The list is almost inexhaustible. Plato says that true and reliable knowledge rests only with those who can comprehend the true reality behind the world of everyday experience. In order to perceive the world of the Forms, individuals must undergo a difficult education. Someone wanting to do architecture, for example, would be required to recall knowledge of the Forms of Building, House, Brick, Tension, etc.
The fact that this person may have absolutely no idea about building design is irrelevant. Not everyone is suited to be king in the same way as not everyone is suited to mathematics. Conversely, a very high standard in a particular trade suggests knowledge of its Forms. The majority of people cannot be educated about the nature of the Forms because the Forms cannot be discovered through education, only recalled. To explain our relationship to the world of the Forms, in the Republic Plato uses the analogy of people who spend their whole lives living in a cave [see Allegory of the Cave ].
All they ever see are shadows on the walls created by their campfire. Compared with the reality of the world of the Forms, real physical objects and events are analogous to being only shadows. Plato also takes the opportunity to use the cave analogy as a political statement. Only the people who have the ability to step out into the sunlight and see recall the true reality the Forms should rule.
Clearly Plato was not a fan of Greek democracy. No doubt his aristocratic background and the whims of Athenian politics contributed to his view, especially as the people voted to execute his mentor Socrates. Plato leaves no doubt that only special people are fit to rule. Who are the special people who can recognise the Forms? What shape is light or the object that mediates the phenomena of light? These are rational Qs.
Again, infinite regress has to do with not defining things objectively, or it is because these autistic mathematicians forever divide numbers and pretend numbers are objects, or because they use what are called "functional definitions" in other words, they try to "prove" an object by running a test or procedure or to confirm a "prediction" -- like they're doing with Higgs.
Well, if you're objects are made of magic, then sure, your predictions will always come true. OK, now I found it! No, this ain't science. It better have some kind of shape! No no no no! You have absolutely no grounds to say that! Furthermore you've committed an infinite regress! If you say that the effects of an object is determined from more objects, then what gives those object its effects?
Then what gives that object its respective effects to do that? Ad infinitum! And so on I'm struggling to understand your idea that objects can cause other objects to move without there being any forces involved, that there can be a 'mechanical process' without energy. For example, when ATP breaks down into ADP and a phosphate, energy is released that can be used to catalyse the reactions in our body. In our most accepted theory In muscle contraction it is this energy from ATP that allows the heads of the actin filament to change shape and cause the 'stroke' and movement in our bodies.
So when you speak of a "string that reels in a fish hook" or a "rope that swings a ball around" you still have to reduce these events back to the force that is allowing the movement. Again, we have to define what we mean by "exist". First we need to make sure an electron is a valid object shape and one which MIGHT exist have location.
So someone, maybe some Phd expert, should be able to simply draw one for me. But they can't! An electron is not negative or positive. These are abstract concepts we use like left and right, or love and hate. An electron, like any object, simply has shape and moves in a certain direction or expands or contracts according to whatever your theory is. But these don't mean anything in science: they're all mathematical terms, or at best they're abstract or circular descriptions of what we observe.
We already "know" about this i. If we just say well, one field attracts and one repels, or it's to do with positive and negative, or charge or fields, or whatever; we still haven't explained anything! We've left the question entirely. Magnetism is the same kind of problem as gravity. Gravity is not a thing object. It's a description of what we already observe.
The ONLY way one object can PULL on another is via a continuous mediating object, like a rope that swings a ball around, or a string that reels in a fish hook.
Because these "experts" are doing religion, politics, math and predictions and all this other nonsense, they've forgotten about true physics and have come up with irrational pseudo-explanations, like fields and force and whatnot. They've forgotten that we need a physical object to do physics!
It's just a contradiction in terms contradictio in terminis. So I prompt again: what do YOU mean by exist, object, concept? Hopefully you can use these terms consistently. Then, what are your exhibits? Particles little balls? The Hypothesis stage of Science is really: 1 definitions, 2 exhibits i. That's the only way we can then proceed with some kind of theory. Once you break that down and realise that there must be forces in existence as part of the universe's natural laws, the interesting question is to ask why these and not others..
And it's all too easy to become irrational when thinking about these topics because we know so little! No no of course human perception has nothing to do with existence. I'm not talking about that at all. Kinetic energy has nothing to do with our perceiving it. It did not come into existence when we saw it. Perhaps kinetic energy was a bad example. If an object makes an electron negative, then what gives that object the force to make other objects negative?
