Philosophy & Ethics - Plato and Aristotle

Question 1

What is the highest and most powerful human capacity according to plato?

Answer 1

Reason

Question 2

What is meant by rationalism?

Answer 2

Any system that stresses reason as the means of determining truth. Mind is given authority over the senses and reason alone can be used to establish truth.

Question 3

What did Plato believe about the nature of forms?

Answer 3

Plato believed in the unchanging nature of the forms, which exist beyond the ordinary, physical world

Question 4

How do we perceive objects, according to Plato?

Answer 4

We perceive objects through our senses, but their reality is defined by the forms they represent

Question 5

How did Plato think we know the forms?

Answer 5

He believed our souls must have existed in the realm of the forms before our birth, allowing us to know them intuitively

Question 6

What is the highest form of the hiercharchy?

Answer 6

Form of the good

Question 7

What does Plato call the Demimurge?

Answer 7

• The Demimurge is Platos definition of God
• Plato makes the claims about the nature of God
• believed that the world was created by a God called the Demimurge, ( craftsman ) who made the world by fashioning it out of material that was already there
• In platos work, he describes how the Demimurge is good and desires the best for humanity

Question 8

What is the difference between the Realm of Appearances and the Realm of the Forms?

Answer 8

Realm of appearances
- currently
- always changing

Realm of the forms
- highest good
H.f. Beauty/ justice
L.f. Desires

Question 9

Key components: the cave

Answer 9

• cave with 3 prisoners in it
• tied to some rocks
• arms and legs are bound - head is tied so they cannot look at anything but the stone wall infront of them
• have been there since birth - never been outside
• behind prisoners is a fire, between is a raised walkway
• people outside the cave walks along this walkway carrying things on their heads
  e.g animals, plants, wood, stone

Question 10

Key components: the shadows

Answer 10

If you had never seen the real objects ever before, you would believe that the shadows of objects were “real”

Question 11

Key components: the game

Answer 11

• Plato suggests that the prisoners would begin a “game” of guessing which shadow would appear next
• if one of the prisoners were to correctly guess, the other would praise him as clever and say that he were a master of nature

Question 12

Key components: the escape

Answer 12

• one of the prisoners then escapes - leaves
• shocked at the world, does not believe it can be real
• realises his former view of reality was wrong
• begins to understand his new world
• sees the sun as the source of life
• goes on an intellectual journey where he discovers beauty and meaning
• he sees that his former life, the guessing game they played is useless

Question 13

Key components: the return

Answer 13

• prisoner returns to the cave, informs the prisoners
• blinded by the outside world, freed prisoner now finds the darkness of the cave a struggle
• others dont believe him, threaten to kill him if he tries to set them free

Question 14

What are 2 strengths of the cave analogy by Plato?

Answer 14

• plato gives a good argument for why there are imperfections in the world around us
• platos belief that true reality, which is far more valuable, lies beyond our experiences or senses seems to be challenged by the success of science

Question 15

what are 2 weaknesses of the cave analogy by Plato?

Answer 15

• Dawkins is one modern thinker who argues it is meaningless to speak of unobservable transcendent realities
• we base our understanding of the world on what we sense, there is no proof of another world

Question 16

What is Aristotle?

Answer 16

An Empiricist - using observation
- believed we can gain knowledge through observation of the real world
- sense experience is the primary source of information
- uses more of a scientific approach

Question 17

What is Aristotles view on reality?

Answer 17

• Aristotle recognised that the world was in a constant state of change
• everything in the world is constantly moving and changing
• everything is moving from actuality to potentiality

Question 18

What is the first cause?

Answer 18

The material cause
- what something is made of

Question 19

What is the second cause?

Answer 19

The formal cause
- this is the structure or form of the finished thing

Question 20

What is the third cause?

Answer 20

The efficient cause
- this is the activity that makes something happen

Question 21

What is fourth cause?

Answer 21

The final cause
- this is the last and most important cause
- the purpose of something or end (telos)

Question 22

What did Aristotle believe was God?

Answer 22

The unmoved mover

Question 23

What was Aristotles final cause?

Answer 23

God (the unmoved mover)

Question 24

What were qualities of the unmoved mover?

Answer 24

• A God that only thinks of himself
• Aristotle believed that God was perfect and everlasting
• but he did not believe that God was the creator
• he thought that it was unlikely that the universe had a beginning
• aristotles God is ultimately indifferent to the universe
• aristotles God is seen as a measure of perfection
• no divine plan for humanity
• only thinks about himself and his own perfection

Question 25

What are 2 strengths of the 4 causes?

Answer 25

- conform strongly to the way we navigate reality, most objects can be broken down and understood in this way, and we could investigate it using the 4 causes. - focus on purpose gives a clear and common-sense way of assessing goodness, conforms to how we assess objects. e.g. if i were to give you a pen that failed to wright it would be uncontroversial to say that it was a bad pen.

Question 26

what are 2 criticisms of the 4 causes?

Answer 26

- purpose is subjective. The purpose of an object can change depending on the POV, the definition of purpose and what is purpose differs from person to person - our senses are unreliable and can be fooled. Supporters of rationalism would argue he was too quick to abandon Plato's theory of the forms

Question 27

what are 2 strengths of the prime mover? (Aristotle's idea of God)

Answer 27

- the prime mover seems to be more of a logical explanation than a theistic God (an Abrahamic God), it explains evil and why some prayers are not answered. - it avoids many of the other issues with a personal creator God, e.g. the problem of evil.

Question 28

what are 2 criticism's of the prime mover?

Answer 28

- Aristotle supported the empirical approach but has posited a being you cannot see and who is not subject to the four causes - difficult to explain how a perfect being can lack knowledge of the world

Question 29

Give 2 reasons why Plato's ideas of the theory of the forms makes sense

Answer 29

- we observe everything in the world is always changing/ it decays or dies, so it makes sense if there is a world where things are eternal/perfect. - world of forms is the real world, like the world outside the cave, much better than life inside of the cave

Question 30

Give 2 reasons why Plato's ideas of the theory of the forms makes no sense

Answer 30

- change is better than immutability. it is an important part of our world. without change we would not progress/mature. - using reason is difficult, how do we know who is right if we disagree? it is better to rely on our senses as it provides verifiable evidence

Question 31

what is the design argument?

Answer 31

An argument for the existence of God that states God designed the universe, because everything is so intricately made in its detail and to achieve a specific purpose that it could not have happened by chance

Question 32

what are 2 strengths of the design argument?

Answer 32

- Theists, people who believe in God, suggest that the universe and life was created for a purpose by God, the universe didn't come about by accident or a random chance. They believe that nature is so intricate and complex that God must have designed it. e.g. a tree was designed to put oxygen into the atmosphere - William Paley, an eighteenth century philosopher argued that if a person was waking in a field and came across a watch, even if they had never seen the watch before, its intricate workings would show that it had been put together deliberately for a specific purpose. someone mustve made and designed it. just like the watch, according to Paley, there is evidence of design in the natural world.

Question 33

what are 2 weaknesses of the design argument?

Answer 33

- if God designed the world, then why is there so much suffering in the world? surely an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God would have created a universe in which there was no suffering due to natural evils such as earthquakes - the anthropic principle makes little sense as there are many things in the world which do not support human life, such as natural disasters and disease. the universe is so vast it cannot be all for humans. we cannot breathe in space, so how was that made for us? most of the ocean we have not even yet discovered , and that is on earth, so how can that be made for human life?