Here is a summary of problem 1, block 2.3. It has been edited after the post discussion so only relevant information is included. All sources and materials are included in the summaries. I got full marks in this course. My average was a 10.
The quest for perfect knowledge
Student of Socrates (first moral philosopher).
Built upon Socrates’ moral concerns
- Dedicates his philosophy to the pursuit of justice both in the state and the
individual
Dikaiosune (greek for justice)- getting out of life what one fairly deserves, not more,
not less
Pleonexia- grasping for more than one is fairly due
Tried to teach his students to do good for its own sake instead of a narrow-minded
sake of the health of their city
Metaphysical realist
What is knowledge?
Humans are set apart from animals due to their capacity for abstract knowledge
Science searches for general knowledge about how things are everywhere in the
universe at any point in time
First to inquire into how knowledge is possible and how it may be justified
Created the field of epistemology (the study of knowledge) influenced the
beginning of cognitive psychology
Truth has to be permanent and knowable with certainty
Wrestling with scepticism
Truth has two defining characteristics:
1. A belief is true (is knowledge) if it is true in all times and all places absolutely
2. Knowledge has to be rationally justifiable
Accepted that sense perception was not the path to knowledge
Knowledge of truth can’t derive from material senses as they reflect the changing
material world
- How the world seems to each person and culture is relative to them
- Observation is tainted by individual differences and cultural preconceptions that
Socrates had challenged
He rejected psychology for an idealistic metaphysics
Mathematics and the theory of the forms
Convinced that transcendental truth exists
- Perception is not the path to knowledge
Found the path to truth and the nature of truth through mathematics
The way of truth is the inward path of logical reasoning about ideas rather than the
outward path of seeming about physical objects
Pythagorean theorem was provable, and therefore true
- Genuine knowledge supported by logical argument rather than observation and
measurement
Geometry supports rationalism’s claim that logic is the way of truth
, Reason is the only way to reality and the realm of being
- The theory is true for all triangles, not just those drawn by mathematicians and
so is a real universal truth of the ‘form’ of a perfect right-angled triangle of no
particular size
Forms belong to the realm of ‘being’, subsisting eternally, while their material but
temporary copies belong to the realm of ‘becoming’
Societies may instil different views of beauty and ugliness, but these judgements
aren’t matters of local taste
- A person or sculpture is beautiful by resembling the form of beauty
- It is ugly when it departs from the form of beauty
Beauty and virtue were not subjective judgements of people and cultures, but real
properties that objects actually processed e.g. size or weight
- If two people disagree about whether e.g. a person is beautiful, at least one of
them would be wrong as they are ignorant of the form of beauty
Socrates’ goal- to find out what virtue was and teach it to people, regardless of social
opinion, so they can act upon their knowledge
- Plato elaborated this idea into metaphysical realism: the forms really exist as
nonphysical objects
- The forms are more real than their observable copies. Because they are eternal,
existing outside the physical realm of becoming.
Imagining the forms
The simile of the sun: illumination by the good- the form of the good is the
understandable world of the forms what the sun is to the physical world of objects,
the copies of the forms
- Reason has the power to grasp the forms as in the physical world the eye has the
power to see
- In an intelligible realm, an ‘other third thing’ is needed to illuminate the forms,
making it possible for reason to know them
- By themselves, senses lack the power to perceive the world accurately but need
help of divine illumination
- The ‘third thing’ (source of illumination) is the form of the good, analogous to the
light of the sun on earth
The metaphor of the line: the hierarchy of opinion and knowledge- A line is divided
into 4 unequal sections each whose relative length is measured of his degree of
truth.
- The line is first divided into two large sections, the lower and shorter section
stands for the world of appearances and opinions (beliefs without proof) based
on perception
- The higher and longer sections stand for the world of the forms and provable
knowledge about them.
- The world of appearances line is further divided into segments for the world of
imagining, the shortest line segment, and of belief, the next shortest
- Imagining is the lowest level of cognition, dealing with mere images of concrete
objects, such as images cast in water
- The highest and longest segment of the line represents the world of the forms,
the place of all truth, mathematical or otherwise
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