Please write a 1-2 page paper comparing or contrasting pages 62-top of page 75 of the textbook Introducing philosophy 12th edition by Robert c.Solomon and this information below: In order to give our lecture on Plato, we will need some preliminary work. Our concern will be with Epistemology, (which is defined in our textbook glossary, and our standard definitions will come from our textbook glossary), as: “the study of human knowledge, it’s nature, it’s sources, and it’s justification”. Plato will be our starting point and then we will look at other theories of knowledge from other philosophers and their implications. A fundamental position for Plato is the belief that what we are, is not just a body. By this, is meant, that what we are, for Plato is more than just a physical body with arms, legs, and hands, and a brain. We are in fact a combination of a soul and a body. This is oftentimes called Dualism: “in general the distinction between mind and body as separate substances…”. Now, what is important to recognize for Plato and a few other Philosophers is the contrast with the brain and the mind. The brain for modern people is a physical substance and it was also for the ancients. But modern disciplines, like Psychology, and especially Behavior Psychology will make an “identity”, ( you have seen something like this, A=B or B=A), where A and B are ‘identical”, but just called different names. Well, that is essentially what some of the modern disciplines have done. They will point to or touch the brain, (which is a physical substance), and immediately call it the mind, ( so in this identity, the mind is a physical substance). But Plato and others reject this identity.
For Plato, we are more than this. In fact, we are a soul, which is a non-physical entity. An analogy may help to appreciate how we could think like this. Let us suppose that you were able to observe a brain operation and that the patient is awake, but cannot talk. The important part is that the patient is clearly thinking, (like when we are silently thinking), What would you “see” on the machines? Likely, you would “see” graphs with pulses, and waves of light, indicating electrical movement going on with in the brain, perhaps called “synapses”. Further suppose that our machines are so sophisticated that you could look into the small “ganglia” where the currents run through. Now the question comes, what would you “see”? ,( the answer is a way to simply understand dualism), Would you “see” the patients thoughts? Suppose the patient is thinking: “gee I could really go for a milkshake at, in and out, right now”, would you really “see” these words, or simply some type of electrical current markings on the machine? It seems clear that electric currents are examples of physical matter and can represent thought activity. But it also seems clear that we do not actually “see” the thoughts. For Plato, thoughts are non-physical entities which occur in the soul which is also non physical. So, here in this thought experiment we have begun to understand Dualism.
But, for Plato the soul is a very interesting entity. It is made up of three parts. So, to help us, let’s imagine a soul to be like a circle with three parts or divide the circle into three parts. The image I have in mind is three horizontal divisions within the soul. With this image we can say there is a top and a middle and a bottom part. The upper part of the soul will be called Mind. The middle part of the soul will be called Passions and the bottom part of the soul will be called Desires. This triune image is the same for all souls. What is important to note, is that the mind is actually part of the soul. So, here we have now a completely different concept of mind and ideas, which is very different than the modern psychological views, which only have physical substance, as brain.
We will now need to talk a little about how Plato thinks about “Reality”, with two definitions found in our glossary. The first definition is “Becoming”; “the “world of Becoming” is the changing world of our daily experience…”. This on one level is our political landscape, our weather, our movies, our relations with friends and family and whatever else is subject to change, either fast or slow. It is in effect the world of matter. Here we take matter in the most simplistic way. All matter changes, either fast or slow, therefore there is no permanence possible in the realm of matter. For Plato this “world of Becoming” is not the most real.
The other definition is “Being”: “the “world of Being” is the realm of eternal forms, in which nothing ever changes…”. This realm, has no matter, or time , or space. It is completely a non-physical realm. Here , let us not forget about our analogy of the brain operation, to appreciate the possibility of such a realm. This realm of “Being” is for Plato the most real and permanent realm. These two realms exist at the same time and it is how “Reality” is structured for Plato.