Energy does not exist, it's a concept. Energy has no shape. Can I draw "an" energy? No, it's to do with measurement or sensation or whatever actually it's an incredible loose and malleable term. This is entirely the problem as I see it. Let's try another thought experiment. Does the moon exist? If so, why? If not, why not? Further; did it only exist once we measured it? Did it pop into existence because we observed it?
If we have no evidence for the Moon, does it not exist? If I am blind,d eat and dumb, does the Moon not exist "for me"? If the Moon exists, hopefully it does so regardless of whether we can prove it, supply evidence for it, sense it, measure it, observe it, etc. Hopefully, the Moon exists because we define exist consistently. Then we can move on. So, does God exist? Yes or no? Same question: why or why not? If we cannot measure Him, or touch Him, or prove Him, or if He is elusive or vague or shows us no evidence for His existence, does he not exist?
I say no! It has nothing to do with proof, evidence etc. This is why theists and atheists run around "proving" and "disproving" gods to each other. It's why we have particles and higher dimensions we cannot imagine. Because we've lost our rationality. To be rational, we must be as objective as possible. So, we must rule out observers. So, existence has nothing to do with human evidence, senses, proof etc.
Take out ALL observers: what's left? Nope, subjective. Insects see more blue, we see more red. Size is relative, requiring a comparison to another object. The ONLY property objects have objectively speaking, must be shape. Can you imagine a chair without shape?! No chance! So, if God exists, he must have shape, then location too.
Then we can proceed with out theory God made the Universe, whatever! As long as IF -- IF -- it exists or existed , it has some kind of structure shape!!! Mmm no I certainly understand your argument, though I was just pointing out how defining existence with a definition that necessitates presence denies the existence of the effects of objects, which undoubtedly do exist.
The virtuous person will be one who has all three parts of her soul working in a harmonious fashion, i. The analogue of the virtuous individual with her tripartite soul is the ideal state, the Republic, with its three parts or classes, rulers, warriors and laborers, all working in harmony with one another under the auspices of the ruler, i.
Having established that justice is psychic harmony at the end of Book Four, Plato next turns to show what it is that the philosopher ruler or reason in the individual knows that licenses his claim that they will rule for the benefit of the respective parts and the whole state or person. At the end of Book V bff , Socrates begins his defense of the rule of the philosopher by contrasting his epistemological condition with that of a group of sightlovers.
The philosopher, who accepts that there are Forms, e. The sightlover, who denies that there is Beauty Itself but rather insists that there are just the many different beautiful plays, paintings and such, lacks knowledge. He has only belief. Examples of 1 include colors and sounds, and of course what completely is and what is and is not. The second criterion is seemingly satisfied by the difference between being true versus being true and false.
Thus, knowledge is always true, whereas belief admits of both truth and falsehood. On the existential reading, knowledge is set over what exists; belief is set over what exists and does not exist. On the predicative reading, knowledge is set over Forms, what is F , for any property F or some privileged kinds of properties, e.
The existential and predicative readings typically are committed to objects as what knowledge and belief are set over. Since it is hard to make sense of what it could be for an object to exist and not exist, the existential reading has found little support. The predicative reading, on the other hand, lends itself to a defense of the Two Worlds account of Plato's metaphysics. The objects of belief and knowledge are distinct. Accordingly, one can have only beliefs about the particulars and about particulars only beliefs, and only knowledge of Forms and of Forms one can only have knowledge.
See Meno 98a. Moreover, since one can have only knowledge of Forms, one cannot have any false beliefs about Forms. Given that in Book I of the Republic the interlocutors seem to have many false beliefs about Justice, e. Knowledge is set over what is true, i. The veridical reading regards the overlap between the objects of the distinct faculties—the set of true propositions—as a virtue, since it allows one to give a justified true belief interpretation to knowledge and allows one to have both beliefs about and knowledge of Forms and of sensible objects.
The point of Sun is to contrast the visible and intelligible realms. The former is generated, nurtured and governed by the sun, which also provides the light required by the eye to gain access to the physical world. And though it is the cause of knowledge and truth, it is also an object of knowledge. Line starts from the broad division stipulated by Sun: there is the intelligible realm and the visible realm.
