1. Assessing Plato (AO2)

2. What does the specification say?

3. Critical Assessment of Plato’s ideas The specification states that: Candidates should be able to discuss critically the validity of the points being made in Plato’s Analogy of the Cave. & Candidates should be able to discuss critically the validity of Plato’s World of Forms.

4. What criticisms or support for either: the analogy of the cave or the World of Forms can you think of?

5. Evaluating the Analogy of the Cave – Plato’s view Plato essentially wants to convince you that the physical world around us is an illusion The analogy (at face value) seems convincing After all, how well do we know the universe? (as we shall see with the world of quantum physics!) It may be that there really is more to life than physical appearances (beauty is only skin deep) Plato certainly believed that the ‘passions’ or emotion clouded our rational minds – so becoming fixated on things of physical beauty might lead us to a warped experience of true reality

6. Evaluating the Analogy of the Cave – Basic problems with Plato Plato wasn’t speaking in the general terms discussed above. He LITERALLY meant that the entire visible world was an illusion and that the World of Forms (WoF) was the only true reality we should seek. In one very real sense the analogy can only be valid if the WoF is real. Without the WoF the analogy breaks down (remember this as there are far more criticisms of the WoF).

7. Evaluating the Analogy of the Cave – Would the prisoner return to the cave? Plato also assumes that someone who discovered the Form of the Good (like the released prisoner) would never want to return to their old ways – is this necessarily true? It could be argued that Plato underestimates the pull from emotions, desires, drives, lusts or physical pleasure I know what the right thing to do is but have failed to do it on a number of occasions (I can be very selfish – Aristotle identified that people suffer from a weakness of will – desire is too strong for some people to combat!) – So can we really say that the released prisoner would definitely not wish to return to the cave? It seems doubtful and if so the analogy breaks down…

8. Evaluating the Analogy of the Cave – Gloomy Cave Vs Physical delights Plato paints a gloomy reality in the analogy. Remember that the cave is meant to represent the physical realm, do you think that a gloomy cave is a fair representation of the physical world? Plato appears to underestimate the physical world around us. It is far more beautiful than Plato makes out. Plato believed that all matter was inherently evil as it was subject to change – he would argue that you are being duped by the physical realm and that you should train yourself to look beyond the realm of experience.

9. Evaluating the Analogy of the Cave – Buddhist Support Buddhism agrees in principle with Plato’s assessment of reality. 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. Buddhism agrees with Plato that physical reality is in a constant state of change. True reality exists beyond the physical realm.

10. Evaluating the Analogy of the Cave – Physical Vs Spiritual difference Plato’s analogy tries to explain that there is a spiritual/meta-physical realm beyond the physical (cave = physical realm – outside = WoF). However, there is an obvious problem with his analogy – Plato fails to make the distinction between the visible world and the WoF because the analogy contains physical objects. The Sun is a physical object, the fire in the cave is merely a smaller version of the Sun. This does not provide an accurate explanation of the relationship with the physical and the meta- physical

11. Evaluating the World of Forms

12. Evaluating the World of Forms – Plato’s understanding Plato is going to argue that through the use of reason or our mind we can recall what our soul remembers from the WoF. We recognise beauty, truth or justice because we have seen this before. Again, at face value this seems plausible. The task of the philosopher is to seek out true reality by training himself not to see the ‘shadows’ of the physical world around him.

13. Evaluating the World of Forms – Basic Problems THERE IS NO PROOF OF THE WORLD OF FORMS! We only have Plato’s theory and (as we have seen) a flawed analogy to explain the WoF. Popper: Believed that Plato sought permanence in the WoF as a way of dealing with the uncertainty of life. Plato couldn’t accept that TRUE REALITY can change – someone like Popper would ask ‘Why can’t true reality change?’. If Popper is right then there is no need to posit the existence of another realm to find the truth.

14. Evaluating the World of Forms – Aristotle Aristotle had several criticisms of Plato, particularly the Form of the Good. He suggested that Good comes in so many varieties that there cannot be one 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, in other words something was good in relation to something else – a good knife is one that cuts, a bad one doesn’t fulfil its purpose as something that cuts.

15. Evaluating the World of Forms – Aristotle 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 – eternity and whiteness are different qualities (meaning that the realness of something does not depend on it remaining unchanged as Plato tried to suggest). The Forms have no real practical use. They cannot be applied in the physical world.

16. Aristotle’s Third Man Argument

17. Form of Man (1) Copy of the Form of Man (2) Or is it the copy of the copy of the copy of the Form of Man (4) Copy of the Copy of the Form of Man (3) WoF Physical Reality The copy of the copy of the copy of the copy of the Form of Man (5) ad infinitum (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) ad infinitum

18. Evaluating the World of Forms – Aristotle’s Third Man Argument Aristotle put forward a very famous criticism known as the third man argument (caution – very tough idea!). Suppose that an individual man is a copy of the Form of Man (but every object in the physical realm has a copy in the WoF!). Therefore there must be a Copy of the Copy of the Form of Man (a copy of the one that exists in the physical realm). Is the man in the physical world a copy of the Form of Man or a copy of the copy of the copy of the Form of Man? This paradox appears to render the Theory of Forms as meaningless (look at the diagram to help you understand).

