10 Facts About Platonic realism

Platonic realism is the philosophical position that universals or abstract objects exist objectively and outside of human minds.

Plato's Forms include numbers and geometrical figures, making them a theory of mathematical Platonic realism; they include the Form of the Good, making them in addition a theory of ethical Platonic realism.

Plato expounded his own articulation of Platonic realism regarding the existence of universals in his dialogue The Republic and elsewhere, notably in the Phaedo, the Phaedrus, the Meno and the Parmenides.

In Platonic realism, universals do not exist in the way that ordinary physical objects exist, even though Plato metaphorically referred to such objects in order to explain his concepts.

Regardless of their description, Platonic realism holds that universals do exist in a broad, abstract sense, although not at any spatial or temporal distance from people's bodies.

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Theories of universals, including Platonic realism, are challenged to satisfy certain constraints on theories of universals.

Platonic realism satisfies one of those constraints, in that it is a theory of what general terms refer to.

The Platonic realism form is the ideal triangle—a figure with perfectly drawn lines whose angles add to 180 degrees.

In Platonic realism, forms are related to particulars in that a particular is regarded as a copy of its form.

Two main criticisms with Platonic realism relate to inherence and the difficulty of creating concepts without sense perception.