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Philosophy > 1. Plato and Aristotle: Strengths and weaknesses > Flashcards

1. Plato and Aristotle: Strengths and weaknesses Flashcards

1
Q

WE CANNOT RELY ON OUR SENSES
(STRENGTH RATIONALISM -
WEAKNESS EMPIRICISM )

BUDDHISTS

A
  1. The Buddhists believe that life is ‘dukkha’ or ‘suffering’. This suffering, according to the Buddha, comes about through human desire to hold on to the physical realm, this is impossible as the buddha states the physical world is in a constant state of change (anicca= impermanence ) True reality exists beyond the physical realm
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2
Q

WE CANNOT RELY ON OUR SENSES
(STRENGTH RATIONALISM -
WEAKNESS EMPIRICISM )

HERACLITUS

A
  1. Heraclitus’you can never step into the same river twice’- The natural world is always changing
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3
Q

WE CANNOT RELY ON OUR SENSES
(STRENGTH RATIONALISM -
WEAKNESS EMPIRICISM )

DESCARTES

A
  1. Descartes was also a rationalist. He agreed that we have concepts that exist in the mind first and then help us construct reality - He says we cannot rely our senses because wax for example can be soft and pliable or solid - without reason we would think solid and melted wax are different properties and only through reason do we formulate an understanding of wax as a substance with different properties.
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4
Q

WE CANNOT RELY ON OUR SENSES
(STRENGTH RATIONALISM -
WEAKNESS EMPIRICISM )

KANT

A
  1. Kant was also a rationalist. He believed that there was two realities
    – 1) the world of sense experience (phenomenal world)
    and 2) the world as it is without observation (noumenal world).
    He believed that our ideas of the world came from the way that we perceive the universe around us (what he called the phenomenal world which is shaped by our mental faculties and concepts).
    The noumenal world is the world of things as they are in themselves, independent of our perceptions and understanding. In other words, it is the reality that exists beyond our human experience and senses, and we cannot have direct knowledge of it, it can only be known indirectly through our concepts and ideas which are applied to the phenomenal world.
    Therefore, there can only ever be an interpretation of the absolute because our own perception if always affecting us. Therefore we must use reason, a priori knowledge to reach absolute truth. Kant is saying that empiricism cannot give us accurate information about the world around us because we can never ‘sense’ the world as it REALLY is.
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5
Q

WE CANNOT RELY ON OUR SENSES
(STRENGTH RATIONALISM -
WEAKNESS EMPIRICISM )

SCIENCE

A
  1. The laws that govern anything larger than an atom DO NOT apply to the quantum world. It may be that what we think we see is not a truly accurate picture of the world – this is certainly backed up by Einstein’s theory of general relativity!
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6
Q

WE CANNOT RELY ON OUR SENSES
(STRENGTH RATIONALISM -
WEAKNESS EMPIRICISM )

AL-GHAZALI

A
  • Al-Ghazali was a medieval Muslim philosopher, and mystic who wrote extensively on the the limitations of the senses. He supported the view that our senses can deceive us in several ways.
    Firstly, Al-Ghazali argued that our senses are limited and imperfect. They can only perceive a small fraction of reality, and are therefore not capable of providing us with a complete and accurate understanding of the world. For example, our eyes are only capable of seeing a narrow range of colors, while other animals can see a wider range of colors or perceive things that are invisible to us, such as ultraviolet light.
    Secondly, Al-Ghazali claimed that our senses are influenced by our subjective perceptions and biases. For instance, our expectations, emotions, and beliefs can all affect how we perceive the world around us. He believed that these subjective factors can lead to errors in our perception and can make us prone to seeing things that are not really there or interpreting things incorrectly.
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7
Q

WE CANNOT RELY ON OUR SENSES
(STRENGTH RATIONALISM -
WEAKNESS EMPIRICISM )

HUME

A

He argued that all knowledge is based on sense experience, but that sense experience alone cannot provide certainty or knowledge of necessary connections between things. For example, empirical evidence of a bloody knife and body would lead us to assume murder - yet these things could also be seen in a hospital theatre - we need our reason to distinguish the two.

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8
Q

WE CANNOT RELY ON OUR SENSES
(STRENGTH RATIONALISM -
WEAKNESS EMPIRICISM )

HEGEL

A

Hegel criticized empiricism for being too narrow and limited in its scope. He argued that empirical knowledge is based on the observation of isolated facts and phenomena, but that this approach fails to account for the larger historical, social, and cultural contexts that shape our understanding of the world.

