Free Will, Decision making and religion

[Mudhammam]

I agree. This is why Platonic ideals bother me, not just with human conceptions of self, but in so many other areas of life -- they ignore the fact that "changes aren't permanent, but change is."

I think there is a context in which it is sensible to talk about Platonic ideals, just not one wholly applicable to the world of sense perception---a point Plato stresses. For him there were unchanging forms from which perceptions derived their order. If we think of something like abstract truths being static (2+2=4, for example) then I think his forms are to that extent valid. Another important function of them is to help us extricate what element it is in two distinct objects that allows us to classify them under a single term, say, such as the idea "bed." One must have an idea of a bed before he seeks to craft one into being, and the resulting product may be quite unlike any other bed-like object yet conceived, but it is called a "bed" due to the likeness of some ideal conception of bed that it shares, i.e. the form common to all beds. On a conceptual level his forms have a lot of application. The problem is when people take the "little agitations in the brain called 'thought'" too far and start inventing realities rather than defining the one presented before us for purposes of clarity.