The following is another B quality paper I wrote for my philosophy class, that will undoubtedly be marked down to a B- for lateness and overall dysfunction. I do not properly present Aristotle's arguments or Plato's arguments because quite frankly, I didn't know what they were. It was me just writing what I knew in the last minutes before my submission was due. I am not sure if it was due noon time LONDON or noon time NEW YORK, cause I defininitely did not care to ask. Basically, a failed attempt to write yet another philosophy paper. I am definitely not doing honors in this department.
Astagfirullah.
Sadia Kalam
Word Count: 1650
Plato and Aristotle on Forms and Phenomenology
How do we know the real? Both Plato and Aristotle answer the questions of epistemology and metaphysics differently. Plato believes that the most knowable things are imperceptible. In the Republic, he proposes that the most knowable things are Forms, which are innate, unchanging, immaterial substances that exist outside of ordinary human perception, and exist above and beyond the objects perceived. Aristotle, however, believes that knowledge is grounded in the knowledge of perceptible things. Aristotle refutes Plato’s Forms because the theory of Forms fails to account for causes. In his Metaphysics, which deals with the fundamental attributes of existence, Aristotle claims that it is primary substances that are most real. He also claims that we can know the primary substances empirically, through an explanation of causation. While Plato doubts the authenticity of sensory knowledge in a changing physical world, Aristotle regards the natural world as a legitimate basis for knowledge. I present Plato’s argument of Forms from the Republic, and Aristotle’s refutation of forms. I then explain how these arguments are rendered compatible by modern analytic philosophers in the current debate of phenomenology, in which the objective and subjective nature of experience are debated.
In the Republic, Plato divides reality into the perceptible and imperceptible, or the visible and the intelligible respectively (509d-e). Within the visible realm are images, shadows, reflections as well as the “originals of these images” including animals, plants, and manufactured things (510e). In the intelligible realm, all things are perceived and conceptualized through the intellect. The objects of knowledge are the Forms, which are innate, eternal, absolute, independent existential entities like Redness, or Beauty or Tallness. The “lovers of sight and sound” are those preoccupied with the manifestations of forms in reality, the redness of a Macintosh apple, the beauty of particular woman, or the tallness of the Petronas Towers for example. For Plato, the instantiation of properties derived from sense perceptions, like the particular red of an apple, fails to “summon the understanding” of the intellect (523b-c). Sensory perception does not summon the understanding to do more than observe.
Knowledge requires more than observation of the perceptible. Essentially, Plato renders conceptual knowledge of imperceptible things more real than sensory knowledge of the visible. Plato illustrates his theory through an analogy. In Book VII of the Republic, Plato uses the allegory of the cave to distinguish between sensory and intellectual knowledge. In an underground cave, people are chained and their heads can only see what is ahead of them. The only light is provided by a fire, creating shadows of objects within the cave. These shadows are clearly visible, and perceptible but they fail to constitute what is real. In fact, these images are analogous to sense perception, or mere observation, by which reality may be distorted.
His analogy suggests that sensory perception can indeed be misguided. “In the visible realm, light and sight are rightly considered sun-like, but it is wrong to think that they are the sun” (509a). Sensory experience can lead you to mistake the images cast by the fire as real, when in fact they are not real. Rather, the sun for people in the cave may only be an imperceptible entity, because they have never seen the sun, but they may intuitively know that the sun exists. While the sun may not be visible within the cave, but because the sun can be seen and there is something that can see the sun, the sun is still conceptually knowable. Plato extrapolates from the particular example of the sun to a general example of the Good, which is the teleological purpose for all knowledge. The knowledge of the sun is possible, through not necessarily through sensory perception. If we are merely content with sense perception, in noting the shadows of the cave, then we are limiting our potential for knowledge of imperceptible forms.
Aristotle offers an extensive critique of Plato’s theory of Forms in the Book I of the Metaphysics. As an empiricist who focuses on the reality of the material world, Aristotle rejects Plato's theory of forms as metaphoric and weak in its foundational premises.
Aristotle argues that Forms cannot explain the existence of particular objects. He states that the “arguments for Forms undermine the existence of things” (I, 9, 18-19). Aristotle basically says that forms exist in particular objects—not above and beyond the particular object. The substance of a particular thing cannot be separate from the thing itself. Forms cannot be the causes because they cannot explain the movement and alteration in the physical objects of sensation. For example, if your right hand is in a bucket of cold water, and your left hand is in a bucket of hot water, you experience the Form of Hotness and Coldness simultaneously. But if the water from these buckets were mixed, what is the Form of the tepid water? While Plato contends that forms do not exist in the particular objects which partake in the forms, Aristotle insists that they must. The existence of the tepid water might mean the existence of the Form of Tepid water but that does not advance our inquiry as to why the water is tepid, or what does it mean for water to be tepid. Plato’s reasoning allows you to hold contradictory believes, yielding a multiplicity of Forms and substances, ad infinitum.
