Do Chairs Exist?

[vulcanlogician]

I liked mereological nihilism too. One of the reasons it seems so appealing is that, otherwise, there would have to be a Platonic form of the chair "out there" somewhere. And I have trouble believing that. But if that isn't true at all, then mereological nihilism must be true.

That Platonic forms, if they exist, must be "out there" is the misguided notion based on folk experiences of time and space. Another way to think of them are as telelogical laws and limiting principles embedded within reality, not out there, but latent.

I've done a lot of thinking about them, Neo. What you say is true. It could be that Plato isn't pointing at the sky, but also to the ground (like Aristotle). It might be better to see the forms as foundational things to whatever takes part in them.

For instance, triangle-shaped things in nature have the triangle as "foundational" to them. The principles inherent in the triangle are inherent in all things triangle-shaped. And you CANNOT mute the principles of the triangle. They are eternal.

What bothers me about the forms is a problem I reach when I contemplate them. Take for example, the fly wing. There is a such thing as a good fly wing and a bad fly wing. So there is an idealized form of the fly wing in existence (according to Plato). A form of the fly wing in which all physical fly wings take part.

Now, imagine a fly lands on a tree branch and a bird tries to eat it. The bird misses the fly but manages to take a bite out of its wing. The fly manages to get away and discovers its wing, though it has a bite taken out of it is still functional. We can compare this "wing with a bite out of it" against the original form of the fly wing (which we are prone to do). The wing with a bite taken out partakes less in the idealized form of the fly wing. So far so good.

But we can also infer a new form. The "form of a fly wing with a bite taken out of it." And since some fly wings with bites taken out of them are better than other fly wings with bites taken out of them, we can infer an idealized form of a fly wing with a bite taken out of it. That's absurd. And we can parse up idealized forms of objects like this until the forms themselves become meaningless. 

Now, that being said, I don't think Plato's forms get a fair shake in the minds of many. After all, concepts like goodness, truth, accuracy infer ideal forms to make any sense at all. And we must agree that some things (like statements) can be more accurate than others. So, I think Plato said something important with his notion of forms. But absurdity ensues when you try to accept the theory of forms as Plato presents it.