The world of the forms

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I have made a breakthrough in thinking about Platonic forms and particulars. This will take a while to work out, but the initial idea:
  • The relationship of a form to its particulars is the same as the relationship of a generic algorithm to its implementations.
  • The form is the "essence" of the particular in the same way that the generic algorithm is the essence of all of its implementations.
  • The form could never exist on its own: no computer can run a generic algorithm. The algorithm must always be embodied in some particular language, and with concrete data structures.

This scheme will ultimately, I intuit, allow the synthesis of Plato, Aristotle, and Berkeley.

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