Plato
Background
Came from an aristocratic, Athenian family.
Was taught by Socrates.
Started a school called 'The Academy' where he taught men and women.
A N Whitehead - 'All of western philosophy is footnotes to Plato.'
Doxa – Opinions with a mixture of knowledge and ignorance.
Episteme – True Knowledge
Epistemological humility – Awareness that our knowledge is always incomplete.
Only a priori knowledge is true knowledge.
Particulars are imitations of the forms and we call them objects.
Theory of the Forms
P1: The physical world is always changing.
P2: However, people can attain true and certain knowledge.
P3: This is a contradiction.
Therefore, humans must be appealing to an external standard, the forms.
E1: We can see just acts and unjust acts due to our knowledge of the 'form of justice'.
E2: We can define a perfect circle, even though a circle in reality can never be perfect.
Clarifications: The physical world is imperfect imitations of the forms. The unchanging nature of the forms makes them more real. There is a hierarchy of forms – material objects, then beings, then abstract concepts, then the Form of the Good.
The form of the good is the purest, most abstract form from the physical world.
Philosopher Kings
P1: A philosopher is a lover of wisdom in Greek and love entails action, not passivity.
P2: When faced with a decision, a person will always choose to do good. Bad actions are the result of ignorance.
C: Since philosophers are the most learned people, they should rule countries.
The Demiurge
Demiurge means craftsman or workman.
The Demiurge fashioned the existing material of the universe into order.
The Demiurge is good and desires what is best for humanity.
It is Plato's version of God.
The analogy of the cave
There are prisoners chained in a cave, who have never known anything else.
Every day they see shadows on the wall and hear echos of voices. They believe that these are real objects and real sounds.
'To them, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of images.'
One prisoner breaks free and is able to see the fire and the real objects. He initially rejects these new ideas as he was comfortable in his ignorance.
The prisoner then walks outside into the sunlight and is dazzled by it. Over time, his sight adjusts and he sees clearly the real world from the imitations.
The freed man feels obliged to free the other prisoners but they reject him, preferring ignorance.
The freed man is widely understood to be representative of Socrates.
Plato concludes from this that rationalism is superior to empiricism.
Criticism
A1: Richard Dawkins – The talk of a transcendent world is nonsense. True knowledge can still be gained from an ever changing world.
A2: Aristotle – It is harder to accept they may be ideal forms of negative qualities such as spite or jealousy.
A3: Aristotle – The forms stop being universal when they account for every object.
CA1: Plato's thought focused on the forms of qualities, not necessarily objects.
A4: The relation between the phenomena in reality and the perfect form is not clear.
A5: Karl Popper - There is no scientific evidence to back the theory of the forms. It is also unfalsifiable and therefore can be dismissed.
A6: A. J. Ayer – It is nonsense to talk about goodness as a universal quality. Expressions of morality are expressions of emotion.
A7: Aristotle – It makes no sense to talk of goodness as a thing in itself as it relates to actions, situations or people. No two situations are the same.
A8: It would seem that those with learning disabilities cannot be good people if they cannot understand philosophical issues.
A9: People often do things they know are wrong.
A10: Aristotle – In order to talk of a form, there must be a form of a form. This causes an infinite increase.