Each of these is again divided into two unequal parts. At the bottom of the visible one finds images, shadows and such. The ordinary physical objects of which the images are images occupy the upper portion. Set over the images is the faculty of eikasia , imagination.
Set over the physical world is the faculty of pistis , literally faith or conviction, but generally regarded as belief. Plato next turns to the lower segment of the intelligible portion of Line:. The top-most segment of Line is clear enough. Included in this group is the Good itself, best regarded as having the status of first among equals.
Precisely what to make of the objects in the third section, the faculty of dianoia , and the nature of hypotheses are matters of great controversy. Given Plato's examples, the capacity of dianoia seems distinctive of scientific or mathematical reasoning.
The objects of dianoia are then, roughly, the objects of the sciences. Cave, arguably the most famous analogy in the history of philosophy, reinforces the message of line. Seated prisoners, chained so that they cannot move their heads, stare at a cave wall on which are projected images. These images are cast from carved figures illuminated by a fire and carried by people on a parapet above and behind the prisoners.
A prisoner is loosed from his chains. First he sees the carved images and the fire. Blinded by the light of the sun, he cannot look at the trees, rocks and animals around him, but instead looks at the shadows and reflections in water cast by those objects. As he becomes acclimatized, he turns his gaze to those objects and finally, fully acclimatized, he looks to the source of illumination, the sun itself.
In the analogy of Cave, corresponding to the physical objects over which belief is set are the carved statues in the cave. If, however, Cave is our guide, these dematerialized images are generated not from the carved statues but from the animals, i. The Seventh Book continues with the kinds of study conducive to the education of the philosopher-ruler cff. The goal of intellectual development is knowledge of Forms, ultimately acquired through dialectic.
Dialectic, however, is practiced late in life by a select few with the requisite memory and quickness of mind, after they have studied various, essentially mathematical disciplines. The winnowing process eliminates most people from ever developing the necessities for philosophical thought.
The first steps aa in the turn towards abstract thinking are occasioned by the need for the mind to settle questions arising from ordinary perception; that is, the mind of everyman is liable to be summoned to reflect upon the confused, and confusing, reports of perception.
About a host of perceptual qualities, thick, thin, hard, soft, large and small, the senses report that they are the same, at least in certain perceptual circumstances. Lumped in with these properties is also number. The mind is summoned to settle what is large and what is small, and what is one.
The brief discussion of the summoners raises suspicions about the faculty psychology presented in the final argument of Book V and in Line and Cave. It seems at times that Plato thinks that belonging to each part of the soul are capacities or faculties capable of issuing judgments cf. So, for instance, there are the judgments of sense that can and often do conflict with the judgments of reason. But taken literally, if each faculty has its own objects such that no other faculty can be set over them, then there can be no conflict in judgments.
The case of perception poses a special difficulty. Perception, unlike discursive thought or belief, is aligned not with the so-called rational part of the soul, but with the desiderative part.
As we saw in the Phaedo , as well as in the passages about the sightlovers and the summoners, the senses are disparaged as a source of confusion and falsehood.
The senses mislead us. One of Plato's complaints seems to be that people rely on perception, or belief relying on perception, with the result that they come to think that what is real is the physical, sensible world. And, perhaps even worse, they come to think that one can understand know things about the world such as what makes for example a temple beautiful or a stick equal or a person large by appealing to properties that are perceptual or observational or sensible.
Proponents of the thesis that Plato posits Forms only for incomplete properties locate the problem for the sensible world not in the objects themselves, but in the kinds of explanations that sightlovers and non-philosophers rely on to justify their claim to know propositions about the sensible, material world see Fine ; ; Irwin ; Gosling It need not be the case, as the predicative reading in terms of objects would have it, that a given temple is and is not- beautiful.
In their view, the problem is the sensible property types cited by the sight-lovers in their accounts of what makes something beautiful. For example, there is the sensible property type, bright-color, that allegedly explains why the temple at Bassae is beautiful.
But, bright-color itself, the property type, is and is not-beautiful, for it accounts for beauty in some things but accounts for ugliness not-beauty in others. For, according to this reading, every sensible property type suffers from this compresence of opposites, i. In appealing to such properties in their accounts, the sight lover can never be justified in any of his beliefs about the many beautifuls, because their accounts or reasons for their beliefs about the world must be false.
