Ideas on the Ideas

Plato’s doctrine of the forms remains one of the most profound worldviews ever attained and created. Its practical acceptance has admittedly been small, however its grandeur and intellectual attraction has caused it to live on in the hearts if not minds of philosophers for centuries. Eventually, it fell to the iron grip of organized religion, translated by St. Augustine into a religious doctrine[1], and was thus stripped of its natural beauty and philosophical achievement.

The theory was born out of various philosophical difficulties which have been the cause of great controversy ever since. The most notable of difficulties influential and fundamental to the theory is known as the problem of universals. Universals are concepts that reflect not a specific object but an underlying universal prototype that has instances of particular expressions of it. For example, the concept man refers to no specific object but to a prototype which is reflected through all men. In a sense, all men are not man itself, but partake in the concept man. The problem with such phenomena is that the concept is valid despite its abstractness and lack of physical expression, which indicates the inadequacy of the physical universe alone to account for conceptual reality. Physical objects seem to be based on prototypes that are real and recognizable, existing on their own, and they seem to form and rationalize all of reality. In subsequent generations this would mostly be considered a psychological difficulty; however, to Plato our minds reflect absolute truth and objective rationality and so psychological explanations are necessarily inadequate[2].

Plato thus acknowledged that universals are actually real, existing as pure ideas, and that all of physical reality is expressions and instances of these ideas. A dual world was thus created and defined; the world of ideas, pure and eternal, and the world of physical expressions and instances of these ideas, ever-changing and mortal. The eyes are the sense for the physical reality, while the mind or intellectual soul is the sense with which we grasp intellectual reality[3].

Interestingly, Plato used this theory to refute Parmenides’s argument which philosophers had grappled with for years. Parmenides’s argument raises the following difficulty: to speak of something not in existence is senseless as there is nothing which is referred to. Thus, to speak of change, which includes speaking about that which went out of existence, is senseless. As such the concept change is meaningless and is invalid. Put short, the argument demonstrates that one cannot have a concept of nothingness, for there is nothing which it refers to, therefore all talk of nothingness is necessarily senseless. Plato replied based on his theory, that nothingness is indeed nothing in the physical universe, but remains an idea, which has existence and meaning forever beyond the physical universe[4].

Naturally, Plato occupied himself with discovering and perceiving the ultimate and eternal reality, the world of ideas. One of Plato’s important conclusions was that the idea of goodness is the light through which all other ideas are discernible. However, it remains unclear why he thought so. Perhaps his reasoning was as follows. All human knowledge is only understood subjectively, after all, the very act of understanding is subjective and personal. Also, one only understands for one’s particular purposes in that moment, consequentially, one is further prejudiced towards it. Therefore, we cannot properly access objective knowledge. Our personal minds are unable and unwilling to reach out objectively to grasp pure objectivity not having any personal meaning assigned to it. Therefore, it is only through the idea of goodness, which forms all values, and hence all meaning[5], that we can properly access objective knowledge. Through our subjective value assigned to it we can grasp it as subjective and personal knowledge. Indeed, it is the light which enables us to interpret and discern all other ideas.

We must ask ourselves, why do we so easily dismiss Plato’s proposition as philosophical fantasy?   Generally people believe their sensory input reflects an objective reality, despite the fact that all arguments for this belief are circular and no one has yet devised a sound argument demonstrating this. However, as this is accepted by virtually everyone, it seems inconsistent that the existence of the world of ideas is generally unaccepted. After all, in both cases we have information concerning objective reality that suddenly appears to us, why decide the visual information and perception reflects objective reality any less than ideological information and perception does? Ideas, too, are perceived by us as representing absolute truth and objective credulity, and so should be accepted as real and objective things.

Furthermore, modern quantum mechanics seems to provide adequate evidence for the truth of the doctrine of the forms. Quantum mechanics seems to indicate that the universe without an observer potentially exists as every possibility, but actually exists as none, until one observes. These terms however, of potential existence and the existence of numerous possibilities, cannot be understood as physical phenomena. Various theories have been introduced to explain this bizarre finding, each one more surprising and ludicrous than the next. Yet this seems to be quite obviously a demonstration of the existence of ideas; every possibility simultaneously exists as ideas. Through these ideas, a world of actual objects is continuously formed, and so whenever we observe we see a world of actual phenomena, but when we don’t observe we can recognize that in reality, the ‘real object’ is the idea of that object, not the object itself, and so exists in a set of infinite possibility. Somewhat randomly, different ideas are chosen to form changes in reality.

