A History of Philosophy | 04 Plato's Epistemology

now um this afternoon we turn our attention to play PL and in dealing with Plato I want to follow the next couple of weeks this General format uh we'll start with his epistemology then look at his famous theory of forms which of course is precisely what nominalism denies then how all this Bears on his understanding of God and the cosmos then um his understanding of the human soul and finally The Good Life ethics social philosophy Etc um now to make the transition to Plato let's cast our minds back back into the presocratic and the sophists where we've laid emphasis on two lines of thought that develop there uh one has to do with that pre-scientific cosmology the orderedness of nature as a whole which for the sophists in their skepticism raised questions about the possibility of knowing anything about the reality of what governs nature at all and um that epistemological question surfaces then uh because of the efforts at pre-scientific cosmology the other line of thought we emphasized was the notion of moral order uh the city state and its proper ordering of justice and the moral ordering of an individual's life now that also raises epistemological questions questions about moral knowledge can we really know objective truth in ethical matters or are we again caught in the competition between knowledge claims and mere opinion um are there Universal moral ideals or are we left hanging in some relativistic situation in which every man is the measure of all things protagoras you remember so whether we take the scientific cosmology approach or the moral order approach the same questions about knowledge versus skepticism develop in the sophists and of course in Socrates attempt to counter the thinking of the sists now Plato inherits that debate from Socrates so that whether Plato is talking about the virtues or about his major concern over the Improvement of the Soul or whether he's talking about the ordering of the city state in his political writings or whether he's doing some things as he does in a few places on um cosmology the order of nature in in all of those areas the same question arises how can we know for sure how can we get Beyond relative varying opinions and uh we see that the sort of Direction which Socrates started the Alternatives of roric versus dialectic come into focus in Plato's thinking now this week you are reading Plato's Mino among other dialogues and that particular dialogue the Mino is gets right at the heart of this issue and helps you to see the way in which it's related to ethical matters the um overall question that the Mino focuses on is the question that um people still ask I guess every parent asks it and I hope most Educators ask it can vertue be taught can virtue be taught you and we still talk about uh character development moral education moral development essentially that's the question that the Mino is discussing whether virtue can be taught now it becomes obvious of course that um to teach something requires presumably that one has some knowledge of the subject to teach so in asking um convert you be taught um Plato has um Socrates the principal character as Socrates asking the um intermediate question well what is knowledge and in the light of that can virtue be taught and you'll find that the the dialogue ends with a note of ambiguity because while of course the um the sophists with their rhetoric can't teach something when all they've got is their own relative opinions rhetoric doesn't teach virtue in the hands of those rather unver virtuous sests but the people who should know what virtue is um outstanding morally U right Civic leaders and parents well they don't seem to have been very effective at teaching virtue look at the kinds of kids they've got the sons that grow up in their homes you see so um Can virtue be taught now of course there are other variables involved in moral education besides simply imparting knowledge of what is virtue even what is a particular virtue like the classic Greek virtues of temperance courage wisdom as well as Justice um there's more to moral development than knowing the essence of any of those virtues and in the MEO Plato doesn't get into the more he does a little bit in the Republic and elsewhere but um the question is posed and um immediately we are precipitated into epistemology okay okay now uh what I want to do however is to broaden the picture from the mea and to comment briefly about um variety of things which Plato talks about both in the Mino and in other dialogues on um epistemology um you'll you'll find um both in the Mino and in the selection from the Symposium and in the selection from the fedo those are the three that you're into this week in all three of them that distinction between knowledge and mere opinion comes through uh opinion is based on experience experience is basically a matter of sense perception the sense perception of particular things in the world in which we live and sense perception Plato points out some of his predecessors had sense perception tends to be relative relative to um the condition of the sense of organs um relative to the condition and position of the object you're viewing and of course particular objects are constantly changing in some regards and so the condition of the object is very significant sense perception in other words does does not yield us unchanging knowledge of unchanging truths it tends to yield a variable relative awareness of changing particulars you see and consequently the accumulated opinions that we have on the basis of experience simply are not reliable now um in um another of his dialogues the Theus and all these dialogues are named after characters who appear or most of them at least in the uh Theus he um debates various possibilities if knowledge is not sense percep um could it be that we can make a simple qualification and say that knowledge is the true that we gain true opinions not mistaken ones but true opinions based on sense perception could that be the case and the debate argues no um even that isn't really adequate and unchanging it's too liable