7. Plato's World of the Forms

Dupre noted as the class was getting underway this is the second day of Plato so here we are in day number two very suits this park and it's very common for lots of new professors when they're introducing Plato the zoo the soul by rolling a chair into the middle of the room this is the way I was taught Plato it's good enough for me it's good enough for you Josiah we were gonna do it so I quit nice I've already given away the chief point that I'm trying to make so I'm gonna have to back up a little bit I'm going to call on Ms MacFarlane if you will kind of play ball with me here a little bit but you do that and I have placed in the middle of the room here an object and if I were to ask you what is the objects what would you call it you would call it a chair excellent now I'm suspicious the only reason you gave that correct answer is because I myself said I was rolling a chair into the middle of the room that's what tipped you off correct No you might have said that any any other even if I haven't told you and this part Nick McFarlane you are also sitting on a certain object well not right now but you were a moment ago and maybe you by the end of the class you will be again and what would you call that object a chair slowly all you'll notice has used one word and applied it to two different objects y'all catch that this is kind of deep but hang on now are those two objects in which you applied the word chair exactly the same or they're not they're different so why is it that you will use one to describe two objects which are not the same okay they're similar that's good important philosophical idea they're similar and you refer to their use those are two different ways by which you have put these two objects in the same class you've said in one way they're similar but they're also but maybe you mean the same thing by that but you also say they have the same use what is the use that you have in mind you sit upon it have you ever sat upon anything that you would not call a chair for example a couch so just sitting is not what makes it a chair because you could sit on the floor you could sit on I'm guessing something you might call a stool a couch sofa divan right all kinds of objects in this world that you might sit on that are not what you would call a chair so what is it about these two objects that has caused you to call them chairs one of the things might not be the one person thing all right so can you imagine sitting on a one-person thing it still might not be a chair would anyone person thing you sit on be all the chair a stool maybe yeah let me ask you this in terms of their similarity we've been talking about function but talk about use but in terms of their similarity are there other ways in which they are similar besides just the use you would make up there they looked same okay that object you have over there how many legs does it have on it no one behind you four and how many legs does this one have that's right so I didn't even have legs doesn't exam X maybe the center post you call it and then it's got these does this one that you've got over there have wheels does this one have wheels does that one have cushy does this one have cushy does that one Rock does this one rock does that one squiggles does this one swivel much to me like they're different in a lot of different respects here right would you agree with me and yeah you still insist on calling both of them by the word share' correct the basic shape I don't know this one has arms arms your tongue with just the basic right angle that's a lot of things that have right angles in life and maybe some of them you could sit on it thank you mister Sheila and you know if you'd like to try sitting on that I would like to skip how that goes thank you Laura now this this little exercise that I've gone through with Laura may seem somewhat silly but it does raise this philosophical question and this is a somewhat serious question in the midst of a somewhat trivial conversation and that is that all of us have this ability to take individual objects and put those objects into classes into categories of things right and we do it all the time we don't think of it as some great you know work of genius on our part we just do it so Laura looked at these two objects and call them chair and the question that comes up in the discussion of plato and in philosophy generally is by what means did we do that how did we go through the mental gymnastics of taking two quite different objects and nevertheless calling them by the same term there's one answer which is generally been the answer given down through the history of empiricism there's another answer that's been given down through the history of rationalism Plato is a rationalist and his answer is that both of these objects can be called chairs because they both says Plato participate in yes you want to say that a little our fairness there is a chair Ness Ness about these two objects now what do you suppose Crysta is the intended meaning of a statement like that that they both participate in chair nests or there's I said that there's a chair Ness Ness about them what what are we saying there how do we mean by chair nests is that provoked any idea in your head to say this object in that object the essence of a chair right has anybody ever experienced the essence of chair Sidney never hear the essence of chair C H AI R Sidney ever experienced that what would that be what would the essence of chair B what would it be can you imagine it alright I thought somebody comes through for me here but you know you think when you think the essence of chair you think like the ultimate eternal perfect chair it's the essential chair it cannot change throughout eternity it is the absolute chair so what you