19. Evaluating the World of Forms – Negative Forms? Plato insists that everything that exists in the physical realm is a pale reflection of something in the WoF. He is not clear on what exists in there. Does this mean that the WoF contains negative forms such as the Form of Disease, Violence, Cancer, Death or even Evil? If we accept that the physical realm is a poor reflection of the WoF then these negative concepts would be ‘perfect’ in their negativity.

20. Evaluating the World of Forms – Negative Forms – Augustine’s Comeback 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, darkness the absence of light and evil the absence of good. This appears to be a strong criticism of the negative Forms idea as Plato can argue that only positive things have any Form in the WoF.

21. Evaluating the World of Forms – Specific Forms? Even if we accept Augustine’s understanding of negative simply being the absence of good things the WoF is still confusing… Are we to believe that there is a perfect Form of the Laptop, Telescope, iPod and Deodorant? However: it is highly unlikely that Plato was interested in the Forms of physical things. 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 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…

22. Evaluating the World of Forms – Are the Forms all in the mind? Dawkins believes that ideas or concepts are passed on genetically from generation to generation. He calls these ideas ‘memes’. Could this account for our apparent recognition of ‘Forms’ such as Beauty, Truth, Justice or Symmetry? More over 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. It seems impossible to understand the Form of Justice without placing it in a physical concept. The ideas or concepts are far too conceptual for us to grasp entirely. In a very real sense the Forms don’t exist unless placed in a physical context.

23. Evaluating the World of Forms – Are the Forms all in the mind? Let us suppose that we could ‘know’ these concepts in the WoF. How could we hope to emulate these ideas in our everyday lives? The Forms would be so far removed from the reality that we experience that it would become impossible to put this ‘knowledge’ of the Good into practise. Our behaviour involves physical actions that the concepts are completely devoid of…

24. Possible support for Plato from Rationalism

25. Evaluating the World of Forms – Support for Rationalism (Descartes) Descartes was also a rationalist. He could be used to support Plato because he agreed that we have concepts that exist in the mind first and then help us construct reality. The difference is that Descartes believed that these ideas existed solely in the mind and not in an independent reality elsewhere (like the WoF).

26. Evaluating the World of Forms – Support for Rationalism (Kant) Kant was also a rationalist. He believed that there was, in essence, 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 or interpret the universe around us (what he called the phenomenal world). He argues that the noumenal world can never be known as the very fact that we observe it through our five senses means that we change its nature though our perception (Rather like rose-tinted spectacles).

27. WARNING – This is one of the most difficult concepts that you will study at AS – if you don’t understand it straight away, give it time! Here is a visual representation to help you…

28. Noumenal object Phenomenal object Real / Absolute Unknowable Understanding Perception / experience This can only ever be an interpretation of the REAL or ABSOLUTE because of our experience or perception Thing in itself Therefore need to check experience or perception using REASON to see that it is correct (synthetic) Knowable through reason alone (apriori)

29. If Kant is correct, then in one sense he is agreeing with Plato – Kant is also saying that empiricism cannot give us accurate information about the world around us because we can never ‘sense’ the world as it REALLY is.

30. The Empirical Evidence Against Plato

31. Evaluating the World of Forms – Empiricists’ Challenge Someone like Hume, Locke or Dawkins would argue that Plato’s ideas about the physical world are counterintuitive. This means that it flies in the face of common sense to say that the world around us is an illusion – it seems so real! In fact the physical realm has empirical evidence to back up its existence. Dawkins would argue that any talk of the ‘transcendent’ (a world beyond the physical) is meaningless as there is no evidence to support such a claim – for Dawkins real knowledge comes through empirical/scientific testing of the universe around us.

32. Evaluating the World of Forms – The Quantum Physics Spanner Unfortunately for the empiricists like Hume, Locke and Dawkins there is one MAJOR hurdle… that of quantum physics (profoundly difficult idea alert!!!). Since the discovery of the quantum world (a world that deals with the exceptionally small – far, far smaller than the humble atom) our understanding of the physical world has taken a turn for the VERY bizarre. In brief, the laws that govern the world of big objects (from atoms upwards) 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!

33. Evaluating the World of Forms – The Quantum Physics Spanner In short what quantum physics does is send a shockwave of doubt through the empirical universe. We can no longer be sure that our experiences of the world we observe around us are accurate This links nicely with Kant’s ideas on phenomenal world and the world that exists without anything experiencing it (noumenal world)

34. Evaluating the World of Forms – The Language Problems (tough idea!) Kotarbinski has suggested that Plato is guilty of making a mistake about language – the mistake of reification. Words exist in our language that do not exist in an objective sense like ‘nothing’ or ‘infinity’ Kotarbinski has argued that Plato has made the mistake of thinking that words like Justice or Good or Love really exist independently. They only ‘exist’ in as much as a person is loving or just or good but he is quick to suggest that we cannot say that these things ‘exist’ in any absolute sense. In this view Plato’s ideas are fundamentally flawed as he is searching for concepts that do not exist independently from human language.

35. Main Points to consider in your AO2 Evaluation Plato Aristotle’s criticisms (Third Man) Rationalist views (Descartes + Kant) Empiricist views (Dawkins) Problems with the Analogy itself Problems with the World of Forms Quantum Physics (the world is not as it seems to be!) ‘Plato’s theory of Forms is of little use in understanding the physical world’. Discuss