to change how do you know what is true if it's just based on sense perceptions well could it be then that knowledge is true opinion based on sense experience true opinion plus an account of why it is true but that of course just opens up a whole can of worms what sort of an account that can you give other than one based on sense perception which would be quite circular you say so the the the question arises if all we have to go on is experience and uh that yields only opinion we have difficult y nailing it down or to use Plato's metaphor tethering it and he uses that metaphor in the in the Mino um opinion true opinion may be all right for practical purposes like avoiding chariots while you cross the street maybe all right for the daily tasks in world of particulars but it uh it really needs tethering that's it like a horse that'll wander away if it's loose it needs tethering and the thing to tether an opinion is dialectic dialectic so no matter what sort of rhetorical tricks you pull about you opinions you see the opinions still aren't firmed up nailed down tethered whichever metaphor you like unless by dialectic well that just poses the question what is dialectic I say what is dialectic and um you can come in it various ways um dial itic is well it's thinking something through to a conclusion that's going to be true of all times and places in other words Thinking Beyond the relativities of a particular time or condition of an object Thinking Beyond the relativity of different sense organs with different degrees of sharpness at different times see Thinking Beyond the relativities of sense perception to something some truth which is unchanging and um in uh speaking of um dialectic he often um Associates it as well with what he calls recollection reminiscence because the way in which dialectic uncovers what is true is very much like the way in which you recollect something which you have forgotten you know the way that goes you you simply don't remember meeting such and such an individual but then as I describe the individual tell you certain of her mannerisms and perhaps start um describing the occasion when you met oh it begins to as we say come back and while it's not initially clear you say oh yes now I be to remember to recollect now dialectic has that effect except that it's not a matter of recollecting particular experiences there is as a result of dialectic an actual recall going on as dialectic and enables you to recall to mind unchanging truths which you knew in a previous existence ah yeah you see um we'll get into this later on but uh Plato believed in the pre-existence of the Soul pre existence of the Soul so that you come into this life with certain innate knowledge innate in the literal sense in Born you are born with certain latent ideas in your mind you see latent in the sense that um you're not aware of them until the dialectic enables you to recall so dialectic facilitates the recollection of innate Knowledge from a previous existence of the Soul now um perhaps you're um acquainted with Plato's famous cave and analogy stump talks of it but um what Plato does is and this is in his Republic which is not named after a character it's about the ideal city state but in the Republic he um he Likens the um um the soul in this life to a prisoner in a cave okay um The Prisoner who is um tied in such a way that he can only look towards the rear wall of the cave and um the light of the sun filters in there's a fire burning in the mouth of the cave casting a flickering light so that Shadows appear here on the wall in front of the prisoner constantly changing never reliable you can never really pin them down nail them down tether them okay meanwhile um your captors scowl big sticking hand walk um to and fro casting further Shadows on that wall ahead you think the soul is a prisoner in the body born into this life you are imprisoned by being born and as a result um you're unable to see the way things are out there in the the real world as you say all you get is flickering Shadows far removed from reality it a world of changing appearances relative and unreliable you're suffering from Amnesia I guess that was the big stick on the head you're suffering from Amnesia you don't recall anything unless of course somebody can start probing with the right questions dialectically to elicit some awareness and recollection begins and so um it's possible then that a person can be freed from those um those chains and be able at least to turn around and get acquainted with the um Earth while to was behind and with the reality of this cave what this is but that's still very shadowy you'll see it's only when we are able to reach outside the cave and see things then we come to know the way things are in reality so what Plato is depicting then is um a scheme in which we have two Realms of being okay two Realms of being a realm of physical particulars a realm of universal truths reality okay Universal truths yeah this is what we have to know this is simply the arena of opinion and somehow or other even while we're in this life we have to engage in a dialectic which enables us to think up there rather than being simply confined to ICS down there okay this takes dialectic stuck in the cave all you can do is to engage in face saving rhetoric so in the MEO you find that Plato talks of knowing by recollection the unchanging Universal essence of something like the very essence of virtue oh recollection may be evoked by considering particular cases particular examples but dialectic is not empirical generalization across a lot of particular cases empirical generalization doesn't get you to the essence of the thing only to similarities some of which may be very incidental and unnecessary so you have to get beyond the sense perception and the empirical generalization to thinking abstractly in abstraction from all of those particulars about the essential nature of things dialectic then typically will start with a hypothesis about the essence of something in the Republic as I mentioned before the question is what is justice so the discussion starts with hypotheses as to