So to this point in our course, we’ve seen,
uh, lots of attempts, you know starting with
Thales trying to answer this question, what
is this thing?
Trying to understand what it is.
We’ve even seen answers from, uh, you know,
some of the sophists said, you know, ‘it’s
whatever you want it to be,’ right?
Ranging from this reality that’s independent
of the mind that our… to which our mind
was conformed, but not the other way around,
to, ‘hey just make it whatever you want
and it is that.
It’s whatever you can argue.’
Well Plato is still grappling with this question.
He’s trying to really deal with two questions
that, uh, that you know, are on the top of
our minds, really.
The first is, you have to explain that a thing
exists.
So, I’m walking through this park right
now, and I’m walking past these trees, and
I’m not thinking to myself, ‘Wow, it’s
really kind of neat, these trees just popped
into existence the minute that I am here.’
It’s like, no, I mean there’s some reason,
there’s some account for why these trees
are here before my arrival.
They didn’t just pop up right now, and they
didn’t just pop up.
They came from something.
And that’s the first question he asks is,
uh, have to explain, is THAT a thing exists.
How did it get to be here?
What brought it into existence?
What’s it composed of?
What’s the causal chain?
What’s it’s history?
Okay.
The second question is WHAT a thing is.
THAT some… you know, explaining THAT something
comes into existence, or THAT something is
now existing, okay, that is one thing.
But telling us WHAT it is after that is something
else.
Now, we say these are trees.
Alright.
The question of that the tree exists can be
explained…
Right, we do a really good job talking about
the seeds of a tree, the germination in the
ground, water, soil, nutrients, the gasses
that are in the atmosphere, and you know,
how it interacts with the rest of the environment.
Okay, that is the THAT of the trees existence.
But WHAT is what it means to be a tree.
There is something about what it means to
be a tree and for me to be human, and there
is a difference between those two things.
And what it means to be ground, and air, and
water, and animal, and everything else.
Now, Plato is trying to answer both questions,
uh, is trying to explain THAT… trying to
explain the existence of every individual
thing, and What it is.
Trying to explain THAT it exists and WHAT
is it’s existence by appealing to form.
So, Plato’s first step in trying to give
this answer to the, you know trying to explain
the existence of everything and what it means..
or the WHATness of everything – the essence
of everything by, you know appealing to form,
is to first provide a refutation against relativism.
Now, relativism, if we’re just going to
kind of simply state is the assertion that
a proposition P is true when and only when
a person believes it.
So, this is the idea, if we’re going to
account for truth, you want to know what’s
true, ask what people believe.
This is just what makes a proposition true,
is the fact that a person believes it.
We make the truth – okay.
Well relativism has some issues here, because
as a matter of fact, not everyone believes
this – Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, a host
of philosophers throughout history, a host
of people today think this is false.
Now plenty of people thought it’s true,
okay, that’s not the problem, though.
The problem is that plenty of people have
thought that it’s false that a proposition
is true when and only when a person believes
it.
There is such a thing as being mistaken.
If relativism is true, then nobody is ever
mistaken.
But there is such a thing as being mistaken,
so yeah, plenty of people have argued that
it’s false that a proposition is true when
and only when a person believes it.
Now, merits to their arguments aside, as a
matter of fact, they believe this is false.
Okay, well if a proposition is true when and
only when a person believes it, AND as a matter
of fact some people believe it’s false that
a proposition is true when and only when a
person believes it, well this means that there
are some people with at least one, uh, with…
excuse me, there is at least one truth that’s
true regardless of if people believe it.
You know, namely these philosophers.
And these philosophers believe that it is
false that a proposition is true when and
only when a person believes it.
So, this is kind of what’s interesting about
relativism.
Say, you know we… our beliefs make the truth,
but some people believe that that’s false,
so…
Okay, they’re mistaken.
Um, there’s at least one truth whether they
believe it or not.
Well, if there’s a truth whether somebody
believes it or not, well then relativism is
false.
Right?
Relativism asserts that what makes something
true is our beliefs.
But here’s a belief…
Or here is something that’s true reg.. and..
here’s something that’s true and people
don’t believe it.
