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Plato on Knowledge

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Title: Plato on Knowledge


1
Plato on Knowledge
2
Plato
  • 429-347 BC
  • Student of Socrates (469-399)
  • Teacher of Aristotle (384-322)
  • Founded Academy
  • Wrote Dialogues
  • Theaetetus
  • Republic
  • Meno

3
Theaetetus
  • A late treatment of knowledge
  • Dismisses two possibilities for knowledge
  • Perception
  • True belief
  • Proposes True Belief with an Account
  • To know X is to truly believe X and to have an
    account of X
  • But what is an account? Justification for the
    belief?

4
Theaetetus
  • First possibility an account is an analysis of
    how X is composed of simpler parts
  • So no simple thing can be known?
  • Reject this idea

5
Theaetetus
  • Second possibility an account is a catalogue of
    the component parts
  • But you can list the parts of a chariot without
    having an understanding of the chariot itself.
  • Reject this idea

6
Theaetetus
  • Third possibility an account is an
    identification of the distinguishing
    characteristic
  • To know X about the sun is for X to be a true
    belief and you can identify the sun as, say, the
    brightest object in the sky
  • But this means there is always something else to
    know before you can know any X
  • Reject this idea

7
Theaetetus
  • All possibilities are eliminated.
  • Aporia again?
  • Plato has another theory from previous dialogues

8
The Theory of the Forms
  • There is a realm of real things that are both
    non-physical and non-mental
  • Things in this realm are the Forms (ideas in
    Greek) of things in the physical realm
  • Things in the physical realm are what they are
    because they are in some way connected to their
    Forms
  • We can know things only through acquaintance
    with their Forms

9
The Theory of the Forms
  • Forms explain the possibility of general terms
  • We can call many things by one name
  • All things which are dogs we can call a dog.
  • There must be something which is
  • Common to all things called by a general term
  • Distinctive of all those things
  • This thing is
  • Not physical not all dogs have any physical
    trait
  • Recognisable by us but not by our senses

10
The Theory of the Forms
  • Forms explain the possibility of judgement
  • All judgement is a type of comparing
  • This is a dog means I am comparing this to
    some standard of dogginess
  • The standard cant be another dog else I have
    to first judge that that is a dog, and so on
  • The standard cant be my idea of a dog it is
    the idea of a dog only because it is judged to
    represent dogs accurately. So I still need to
    judge its dogginess and so on.

11
The Theory of the Forms
  • Forms explain the possibility of judgement
  • The standard of dog cant be physical or mental
  • It is metaphysical
  • It is that in virtue of which
  • All things properly called dog are properly so
    called
  • Only things properly called dog are properly so
    called
  • We call it the Form of dog, or dog-in-itself,

12
The Theory of the Forms
  • How do Forms relate to their particulars?
  • Transcendence there is far more to the Forms
    than the particular things which fall under them
  • Immanence the Forms are present in their
    particulars, but not in a way that we can
    perceive through our senses

13
The Theory of the Forms
  • How do we come to know of them?
  • Not by our external senses (perception)
  • Not by our internal sense (awareness)
  • But by intellectual perception or awareness of
    the understanding
  • (Whatever those might be)

14
The Theory of the Forms
  • Who is capable of knowing them?
  • We are all able to use the term dog correctly,
  • So we are all intellectually aware of the Form
    of Dog
  • Dog is the Form of a mundane thing it is a
    lower Form
  • Higher Forms are of things such as Triangle,
    Courage, Equal, Noble,
  • Only those trained as intellectuals can perceive
    these in their understanding

15
How we Know
  • How do we come to know the higher Forms?
  • Plato gives an example in the Meno
  • A slave is taught to double a square
  • Slave thinks he knows but gives the wrong answer
    at first before Socrates begins to question him
  • This also shows the value of elenchus
  • Socrates then gets the slave to give the right
    answer
  • Since the slave only answered questions, he must
    have known how to double a square already

16
The Allegory of the Cave
  • What is the difference between how normal people
    see the world and how philosophers see it?

17
The Objects of Knowledge
  • Only the Forms are objects of real knowledge
  • They are permanent, unchanging, always true
  • What is learnt through the senses is opinion
  • It is impermanent, changeable, sometimes true and
    sometimes not
  • Plato is contradicted by Aristotle, as we shall
    see
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