2. Plato's Understanding of Reality

this is the first video on Plato and it's all about his understanding of reality his reliance on reason as opposed to the senses Plato argued that truth is eternal everlasting immutable that means unchanging and perfect he said this must be the case because knowledge pertains to that which is doesn't change he drew a clear distinction between knowledge and opinion unlike truth opinion is transient it's fleeting it doesn't last it is also mutable meaning it's changeable and end it is imperfect Plato noticed but unlike truth the physical empirical world which we see around us with our

senses is full of change and decay you also notice that our senses are unreliable he said we neither hair and or see anything accurately we can see this in the example of an optical illusion so if you have a look at the squares it looks at first glance that's square a and square B are very different colors whereas actually if we were to draw a line of color between them we can see that's in fact they are exactly the same color that our perception of the color is inaccurate in the way that we perceive it

so we can't trust our senses Plato argued that for this reason truth cannot be found in our empirical world you therefore rejected and Pyrrhus ISM which is the claim that truth can be discovered by our sense experience of the world he said this method can only form opinions how could any rational man affirm the identity of the infallible meaning the perfect with the fallible meaning the imperfect that which is is knowable he said something other than that which is would be a pie noble meaning something you can only have an opinion about instead Plato argued

truth must be discoverable by reason that means thinking things through in a rational or logical way knowledge gained in this way is called a priori knowledge so if we recap Plato's argument for rationalism we can look at it in this way the first premise is that truth is found in perfect immutable and eternal the second premise the physical world is not perfect immutable and eternal and the conclusion truth is not found in the physical world the type of argument used here is an argument from deduction he's starting with the definition of truth he's then moving

to a definition of the physical world and from those two definitions he's concluding that truth cannot be found in the physical world so this argument looks like the conclusion foolish premises that would make it valid and then we also need to question whether the premises are true in order to see if it is a sound argument which we will do later on in another video play to argue for a very specific kind of rationalism called innate rationalism he argued that all truths are innate in other words they are in us at least from birth and

are part of our rational nature so for example even though we haven't experienced things like absolute beauty or true goodness in the world because these things are perfect and the things we see in the world or not we all have an innate understanding of what these concepts mean so we understand the idea of absolute beauty and we understand the idea of complete goodness whenever we learn something Plato argued that we are simply recalling these truths from within experiences we have might trigger this self discovery but they don't actually give us any additional knowledge he said

we must reject the conception of Education professed by those who say they can put into mind knowledge that was not there before this is a capacity which is innate we do not learn and what we call learning is only a process of a recollection Plato gives the example of the slave boy in one of his dialogues called Kamino he shows in the Meno how the slave boy is able to discover geometrical truths through Socrates asking him a series of questions he does not give him any new information so Socrates was the teacher of Plato Plato

used him as a character in his dialogues to put forward his own views we read observe closely whether he strikes you as recollecting or as learning for me Tony boy do you know what a square figure is like this Socrates draws in the sand and continues to ask questions now watch his progress and recollecting Socrates says by the proper use of the memory he will go on and discover something by joint inquiry with me while I nearly ask questions and do not teach him Socrates continues to ask questions and the slave boy demonstrates knowledge of

geometry through his answers without anyone having taught him Socrates says and only through questions put to him he will understand recovering the knowledge out of himself and is not this recovery of knowledge in himself and by himself recollection Plato's epistemological claims his claims about knowledge lead him to make some very extreme claims about what exists about ontology Plato argued that our innate knowledge must have come from a prior existence because we can only recollect what we have either once acquired or always had Socrates points out that the slave boy could not have acquired his knowledge

in this life as no one has ever taught him since trees have been with us in lately since birth we must have grasped them in some previous existence and carried them with us is it not obvious at once Socrates asks that he had them and learnt them during some other time Plato argued that whenever we come to know something we are recognizing or remembering some truth that we've learned before this life and which has always been in us remember Plato believed that the definition of truth was that which is immutable and eternal so this prior

existence can't have been in a reality like our own it must have been in an eternal reality a realm unaffected by change and decay and Plato called Israel the intelligible realm of the forms a world of truth and unchanging reality which is the object of knowledge Plato characterized the empirical visible world on the other hand as one of illusion and appearance the changing world of sensation which is the object of opinion he argued that the two realms could be clearly separated by a line divided and this has come to be known as Plato's divided line

between opinion and truth Saito's ontological claims don't stop there he says the only part of us unaffected by change in decay is the non-physical soul because our bodies change and they decay so it must be the soul that pre-existed and wreck Lex truth belief in both physical and a non-physical existence makes Plato a duelist the physical body he said hinders the recollection of truth by the soul its companionship disturbs the soul and hinders it from attaining truth Plato argued that because of this the true philosopher would despise the so-called pleasures of the body avoiding so

far as it can all Association or contact with the body and instead concern himself with the soul which reaches out toward the reality Plato described doing philosophy as practicing dying at death the body is separated from the soul and the soul exists alone free to grasp truth which is the aim of the philosopher this video has been brought to you by jest education thank you for watching and please subscribe to find out more