what Justice is that are offered by thus and others along the way you see and it is by the analysis of those hypotheses about the essence of justice that finally the dialectic gets closer and closer to the truth about Justice in the fedo you will find that um Plato uses the concept of equality as an example um how do you judge that two sticks two pieces of chalk or for that matter um two sticks of so-called dry ink uh or do they call this liquid chalk well whichever it is are um equal in length you'll see by looking at them no no you you cannot say they're equal in length unless you already have a concept of equality to know what you're saying when you say they're equal in length in other words a judgment like these two sticks are equal in length presupposes a non-empirical concept of equality which um may be elicited by talking about two sticks being equal in length you'll see but is not as such an empirical property no two physical things are ever exactly the same after all so the example there is of um things being equal in length all right now it's with that in mind that um we have this um print off from Plato's Republic oh let me let me mention one other in the Symposium you'll find he distinguishes between Beauty the essence of beauty the ideal beauty capital B and particular beautiful things okay particular beautiful things are objects of sense perception Beauty the ideal capital B is grasped as he puts it by the eye of the mind you see with your mind you see what I mean you know how we often say that you think you're following a um mathematical proof and the conclusion comes out clearly and you say oh I see what I ought to have done yes seeing abstractly not with reference to sense particulars but with reference to some abstract line of thought you see we say it again and again well look at this um excerpt from the Republic everybody have a copy okay um it's from book seven of the Republic um in the context where the where the um cave analogy appears conceive said I that there are these two entities one of them is Sovereign over the intelligible order and the other over the world of the eyeball okay the sensory world so this then is the sensory world the world of the eyeball and the other senses and this is the intelligible World okay intelligible sense World um the the visible and the intelligible now represent them as it were by a line divided into two unequal sections two unequal sections all right make this one a little bit longer and uh cut each section again in the same ratio all right and you've got a line divided into four parts Plato's famous divided line okay the section of the visible and that of the intelligible and then as the ex as an expression of the ratio of their comparative clearness and obscurity you will have as one section of the visible world all right as one section images images that is Shadows Reflections in the water or on surfaces things of that kind okay images Shadows Illusions hallucinations okay imaginations if you like where you fantasize something picturing to yourself something which doesn't exist physically okay the second section um assume that of which this is a likeness or an image that is animals plants and the whole class of man-made objects so here you've got uh physical particulars okay physical [Applause] particulars okay and uh then what you do in the uh higher region is something similar you make a distinction as he puts it um such that there is one section which the soul is compelled to investigate by treating as images the things imitated in the former Division and by means of assumptions images and assumptions from which it proceeds to the conclusion and another section in which it advances from its assumption to a beginning principle all right so here you've got if you like first principles okay and here you've got the reasoning um and making of inferences okay and as he goes on he points points out that it's in this area of reasoning and making inferences that mathematics fits which of course is making inferences reasoning things out all the time so that mathematical objects like um mathematical relationships like addition and so forth come out there but as we know from ukian geometry onwards all mathematical systems and inferences defend depend on first principles um first principles which are assumed in the inference okay so now uh what we have is to distinguish correspondingly the different kinds of awareness okay if you take uh those images to be real that's what we call illusion this dealing with um physical particulars is what we call sense perception those are the two kinds of opinion DOA the Greek word opinion seeming appearance the Greek verb doet and up here you have of course um uh deductive reasoning deduction that kind of thinking and here knowledge of first principles is by dialectic knowledge of first principles by dialectic okay so that's the thing that he introduces now halfway down the second page in this handout he comes to talking about dialectic um understanding that by the other section of the intelligible I mean that which reason Le is hold of by the power of dial dialectic now what is dialectic it treats its assumptions not as absolute Beginnings but as hypoth in underpinnings footings springboards that enable it to rise to that which requires no assumption and is the starting point of all and after attaining to that again taking hold of the first dependances and so proceeding downward to the conclusion this is dialectic he goes on it's no slight task that you have in mind I understand that you distinguish uh reality in the intelligible contemplated by dialectic as something truer and more exact than the object of Arts and Sciences whose assumptions are arbitrary okay those who contemplate them are compelled to use understanding and not the senses they go back to the beginning the foundations in the study and then at the top of 747 your interpretation is sufficient so that answering to these four sections you have intellection or reason for the highest understanding or thinking things through for the second belief or perceptual belief for the third picture thinking