were thinking no now it is who is that what you everything you guys actually giving you a chance you're the one who came up with the word but well this is Plato's this is Plato's idea some Plato makes a distinction in his philosophy and this is probably the single best known most famous most important distinction that you have this is the heart of the heart of Platonism and he makes this distinction between what he calls the ideal and the receptacle so Plato is an idealist because he believes there is an ideal world and that ideal world doesn't change it is eternal it is fixed it has in an only essence we're going to use the word idealist repeatedly throughout the rest of the year so I want you to get it in your heads right now an idealist whom Plato is the most famous is someone who believes that there are great eternal ideals either one or more we don't experience and then them directly but they must be their ideals chair Ness would be an ideal Plato is also called a realist Oh ordinarily Trevor when we hear the word realist and when we hear the word idealist we think of two different kinds of people you ever heard those words used I'll Sara here she is a realist but Sydney Wow see an idealist you ever heard the terms used that way is that so what would be the difference if I said that sara is a realist but Sydney is an idealist what distinction would I presumably be making not that I'm actually saying that about either of them of what distinction would I be making were I to say that well right here people like that to me I always get the imaged it be called realist but I hear something suppose realize they're more down-to-earth they don't ever think practically practically an idealist I kind of up in the clouds heading the clock okay that's good very good answer y'all kind of follow that that isn't that a pretty common way of distinguishing those somebodies realistic somebody's idealistic we usually think of them as two different kinds of people do not think that way in philosophy okay they are the same thing Plato is an idealist and Plato is a realist we don't meet it in the popular sense we need it in the philosophical sense make that distinction hang on to it from this day on in your philosophical thought what we mean by this is as in the case of Plato there are ideals and they are real for Plato chair Ness is not just an idea as Matthew was describing Matthew gave the classic formulation of nominalism chair is just a word a name an omen nominalism I look at things I noticed there or I call them by the same name that is not Plato okay Plato says I look at things and I call them chair because somewhere in my head is a memory a picture an idea of the perfect essential archetypal eternal unchanging chair to wit chair ness and I have it there and as soon as I encounter an object that resembles that idea in my head I use the word that describes the similarity to that which is in my head okay did did you ever get that Jake you didn't okay Matthew excellent question where does it come from that is a major conversation we need to have it is the it's the whole question play those eat mr. Balaji Matthew let me give you a very short answer now with the promise that we will come back and talk about it in greater detail before we're done with Plato okay the short answer is we remember it we remember that somehow or other you at some time experienced that eternal chair and you have a recollection of it yes it's really that tear is real and you have experienced it not in this world some prior existence but you recall it however dimly it's there that's call this theory of recollection like I said that's a very inadequate answer but I want to come back to that we'll talk about that yes he does but he does have a theory of reincarnation but that's not central to what we're talking about right now that's almost he got that from the pythagoreans who also had a idea of reincarnation but this is not quite the same thing okay it's a good connection if it fought but it's not quite the same thing but yes he did in fact affirm that Sydney you enter it's that's a that's a good question and it's a complicated question and I don't know I think I think scholars in Plato differ as to their answers of is there a perfect aardvark is there a perfect orangutan you know certainly those are not points that era saw a play-doh addressed directly presumably yes presumably any object in this world that we can that we can say it is a something we can call it there's going to be an eternal expression of that in the ideal world but some would doubt that and then you'd have the question well what about a unicorn you know well most of us have never experienced directly a unicorn you ever woke up look out in your backyard kale and saw a unicorn maybe in your little girl imagination once years and years ago you imagined a unicorn but you know most of us but we have an idea so is the idea of a unicorn something that we recall because we saw it in the ideal world or is that something we just cooked up out of our imagination well that's a debate that scholars in Plato can't really agree on and it's part of that whole problem very importantly though for Plato there would be the perfect man or the perfect human for man or woman I guess that becomes very important yeah there is whoa he's here Joe you got a yes yes he does yep because that ideal world is real it's really out there and so it's not like well this is something we invented out of our imagination it's something that we actually experienced and we all experience the same thing so that's part of why he's not a relativist for that very reason it's very good use of that term yes it's a heaven type thing yeah yeah it is not heaven in the way we use it as Christians but it's that idea it's transcendent