And yet, David, I bet you still refrain from jumping off tall building and eating poison.
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Replying to @Jayarava
Right. The point here is that many things are “true enough” or “more-or-less true” or “true for this particular purpose.” The false dichotomy is between “really truly true” and “meaningless” or “hopelessly vague.”
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Replying to @Meaningness
I think this might be more interesting for me if I knew who "the Rationalists" are/were or if I'd ever seen anyone make the point you are arguing against.
Most of the people I know are irrationalists.1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes -
Replying to @Jayarava
Rationalists: Plato, Kant, Russell, Gödel. Almost all 20th century analytic philosophers. Most working scientists (but inconsistently). On your other point: yes, and I’ll take rationalists over irrationalists any time!
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Replying to @Meaningness @Jayarava
I love the original tweet but I think it is deeply wrong to characterize Plato and Kant in this way. especially Plato
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Replying to @davidcrespo @Jayarava
Hmm. For Plato, I guess the issue would be how his “participation in a Form” was supposed to work, which we don’t know. The theory of Forms overall seems designed to make everything clear-cut, though?
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Replying to @Meaningness @Jayarava
not a conversation for Twitter, but the basic idea is that Plato had no such theory — even the bits of Plato that look most like such a theory differ in both their details and their purpose within their respective dialogues
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and in fact, Plato is very sensitive to the distinction between artifacts and natural things, especially with regard to the your thought about the special clarity of boundaries and distinctions made in the realm of artifice. an example is the divine craftsman in the Timaeus
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I'm really just cribbing from my wife here, who is writing a dissertation on Plato
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Replying to @davidcrespo @Jayarava
Yes, a close friend of mine wrote a book about this, but I haven’t read the Timaeus myself :)
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If you ever get around to reading the Timaeus, just be prepared for recurring nightmares about the eternal Triangles.
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