That’s kind of a problem for relativism.
It rejects itself given all of the relevant
evidence.
Now, there’s lots of way to look at relativism
here, and lots of ways to argue against it.
The little passage in the text goes about
it one way and we may go over that in class,
but this is.. at least as first glance at
why Socrates…
Socrates and Plato reject relativism.
Because at the end of the day, you know, it
rejects itself.
So the first step that Plato takes is rejecting
relativism.
The second…
Yeah, so this establishes that there is some
objective truth out there.
This isn’t just anything that you want it
to be.
The second step is to understand the source
of our knowledge.
Now, we might be tempted to think that the
source of all our knowledge is perception,
right?
What we see, hear, taste, touch, smell.
Now the assertion that the source of all our
knowledge is perception – what we get from
experiences – is called empiricism.
Empiricism.
Empiricism is not being a fan of Darth Vader,
alright.
Empiricism is the claim that all of our knowledge
– the source of all our knowledge is perception.
Now, Plato rejects this idea.
What Plato endorses is what today is called
rationalism.
Now rationalism asserts that at least some
of our knowledge is not from experience.
At least some of our knowledge is not from
experience.
Plato takes a pretty heavy version of rationalism.
He’s going to say the source of all real
knowledge is not from experience at all, alright
[laughs].
He takes a pretty heavy version here, but
you know, bear with him.
Okay, so at least just hear him out before
you say, ‘Whoa, Plato, come on, that’s
crazy.’
Alright, so how does this go about?
Well, as we saw with a lot of philosophers
from previous, uh readings.
He looks at change.
Change.
Now, it doesn’t look like it right now,
but this creed bed’s gone through a lot
of changes.
At one point there was water flowing through
here.
There’s not water flowing through here now.
Um, there was probably, or maybe there was
more soil on the ground that’s been washed
away by cree… by flood waters, or by creek
waters.
Uh, some of the vegetation has lost it’s
leaves, but you know, that’s a season for
it and the leaves will grow back.
Some of the vegetation wasn’t always here,
you know, it grew up from the ground.
Some of it will disappear, right.
It’ll die and wither away and provide the
fuel for the next line of vegetation.
Uh, this won’t always look like..
This whole area didn’t always look like
this.
You may or may not know this, but this whole
area way, way back, we’re talking about
thousands of years was once covered in water.
We’ve seen the fossil evidence for that.
Um, some day maybe it’ll be covered in water
again.
Or maybe all the water will, um, be somehow
destroyed and this will just be a desert landscape
after a while – whatever.
The point being that, you know, while it looks
pretty stable now, this goes through a lot
of changes.
And, you know as it goes through changes,
it becomes one thing or another, alright?
So, you know, there’s a tree right over
there.
It’s kind of big at this point, it’s what
20?
– Well big compared to me anyway, it’s
what?
20 feet tall?
It wasn’t always 20 feet tall.
It started out as, you know some kind of seed
– an acorn.
And it sprouted through the ground, right?
It grew leaves, it grew bra.. it grew more
branches, it grew bark.
Um, right now it’s lost it’s leaves, but
it’ll grow leaves back.
So as it.. you know goes from this seed up
to that – it’s becoming something, right?
The acorn, that seed – the little sproutling
– is becoming something.
It’s becoming that tree.
Well, if it’s becoming something, right?
If it’s going through changes, what it is,
is not just the changes.
If all that exists are the changes, then it’s
not becoming anything, right?
Whatever was there is gone and a new thing
is in it’s place, and whatever that is,
is gone, and a new thing is in it’s place,
and then that’s gone, until finally we have
this.
Uh, but that’s just the latest thing at
the end of a succession of a bunch of things.
Okay, but, you know, we don’t think that.
We don’t look at an acorn and say, ‘Oh,
well I assume this will be nothing and something
else will take it’s place miraculously.’
No, we say that it’s becoming a tree.
Okay.
So, whatever a thing is, you know, whatever
a thing is, is not the changes.
If it’s becoming, it’s becoming something.
It’s becoming something.
You were a little infant, and you went through
a lot of changes.
