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The Aporiae of Platonism

According to Putnam’s Platonic ontology, reality is not a part of human mind, rather the human mind is a part -and a small part at that- of reality.[1] It is fascinating to see how the ancient proclamations of a universal and transcendental law keep still all their strength in our society. Ontological assumptions cannot be discussed in terms of formal logic, for they are the very grounds of any possible discussion. Concepts such as whole, part, reality, are pre-valued in our acritical Lebenswelt knowledge, and even at a more basic neurophysiological level. It is obvious that we are a small piece within a huge scenario, but the cosmos is not something independent of our thinking: if it were we could not place ourselves in any relation to it. When we read Putnam’s words, we confound the experience of our life in an historical community (with a given scientific knowledge) with the concept of reality, as he himself does. In fact, such a proposal pretends to be a declaration of soundness of mind: is it not evident that we are but a small part? But human mind is not a part in a whole, but the condition of possibility for the concepts of part, whole, reality and many more.
Platonism is utterly nihilistic and aporetical, for if our mind is such a small part, our concepts cannot grasp reality [using Platonic (Cantorian) set theory], any finite set of true sentences is negligible in an infinite set of sentences which express transcendental wisdom], so why bother?
We do not need to sink anymore in man-made cosmic oceans. We do not need anymore philosophies  of the universal law which confound linguistic operations, such as the construction of general concepts (cosmos, reality, god, etc.) with mythological beings independent of our thinking. The whole cosmos fits in one single of our thoughts, needs our thoughts to be a cosmos.



[1] Hilary Putnam. Mathematics , Matter and Method. Cambridge University Press 1980. p.vii.

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