Hence, the sightlover can have only beliefs about the many beautifuls, or equals, or, for any incomplete property F , the many f s. The sight-lover can never achieve knowledge so long as he relies on sensible properties in his accounts. This can come about for at least two reasons.
On the one hand, there will be a host of non-sensible properties and propositions about ordinary particulars and such properties, e. Since arguably Plato thinks that Socrates is completely or essentially a man, and since there is no Form of Man, the philosopher and, perhaps, anyone can know such a proposition. On the other hand, the philosopher, once he comes to know the Forms of the Incomplete Properties, can then have knowledge of the external world in any and all respects.
Not misled by the compresent opposite properties, and able to base all his accounts on the Good and the other Forms, nothing stands in his way of knowing the material world c. The predicative reading of the argument of Book V and the analogies of the central books does not limit the range of Forms and does not commit itself to the possibility of knowledge of the external world.
If one treats the physical world as metaphysically defective, as victimized in any and every respect by its being and not-being, then that suffices to preclude one from knowing anything about such a world.
The objects of the physical world are simply not the right sorts of things to qualify as objects of knowledge, regardless of what sorts of reasons or justifications or explanations one has at her disposal.
Regardless of the epistemic status of the physical world, one task is to understand how Plato thinks the transition is made from one's perceptions and beliefs about the physical world to knowledge of the Forms. In the Republic , Socrates says that every human being is capable of becoming a philosopher and thus able to know the Good and all the Forms c. On the other hand, the Republic leaves little doubt that Plato expects that few will actually achieve the knowledge each is capable of.
Most of us will give in to the ordinary beliefs generated through our perceptual encounters with the sensible world, as well as those resulting from the conversations we have with one another.
But despite the odds, from the Phaedo and Republic we can locate two elements of Plato's epistemological program that can lead to knowledge if properly exercised, recollection and the method of hypothesis.
The latter is mentioned explicitly in the Phaedo and seems again to be alluded to in Plato's remarks about the differences between the top two sections of line. Since this method, assuming that it is the same in both, appears to be deployed as part of the final stages of the pursuit of knowledge, there is reason to postpone consideration of the method until after consideration of perception and belief, i.
The Phaedo 's discussion of Recollection suggests that there is something inherently flawed with empiricist or abstractionist accounts, at least those that attempt to derive any concept from our contacts, perceptual or linguistic, with the external world.
It seems that Plato thinks that the deficiency of the external, sensible, material world vitiates all efforts to build or acquire concepts from it. The deficiency of the sensible material world makes it an unreliable source of information. Depending on how one accounts for this deficiency, the trouble for perception, and belief based on perception, is explained in different ways. Aristotle's account emphasizes that it is changing. The Affinity Argument points to the complexity of material particulars.
Rather than present a single property, as it were, to perception, perception is required to focus on some aspect of the complex particular.
If it is also true that at least with respect to some properties, namely the incomplete or relative properties addressed by the Compresence accounts, every object is both F and not- F , then no sensible will be an unqualified bearer of these properties. Perception, considered in its own right, seems to be unable to explain how any feature of an object is selected for study. It also seems that Plato thinks that the psychological faculties of perception, or even belief, are incapable of processing the information in a reliable manner, or at least in a manner requisite for knowledge.
At times it seems that they distort or alter perceptions Phaedo , 65ff. At other times, e. One problem is that whenever one engages in perception, and belief based on perceptual reports, one can never overcome the inherently perspectival situation. For instance, no matter where one is situated, the round penny will appear to the eye, we might say, somewhat elliptical. Or, to use Plato's example from Book Ten, the straight stick in water will seem bent owing to the laws of refraction , even though an experienced person will believe that it is straight ca.
However we account for the inadequacy of perception the task remains to explore how we get from perception, which stimulates the recollective process, to belief and eventually to recollect or otherwise know Forms. Plato is less than forthcoming about how one moves from one stage to the next.
The elenctic method probably plays some role in advancing one's understanding, especially the step from perception to belief. At a certain point, we naturally begin to offer reasons for our beliefs. The elenchus questions our reasons, typically by revealing an inconsistency in our accounts of why we believe what we do. But we can also place Plato in a tradition that seeks a systematic explanation of the natural phenomena.
One aim of the Presocratics, as Socrates narrates in the Phaedo 95a4ff , is to find a single explanation, or a single kind of explanation, to save the phenomena.