So, how is this relevant to the study of knowledge? Let’s go back to the soul and it’s three components. The souls exist first in the realm of “Being”, all of them, (they don’t take up much space, because they are non-physical, just like the patients actual thoughts, not the electric signals). While in the realm of “Being” each soul has been given the same quantity and identical Ideas or Forms. Here now a slight digression to try to understand what Plato means by Ideas or Forms. We will use the Idea or Form of Love. All of us can pick out in the realm of “Becoming” various examples of Love. For example: love of cookies, love of Mom, love of Dad, love of baseball, love of friendship, love of country, love of music, love of movies, love of cell phones, love of hiking, love of running, etc., etc.. The point here is that each of these are different examples and applications of the Idea or Form of Love. Further, all of us understand how the abstract word Love is being used. The logic problem is the following. No one ever teaches us the various applications of the word Love, and there are many. Yet we seem to “know” the examples when we are looking at them or thinking about them. In other words, there are no grade school, or high school, or college classes which can define the word Love, such that with that definition we can identify all the various examples mentioned and others, through the course of history. When we read ancient books, we have no trouble understanding different examples, and applications of the Form of Love. This also applies to other abstract Forms like Beauty, or Justice. These are only some of the Ideas or Forms that are put into the soul in the realm of Being. So, again each soul has the same identical Forms and quantity, ( Forms are abstract ideas like Love), already inside of it. While the soul is in the realm of “Being” though the Passions and Desires cannot activate, because a physical body is needed to experience Passion and Desire.
We introduce another definition to help understand Plato’s theory of knowledge. The definition is “innate Ideas”: “literally, ideas that are “born into the mind”, knowledge that is “programed” into us from birth and need not be learned…”. Here think of our example of Love. All of us know the examples of Love when we see it, in all of it’s various ways. No one could have taught us a definition of Love, such that with it we could be able to cover so many examples of this idea and various applications of love, (there could not be enough words in such a definition to cover all of what we are saying). It is instead, for Plato, an Innate Idea which was put into the soul, (all souls), in the realm of “Being”
However, when the soul travels into the realm of ‘Becoming”, and this happens when we are born, the soul is now mixed with the flesh and the passions and desires can now be activated. The transitions of the soul from the realm of “Being” to the realm of “Becoming” represents a trauma for the soul, because now the three parts are in a sense involved in an inner struggle among themselves. Let us continue with the contrast of Dualism to help us understand this point. Suppose the modern psychological view, and take the example of people who take drugs either to affect or control such things as passions or desires. Considering what we know of Plato so far, we would have to say that the drugs actually only work on the pathways, or “circuitry” of our body and only affects the biology of the pathways. But if passion and desire are part of a non-physical soul then it is the soul that needs to be in control of its self. So, what keeps us from recollecting the abstract forms that were placed in our soul? It is this inner battle among the three parts of the soul. This is a normal state of affairs but one which can be controlled with the power of our mind, (a non-physical mind, which is the soul), but this inner struggle interferes with the recollection of our “innate ideas”
To support the belief of “innate ideas” let us take a simple example about math, say 2+3=5. You might say that you were taught this by teachers. But if we go back in time to the first man or women who said this, who taught them? Nobody did, they figured it out. In order to figure out something you need to start with something. In this case “innate ideas”. This simple example applies, for Plato, to all math. We simply “look” inside, but when we fail it is likely because of the distractions of the passions and desires. This applies to all of our studies, we in a way are fighting ourselves, (here think of yourself as a soul). What gets in the way is the distraction of our passions and desires, and this inner disturbance of the soul keeps us from “recollecting”. It is within the power of the mind to find a harmony between the appropriate use of our passions and desires to be able to remember the “innate ideas”.
One last thing we can say about this concept of soul and mind, is that the Forms, (abstract ideas), are not about moments in time. For example, the temperature of the day, or where you went over the weekend. Ideas or Forms, for Plato are not about the transitory world of changing matter. Instead, it is with the Ideas or Forms, that we can recognize within the changing world of matter, the examples of Love. So the abstract ideas are not found in the realm of “Becoming” they are separated, they are about eternal ideas.
But what also is important is that we can now have certainty about our ideas or Forms. Not certainty applied to the changing world of matter, the realm of “Becoming”. But we have certainty of our ideas or Forms, because they are already inside of us, we don’t learn them, we recollect them and apply them.
Make sure you are citing the actual philosophers writing, not the authors commentary. You can tell it’s the philosophical writing by the different font size, or a blue line running vertically along the text.
