Degrees of being, part 2
What my last post failed to address is the question of whether ideas "exist" in a meaningful sense. In one way, my explanation seems to support Plato's belief that ideas are the only thing that exist, and everything else is merely a poor imitation. The idea of a triangle, for example, is clear and precise; triangles in the real world, however, by definition are never as precise as the ideal triangle (remember, lines have no width in geometry). And if everything has only a relative existence, measured against an idea, it seems logical to say that ideas exist more completely than the material things of which they are copies. This might be true, except for two things. First, we don't have such a precise definition of most things as we do of triangles or other geometric concepts (and geometry, of course, was central to Plato's philosophy -- the words over the Academy read, "Let none ignorant of geometry enter here"). For example, we know that a chair