Socrates complains that the Presocratics had mistakenly looked to material causes. Such explanations fail to meet minimal standards: the same explanation aitia accounts for opposite phenomena, e. The best account is teleological in nature, in terms of the Good. Thus the Phaedo gestures at the critical role assigned to this Form in the Republic.
In the Phaedo Plato begs off from directly investigating the nature of the good or teleological explanations. Precisely what the connection is between the Phaedo 's method of hypothesis 99eff and the Republic 's remarks on hypothesis and the ascent to an unhypothetical first principal is a subject of controversy.
Equally controversial is its connection within the Phaedo to the method of recollection and to philosophical practice in general. Since the hypothesis of Forms is offered next, with its corollary of participating particulars, it would seem that the logoi are opinions about Forms.
These logoi are to be treated as provisional. Socrates' is the strongest logos and the safest, in explicit contrast to the wise explanations of others. Rather, Plato directs us to posit initially a general hypothesis and to determine whether there are particular cases within the target domain—here the cause of generation and destruction—that are inconsistent with, i.
The elenctic practice of Socrates would determine whether other accounts are consistent with one another. But that still leaves the question of higher hypotheses unanswered. While this may well be so, there are perhaps intermediate accounts between the full-blown teleology of the Good—an account that Plato steadfastly throughout his writings refuses to provide—and the initial statement of the theory of Forms and its corollary of participation see Rowe These intermediate stages might then be viewed as different accounts of the nature of Forms, the nature of particulars and of the participation relation itself.
Or, looking to the clever explanations that follow, where perhaps Forms of Fire and Heat, Cold and Snow or Three and Odd are linked, one might ponder whether Forms are indeed utterly simple or monoeidetic, in contrast to an account of Forms in which they may bear a special relation to their essence—Three is what it is to be three—and a different relation to another property, e.
Seen in this light, the Theory of Forms in the Phaedo and Republic is hypothetical or provisional, awaiting a defense in which the nature of Forms, the role of the Good and the relations between Forms are examined. They are distinguished in part by the fact that those considering their subject matter dianoetically still make use of hypotheses, whereas those using nous have arrived at an unhypothetical first principle and descending the line have destroyed the hypotheses.
It seems that the mathematicians, for example, use discursive thought because they assume the starting points, i. In this respect, they are like Socrates of the Phaedo positing the Forms to explain generation and corruption.
In Plato's hands, scientific inquiry seems to emerge from reflection on the everyday material world. The step from conviction to dianoia , however, is taken by far fewer individuals than those who step from eikasia to conviction. The move from the second to the third level crosses the barrier between the visible and the intelligible. Or, similarly, the objects of dianoia and nous may be identical: the philosopher thinks about them differently from the scientist.
If one assumes that here Forms are first posited, as seems required if we are to understand the descent from nous to secure the Forms, then the objects of dianoia and pistis cannot be the same. For the latter are not Forms but ordinary particulars. The initial strongest hypothesis, i.
The same route would secure the hypotheses of the sciences, i. The peculiar properties or axioms of the individual sciences would remain the provenance of the scientists. Dialectic or understanding would concern how we are to think about the nature of those properties and the structure of the sciences. The images of the central books do not settle the question of whether or not the objects of the different faculties are the same. The same proposition can be believed or known, depending on one's reasons or justification for holding the belief.
But a contents analysis is not committed to a justified true belief account of all knowledge. It is left open that knowledge of Forms is somehow basic. Descending the line furnishes justification for the claims of the dianoetic sciences and beliefs about the material world, including the states of affairs in actual cities. What to do about the basic knowledge of Forms is a key issue.
Sun, Line and Cave suggest to many readers that knowledge of Forms is intuitive or acquaintance-like. On the other hand, the refrain that one who knows can give an account logos of what he knows suggests knowledge by description or a propositional analysis. To emphasize relations between Forms, starting from the relation of the Good to all Forms, lends credence to the view that Plato is an epistemological holist.
Holism is fueled by the search for definitions, since in order to know what, for instance, Human is, one must know all the elements of its definition, Animal, Rationality, Bipedality, and thus the definition of these elements, and so on. In order to know a given Form, one must know all the Forms, an extreme version of holism, or at least one must know all the Forms in a given science. The results of this analysis, the genera and species of a given science, are then hypostasized as Forms, nodes in a web or the elements of a field.