Well, you’re not identical to the changes.
If all you are, are the changes, you don’t
exist very long.
We’ve seen this with Heraclitus – but
you’re becoming something.
So, whatever you are is not identical to the
changes – it’s not just the changes, alright?
I’ve grown from, you know 10 inches or so
to 60 inches, alright?
That’s a lot of changes.
I’ve grown from ten pounds to more pounds
than I’d like to admit.
I even had blonde hair when I was a little
boy.
When I was a little boy, I had blonde hair.
Um, now what we…
We only perceive changes, alright.
We only perceive changes.
Changes are reflected by the causal interactions
around us – light, sound, uh, smell, or
sight, touch, smell, sound – all that.
That’s the content of our perceptions.
We perceive only changes.
When we look at an acorn – right – when
it’s first planted and in the ground, we
don’t also perceive the tree it’s going
to become.
And when we look at the tree, we don’t perceive
the dried out husk that it’s going to become.
We also don’t currently perceive the acorn.
We don’t perceive ALL of that.
When we look at each other – I can’t look
at your baby picture by looking at you.
So, whatever we perceive – we perceive only
changes.
Well that means, you know, since changes are
not identical to the thing.
They are not what a thing is.
That means that we don’t perceive what a
thing is.
What a thing is, it’s essence, it’s definition,
it’s meaning, is not given through perception.
When I look at something, I don’t see it’s
essence.
I might see it’s…
I see It's color.
I might even see it’s shape, the contours
of it’s edges.
Okay, we’ll grant that, I see the contour
of it’s edges, but not what a thing is.
Well if perception gives us REAL knowledge..
I mean if perception gives us knowledge…
perception gives us knowledge, at all, for
Plato – perception gives us knowledge at
all – perception will tell us what a thing
is – it’s essence.
Heck, perception doesn’t even tell you where
a thing comes from, or doesn’t even explain
where it comes from.
It doesn’t answer either one of those questions.
Well, perception doesn’t do this.
Perception doesn’t tell us what a thing
is.
So, perception is not the source of knowledge.
Now, either it’s perception, or it’s something
else.
What.. at this point we’re only considering
perception or reason.
What we might call… identify as conceptual
knowledge – knowledge of essences.
Alright, well if it’s… if our choices
are reason or perception.
Conceptual knowledge or perception.
Abstract knowledge – knowledge of universals
or perception, well perception in particulars.
Well, if perception doesn’t do it, then
our knowledge has to come from reason.
That means our knowledge of what things are
for Plato.
Our knowledge of what things are is not from
perception.
So, the question is, where does this knowledge
– this knowledge by reason – where does
it come from?
How do we have it?
And Plato’s answer is gonna sound a little
different.
So I’ve said that Plato’s gonna explain
all of this, or account for all of this by
appealing to form.
Now, it’s probably going to help, at least
a little bit, to understand what he’s talking
about.
Well, the way to understand what he’s talking
about is to start first with, you know, what
we experience with our perceptions, and form
is not that.
So, as we’ve said before, perception is
not knowledge.
Reason is knowledge.
So what does perception give us?
What is perception like?
Well, with perception, I see the particulars.
The individual things.
I see this bush, this bush, I see that tree,
that rock, that uh, grass.
That particular organism of grass.
That particular tree.
This particular shrub.
Perception gives me the particular.
Well, reason gives me the universal – gives
me the essence.
This is the particular.
The form – the essence – is what all these
particulars have in common.
Now, you might think, ‘well I’ve seen
one tree, I’ve seen them all.’
Well that’s not true, because trees look
different from each other.
Or even, let’s take this, sunglasses.
Alright, this is a particular pair of sunglasses.
You see this, but you don’t see all sunglasses.
You probably can’t conceive of all sunglasses.
This is a particular.
But what they all have in common is the universal
– it’s the essence.
Now this is made up of plastic.
The lenses are made of plastic, the arms are
made of plastic.
Some lenses are made of glass.
Some frames are made of metal.
You see this particular shape.
It’s kind of long and has a corner at the
ends of it.
Some sunglasses are perfectly circular.
Some sunglasses are more square.
