Platonism (Philosophical)
Platonism is a philosophical theory that there are entities in and of itself intelligible, whose content is independent of the contingency of sense experience. These entities, depending on the version of Platonism we are talking about can be concepts (the ideas in general, as in Plotinus and Augustine ), numbers ( mathematical Platonism , as in Iamblichus or Lautman ), or logical values ( logicism of Frege , for example). This theory is a possible answer, with nominalism ( William of Ockham ) and conceptualism ( Pierre Abelard ), the question of the ontological status of cognitive concepts (ideas, numbers, or propositional content).
Summary |
Platonism in Antiquity
The first form of Platonism was defended by Plato in the context of the famous theory of ideas. But we must see that this theory was never explicitly stated by Plato, but it underlies much of Plato's thought: the most important texts to learn the theory of ideas is The Republic , the Phaedo , the Symposium and Parmenides , and to some extent the Socratic dialogues. The last Plato (oral teachings), more and more influenced by Pythagorean thought , tends to identify ideas and Numbers, which was not the case in his earlier writings. In the Republic , the idea was the supreme good, the sense of expediency, not moral goodness. In The Banquet , the idea was the Supreme Beauty. For Neoplatonists , the field of ideas will become the Intellect and the Beauty Supreme become the One.
Platonism in the Middle Ages
The Middle Ages was probably the period during which Platonism was the most discussed but also defended the strongest arguments against the nominalism. The quarrel between these two theories was named the feud of universals and is one of the founding moments of philosophy and medieval epistemology. The main representatives of Platonic realism were William of Champeaux , Amaury de Chartres , Gilbert de la Porree.
Platonism in modern times
The most important defenders of Platonism in modern times are the analytic philosophers Frege and Russell , who postulated the existence of an area in which exist independently of the meanings of propositions logic and mathematics. This is Platonism strongly criticized in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein , which revives a form of nominalism.
- Kurt Gdel asserted himself as resolutely platonic unlike his friend Albert Einstein , who said Spinoza.
- The contemporary French mathematician Alain Connes defends Platonic ideas, among others in the book he co-authored with Andr Lichnerowicz and Marcel Paul Schtzenberger entitled Triangle of thought, (Editions Odile Jacob, 2000).
- The physicist Roland Omnes also defends a thesis Plato in his book While the One became Two (Flammarion, 2002).
- The mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose gives an ontology mathematical laws of physics in all his works, especially in his latest book The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe.
The thesis of Platonism was vigorously challenged by Quine.
Platonism and realism
It would be more accurate to characterize the mathematicians called "Platonic" mathematicians "realistic" because the realism in mathematics continues the idea that the nature of mathematical objects is real in that it is independent of the intellect of the human being but it does not necessarily cover all the attributes of Plato's world of ideas. Bibliography References
Sources
Studies
See also
Loading ...