Plato

Plato (428 BC - 348 BC) was a philosopher in ancient Greece. He has had an enormous impact on Western philosophy. As Alfred North Whitehead put it: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato".

Plato thought that common characteristics of distinct objects were due to these characteristics existing in their own right and influencing each and every object which instantiated those characteristics.

Words work

Submitted by jhwierenga on Mon, 07/30/2018 - 10:07

Ever since Plato, the ability of words to mean something has generally been considered to be the central problem of philosophy: when we observe a common characteristic of distinct objects - say, that each of them is red - in what sense, if any, does it make sense to say that this common characteristic is a distinct thing, that exists of itself independently of the objects of which it is a characteristic? This is more a theoretical than a practical problem. For we experience on a daily basis that the words we use have communicative and predictive value, by and large.

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Philosophy

Submitted by jhwierenga on Thu, 07/26/2018 - 16:14
icon of thinker

QO offers a new approach to what, ever since Plato, has generally been considered to be the central problem of philosophy: when we observe a common characteristic of distinct objects - say, that each of them is red - in what sense, if any, does it make sense to say that this common characteristic is a distinct thing, that exists of itself independently of the objects of which it is a characteristic?

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