Plato’s dualism Flashcards
What is a useful analogy by Plato to accompany this?
The charioteer analogy
What did Plato beleive
Plato believed the body was like a prison for the soul, trapping it in this world of appearances. He thought our souls came from the world of forms and had a vague memory of the forms.
Explain the charioteer analogy.
Plato compared the soul to a person driving a chariot (our bodies) pulled by two flying horses.
- One horse is beautiful and noble; it wants to soar into heaven. This horse is our finer spirit.
- The other horse is ugly and bad. This horse represents our base nature, driven by passions and irrationality.
The soul is our rational self, trying to keep control between these two horses pulling in opposite directions.
What does Plato’s argument from recollection argue?
The argument from recollection is one of Plato’s arguments for the existence of the world of forms and also the existence of the soul.
Explain Plato’s argument from recollection
- Plato points out that we somehow do have knowledge of perfect, eternal and unchanging concepts.
- These include concepts like perfect beauty and justice. We also have perfect mathematical concepts and geometric concepts such as the idea of a perfect circle or two sticks being perfectly ‘equal’ in length.
- We have never experienced perfect beauty, justice or a perfect circle.
- So, we must have gained this knowledge a priori.
explain the extract from* The Meno* which would accompany this.
In The Meno Plato tells the story of how Socrates proved that an uneducated slave boy could be prompted by a series of questions and some shapes drawn in the sand to figure out how to solve a geometry question.
The slave boy must therefore have been born with geometric concepts.
How does Plato explain* The Meno*
His answer is that we must have somehow gained these concepts before we were born.
It follows that there must be a part of us (our soul) which existed in a realm where there were perfect forms.
- such as perfect mathematical forms
How does Plato argue that knowledge is a priori not posteriori?
We are born with a dim recollection of the forms because our soul apprehends them before becoming trapped in this world of appearances.
Anamnesis is the process of re-remembering these forms through a posteriori sense experience.
- Plato concluded that the source of knowledge must therefore be a priori
How would you structure this argument into a paragraph?
P1. We have a concept of perfect justice and beauty and perfect mathematical concepts.
P2. We have never experienced perfect instances of such things.
C1. So, our knowledge of perfect concepts must be innate.
C2. Therefore there must be a world of forms and we must have a soul which gained perfect concepts from it before we were born.
How may you counter argue this (P1) ?
subjectivity.
Justice and beauty are subjective. We could deny P1 by arguing that beauty and morality are subjective; in the eye of the beholder.
Could depend on;
* culture
* time
In Favour of Plato, how could you respond to the counter argument of subjectivity?
**Maths is not subjective. **
Perfect Plato’s examples of perfect circles and the idea of lines that are perfect equal can get around this issue, however. It is much harder to argue that mathematics is subjective.
How may Hume respond to this?
We can actually create the idea of perfection in our minds even if we have never experienced it.
We have take our concept of ‘imperfect’ and simply concieve of its negation: ‘not imperfect’ to gain the concept of ‘perfect’.
How may we apply Humes point to The Meno argument?
- We could add to Hume’s point that mathematical knowledge could come from experience.
- The slave boy may not have had any mathematical training, but he had seen shapes of objects in his life – thereby gaining concepts of shape and geometry from experience.
- This gave him a basic conceptual understanding that Socrates’ questioning brought out and clarified.
What argument may be used to conclude the paragraph.
Even if Plato was correct that we were born with perfect concepts, it doesn’t mean a soul and world of forms is the only or even best explanation.
- Evolution could have programmed us to have a sense of morality, beauty and the evolution of intelligence could explain being born with mathematical ability.
What is Aristotles response to Platos theory.
Plato’s theory lacks empirical validity
