Let's be Platonic

I am bored writing about Cindy Sheehan. It seems to me like the debate on both sides has become overly personal and idealistic. So I thought I would write about something comepletely different, yet the same.

No one is in an adqeuate epistemic position to know what is really right. Most people that attempt formulate some kind of theory about why their version of right usually get laughed into disrepute by people who disagree. One person that tried, and succeeded (at least in convincing Catholicism to follow his ideas) was Plato. Plato believed that everything in the world merely imitated a Form. Each Form is the standard of all the imitations. All of the Forms culminate in one, the Good. The Good equalled, so I believe, the Truth. These ideas were hugely influential to early Christians (Well, from about 400AD, not the earliest of Christians). God was assimiliated the position of the Good. Together with the Aristotlean notion of the prime-mover unmoved, set the stage up for much of Christian doctrine's position today. Sidenote: Aristotle was interested in the cosmological argument. i.e. if every effect has a cause, what was the first case? Must be God.

One of the criticisms raised against Plato's Theory of Forms is that he can not deal with negative universals, while upholding the law of non-contradiction. The law of non-contradiction says that any given thing cannot both be and not be. The leaf cannot be both green all over and brown all over. For the two colours to co-exist would lead to a contradiction. Contradiction is the (standard) logician's ultimate sin - if we find ourselves in contradiction, we are wrong.

I want to give a defense of a Platonic heaven. From now on, I will be using the terminology of universal and particular:

I start by positing three distinct, rather simply one all-embracing universal reality. An analogy can be made with mathematics. There are numbers existing from 0 to infinity, and from 0 to negative infinity. Likewise, it seems possible to also allow this continuum for universals. One reality is positive, which aims towards truth containing the universals of the form u. The second is negative, which aims towards falsehood. Meanwhile, the third is neutral, encompassing the universals of contradiction, meaninglessness, nothingness, non-existence, 0 and possibly identity.

My strategy of separating universals into three realities rests on a critical premise, that they are utterly distinct. Otherwise, both p and not-p would be true. The natural separation point is around zero. The neutral reality is required, because the universal of non-existence is neither positive, nor negative. Nothing true or false can be said about Pegasus, as Pegasus does not exist to have truths spoken about him. Nothing can be said of something that does not exist.

The whiteness of my mug is “caused” by the universal white, and its not-not-whiteness is caused by the universal of not-not-whiteness. Not-not-whiteness is required to explain why the law of non-contradiction holds. If positive and negative realities are utterly distinct, then whiteness itself cannot deny an object’s not being white. Thus the positive reality can only attribute positive characteristics to things.

I've got more to say on the issue, in fact I've written quite a long article about it. The upshot is, I think that Plato has room to move. Therefore, it may be possible that Cindy Sheehan really is right. Therefore, we should engage with her in real argument - rather than throwing her out the door by saying she is dishonouring her son. Rubbish!