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9
Q

WE CANNOT RELY ON OUR SENSES
(STRENGTH RATIONALISM -
WEAKNESS EMPIRICISM )

POPPER

A

Popper, a philosopher of science, argued that empirical knowledge is always provisional and subject to revision based on new evidence. He claimed that empirical theories can never be proven true, but only falsified, and that the goal of science is to continually test and refine our theories in light of new data.

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10
Q

PLATO - IS SUPPORTED BY EVIDENCE OF INNATE KNOWLEDGE
… meaning knowledge isn’t gained from empirical evidence

LEIBNIZ

A
  • Leibniz argued that the mind contains innate knowledge or ideas which are not derived from experience but are instead present in the mind from the moment of its creation. This is known as the doctrine of innate ideas.
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11
Q

PLATO - IS SUPPORTED BY EVIDENCE OF INNATE KNOWLEDGE
… meaning knowledge isn’t gained from empirical evidence

PLATO/ SOCRATES

A
  • Plato -
    Plato called it “recollection.” According to Plato, the soul has knowledge of eternal truths that it has acquired before birth, and that this knowledge can be accessed through philosophical inquiry.

a slave boy has had no formal education, but by asking him a series of leading questions, leads him to discover for himself the mathematical relationship between the sides of a square. Socrates argues that the boy must have had some innate knowledge of this relationship, which was brought out through the questioning, rather than having learned it from anyone or anything else.

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12
Q

PLATO - IS SUPPORTED BY EVIDENCE OF INNATE KNOWLEDGE
… meaning knowledge isn’t gained from empirical evidence

CHOMSKY

A

Chomsky is a linguist who argued that humans have an innate ability to acquire and understand language, which he called the “language acquisition device.” Chomsky believes that this ability is hard-wired into our brains and that we are born with a set of universal grammar rules that allow us to learn any language. He argues that the existence of these universal grammar rules supports the idea of innate knowledge.

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13
Q

PLATO - IS SUPPORTED BY EVIDENCE OF INNATE KNOWLEDGE
… meaning knowledge isn’t gained from empirical evidence

DESCARTES

A

He claimed that the mind has an innate ability to reason and to apprehend necessary truths.

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14
Q

PLATO - IS SUPPORTED BY EVIDENCE OF INNATE KNOWLEDGE
… meaning knowledge isn’t gained from empirical evidence

KANT

A

Kant argued that certain concepts, such as space, time, and causality, are innate - not derived from experience, but are inherent in the structure of the mind itself.

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15
Q

PLATO - IS SUPPORTED BY EVIDENCE OF INNATE KNOWLEDGE
… meaning knowledge isn’t gained from empirical evidence

ROUSSEAU

A

Rousseau - argued that children are born with a natural capacity for moral reasoning and a sense of justice. He claimed that society / sensory realm corrupts this innate moral sense.

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16
Q

WEAKNESS OF WOF

SCIENCE

A

Scientists argue that the physical world is worth studying in its own right and can give us insights to the nature of reality.
Richard Dawkins believes that it is nonsense to talk of a ‘transcendent’ other world beyond the physical. This world may be changeable but we can still study it with all its changes and gain true and valuable knowledge that benefits us in our daily lives.

17
Q

WEAKNESS OF WOF

IDEA OF REALITY

A

This world is real, if you hit your head on a bookcase, you would feel it.
Can things be real in different ways

18
Q

WEAKNESS OF WOF

BED

A
  • Plato is ambiguous as to whether or not there is a Form for literally everything. At points he seems to argue that there are only Forms for opposites', for example, beauty’ and ugliness’ or good' and bad’. However, later on in The Republic he talks of Forms for everything, such as a bed. If there is indeed a Form for everything, Is there a Form for atoms, or even a Form for the nucleus of an atom? If this were the case then it is possible that nothing is really static as every single particle is unique. ‘The world of being’ (WoF) effectively becomes ‘the world of becoming’ (Sensory realm).

Could there be a form for the whole planet - meaning that there are forms within forms?

19
Q

WEAKNESS OF WOF

SUBJECTIVE

A

People have subjective preferences to what would be the perfect form of something, how can there be an absolute to something that is a subjective preference.

