Plato Flashcards
(29 cards)
Explain the allegory of the cave
• In the allegory a group of prisoners are in a cave since birth, chained facing a wall unable to look anywhere else being forced to watch shadows on the wall caused by puppets in front of a fire behind them. The prisoners name these entities believing they are real. Suddenly, a prisoner is set free and brought outside for the first time, the sunlight hurts his eyes and when told that the things around him are real and the shadows are mere reflections, he cannot believe it. The shadows appear much clearer to him at first and gradually his eyes adjust, and he can see objects, reflections and the sun. The sun is the light that is the source of everything he has seen. When he returns to the darkness, he finds the darkness hard to see in and when he tells the prisoners about the world outside, they violently resists and believe that he has become stupid.
What are the epistemelogival impacts of the allegory?
Everything we see is ilusion as there is a realm that we cannot sense in which true reality exists
The visual world is a flawed reflection of the realm of the forms
What is an idealist? how is Plato one?
someone who believes that there is a spiritual realm in which things exist in an archetypal way.
Plato is one as his theory of the forms implies that ideal things do exist
Why is learning recolection?
Learning is recolection as we are simply being reminded of what we sawbefore birth. This is because our soul sees the realm of the forms before birth and what we learn is directly related to the realm of the forms
What does inhere mean
to exists essentially within something
How do the universals interact with the particulars
They inhere with them. Thhis means that physical objects are reliant on forms but forms are still independant of the forms
Explain what a form is
The thing in itself- the reality of whatever x happens to be e.g. pure tableness
Why are forms perfect
They are simple and unchanging. They are unrestricted by what makes physical things imperefect as they are imaterial
Why are forms significant
Because knowledge of them allows us to better our own life- example of the carpenter and the masters wooden model
They provide intelligibility
What issues does plato attempt to explain with his theory
the issue of generalised concepts- once we see a table we can recongise other tabls to be tables
How can we find out what a form trully is
through philosphy
All physical things of a certain type (eg chair) contain certain aspects of the form of them, they all point towards what the form is
What is the empricial criticism of the theory of the forms?
We can explain concepts through sensing ‘atoms with purpose’ and then abstract generalised objects in our mins each time we sense another of the object.
Response- we cannot sense things such as the state yet we still have an idea of it
The explanatory weakness of showing how forms relate to different types of the same concepts
There is a universal of courage, yet there is an excess of courage ‘foolhardiness’ and a deficiency of it ‘cowardice’. The ideal of courage relates to both of these despite them being entirely seperate
The third man criticism
two men in a room, both are a men as they relate to the form of a man. This means that there are three things in a room. But to explain how we can call all of them man we need to posit another form, and so on.
How to achieve the good life
One must become a master of hiself using reason to reign in passions
Why must one be just to live a good life?, why can they not just seem just?
Justice is more than a political motion, it is the state of ones soul. Seeming just is not trully being just. A just society is in the best interests of eveyone and this can only hapen if those in control are actually just.
Explain Platos theory of the soul using the charitot analogy
The sould is made up like a chariot with two horses.
One horse is appetetive (our wants and adesires) the other is ‘spiridness’ and can be used by reason (the charioteer) to reign in our wants and desires and to live a good life
Why is platos theory of the good life toubling
There are different conceptions of what good is- according to the utilitarian plato telling us to supress our desires is not agreeable
Explain the form of the good
It is the greates of all forms, it allows all the other forms to exist. It is best understood as the ideal on which all ideals (forms) are based- the sun allows us to see outside the cave
Why is the form of the good useful
Why is it the begining of philosphy
It shines light on all knowledge making all things inderstandable- the means by whcih we can know anything making it the begining of philosphy
What is the divided line, what does it aim to achieve
It is a visual metaphor for Platos ontological and epistmelogical theories.
It aims to explain how we explain knowledge and whst types of knowledge to repsect more
What are the two halves of the divided line
the intelligible and the visible, each of these are further split in half
What is the hierachy of knowledge in terms of epistmeic states
A- state of inteligence, allows us to see the forms
B- state of mathematical reasoning, above physical objects as we access things that are impossible to experience
C- state of belief, allows us to comperehend physical objects- what sense gives us
D- state of ilusion, shdows and reflections. Tells us nothing about how anything actually is
What do the prisoners represent
people unlikened to the theory of the forms