it's not part of this world it's otherworldly that's what distinguishes it from this receptacle world which is the world in which we live all right we live gotcha we live in the world of imperfect copies so there's zillions of chairs in this world none of them are a perfect replica of that eternal ideal chair but there are many imperfect copies and when we see a copy we recognize it as such and call it by the name chair Matthew I did his like standard yes yeah excellent to have yeah that's right excellent thank you so yesterday I showed you two great pieces of art remember that the Mona Lisa and Nicole the the Betty Sue and I tried to solicit from you opinions only one of which was very respectable namely the opinion of mr. Fugate arguing that the Betty Sue was superior to the modalism of most of you if you were actually honest with me including mr. Fugate who's a great actor and can pull the part off well but even he down deep inside knows that the myth that the Mona Lisa beats the Betty Sue and the question is why do you know that why are you all so secure in your opinion that the Mona Lisa is superior in beauty to the Betty Sue answer go ahead and give the answer Matthew you asked the question that would point to the right answer exactly okay then hold on to that questions I want to make sure everyone calm place I put this because I don't know how else to picture but I want you to imagine not something that is beautiful you know but I want you to imagine as best you can beauty whatever that is beauty I was asking you a minute ago to imagine chair Ness and you are having trouble with that this may be even tougher I want you to just imagine eternal essential perfect beauty see whatever comes to your mind well what play was saying is that is what's here there is the perfect and eternal not just beautiful thing but beauty as such and you have it in your mind and therefore if you go through this world you can routinely and easily many times distinguish that which has greater beauty from that which is less beauty you distinguish Mona Lisa from Betty Sue you distinguish all through life beautiful this beautiful that not because you're just making a private judgment about it but because literally your mind is that essential eternal notion of beauty and it's there and strangely enough most of us agree most the time on what is beautiful and what is it now sometimes we differ on fine points you know is the last supper more beautiful than the Mona Lisa well we can have that conversation but the very listen to me the very fact that we can have the conversation means that we have something in us telling us that there is that which is beautiful ultimately otherwise the conversation would be meaningless even if we differ it proves the point that Plato's making we've got some idea of that which is eternally an expression of beauty kind of tracking with that and see what's going on here Matthew you have can I that's answered it yes how does he explain that we think yeah excellent and again this kind of goes back to your prior question where does it come from and again I'm going to hold off and give you an adequate answer by just giving a real short answer some of us remember it better than others okay some of us are more philosophical than other things and Plato of course in his Republic argues that those people who do this the best should be the ones that rule right the philosopher keys but he says we all can do it we all have it somewhere in our heads Spencer that's a real chair it's not the perfect it's closer I mean to be honest with you I sit out of this chair he's back like it almost goes off here you know I sit in that thing you call a chair it's hard you're right there's no relaxing to it yeah and so if you were to ask me which of these two objects more closely conforms to chair nests my opinion would be it's this one somebody may differ but again the very fact that we have the conversation proves that we all share some notion of what the perfect chair would be right yeah the world is considered somewhere in heaven or something disappointed believed that when people die go get to go there yes good question and be careful about calling it heaven because that brings too much Christians spend to this he simply calls it a the world of the ideal but he does believe and this is part of part of my Socrates is so kind of confidence and relaxed as he anticipates his death you know is that he believes as he dies he's going to be going to that place and that that will be the place of the experience of ultimate beauty and all these great things so he's he's ok with that no not necessarily he does believe in virtue he does believe in an afterlife he does believe that there is justice he does believe that justice is part of that eternal circumstance of reality and that people can live contrary to that justice and that they will experience negative effects as a result of that he never works out a kind of robust doctrine of hell such again as we would find in the Christian faith but he certainly does work out an idea of bad effects following from a bad life because of his very keen sense of justice just like memory yes yes right we're gonna talk about Plato's theory of recollection later and Jill science course is good though there's there's one dialogue that's famous in Plato called the me no dialogue in en El Nino anybody ever read it or know anything about it are you familiar anybody with the Meno its if we had more time we'd read it in here just to kind of illustrate the point but in the Meno dialog Josiah Socrates the hero of this this little kind of dialogue takes a slave boy uneducated you know rude in the sense that he's not sophisticated and by a series of questions just by asking questions gets this slave boy to show that