20
Q

WEAKNESS OF WOF

NEGATIVE

A
  • If forms are perfect, and there is a form for everything does this mean there are negative forms such as the form of disease, violence?
21
Q

WEAKNESS OF WOF

AYER

A
  • Some say it is nonsense to argue that we have a shared sense of morality and that there is an absolute ‘form of the good’- According to Verificationist and Emotivist Ayer
    Statements of what is good and bad cannot be known and are not themselves true in any way - they are meaningless because they are not subject to cognition.
    There is no absolute moral standard, in fact all moral statements are just an expression of a person’s belief - he calls
    E.g to say ‘stealing is wrong;’ (which is a categorical imperative) is just saying ‘boo’ to stealing.
    A.J Ayer and the Vienna Circle, a group of philosophical thinkers stated that in order for a statement to be meaningful, it must either be empirically verifiable or we must at least be able to conceive its method of verification, in principle.
    Therefore it is meaningless to suggest that we can intuit good and bad because there is no empirical evidence to prove this is true. Moral statements are not analytic or synthetic.
22
Q

WEAKNESS OF WOF

KAI NIELSON

A
  • Kai Nielson states that there is no common human nature. CHN runs contrary to modern studies of human behaviour. He states that human beings have ‘different hardwiring’ - ‘there is no such thing as an essential human nature which makes man man’ e.g. eskimos killed members of their family who would be a burden during the winter - hard to believe that these people shared a common human nature with us
23
Q

WEAKNESS OF WOF

RUSSELL

A

Russell- universe is “Brute fact”; People not innately seek good but evil- Modern physics shows there is a lot of randomness and choas in the universe - such as Brownian motion which is the seemingly random movement of small particles, such as dust or pollen, when suspended in a fluid or gas. No demiurge creator God.

24
Q

ARISTOTLES WEAKNESSES OF PLATO

A
  • Aristotle argued that Good comes in so many varieties that there cannot be one absolute Form of it; Goodness of a person is different from the Goodness of a shovel. A person may be a Good person but a bad shovel. In essence Aristotle was looking at purpose as the definition of whether something was good– a good knife is one that cuts, a bad one doesn’t fulfil its purpose as something that cuts.
    “It is impossible that there should be one thing that is good simply and nothing else”
    • Aristotle also suggested that something does not have to be eternal to be pure. - Something white does not become more white if it is eternal - (meaning that the realness of something does not depend on it remaining unchanged as Plato tried to suggest).
25
Q

WEAKNESS OF PLATO - POPPER

A
  • Popper argued that Plato’s theory of Forms was a misguided and involves ‘a false theory of universals’ and that it ultimately failed as a scientific theory. Plato couldn’t accept that TRUE REALITY can change – there is no need to posit the existence of another realm to find the truth.
26
Q

WEAKNESS OF PLATO - THE THIRD MAN ARGUMENT

A
  • The Third Man Argument - first presented by Plato in his dialogue Parmenides then furthered by Aristotle -

challenges Plato’s assertion that if something participates in a form there will be a form to represent it.

However, for example the form of largeness must itself be large - meaning that therefore it is participating in the form of largeness but as Parmenides said

“But if the form itself is a thing that participates in another form, it will participate in that as well, and so on ad infinitum; so the result will be that everything will be a participant in everything else” .

This suggests that if the theory of Forms is true, then there must be an infinite regress of Forms, this creates a paradox where the theory of Forms cannot provide a coherent explanation for the nature of universals.

27
Q

Jordan, Lockyer and Tate - WEAKNESS OF PLATO

A
  • Jordan, Lockyer and Tate argue that because of the radical difference between the physical and spiritual it is difficult to see how we could ever gain ‘knowledge’ of the WoF. ‘The Forms exist in a transcendent realm that is inaccessible to the physical senses and the rational mind”
28
Q

JOHN LOCKE - WEAKNESS OF PLATO

A
  • Plato believed that our knowledge of beauty is innate- the soul can ‘recollect the things it knew before,’ But the mind according to John Locke is ‘a blank slate on which experience writes’
29
Q

St Augustine to plato’s defence

A

St. Augustine argued that evils or negative things do not really exists at all. They have no true substance as they are simply privations of goodness – the absence of Good. For Augustine blindness was the absence of sight and evil the absence of good. Therefore, Plato can argue that only positive things have any Form in the WoF, negative things are just privations of these positive forms

30
Q

Plato’s response to the third man argument

A
  • Plato replies to the man argument by saying that forms can be self participating so largeness doesn’t have to have another form of largeness to participate in. Furthermore, he argues that forms are not all separate - e.g. a bed can participate in the form of the bed and of largeness
31
Q

Griswold to plato’s defence

A

Griswold believes that Plato was not serious when he mentioned the Form of a Bed in the Republic, he sees it more as an example of Plato’s sense of humour. A more sophisticated reading of Plato might suggest that he believed that everything in the physical realm was made up of a series of concepts – Beauty, Symmetry and Sturdiness

Philosophy (7 decks)

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