These are kind of dark grey or black.
Some are multicolor.
Some dark blue, or some are mirrored.
You know there’s a whole variety of shapes,
uh to sunglasses.
A whole variety of colors to sunglasses.
You haven’t seen all of them.
Heck, you can’t conceive of all of them,
right?
We don’t know what the sunglasses of the
future are going to look like.
We don’t know what they’ll be made of.
Alright.
But, you know the universal sunglasses.
You can look at this and say, ‘Yeah these
are a pair of sunglasses.’
This is.. you know sunglasses are not a hat.
Sunglasses are not a shirt.
You can distinguish sunglasses from regular
glasses.
So, the point of that being is that you perceive
the particular thing.
You don’t perceive the essence universal.
THAT, you have to reason.
So that’s the first thing is the distinction
between the particular and the universal.
The form is the universal.
The form is not the reason.
This is also the difference between the subjective
experience and objective knowledge.
So, perception is subjective.
I have my perceptions, you have yours, they
don’t look alike.
Even if we were standing in the same room,
looking at the same thing, there would be
some difference.
As I’ve probably mentioned before, I’m
slightly colorblind.
I can’t see as many colors as you do.
The color spectrum is going to look different
to you than to me.
Even our experiences, our memories, our…
uh.. how we’ve encountered different things
is going to change how we perceive a thing.
Somebody who’s afraid of dogs is gonna look
at dogs much differently than other.. than
people who are not afraid of dogs.
So, perceptions, knowledge of the particular.
Alright, the particular experience – that’s
subjective.
Form, the essence, the universal – that’s
objective.
That doesn’t change depending on who’s
looking at it.
Perceptions are all subjective.
Form is objective.
Alright.
In addition to that, you know we can contrast
forms to the particular things even more.
These particular things come and go.
This tree did not always exists, and then
at some point it will cease to exist.
This creek bed at one point didn’t exist
– at some point it will cease to exist.
But the form, the essence, of creeks – the
form, the essence, of trees, will always exist.
The particular things are temporal.
The forms are eternal.
So to kind of summarize this, form is known
through reason.
The particular.. the particular things – the
appearances – are known through perceptions.
Um, form is objective.
The perceptions are subjective.
The particular things are temporary – heck,
perceptions are temporary.
The form is eternal.
So, this raises a very interesting question.
Forms are eternal.
They’re not known through perception.
They’re objective.
How do we know about the forms?
So Plato’s given us form.
Form is eternal.
It’s objective.
It’s the universal.
It’s known through reason, not perceptions.
We never see form.
Well if we never see it.. question…
how do we know it?
Well Plato says, “Well look.
Look what’s happening here.
You know what goodness is, right?
You look at particular actions and you say,
‘Well that’s good and that’s bad.’
If I were to randomly walk around and start
slapping people across the face, ‘well that’s
bad, that’s wrong, you can’t do that.’
You know what shapes are, or triangles are.
You know what triangles are.
You can recognize different triangles without
seeing all triangles.
You have that knowledge.
You can look at different figures and say,
‘Well THAT’S not a triangle.’
You haven’t even seen all shapes, and you
can spot the difference between a triangle,
and a square, and a hexagon, and everything
else.
You know what equals is, right?
If I had two sticks here.
Uh, okay, here we go.
Two sticks, you know they are not equal.
They are not equal length.
They’re not even equal width.
You can.. you can look at that, but you know,
equals doesn’t have a color.
Equals doesn’t have a… there isn’t some
color that’s shining between these two things
that says ‘Not equals,’ right?
Equals is a concept.
You haven’t seen all the twigs in this park
and compared them to one another to find equals
and unequals and then you know say, ‘well
this one belongs in the equals group.’
You know what equals is even thought you haven’t
seen all instances of equal lengths and all
instances of unequal lengths.
You have this knowledge independently of experience.
But, you know, even Plato is not going to
doubt that you have experiences and that you
have perceptions, okay.
And perceptions are what you have through
your body, through your eyes, through your
nose, your mouth, your ears, your skin.
Those are your perceptions, the senses.
That is temporal.
