Have you ever talked with someone who thinks that Platonism is rational? For a rationalist, it's quite an irritating experience! Platonism may have been extremely popular within a certain geographical area for a certain period of time, but it can't withstand a logical examination. The HBU honors college is unfortunately quite fond of Plato and Platonism in general, and thus out of frustration I want to explain why it is impossible to rationally establish values on a Platonist worldview. I already explained this briefly in another post [1], but here I will elaborate more on why Platonism is irrational.
Platonism is the stance that abstract objects, like justice, goodness, beauty, and so on, exist outside of the material realm that the senses perceive and outside of human consciousness. What it gets right is that moral obligations cannot be material things and thus, if they exist, they must exist in a nonphysical way. A moral obligation is not a tangible, physical thing. But the forms of this worldview cannot be argued for apart from fallacies. In this post, when I refer to Platonism I do not mean any kind of modern mathematical Platonism, but the broad system of forms and values in the philosophy of Plato.
In Platonism, one form has special significance: the form of the "good", which provides illumination of the other forms. Apart from the good, the other forms could not exist, and humans could not have knowledge of any of them. The good grounds and reveals moral truths. It enables human understanding in the way that the sun allows humans to see other objects in the external world. As I said, the good and the other forms are not perceived by the bodily senses; they are allegedly grasped by reason and experience. This experience includes the experience of talking with others (hence the dialogues of Plato).
But Platonism reeks of epistemological errors. Platonist moral epistemology hinges on whether or not humans can know if the forms exist and know what they are like. Since one can only know of morality through the forms, one would have to first demonstrate that the forms exist. The specifics here are crucial. If someone cannot perceive the forms with his or her senses, and the forms (at least the ones pertaining to values) do not exist by pure logical necessity, then there is no reason to believe that they exist in the first place, and thus no reason to believe in Platonist morality. No amount of introspection or conversation with others enables someone to discover the existence of something that cannot be proven to exist logically. Likewise, having a feeling of conscience does not in any way establish the existence of objective morality or any forms. No feeling, idea, or conversation can prove that these forms exist at all.
Platonists must assume their conclusions about morality and the forms before they argue, for they land in an overt example of circular reasoning whether they start by appealing to either their moral beliefs or to the forms; they cannot actually establish either the forms or their morality in order to argue for the other in the first place. How do they know their values and moral intuitions and beliefs are correct? Because of the forms. How do they know that the forms exist? Because of their moral intuitions and experiences. There is no verifiable starting point here, yet logic requires one. A conclusion without a proper logical proof is a shot in the dark. If it turns out to be correct, it is correct only by accident.
Platonism makes the mistake of teaching that humans can know moral truths, truths about how things should be and not just how they are, simply through reason and reflection and experience, when logic, by itself, can tell people nothing except how reality is--or how reality is if a certain starting premise or set of premises is true. Logic does not reveal that Platonic forms exist by necessity. What it does reveal is that Platonism is riddled with fallacies. Divine revelation is required for moral knowledge to be obtained, for without a deity there can be no anchor for values and without divine revelation no one could ever know objective morality [2], just his or her moral preferences or feelings.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-epistemic-problem-of-moral-platonism.html
[2]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-nature-of-conscience.html
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