Metaphysics: Plato vs Aristotle

okay hello everyone I'm sure you've been missing me terribly but I wanted to record me narrating this PowerPoint because some of the ideas can be a little bit tricky and it's important that we understand them so what we're going to be looking at today is really the basis of the metaphysical debate and funnily enough it really started between Plato and Aristotle and remember plato was Aristotle's teacher but when it came to metaphysics particularly they had very very very different views so let's get started this PowerPoint by the way is available in the resource folder so you can access it there to be able to access the YouTube links that are going to be popping up a little bit later on okay firstly we need to start off with some key terms in the in the debate around metaphysics there's sort of two camps one is the materialist camp and one is the materialist camp so what is materialism materialism is the view that reality is made up of what we can see touch and taste there is no other world beyond our senses so what we're really talking about here is the idea that reality is accessible by our senses we see it we touch it we taste it we hear it we smell it that is the world there is nothing else that's all okay there is nothing beyond this physical world around us a lot of modern-day philosophers are materialists and most scientists and materialists as well in that day don't believe in something beyond what they can measure or sort of quantify in materialism is different in materialism is the view that reality is not the physical world but rather a world of concepts or ideas which is essentially non-physical this sounds a little bit weird but to give you an example you know think of the shape of justice or the color of truth or the smell of beauty none of these things have any physical presence we can't explain the shape of justice because justice does not have a shape yet we all have a very clear idea of what justice is just think about the last time you had a run-in with the teacher or your parents because something wasn't fair what you're really saying here is that you felt a sense of injustice even though you can't tell me what justice is or what it looks like now some philosophers would argue the reason that you know what justice is is because you are capable of accessing an immaterial world one that is beyond this physical world and for Plato particularly that world is a world of perfect ideas or concepts and so even though justice doesn't exist in the world around us we can't come into contact with it physically in any way Plato would argue that you do come into contact with it in other ways and that is via this immaterial world it's worth noting that you know most religions believe in some form of immaterial world if you believe in life after death well we know what happens to your physical body when you die the material part of you breaks down if something is living beyond well then it must be something that is not material or immaterial and it must live in a place that is immaterial as well so hopefully these two concepts are becoming clearer all right we'll start off with Plato and remember Plato is really where Western philosophy became a subject Socrates was really good at talking about it and really good at stirring up a bit of trouble in ancient Athens but Plato was the one who turned it into really the world's first academic subject something that you studied in school so for Plato Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher he lived between 427 and and 347 BCE if that sounds a little bit weird remember we're going we're in the year 2017 if we go back to zero then everyone who lived beyond that we go backwards in numbers okay I know it sounds a little bit odd but now Plato was an extraordinarily gifted philosopher and what we say a prolific writer he wrote a whole a lot of books and in all of these texts he covered basically every key question that we have had and still have in Western philosophy and this includes things like the nature of good and evil what constitutes a good life whether we can gain knowledge and whether we should be religious the structure of society everything that we could really think about Plato was the first to discuss he was extraordinarily influential in ancient Athens when we compare him to Socrates remember Socrates was kind of hated during his life Plato certainly was not he was kind of the golden child of Athens so a very very important man his crowning achievement in terms of his philosophical writing is a text simply titled the Republic if any of you decide to continue selling philosophy into university I pretty much guarantee you'll come across Plato's Republic at some point or other because it is his crowning achievement we then at Plato outlines his view of the nature of the world and whether or not the perceived world or this material world the physical world is the real one in it is in Plato's Republic that Plato develops the allegory of the cave which hopefully you remember from us discussing it when we just before we watch The Matrix this idea that we are all prisoners chained in a cave staring at a cave wall and what we take to be real is actually just shadowy versions of reality okay in the allegory of the cave Plato presents his idea of forms what Plato was trying to do here he was trying to sort of marry together the materialist world and the in materialist world so he is presenting an argument that actually there are two levels of existence there is a material level of existence the physical world around us and then there is another world now in terms of which one is more real Plato argued that the immaterial world is where true reality is this is where true and knowledge actually lives the physical world because it's always changing and difficult to define is imperfect and so it's a less reliable version of reality so he referred to this world as the world of being this immaterial world okay so this is where the perfect forms of all things existed so essentially what Plato is talking about here is the fact that your mind is able to access this immaterial world that he called the world of being within the world of being we have our mind can access perfect ideas so when you say that that's not fair so you're making a statement