but IIRC he did write about how they are more perfected forms of the shapes we can see around us. Heraclitus and Pythagorus however, (both of whom are considered to have been highly influential on Plato), did directly argue that mathematically perfect shapes are more real than our interpretation of reality. They were both in the camp that considered knowledge gained through reason to be superior to that gained by the senses because the senses can be fooled. This seems like an easy thing to believe when you look at things, figure them out mathematically and then test them and the stuff you reason out always works out while the things you merely observe don't offer up explanations as to their workings.
Pythagorus was able to use his reasoned out mathematical knowledge, (which was considerably advanced over the average people at the time), to advise engineers on how to design their structures, create basic music theory, and make predictions that today would seem like no big deal but at the time were looked at as bordering on magic. Again, this gave him reason to believe in reason and not mere empiricism, (or mythological thinking which was the other competing idea at the time).

He played up to his exaggerated status too, founding what today would be looked at like a religious cult, (complete with instructions as to how to live your life and dietary restrictions), in his Pythagorean school. To be fair though, this was a big step down from the runaway ego of his teacher, (Anaximander), who professed to be a god and makes Plato's advocacy for the rulership of philosopher kings seem downright humble.

Stop the world and melt with whom?  It's not enough...  it will never be enough until we melt the whole thing.  But that's not practical, usually, and in any case, probably the gods choose the shapes they do for a reason. 

I don't know about the whole melting thing, but the stop the world part seems like a good thing to be skilled at.

[Le_Regard]

Also, and I'm saying this in anger now, mistaking all of Plato for the doctrine of Forms is totally a 101 level mistake.

[Le_Regard]

The theme of The Charmides is TEMPERANCE and self-restraint by the way.

Socrates is just back from the great war and a friend of his wrongly assumes he's interested in local gossip and lusting for the beautiful youths of Athens. But in the dialogue anyway, no, it turns out he's fresh from the great war, finally seeing home again for the first time in years, and all he wants to do is have a book length dialogue about Temperance with some attractive teenagers.

In this dialogue he also gets an erection. It is the only Platonic dialogue where ANY character is known to have an erection. I couldn't even make this up.

The Laches where they talk about Bravery and the training of warriors, properly so-called, is also a masterpiece.

[Le_Regard]

However, if you want to have a long discussion on what Laws are, how they work, and why we have them, that's fine with me too.

My understanding is that most responsible philosophers would tell you that provoking such a discussion, and not recording his opinions for posterity, was the intent behind writing in dialogue form.

[Le_Regard]

And I'm not just trying to be a jerk about this, I'm just saying this like it's a fact, but I don't think you've read Heraclitus either.  That's fine, not everybody alive has to read Heraclitus, but I didn't bring it up.

Everything we know about what Heraclitus thought is written down in REALLY cryptic aphorisms that don't even make a lot of sense in the original Greek.

[Le_Regard]

"Nature loves to conceal herself"

"War is the Father and King of All"

"Everyday the Sun is new"

That's what Heraclitus thought.

[Le_Regard]

Look, I will TEACH YOU Neo-Platonism if you want.  I'm not trying to put you down.  I'll lift you up if you like, but don't tell me what Plato really thought.

[Le_Regard]

"Though this Word is true evermore, yet men are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time as before they have heard it at all. For, though, all things come to pass in accordance with this Word, men seem as if they had no experience of them, when they make trial of words and deeds such as I set forth, dividing each thing according to its nature and showing how it truly is. But other men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget what they do in sleep."

Heralitus, Fragment #1

"Word" here is a form of Logos, by the way, I looked it up.

[Guest]