Here's why I actually stand by Plato: the 'cupness' - is the purpose or function of the cup Śunyata refers to the tenet that all things are empty of permanent existence and nature. The physical cup is certainly not permanent, but the same cannot be said about its function.
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Replying to @SuprahumanMind @Meaningness
In fact, the utility of the cup depends not on its physical form but on its empty hollowness. That is, emptiness is where its function lies.
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Replying to @SuprahumanMind
This is a really interesting take! I don’t think I quite agree, but… probably twitter isn’t the best place to argue metaphysics :)
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Replying to @Meaningness
I would greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts on this.
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Replying to @SuprahumanMind
Um, well, I’ll try. First a disclaimer: I’m not the slightest bit expert on Plato; I know him mostly only from second sources. And I mostly I read those a long time ago and may misremember them. But maybe what matters is not what Plato thought, but what is actually the case…
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Replying to @Meaningness
My dim recollection is that Plato’s Forms/Ideals were not meant to be understood as functions. That came in more with Aristotle? For Plato, a cup is a cup because it has cupness, not because it holds wine.
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Replying to @Meaningness
If a non-cup holds wine, and you use it as a cup, it’s not a cup, and you are probably a pervert. My friend Beth Preston did a lot of work to sort this out: https://amzn.to/2GdQve2
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Replying to @Meaningness
For Aristotle, functions inhered in objects; i.e. the function of holding wine is an essential property of a cup. And, as you suggest, that function is eternal in the abstract, although its instantiations in particular cups is impermanent.
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Replying to @Meaningness
But, (imo) this function does not inhere in the cup. It is an interaction among the cup, the wine, and the drinker.
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Replying to @Meaningness
If all humans die next week as a consequence of the Anthrax Leprosy Mu epidemic, former cups will no longer function as cups. Arguably, they will no longer *be* cups; they’ll just be random blobs of silicon-aluminum oxide.
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So, the function of a cup is not eternal; once we’re extinct, it’ll return to the Dharmakaya, as all phenomena do.
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Replying to @Meaningness
Also, the emptiness of a cup is only a matter of imputation. There are air molecules in it, and other tiny bits of stuff, so it is not absolutely empty. Relative emptiness of this sort is not the same thing as śunyata; only a heuristically useful analog for it.
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Replying to @Meaningness
If śunyata is absence of essential nature, and all things are empty in this sense, then Plato’s theory of ideas is utterly wrong. Because the theory was that everything has an eternal, essential nature.
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