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Article 2920 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR)
Subject: Re: Private lives of ideal forms and formulas
References: <knbn47INN3ga@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Message-ID: <1992Jan17.232138.11601@a.cs.okstate.edu>
Organization: Oklahoma State University
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 92 23:21:38 GMT

>From article <knbn47INN3ga@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>, by silber@orfeo.Eng.Sun.COM (Eric Silber):
> 
>  Well, if platonism were correct and ideal forms and formulas
>  had a life of their own quite apart from the dust and the seasons of
>  the material world, THEN one might ask as to the habits and private
>  lives of the platonic forms.  Do they get together and chew the fat
>  over cups of abstract coffee? Have all the theorems provable within
>  every axiomatic system always been proved ( humans only discovering
>  the proofs later) ?  In view of what we can see of the physical world,
>  e.g. that it evolves, it would seem that NOT-all the consequences of all
>  the axiomatic ideals were , in fact, always "there"; they must
>  have "come into existence" through some process involving INTERACTION
>  of the "ideals" over time (oops, one said "time", so one has trod the
>  grounding of the material world, the "ideals" MUST depend upon
>  the evolution of the material world for their own existence !)

  Welll, for Frege, it is quite possible that they have always been TRUE.
Are you implying that we invented axiomatic systems?  And if we did 
what guarantee do we have that they apply to the material world?  
The typical approach to AI isn't so anti-Platonic as it may seem.       
  First of all, in traditional approaches and expert systems, or even in
modern approaches such as CYC, the idea is to load the machine up with 
informatio so that it can apply it to the material world.  Hence, in a 
sense, the machines know a priori about the world, but have to realize
what they know.
  Second, The notion of TRUTH either fits a well matched system of ruls
(which the rules themselves had to have been invented to fit), so that
things that match TRUE.  But if a thing is TRUE in this sense, it was
always, is now, and will always be true.  Sure we INTERACTED to get
to the TRUE but it was always there (in a sense).  The platonic
system is not so outlandish as it seems.  
  As for what the Forms are doing while we aren't aware of them?  Well,
what was a + b = b + a doing until it was realized?  For Plato, of course,
we must come to know the Forms before we can know anything.  Logic, in 
some views, concures (although they may not want to admit it), to know 
something means to know TRUE-- but TRUE was already there.

  As for a more clear understanding of this relationship I refer you
to Karl Popper's works.  He talks of the Three worlds as he sees them.
They are interesting and think would give you a window to tie these
platonic ideas to a modern setting without thinking them so absurd.

BCnya,
  Charles O. Onstott, III

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Charles O. Onstott, III                  P.O. Box 2386
Undergraduate in Philosophy              Stillwater, Ok  74076
Oklahoma State University                onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu

"The most abstract system of philosophy is, in its method and purpose, 
nothing more than an extremely ingenious combination of natural sounds."
                                              -- Carl G. Jung
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