he actually knows the Pythagorean theorem not by telling it to him not by teaching it to him but just by walking him through the logic of the thing you know and the point he makes is do you see I didn't teach the kid the Pythagorean theorem he already knew it I just drew it out of them out of it that's the basis of what's called sometimes Socratic teaching we try to get you sometimes it's harder than at other times to be honest with you to actually say the right answers so that I'm not just sitting up here like a talking head you know shoveling out data it's much better if you learn Socratic ly you find out you know more than you thought now I don't know you know I mean you'll have to surmise that I was trying to get you to talk about an ideal chair and I was not coming up with anything very good so but I think you know the idea don't you that there is there stuff in there and a well-crafted question may help you pull it out and that's what Socratic teaching is and that's what Plato was the master of and that's what Socrates was really famous for was Socratic teaching you all right now in terms of what we've studied so far plane was trying to tip his hat to the two philosophical traditions that have been coming down to him so Nicole the most famous Ionian was hair yes Heraclitus thank you phones got me there and the most famous Italian was Ben okay so you got the Ionian Heraclitus you've got the Italian Parmenides and now I'm going to say to you that the ideal world celebrates one of those and the receptacle world celebrates the other which is which Sarah for a hundred bucks know which is which who is celebrated which tradition at the ideal level and which tradition at the receptacle level just use the names for military so do you see Plato is trying to synthesize these two traditions right talked about that yesterday he wants to tip his hat to both he wants to acknowledge on the one hand the contribution from Parmenides and also allow for a place for Heraclitus how does he do it he has two worlds the world of Parmenides is the world of being whatever is is it's a perfect eternal unchanging being perfect chair perfect beauty perfect and perfect virtue perfect goodness perfect everything that's part manatees work it doesn't change whatever is is but Plato realizes that we got to do something with this world of change and so he just has a separate world he calls it the world of the copy or the receptacle rule now the reason it's called receptacle I'm gonna hold off until we talk about his creation myth and then I'll come back and deal with that briefly later so just a lot right now that that's the word we use the ideal and the receptacle this is the world we're living in well change copies imperfections and these two worlds are an attention with each other there is in other words between them a dualism in the human make up your soul is from which world Josiah your soul is from the soul comes from the ideal world he has an argument for the immortality of the soul see it's always there but the body comes from which world kala this is a fairly easy question I've got a follow-up question there aseptically and what is it about the body that makes it reflect the receptacle as opposed to the soul which he said reflects the idea what is it about the body that makes it more practical it's always changing right when I look at the changing part of me I see it's the body's getting older and wrinkled arthritis dementia yeah all of those good things yes okay all I'm saying it remember these two guys per minute ease whatever is is in other words he's the champion of a world that does not change so this is Plato acknowledging Parmenides yeah anything exists remember all houses illusion okay for Heraclitus the only that does exist is the illusory world change right did you follow that this is Plato trying to synthesize these two traditions he realizes both these guys have something to say and so he wants to find a place for both of them in his field of philosophy but between the two who gets the who gets more emphasis Plato synthesizes them but who gets more emphasis in Plato's philosophy if I could send it up this way you'd say you know in the great scheme of things he's 2/3 one and one-third the other let's just say arbitrarily well who gets most the emphasis here absolutely so Plato comes more in the tradition of rationalism not so much empiricism when we get to Aristotle we find just the opposite Aristotle will be mostly you know Imperial mostly the Heraclitus peace less the Parmenides peace that's why these two can represent another philosophical conflict justice Parmenides and Heraclitus did that make sense he following no it was pretty it was conscious you read his he writes about both of them and it's pretty clear he's got them in mind as he's working this out yeah and others I mean he likes Pythagoras he likes all these pre-socratics but as you begin to see him incorporating their thought it's pretty clear what he's attempting to do all right what are some of the things that we find in the ideal world what is up here well I mentioned two of them beauty is their chair nests is there some other ideas and he really uses these just to prove his point he would say for example that your idea of a perfect circle is part of your experience of the ideal world for example Kayle have you ever experienced in your life a perfect circle no no you know what a circle is is that a perfect circle no would you agree with me that it's not bad I've drawn this object over here would you call that a circle would you call that a circle you've never experienced a perfect circle in your life but you can distinguish between two objects on the board that are at least somewhat similar and say one is a circle and one isn't right you can do that in