There is a virtuous circle of justification. Holist readings can also be combined with the narrow reading of recollection. The same token proposition may well be entertained by the philosopher as by those who still rely on concepts gleaned from their everyday encounters. Or one can try to save one's holism by allowing that the different states of mind cause the contents of the propositions to be different. Those who see recollection as an act engaged in only by philosophers maintain that their concept differs from the empirically grounded concept of the non-recollector, the occupant apparently of at least two of the other three stages of Line.
But how one gets from the one concept to the other is unspecified. The holist program seems to entail that one can continue to add to beliefs about Beauty, where one is deploying the empirical concept, until one in a proper justificatory exercise acquires all the appropriately related beliefs about properties.
Once that is accomplished, the philosophical concept is recollected. It remains open on this account, when one has recollected the Form and then descends, whether the contents of the philosopher's beliefs about the empirical world use the philosophical or empirical concept.
Those who read Plato as subscribing to different objects for Knowledge and Belief also need a story about how one gets from one stage to the next. If we assume that Forms are at work throughout the learning process, then Plato is best viewed as not identifying the Form with the propositional contents of his states.
The same expression will, depending on the state of the agent, have different referents: the images; the material objects; some immaterial, abstract intermediary, or a mathematical in the case of dianoia. On the objects account, Plato has little to say about the status of the concepts deployed in thought. The Form of Equality is not the concept. The concept is present throughout the developmental life of the human. A select individual will come to disdain the senses and the material objects of the sensible world and try to explain what accounts for the similarities present in his experience.
The ontological status of these kinds is not, as yet, clear to her. With the further development of her dialectical capacity, the philosopher-to-be comes to think that there are Forms; that is, comes to think that there are special entities variously related to particulars and property-instances. The objects of these beliefs are still not the Forms themselves, if the state of mind of the scientist or Phaedan hypothesizer is not yet knowledge.
At this stage, or even earlier, one might even be in possession of the definition of the Form and still not have knowledge. Exactly why one lacks knowledge is hard to say. It is not, it seems, because he lacks beliefs about the relation the Forms bear to other mathematical notions. On the one hand, it is doubtful that Plato believes that one can know all of mathematics or that one can know what a triangle is only if one knows every other shape.
On the other hand, the mathematician does seem to know as much as would be needed to qualify as having knowledge of the mathematical Forms. The philosopher is not said to know more mathematics than the mathematician. He secures his knowledge in way the mathematician can't or doesn't. Plato does then place fantastically high demands on knowledge.
The desire to ensure irrefutability, perhaps the legacy of reflection on the Socratic elenchus, drives him to the conclusion that one really has recollected the Form only when one has become a metaphysician. She need only! There is little reason to think that Plato espouses a holism of knowledge of the sort discussed above.
Plato never says that the mathematician or the philosopher needs to know all the truths of mathematics or ethics to know some Form. Moreover, while Plato does prescribe a course of study in the Republic designed to promote one's dialectical abilities, and while it is agreed by both holists and intuitionists, those who allow for atomic or acquaintance-like knowledge of a Form, that the same Forms are the basic objects of knowledge, it does not follow that Plato thinks that there is only one way to secure knowledge of the Forms.
If there are different paths to knowledge, or different ways to know a given Form, then Plato's epistemology is liable to appear to be both holistic and acquaintance-like.
As for when and where Recollection is operative, or whether Plato allows that a philosopher or scientist can know anything about the physical world, it is left to each reader of the dialogues to judge whether Plato is committed to gulfs between both the ordinary concepts of most humans and the special concepts of the few philosophers, as well as between the perfect Forms and the seemingly imperfect physical world.
Since a Platonic dialogue is a dialectical conversation designed to summon the mind of the reader towards philosophizing, it is appropriate that each reader struggle to discover for himself What Knowledge Is.
Aristotle, General Topics: metaphysics individuals and individuation innateness: historical controversies knowledge: by acquaintance vs. The Background to Plato's Metaphysics 2. The Metaphysics of the Phaedo 3. The Nature of Forms: Self-Predication 4. The Simplicity of Forms 5. The Separation of Forms 6. The Range of Forms 7. The Deficiency of Particulars 8. Being and Partaking 9. Introduction to Plato's Epistemology The Meno Recollection in the Phaedo Sun, Line and Cave The Development of Mind The Method of Hypothesis The Background to Plato's Metaphysics Three predecessors heavily influenced Plato's thoughts on metaphysics and epistemology, Heraclitus c.