But we need not rest on the mysterious and obscure findings of quantum mechanics to gain modern support to this ancient view. In fact, the entire science demonstrates its truth. Science is founded on the assumption of natural law, a concept which requires explanation, and without the existence of forms is utterly senseless. What are, after all, the laws of nature? It seems this concept arose out of Christian scientists, specifically deists, who regarded the world as created and controlled by the dictations of God. However, this picture fails to explain and account for the laws, for it leaves open the question: how do God’s laws and desires affect the nature of reality? The most obvious explanation of contingent law’s and properties which control reality is that these laws aren’t actually laws but ideas, which the physical universe, being an expression of these ideas, abides to.

We live in a world which seems to be surrounded and defined by ideas. Mathematics, for example, defies explanation and philosophers have long wondered what exactly numbers, and all mathematical truths and principles, are. Yet again, the most obvious explanation is that these are ideas. Particularly, this accounts for the massive success of mathematics in terms of its explanatory power over physical phenomenon. This reflects the absolute submission of physical phenomenon to the ideas. Similarly, logical truths can be accounted for as ideas. Morality, as well, has no place in a world of physical objects and is indication of ideas existing beyond physical objects, defining and controlling the natural order. Perhaps ideas are the secret behind aesthetics, as well. A song, for example, which is a grouping of various tones and chords, somehow when put together in the ‘correct’ ways, sounds symmetrical and beautiful in a way that is forever beyond our psychological selves. We recognize good music to be on-tune and can even discern rules which define what constitutes as musical. These rules, utterly out of place in a physical universe, can best be described as ideas; music is an instantiation of ideas. 

Perhaps there is no physical universe, but it itself is an idea composed of ideas. After all, isn’t our perception of the physical universe itself nothing more than a very grand and detailed idea? Why don’t we naturally assume, then, that ideas are real, and the physical universe is but one of the mysterious ideas?

With the modern age came at last the advent of Atheism and the possibility for new sophisticated worldviews. The new god of the atheists is materialism, and they have caused much of the religious and spiritual psychic, fundamental to humans for centuries, to die out. However, let us not forget that we live in a mysterious world, and our eyes are only one sense. The most important sense is, of course, the mind, which discerns logical credulity, and analyzes and accounts for physical sensory information. When we use the mind to explain reality we are faced with a very different picture of reality; we see a very spiritual and intellectual one. Let us not forget about the most important sense of the body, and let us not forget that as much as science has shown us, the universe is prepared to show us much more, if we would only apply ourselves with an open mind and not be blinded by the baseless assumptions of science or religion.

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[1] St. Augustine preached that these ideas are God’s ideas and prototypes for the world. He thus maintained that through philosophical investigation one can enter God’s mind and perceive His underlying ideas of the world, a belief which has helped philosophy gain popularity in the Western Christian world.

[2] Similarly, Plato struggled to comprehend how one can make a mistake, for it seems impossible to understand something irrational, as such if one thinks s/he understands, s/he must actually understand. Again, today this is mostly understood as a psychological question, to Plato this is a philosophical one questioning the nature of rationality and the law of the excluded middle.

Another example is Plato’s conviction that if one understands properly why the good is good, he will necessarily choose the good, for everyone wants that which is best, and the good describes that which is best. Reality seems to disagree with Plato on this; Plato recognized this and was forced to explain the reality in a somewhat desperate and unlikely way because of his a priori reasoning. Here yet again, most would consider this a psychological phenomenon, but to Plato the mind is necessarily rational and objective.

It’s worth noting that Aristotle, who was amongst the founders of modern psychology, disagreed with Plato on this, and also disagreed on Plato’s insistence on the objectiveness of ideas.

[3] Plato himself didn’t view it this way; he thought one is born with all ideas already in place. He argued that otherwise one can’t be convinced of truth, for how does one know if something is true unless he has the information deep inside him already. For various reasons this was not included in the text.

[4] I have been bothered by a similar question to Parmenides’s argument, but one that I feel is more difficult to answer: how could there be truths about states of absolute nothingness, there is nothing to have truths about? Yet there certainly are such truths, such as the truth that it is indeed a state of nothingness. Possibly, an idea of nothingness explains why there are truths about it. Indeed, without the idea of nothingness as well, there would be no truths, but of course we don’t understand this for we have never imagined a true state of nothingness, for that is impossible, as Parmenides demonstrated.

[5] Although some philosophers would disapprove of such grouping, Plato would not be among them. He understood goodness as personal and profitable, as seen through his argument that if one understands properly the good he will doubtlessly do the good, as quoted in the previous footnote.