Knowledge for Aristotle requires both an understanding of facts and causes. It is not merely observation of perceptible things that ensure knowledge. Rather, you need to understand the universal principles and primary causes of all things. The most universal things are “furthest from perceptions” (II, 2, 24). Aristotle claims that the theory of forms fails to give a full account of knowledge as something that changes. The forms fail to specify the substance that is in a thing. Like Plato, Aristotle agrees that conceptual knowledge of forms can further one’s knowledge of particular things. But Aristotle’s understanding of principles, while similar to forms, does not allow for the general participation of forms in particular things. The forms do not further our particular knowledge of a particular fact. For example, the redness of the apple is not derived from the Redness or Apple-ness of forms. Instead, the concept of red, and the structural components of apples can be broken down and empirically studied.
Aristotle classifies knowledge according to the objects of that knowledge. His epistemology involves a classification schema based on the certainty with which you can know something. Unlike Plato, Aristotle allows for the possibility that some knowledge is not absolutely certain. This error was the result, Aristotle believed, of Plato's assumption that since the human mind could contemplate a particular object and its abstract form separately then both must exist separately. Aristotle claimed that the human mind naturally thought in the abstract and that the fact that a person could separate forms from objects in their own mind didn't necessarily mean that forms existed separately from objects.
The differences between Aristotle and Plato can be recast into modern analytic philosophy of the mind. Currently, the debate is over phenomenal states. What does it mean to have a conscious experience of anything? For example, Commander Data on Star Trek and Geoff the philosophy TA can have unique experiences of red that are a function of one being an automaton and the other a human being. The idea is that the organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is to be that organism—something it is like for the organism. This idea seems to allow for the notion of Forms because there are objective facts about the world on one hand and conceptual schemes of representation on the other. The objective form is attached to the experience of red that is somehow universal for all individual organisms. In Nagel’s essay “What is it Like to Be a Bat,” Nagel presents the dilemma of the objective versus the subjective character of an experience, apart from the particular point of view from which its subject understands the experience. There is some phenomenological feature of an experience that is different from the material reduction of that experience, like the physical or chemical reduction of the experience in the minds of the organism. There are indeed intrinsic structures within cognition that allow us to know particular things, as Aristotle might have said. For example, in trying to reflect on what it is like to be a bat seems to lead us to the conclusion that there are facts that do not consist in the truth of propositions expressible in a human language. We can be compelled to recognize the existence of such facts without being able to state or comprehend them. This notion of qualia, or the intrinsic, eternal, perhaps immaterial content of phenomenal experience that is beyond our cognitive abilities—seems analogous to Plato’s forms, but also seems to allow for an Aristotelian explanation of physical causation.
Although Aristotle gives an extensive critique of Plato’s theory of forms, and concludes that the perceptible things understood through sensory experience and empiricism are more real than Plato’s abstract forms, Aristotle and Plato do not present views that are incompatible. Rather, their theories seem to overlap. There are elements of Aristotelian and Platonic thought in current metaphysical debates about the nature of phenomenological experience. Plato would probably argue that the redness of an apple, the beauty of a particular woman, or the tallness of a tower are extrinsic to the objects, that they are somehow manifestations of eternal forms. Aristotle would respond that the color, appearance, or height of a particular object is a property that is intrinsic to the object, that there are principles and universals linked to your understanding of real, perceptible things, but that that knowledge of universals can be attained through empirical investigation. The question what is real thus remains categorically ambiguous.
Astagfirullah.
Sadia Kalam
Word Count: 1650
Plato and Aristotle on Forms and Phenomenology
How do we know the real? Both Plato and Aristotle answer the questions of epistemology and metaphysics differently. Plato believes that the most knowable things are imperceptible. In the Republic, he proposes that the most knowable things are Forms, which are innate, unchanging, immaterial substances that exist outside of ordinary human perception, and exist above and beyond the objects perceived. Aristotle, however, believes that knowledge is grounded in the knowledge of perceptible things. Aristotle refutes Plato’s Forms because the theory of Forms fails to account for causes. In his Metaphysics, which deals with the fundamental attributes of existence, Aristotle claims that it is primary substances that are most real. He also claims that we can know the primary substances empirically, through an explanation of causation. While Plato doubts the authenticity of sensory knowledge in a changing physical world, Aristotle regards the natural world as a legitimate basis for knowledge. I present Plato’s argument of Forms from the Republic, and Aristotle’s refutation of forms. I then explain how these arguments are rendered compatible by modern analytic philosophers in the current debate of phenomenology, in which the objective and subjective nature of experience are debated.