At this juncture, Socrates changes course: What about these things? Do we say that justice itself is something? Of course. And the fair and the good? Then have you ever seen any of these sorts of things with your eyes?
In no way. But then have you grasped them with any other sense through the body. I am talking about all of them , for instance about size, health, strength, in a word about the essence ousia of all of them, what each happens to be.
Is it through the body then that what is most true of these things is contemplated? Or does it hold thus? Whoever of us should prepare himself to consider most accurately each thing itself about which he inquires, that one would come closest to knowing each thing. Once Cebes accepts the hypothesis, a novel implication is announced c3—7 : Well then, consider what then follows if you also accept my hypothesis.
For it seems to me that if anything else is beautiful besides Beauty Itself, it is beautiful on account of nothing else than because it partakes of Beauty Itself. And I speak in the same way about everything else. Do you accept this sort of cause or explanation?
The Nature of Forms: Self-Predication The debate over self-predication involves both statements and what the statements are about, i. The Simplicity of Forms Throughout the dialogues, Forms are said to be one, hen , or monoeides. The Separation of Forms The best guide to the separation of Forms is the claim that each Form is what it is in its own right, each is an auto kath auto being.
The special relationship between a Form and its essence is captured in two principles Each essence is the essence of exactly one Form. Each Form has or is exactly one essence; [ 10 ] II captures the ontological force of the expression that each Form is monoeides : of one essence. The Range of Forms The middle period dialogues contain few arguments whose conclusion is that such and such a Form therefore exists. The Deficiency of Particulars Metaphors dominate Plato's remarks about the relation of particulars to Forms.
Furthermore, since the Phaedo asserts that particulars are what they are in virtue of the Form's being what it Is, it follows that If P has Y , then P has something which Is Y.
Introduction to Plato's Epistemology Epistemology, for Plato, is best thought of as the account of what knowledge is. The Meno The Meno is probably a transitional work, bridging the Socratic and the middle period dialogues. The paradox is this 80d-e : For anything, F , either one knows F or one does not know F.
If one knows F , then one cannot inquire about F. If one does not know F , then one cannot inquire about F. Therefore, for all F , one cannot inquire about F. If x reminds one of y , then one must have known y beforehand one must, in having any sense-perception of something x , recognize x and take y in mind think of y y must not be the object of the same knowledge as x. The Epistemology of the Republic : The Two Worlds Doctrine The Republic is unquestionably Plato's most elaborate defense of his central ethical doctrines in the middle period.
Having established that justice is psychic harmony at the end of Book Four, Plato next turns to show what it is that the philosopher ruler or reason in the individual knows that licenses his claim that they will rule for the benefit of the respective parts and the whole state or person At the end of Book V bff , Socrates begins his defense of the rule of the philosopher by contrasting his epistemological condition with that of a group of sightlovers.
Plato next turns to the lower segment of the intelligible portion of Line: In this subsection, the soul, using as images the things that were imitated before, is forced to investigate from hypotheses, proceeding not to a first principle, but to a conclusion.
In the other subsection, however, it makes its way to a first principle that is not a hypothesis, proceeding from a hypothesis, but without the images used in the previous subsection, using Forms themselves and making its investigation through them b. The Development of Mind The Seventh Book continues with the kinds of study conducive to the education of the philosopher-ruler cff.
The Method of Hypothesis However we account for the inadequacy of perception the task remains to explore how we get from perception, which stimulates the recollective process, to belief and eventually to recollect or otherwise know Forms. If someone then attacked your hypothesis itself, you would ignore him and would not answer until you had examined whether the consequences that follow from it agree with one another or contradict one another. And when you must give an account of your hypothesis itself you will proceed in the same way: You assume another hypothesis, the one which seems to you best of the higher ones until you come to something acceptable.
Conclusion The images of the central books do not settle the question of whether or not the objects of the different faculties are the same.
Bibliography Ackrill, J. Lee, A. Mourelatos, and R. Rorty eds. Adam, J. Alican, N. Allen, R. Allen ed. Annas, J. Bedu-Addo, J. Benson, H. Bobonich, C. Bogen, J. Bostock, D. Brandwood, L. Kraut ed. Brentlinger, J. Burnyeat, M.
Graeser ed. Haupt, — Levett trans. Cherniss, H. Code, A. Bogen and J.
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