other words you've got a you've got a standard in your mind by which you go through life and evaluate its experiences at this point the experience is one of circle nests right and if you've never seen a perfect circle in fact it would be impossible to experience a perfect circle because how why is the line that forms the perimeter of a perfect circle how wide is it Trevor why does the line that forms the perimeter of a perfect circle it is what geometrically speaking it is say it's a probably so they owns nothing okay that's right not almost nothing it is infinitely small it's like a mathematical point in fact a circle is defined as an infinite number of points equidistant from a center point right something like that and a point has no dimension a perfect circle has no breath in the line that forms it what makes it perfect but you all have it in your head don't you you've all got an idea Cayley can immediately make distinctions and yet both of these are miserable as compared to a perfect circle is outrageously off the mark compared to a perfect circle and yet one is still better than the other we do that all the time don't so that's the kind of thing he would say perfect triangle equilateral triangle something you have in your mind it's part of the ideal yeah okay and if you want to make a perfect sphere beyond the world in this room I have yes yes sure right so it's it the point is that you any of these that we imagine in this room can only be called sphere or a circle or any name we apply to them because they resemble something that is that it's perfect now you're talking about maybe different dimensions one small ones large you know that but he says in the in the in the ideal world dimension in that sense like measurement like 3 feet or something doesn't apply this is a world of perfection and as soon as I say well this is three feet wide I've talked about something that is particularly not something that was Universal would be the idea he says in the ideal world are the whole the whole notion of number of unity oneness duality two nests you know all of those things are the idea of sets usually with Venn diagrams and stuff like that you've done a little bit of that Plato says that the whole idea of a set the whole notion that there is a class into which you can put things is an idea in your mind that comes from the ideal world that are a the very notion of class as such the fact that you can put two objects in a class and call them both chairs that that idea of a class itself is ideal moral ideas virtue piety justice beauty goodness there are true propositions that are part of the ideal world if I said Gor was born April 28 1949 okay there's a proposition now I'm going to tell you that's my birthday for purposes of making the immediate point right it's far enough off hopefully you'll forget by the time they no forget it it's always scary all right my question is assuming that's true course borin I'm certain date is that true today he's a true today Jacob is it true today yes okay if it's true today then it's the proposition was it true a thousand years before it happened now I put it in the past tense that's what's tripping you up there so let's just say it more in a kind of timeless since the birth of gore is on that particular day would that be true throughout you know a thousand years before it actually happened and if it's through a thousand years before and it'll be true a thousand years after could you say in a sense it's true eternally it is true isn't it it stands as a great truth and so this becomes Plato's notion against relativism there are true propositions there are true propositions that are true eternally including the date of course birth the date of your birth and an infant number of other things he does not create a relativistic universe for us he creates a universe in which certain things are true and they are true absolutely so what's in the ideal world I hope you're keeping track of this I'm throwing them at you perfect geometric shapes number sets virtues propositions universals of qualities yellow nests for example cheerfulness those would be ideals those are universal properties Universal relations one thing being above another so on below another beside another those relational properties are universal the bottom line is where I'm going to stop right now - the time is running out is that it's your idea of the forms and all of these various expressions that it takes that gives you the capacity to make sense out of the world in which you live and Plato says you are using this world of the forms constantly to decipher your experience in this world and if you didn't have those notions of forms you would be living in worse than the most insane nightmare you can imagine these are the things that make sense out of your experience of life like the ideal war death and like all that negative stuff or is that just a result of them I would say Plata would make that derivative he believes that that part of it for example we have an idea of the good and derivative from that is an idea of evil evil is not an eternal essential idea but it is the effect of denying the good and that would be true of a lot of things that we would call kind of negative qualities good question fair enough tomorrow I want you to read I'm going to give you the class period to read as much as you can of the it's called book seven you see it there it's from the Republic it's the cave dialogue and we'll come back and look at that on Monday that's what's coming out even ever see you

Channel: Bruce Gore

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Keywords: Plato World Forms Ideals Bruce Gore Receptacle Philosophy

Id: eosZDtryVLM

Length: 46min 11sec (2771 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 25 2015