ANCIENT PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES

Question 1

In Plato’s Analogy of the Cave, what do the prisoners represent?

Answer 1

Entrapment in the physical world, stopping them from seeing the forms.

Question 2

In Plato’s Analogy of the Cave, what does the escapee represent?

Answer 2

Finding enlightenment by being dragged into the sunlight. Philosopher.

Question 3

In Plato’s analogy of the Cave, what do the statues being carried represent?

Answer 3

Only imitations of the true reality of the forms.

Question 4

In Plato’s analogy of the Cave, what do the following represent?

• Fire
• Shadows
• The Sun

Answer 4

Fire = a poor imitation of the sun.
Shadows = distorted ideas
The Sun = the form of the good.

Question 5

What does Plato want us to understand from the cave analogy?

Answer 5

The ignorance of humanity when people do not engage in philosophy.
The potential for true knowledge.

Question 6

Give two strengths of Plato’s analogy of the cave.

Answer 6

1) It fits with religious teachings regarding the soul being eternal.
2) It is true that the physical world is ever changing and subject to flaws.

Question 7

Give two weaknesses of Plato’s analogy of the cave.

Answer 7

1) It makes no sense to believe in a spiritual world you cannot see (Kant).
2) Dawkins, it is not based on testable, observable evidence.

Question 8

What is a form?

Answer 8

The essence of what something is; its true representation or ideal standard.

Question 9

What did Plato believe the real world was?

Answer 9

Outside the material one we live in, the one the prisoner escaped to.

Question 10

Why did Aristotle reject Plato’s ideas about the Realm of Forms?

Answer 10

Cannot be observed empirically.

Question 11

What was Aristotle interested in instead of the Realm of Forms?

Answer 11

Why a piece of matter exists in the way that it does.

Question 12

What are Aristotle’s four types of cause? What do they each mean? (MEFF)

Answer 12

• Material Cause = what something’s made from.
• Formal Cause = characteristics of the item.
• Efficient Cause = the means by which it comes into existence.
• Final Cause = its ultimate goal (telos).

Question 13

What did Aristotle observe when formulating the Prime Mover?

Answer 13

The world was in a constant state of flux, so there must be an explanation for all changes in the universe.

Question 14

An endless chain of causes is impossible so…

Answer 14

it must lead back to a beginning point which itself is unmoved: the Prime Mover.

Question 15

What was Aristotle’s conclusion?

Answer 15

What causes everything to be or started off the chain of cause and effect must be aspatial and atemporal.

Question 16

What does the Prime Mover give everything?

Answer 16

Telos.

Question 17

For Aristotle, who/what is the Prime Mover?

Answer 17

God as has no potentiality but only actuality.

Question 18

What did Plato notice about the physical world?

Answer 18

Always changing and that nothing ever stays the same.

Question 19

What was the main problem that Plato sought to answer?

Answer 19

How could people attain true and certain knowledge, if the objects they wanted to know about were never the same from one moment to the next?

Question 20

What conclusion did Plato draw?

Answer 20

The things we see around us in the physical world are always in a state of process and change, and so cannot be objects of complete knowledge.

Question 21

What did Plato call realities?

Answer 21

‘Forms’ or ‘Ideas’.

Question 22

What does the very fact that we realise the world is not perfect demonstrate to Plato?

Answer 22

We have an inner understanding of what ‘ideal justice’ or the ‘Form of Justice’ might be.

Question 23

What did Plato believe the physical world is full of?

Answer 23

These imperfect imitations.

Question 24

What can be said about the example of a tree?

Answer 24

The ideal or Form of the tree, unlike the physical tree, never changes.

Question 25

What does Plato believe that the unchanging nature of Forms makes them?

Answer 25

‘more real’ than the ordinary physical objects we can perceive with our senses.

Question 26

What was the issue with Plato’s theory of Forms?

Answer 26

At other times he seemed to think that there is a Form for each different thing in the world, which seems ridiculous.

Question 27

How were different forms related?

Answer 27

The different Forms were related to each other, and arranged in a hierarchy.

Question 28

What is goodness seen as?

Answer 28

The purest, most abstract of the Forms, the furthest away from the physical world.

Question 29

How do we recognise the goodness of role models for example?

Answer 29

Because we understand how they correspond to our intuitive knowledge of the Form of the Good.

Question 30

What was part of Plato’s argument about good and bad?

Answer 30

If someone knows what is good and what is bad, they will choose the good.

Question 31

What does Plato state about ignorance?

Answer 31

It is only ignorance which cause immorality.

Question 32

What does Dawkins state about Plato’s thought?

Answer 32

It is nonsense to talk of a transcendent ‘other world’ beyond the physical.

Question 33

How does Aristotle criticise Plato’s thought?

Answer 33

Plato’s theory of forms is criticised on the grounds that it becomes ridiculous when pushed to its logical extremes.

Question 34

What is the issue with Plato’s theory of Forms?

Answer 34

Plato is not entirely clear about the relationship between the Forms and the objects of this world.

Question 35

What did Ayer argue against Plato’s thoughts?

Answer 35

Argued that when we talk of something being ‘good’ or ‘bad’, we are simply expressing our own emotional reaction to it, and not referring to any real knowledge.

Question 36

How is Aristotle’s criticism of Plato criticised?

Answer 36

His reject of Plato’s belief in another world, perhaps he should have been more willing to accept the possibility of ‘spiritual knowledge’.

Question 37

How is Aristotle’s belief that the universe must have a ‘telos’ criticised?

Answer 37

They claim that it makes no sense to talk of a ‘purpose’ for the universe.

Question 38

What is the counterargument to Aristotle’s prime mover?

Answer 38

Perhaps cause and effect is eternal, in a infinite chain, or perhaps it all began as a result of blind chance.