conjecture or Illusion if you take it in as reality for the force okay well and then the other two paragraphs are added from a little later in the text um is not dialectic the only process of inquiry that does away with hypo hypotheses advances to the first principle itself it's true then that when the eye of the soul is sunk in the barbaric sloth of orthic myth d dialectic gently draws it out leads it up employing us helpers Cooperators the studies and Sciences we've enumerated um so forth and then in the what remains we give the name dialectician to the man who's able to exact an account of the essence of each thing will you not say that the one who's unable to do it capable of rendering an account to himself and others doesn't possess full reason and intelligence about the matter but the man who is able so forth it's different so notice the description he gives in the final paragraph um as it were in battle running the gauntlet of all tests striving to examine everything by essential reality and not opinion we hold he holds on his way through all this without tripping up in his reasoning the man who elects this power doesn't really know the good itself or any particular good so you see dialectic is analysis of argument and of idea looking for consistency looking for something which doesn't beg any question which has no prior assumptions scrutinizing it relentlessly facing every objection every other competitor every counterargument you see and if it survives that test of careful honest Relentless dialectic then you can be pretty sure you've grasped the truth yes see now that's Plato's account of dialectic and uh with the rest of what would been doing it um tells us what he thinks of knowledge do you get it what do you think of it feedback questions yes David yeah we'll uh we'll look at that a bit more later on uh he seems to think that it's only only at death that we get the full vision of the sun which in the analogy is the most Ultimate Reality the source of being the source of light yeah so that that full understanding comes later and uh incidentally that becomes the basis for the development of certain mystical Traditions when platonism was taken over in the judeo-christian tradition and the sun becomes likened to God so the vision of God the mystical Vision you see is it possible in this life in limited way does it await the Hereafter fully yes yeah um yeah I think and say we're living in a world of um um images Illusions particulars um we simply don't get back to Ultimate first principles um our society hangs not on the knowledge of some ultimate etern unchanging good but on some social contract you see um yeah yeah I I think he' talk that way it would not be Plato's ideal Republic in which we live right um yeah Jason no not is it Jason Tim okay lot yes right yes he does and we'll look at it um when we get down to talking about the human soul uh the fedo which you're reading um part of the full fat gives a whole series of arguments for both both the pre-existence and the immortality of the Soul uh you may know incidentally that in the early church uh there were three views that were debated concerning the origin of the individual soul um either the platonic view that it pre-existed uh or the view that it was somehow reprod educed with physical procreation or that it is a special creation of God at some point in fetal development um curiously the first was characteristic of Plato and the platonic influence the second of the um more of the stoics and the third seems to have been separately introduced so um the history of theology in that way is very much indebted to the Greek tradition very much but we'll get back to that as we get to the human soul uh yeah Tim yeah okay um dialectic recollection of innate ideas yes dialectic is the means the method employed okay that facilitates recollection of innate ideas about those first principles get it so uh recollection is being with the eye of the Mind whereas dialectic is how we get our minds into the position to be able to see okay if you like dialectic is uh focusing the Mind focusing the Mind Jess not sure if I still understand if there was a great difference in necessarily the approach like let's say from theop waset to the diale see yeah was that difference or and did that translate into their actual knowledge were they reallying broadly speaking really different things apprach to that yeah no if you you if you go back to the differences in ethical matters which we saw emerging in the presocratic those are the differences which Plato would say are represented here that is to say if we understand the first principles of moral order okay we'll have to think about the principle of justice and he tries to Define what Justice is as a result of dialectical inquiry in the Republic but meantime uh what were um some of the Greek poets interested in when they weren't interested in the moral order of Justice you see what are the sophists after what are they talking about well um in the materials we have take a look at um democratus again where democratus was saying yeah be Savvy use your head but uh in order to um ensure pleasure rather than pain in order to be successful in order to enjoy life get ahead now those were the kinds of values which which um represented down here the values associated with this world you think now you can see immediately I suspect from that why this had such an appeal to um religious thought Christian Jewish later on Islamic you see uh it's as if Plato is saying set your affection on things above not on things below yeah and as we um get to the early church fathers we'll see that Plato was their principal resource in resisting um non-Christian criticisms in those first three four centuries and indeed I think as a result of assimilating it into Christian thought it was the platonism was the dominant philosophical influence within Christianity until um oh 12200 1100 thereabouts yeah and you can see its appeal right away mentioned last week yes call com yeah well I think what Alan Bloom is doing is calling us back to um the kind of liberal education through a study of