Your knowledge of the forms, then, of these
essences has to be… has to then come from
the eternal.
You know, for Plato, our knowledge of the
forms – we have this knowledge of the forms
because we at some point existed with them,
without a body.
We existed with them without a body.
We had some kind of eternal existence, or
at least non-temporal existence, non-physical
existence with the forms.
The process of birth was very traumatic.
So we spend the rest of our life recollecting
the forms.
These copies of the forms – these mere,
you know poor shades of the forms remind us
of them, okay.
We recollect the forms through this process
of observation.
But the knowledge of the forms was always
there.
Alright, well whether you accept Plato’s
account or not, there is some sense in which,
you know, you may not necessarily recollect
the forms, but we discover them.
We discover them.
Uh, you know, looking at triangles, we’ve
discovered all kinds of things about triangles.
We didn’t create these truths about triangles.
We didn’t decide that the sum of the interior
angles of a triangle will be 180 degrees.
We found that.
We found that.
It was discovered, not made.
We discovered that the sum of the interior
angles of a square are 360 degrees.
We didn’t create that.
We discovered that.
So, uh, you know, you maybe you’ll accept
Plato’s account, maybe not – as far as
how we know about the forms.
But it is really hard to deny that we do discover
these truths, we don’t get to decide what
they are.
I could decide what a unicorn is, or a leprechaun,
or an elf, or a garble, or a wobble, or you
know, I’m going to make a new creature – it’s
you know, a tree gnome.
Tree gnomes hide behind trees and wherever
you look, you know they’re like really fast.
So I’m looking around, and they always hide
behind a tree.
I can make that up.
I can’t make the sum of the interior angles
of a square be 20 degrees.
Can’t do it.
Okay, so again, whether you buy Plato’s
account of existence with the forms before
our physical body or not, there’s still
some sense in which we have to contend with
this idea that the forms are discovered.
They’re not made.
Alright, now what Plato has given us here
is a view of reality that’s contrasted to
what we can call materialism.
Materialism is the view that the only things
that exist are material or physical objects.
So harkening back to this distinction between
the material and the form given to us by Pythagoras.
The materialists are going to say the only
things that exist are the material objects;
there is no form.
There is no form.
Now, Plato’s view – well it’s often
called Platonism.
It’s the view that there’s physical objects
– material objects – AND form.
It’s the view that there’s particular
things and universal things.
Both of these things are real, they both don’t
exist in the same way, but they’re both
real.
Now the book, the text that I gave you calls
this idealism.
Don’t call it idealism, that’s something
else.
It’s Platonism.
Just scratch out idealism and put in Platonism.
It’s the view that there are particular
objects AND universals.
Both these things are real.
So we’re going to look at the.. more.. look
at this distinction between materialism and
Platonism more through the course of the semester
and see different philosophers try to grasp…
grapple with this.
And I also want to point out again what Plato
has given us called rationalism.
Rationalism is the view that at least some
knowledge is not empirical.
And this is contrasted to empiricism.
And that’s the view that all knowledge,
all… the source of all knowledge is empirical.
That’s empiricism.
So, Plato’s told us about form.
And what he’s told us is not only the WHAT
of this tree is form, right.
This tree is a particular thing, and the WHAT
of it, is it’s form.
But he also says the THAT of this tree..
THAT is… explaining THAT it exists is ALSO
form.
Because as I’ve said, as we’ve pointed
out.
These are particular things.
These come and go, but the forms are eternal.
That means that the form is more real than
that tree.
And when you understand form, you understand
reality better.
You want to understand that tree?
Don’t look at that tree.
Look at it’s form.
To understand all trees, look at it’s form.
And when you really start to understand these
forms, and you understand that the forms of
these things are what all these things have
in common, the next step is to ask what do
all forms have in common?
What is it that all these particular things
and forms have in common.
Because they all exist.
It’s all good – goodness.
So, you’re working your way up to what everything
has in common.
And what everything has in common, for Plato,
is goodness.
Is being itself.
Existence.
Exist!
And when you understand that, you understand
everything else.
This for Plato is wisdom.
To understand being.
Goodness.
Truth.
