Welcome to Philosophy 4 at Las Positas College.
This is an introductory lecture on Aristotle’s
theory of knowledge and his differences from
Plato.
We have seen that for Plato, the world in
which we live is just a shadow of reality.
Things in the physical world only distantly
approach the perfect and eternal things that
exist in the heavenly realm of the forms.
To find knowledge, our goal is to get beyond
the illusions cast by this world and to attune
our minds to the eternal truths which exist
outside of our world.
True justice and equality, even the true “chair
and horse” are eternal ideas which will
always exist, and would have existed whether
or not humans, horses and chairs had ever
existed.
It is awareness of these forms which counts
as knowledge.
Aristotle was the student of Plato.
He entered Plato’s academy at 18 years old,
and he studied under Plato for 20 years before
founding his own school, called the Lyceum,
in ancient Athens.
Aristotle’s ideas show a strong influence
from Plato’s thought, but he also argues
directly against Plato’s ideas in his writings.
Like Plato, Aristotle believes that knowing
the form of a thing is important for truly
understanding that thing.
But, unlike Plato, Aristotle does not believe
that forms exist outside of matter, as a separate
thing in an eternal realm of ideas.
For Aristotle, a form is just the shape or
order imposed in matter to make matter into
the kind of thing it is.
Forms are within matter and there is no matter
without form nor are there forms without matter.
This means that we can learn much about humans
from studying their 
physical form.
For Aristotle, how can we get abstract knowledge
of general things such as “horse” and
“triangle” from studying the world around
us?
Plato – you can never get knowledge of true
forms from earthly observation!
You have already known about them from another
life beyond this earth.
According to Aristotle, our intuitive faculty
has the ability to form a general idea of
“horse” or “triangle” by observing
many particulars and seeing what they have
in common.
Through this, we form a general notions and
scientific knowledge.
So in the case of scientific knowledge about
the form of the human body or even about triangles.
We learn by studying the human body, and the
form of the body or triangle is generalized
from that experience.
This epistemological difference is also heavily
reflected in Aristotle’s ethics.
You remember from our quick summary of Plato’s
Symposium that he believes humans start out
with their desires and aspirations mixed up
with their human circumstances.
But that eventually we should realize that
both beauty and ethical truth lie beyond our
world.
Changing our focus from our relationships
with others and unto eternal truth is the
only way to find true virtue.
That is why Rafael has Plato in his famous
painting pointing up to heaven.
In contrast Rafael has Plato pointing down,
indicating that we learn from studying the
world itself.
In the case of ethics.
Aristotle starts by saying that the honest
person must accept that ethical rules are
only imperfect generalizations of what is
good for humans, because learn virtue from
observation here on earth.
We gradually learn the nature of ethics by
studying our experiences and learning what
makes life for humans fulfilling and well-lived.
This is one reason why Aristotle encourages
us to find virtuous models of the good life
here on earth.
Even without a virtuous model, we can learn
new ethical truth by studying our own experiences
and learning what is right for you, both as
a human, and as an individual.
Aristotle’s Arguments Against Plato’s
Forms
In Aristotle’s work entitled The Metaphysics,
he gives some explicit arguments against Plato’s
belief in eternal non-physical forms that
exist separate from matter, are the object
of true knowledge, and make physical things
on earth possible.
In the Metaphysics Aristotle says that it
is ultimately impossible to explain how eternal
and transcendent forms can participate physical
things.
Aristotle claims that this metaphor does not
provide a real explanation.
Similarly, he points out that if you want
to explain things that exist in our world
by postulating many more things that exist
outside of our world, you have not made much
progress.
The existence of the forms themselves cannot
be explained, so how can they explain the
things we experience on earth.
Aristotle also asks the reader, why, on Plato’s
view of the forms, there is ever change on
earth?
If the true reality is made up of always present,
timeless, and unchanging forms, what causes
change on earth?
As we will see when we cover Modern Philosophy
starting in a few weeks, all of these claims
by Aristotle have led to him being referred
to as the father of Empiricism.
Empiricism is the general movement in philosophy
that starts from the claim that anything we
learned on earth must have been learned from
our experience here, in the real world, with
observations using our human senses in a process
of learning.
By contrast with this, Plato is referred to
as the father of idealism.
Idealists will continually point out that
nothing could be an experience for us, unless
we took the “blooming, buzzing confusion”
of the senses and organized it with principles
we bring to experience that cannot be learned
from observation alone.