the Classics for which University of Chicago is famous uh that is to say while his criticism is that the Contemporary University student talks as if there is no such thing as truth or falsity right or wrong but the time you get to the end of the book and he talks about his prescription for our society and for Education he's talking about reading all of the classics back to the Greeks and so forth now why it's not that you find um one set of unchanging values I mean if you go through the great books you find a whole variety of different things a pot perie it's a regular cafeteria Resort you'll see now I think what he is after is um a dialogue that would go on with those great books if you like a kind of informal dialectic with those Alternatives that would lead people to ask basic questions even though they might disagree on the conclusions they'll be trying to get back to First principles you um well you know I I see Christian liberal arts education very much related to that um liberal arts education involving Us in dialectic dialog with the uh great minds and great ideas of the past and the present while all the time looking at those ideas from the perspective of um the Christian faith and trying to see the relationship yeah um on the other hand I I think there is a kind of education that is much more the rhetorical kind that teaches you the tricks of the trade so you can get ahead in your chosen VOA vocation you see that's uh that's more the rhetoricians kind yeah um okay um couple of other things to round out this this picture of his epistemology um and we'll pick on up on these later on um you might gain the impression from what I've said that Plato thinks of the pursuit of knowledge and the exercise of dialectic as a detached unimpassioned purely um objectified kind of intellectual exercise um not so not so um you find that Plato talks a lot about about love of the good and of course in the intellectual realm Love Of Truth um because the question is um what are the psychological Dynamics involved in getting a person to focus attention on first principles rather than on the um titillating fascinating particulars that absorb us for most of our Lives you'll see and um in the Symposium therefore you you find uh for instance the whole dialogue devoted to the question what is love it's interesting what is love now the word that he's using is the word AOS desire now the word Eros and its um cognates erotic in our day have narrowed down in their reference to sexuality but not so among the Greeks AOS was simply the kind of love that wants that desires and when he talks of an Aeros for the good it means love of what is good a desire to know what's good love of Truth a desire to know what's true you see a love of wisdom a love of beauty uh you're going to be reading the fedus next week another of his dialogues and you will find the um dialectic versus rhetoric theme coming out in the second part of the fadis powerfully what constitutes good rhetoric is against nuts of good rhetoric it's rhetoric Guided by knowledge gained through dialectic yes but how do you get people to uh to to seek that is he to seek the good there must be a love of the good a love of beauty and uh that in turn raises the question um what can be done to um get people to love you see in a way there's a vicious circle if only you could grasp the vision of The Good The Beautiful in it's ideal in principle grasp it with your mind you would love it yeah but how can I grasp it if I don't love it get the Vicious Circle it takes love to see with the eye of the mind but how can I love what I don't see unless there is a unsatisfied hunger I deser and Eros in that sense um in the Republic uh Plato makes I think two suggestions that he works with in a variety of places one is that it's the task of the city state so to order the good society as to encourage that sort of pursuit of the good uh so he sees the task of government as the Improvement of the Soul loving the right the good the true um secondly he conceives of an educational system which will gradually take people through a developmental process you see uh so that um things like um physical exercise and music both of which involve the physical and the senses physical exercise and music cultivate an appreciation of rational order rather than particular sense experiences yeah physical exercise yeah I think so oh the example that he uses is military training well I don't know what military training was like in the Greek days I know it was what it was like when I went through it in World War Two you see um the parade ground drill got the whole contingent of people behaving as if they were choreographed yeah all I remember Cliff Shimmel who coached football for a while he showed some of us one time um a film of um um the players going into a scrimmage and coming out and he ran it forward and backward forward and backward forward and backward and looked like a choreograph dance beautiful beautiful beautiful you see and music yes you you you're trying to get as you listen to the music the overall order and pattern at least says Plato if it's the right sort of music not the dionan time and so um those are the beginning stages of Education cultivating the capacity of the mind to love and to know uh ideal pattern order you see and then moving on until um you work through literature of various sorts um carefully selected so as not to arouse passions but to cultivate a love of the good you'll see and the discipline of mathematics which is the best preparation for doing dialectic yeah to this day I'd by that math Majors who come to philosophy usually are much sharper in their logical processes than other people yeah so um I think it's the same question as how do you get people to love uh mathematics to love order intelligible order in any field you love it by doing it and gradually rise to higher and higher level it so uh that is I I think necessary to to round out the picture of what he's talking about iny

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Length: 59min 39sec (3579 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 07 2015