Does the gradualness of change undermine Platonic realism?

[Tannhauser_1509]

What is the defense of Platonic realism (the notion of real, distinct qualitative difference) given that many distinctions we observe are hard to define? For example, the difference between outside and inside, the threshold being the gradual move from in to out and vice versa, but it it also being impossible to p(name removed by moderator)oint where one gives way to the other; or, in the case of biological evolution, how is it possible to say when one kind has given way to another, given that in real time the process appears simply as the accrual of more and more accidents to the same substance such that the transformation is imperceptible except at a distanced view?

This question comes from a reaction an atheist blogger had to David Bentley Hart’s term “pleonastic fallacy” (which Hart uses mostly to talk about consciousness), i.e., an “attempt to overcome a qualitative difference by way of an indeterminably large number of gradual quantitative steps.” The blogger, P. D. Magnus, writes:

One problem with Hart’s newly named fallacies is that they are not obviously mistakes. Take the pleonastic fallacy of thinking that a difference in kind might only be a tremendous difference in degree. Nature abhors a dualism, so there are almost always odd intermediate cases between any two things that seem utterly distinct. So it might be a productive move to insist that what seems like a binary distinction is in fact a continuum.

How do we avoid nominalism given what Magnus observes?

 

[IWantGod]

but it it also being impossible to p(name removed by moderator)oint where one gives way to the other; or, in the case of biological evolution, how is it possible to say when one kind has given way to another,

It’s difficult to p(name removed by moderator)oint when a biological nature is truly distinct because we all share similarities. But such a distinction must exist, otherwise there would not be any differences at all. Surely the nature of a giraffe is truly distinct from the nature of a hippo.

 

[IWantGod]

Does the gradualness of change undermine Platonic realism?

Platonic forms strikes me as the idea that there are perfect forms, and the matter of universe is gradually realizing these forms to an imperfect degree. We are like a shadow of the real thing.

But don’t quote me on that.