(December 14, 2012 at 7:38 am)The_Germans_are_coming Wrote: I rejected Platos ideas on how the "perfect" state should be, right from when I first read about it.
To be honest I read about it in Poppers Open Sociaty and it`s enemies.
As to Platos idelism - I have always been empirical in my way of thinking.
I agree now with this and Dawkins rightful blasting of Plato. But what I got stuck on was his pretty story of "Allegory of the Cave". In it as those who have read it know, 3 babies are confined in a cave by chain, and the only image they have is shadows on a the wall. But they don't know what causes the shadows so they end up thinking all sorts of crap about the importance and powers of the shadows. But one of the babies after all of them get to the point of being older youth, decides to chuck the chains and leave the caves.
It sounds good as as a story, because it teaches you to question, otherwise that one baby would not have discovered a different reality unlike the one he viewed in the cave. It also teaches you not to be fearful of questioning.
Plato's flaw was that the INTENT OF QUESTIONING, was not designed to find facts, but to seek an essence, a utopia, a perfection.
I think the problem with most who read Plato did what I did, not all, but far too many.
I am with Dawkins in his claim that Plato is probably the most responsible for fucked up logic humanity suffers from today.
Questioning as an idea wasn't bad. But questioning without some sort of data testing and control groups was something Plato never considered to any semblance of modern science.