about justice what you're actually doing is your mind is accessing the perfect form of justice in the immaterial world what you're recognizing in this material world is an imperfect version of that justice and that's what's your attaining you because it's imperfect but that's the world of being so Plato argued that the world of being was the eternal world and was where the ideas and concepts that are represented in the material world are actually based may interest you to know that this form to the basis of the Christian idea of heaven which I'll go into later on there's a youtube link here have a watch of that video and it will help to explain the idea of Plato's reforms okay hopefully the video made things a little bit clearer but if you're confused at all let's try a little bit of an activity what I want you to do is take a couple of minutes to write what you see as the simplest but perfect definition of what a horse is so this is not a joke I want you to try it try and write down a perfect definition for what a horse is go alright hopefully what you've realized is that there's a bit of a problem whenever we do this in that well much of what you wrote about horses can be true of other things as well so as I've got here for example if you wrote that horses four-legged mammals that they that are covered in hair with a long face well you've also explained what a German Shepherd is so or a giraffe for that matter so this is a difficult thing to try and define and if you think about it there's really no way that you can perfectly define a horse unless you say well a horse is a horse and it's not any other animal obviously there's a problem with this definition we can't use the word in our definition but that's not how we understand the world we don't commonly look at a German Shepherd and think oh is that a horse or a dog we know the difference between a dog and a horse and Plato argued that the reason that you know the difference between these is because now follow me your mind is able to access the perfect form of what a horse is from the world of being in other words in the world of being there is the perfect idea of what a horse is you can't explain it you can't write it down you can't tell someone what the idea of a perfect horse is but you recognize it in the physical world when you come across a horse what you're really doing is recognizing the elements of a perfect form of a horse and that's what allows you to see a horse and not a dog it makes sense essentially when you access the world of being you are accessing truth you're just trying to apply it to this world that we exist in the form of horse the one that you're looking at is in the world of becoming so that's the world that is the material world the physical world so Plato called the world around us the world of becoming which is real but not as real not as true as the world of being the immaterial world a good example of something that only exists in the immaterial world is mathematics mathematics is based purely on ideas and if you've never thought about it let's take geometry as an example we can measure all of the elements of a perfectly round circle so we can measure its diameter we can measure it succumb Prinze we can calculate a whole range of things to do with a circle may interest you to know that there has never ever ever ever been a circle before if this sounds weird draw a circle in your book now is it perfectly round probably not let's assume you use a device to help you to draw like a you know a circular coin or something like that well now look at the line really really clearly is it a smooth line or is it jagged in essence we've never ever ever actually had a perfect circle ever exist in reality in this material world Plato argued that well how can we measure things to do with a circle if we've never actually experienced it this is because the form of a circle exists in the immaterial world in the world of being in these two worlds the world of becoming is where our physical self is and it's always changing and imperfect it is the world you can touch and taste the world of being is where our soul or our mind comes from and it is permanent and unchanging it's a world of perfect and eternal ideas so essentially your body will change this physical world will change your mind or your soul as Plato referred to it will never change because it comes from the world of being it is the perfect part of you within the world of being was the ultimate form which Plato called the good so if you remember in Plato's cave this was represented by the Sun and the good is the form that illuminates and makes all other forms possible remember when the prisoner is dragged out of the cave or crawls out of the cave depending on if he's coming willingly or not the Sun hurts his eyes if your brain is hurting a little bit from trying to define a horse and not write down a definition that also fits another animal well this is the equivalent of your eyes hurting when you're looking at the Sun for the first time remember Morpheus comment to neo when he is first woken up neo system Morpheus why do my eyes hurt and Morpheus says because you've never used them before so very very very platonic to be talking about from Morpheus there as I said Christian belief has borrowed a lot from Plato and we're in Plato's allegory of the cave the Sun is referred to as the good which illuminates all things and provides us with truth in the Christian faith that was adjusted and they dropped an O in good and turned it into God and so God is what illuminates truth and provides understanding for us so this yeah this while Plato's works was borrowed or say by Christianity to allow them to explain some of these difficult concepts by making slight adjustments and kind of adding God but as you can see with the idea of two separate worlds it's not that difficult to put the idea of religion into this and Plato certainly would have been religious in his day so we'll stop the video here and I'll do a second recording for the second half of this PowerPoint which is then on Aristotle as you can see take a little bit of time complete the right activity on page 94 of your textbook

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Length: 14min 39sec (879 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 22 2017