In the Republic, Plato divides reality into the perceptible and imperceptible, or the visible and the intelligible respectively (509d-e). Within the visible realm are images, shadows, reflections as well as the “originals of these images” including animals, plants, and manufactured things (510e). In the intelligible realm, all things are perceived and conceptualized through the intellect. The objects of knowledge are the Forms, which are innate, eternal, absolute, independent existential entities like Redness, or Beauty or Tallness. The “lovers of sight and sound” are those preoccupied with the manifestations of forms in reality, the redness of a Macintosh apple, the beauty of particular woman, or the tallness of the Petronas Towers for example. For Plato, the instantiation of properties derived from sense perceptions, like the particular red of an apple, fails to “summon the understanding” of the intellect (523b-c). Sensory perception does not summon the understanding to do more than observe.
Knowledge requires more than observation of the perceptible. Essentially, Plato renders conceptual knowledge of imperceptible things more real than sensory knowledge of the visible. Plato illustrates his theory through an analogy. In Book VII of the Republic, Plato uses the allegory of the cave to distinguish between sensory and intellectual knowledge. In an underground cave, people are chained and their heads can only see what is ahead of them. The only light is provided by a fire, creating shadows of objects within the cave. These shadows are clearly visible, and perceptible but they fail to constitute what is real. In fact, these images are analogous to sense perception, or mere observation, by which reality may be distorted.
His analogy suggests that sensory perception can indeed be misguided. “In the visible realm, light and sight are rightly considered sun-like, but it is wrong to think that they are the sun” (509a). Sensory experience can lead you to mistake the images cast by the fire as real, when in fact they are not real. Rather, the sun for people in the cave may only be an imperceptible entity, because they have never seen the sun, but they may intuitively know that the sun exists. While the sun may not be visible within the cave, but because the sun can be seen and there is something that can see the sun, the sun is still conceptually knowable. Plato extrapolates from the particular example of the sun to a general example of the Good, which is the teleological purpose for all knowledge. The knowledge of the sun is possible, through not necessarily through sensory perception. If we are merely content with sense perception, in noting the shadows of the cave, then we are limiting our potential for knowledge of imperceptible forms.
Aristotle offers an extensive critique of Plato’s theory of Forms in the Book I of the Metaphysics. As an empiricist who focuses on the reality of the material world, Aristotle rejects Plato's theory of forms as metaphoric and weak in its foundational premises.
Aristotle argues that Forms cannot explain the existence of particular objects. He states that the “arguments for Forms undermine the existence of things” (I, 9, 18-19). Aristotle basically says that forms exist in particular objects—not above and beyond the particular object. The substance of a particular thing cannot be separate from the thing itself. Forms cannot be the causes because they cannot explain the movement and alteration in the physical objects of sensation. For example, if your right hand is in a bucket of cold water, and your left hand is in a bucket of hot water, you experience the Form of Hotness and Coldness simultaneously. But if the water from these buckets were mixed, what is the Form of the tepid water? While Plato contends that forms do not exist in the particular objects which partake in the forms, Aristotle insists that they must. The existence of the tepid water might mean the existence of the Form of Tepid water but that does not advance our inquiry as to why the water is tepid, or what does it mean for water to be tepid. Plato’s reasoning allows you to hold contradictory believes, yielding a multiplicity of Forms and substances, ad infinitum.
Knowledge for Aristotle requires both an understanding of facts and causes. It is not merely observation of perceptible things that ensure knowledge. Rather, you need to understand the universal principles and primary causes of all things. The most universal things are “furthest from perceptions” (II, 2, 24). Aristotle claims that the theory of forms fails to give a full account of knowledge as something that changes. The forms fail to specify the substance that is in a thing. Like Plato, Aristotle agrees that conceptual knowledge of forms can further one’s knowledge of particular things. But Aristotle’s understanding of principles, while similar to forms, does not allow for the general participation of forms in particular things. The forms do not further our particular knowledge of a particular fact. For example, the redness of the apple is not derived from the Redness or Apple-ness of forms. Instead, the concept of red, and the structural components of apples can be broken down and empirically studied.
Aristotle classifies knowledge according to the objects of that knowledge. His epistemology involves a classification schema based on the certainty with which you can know something. Unlike Plato, Aristotle allows for the possibility that some knowledge is not absolutely certain. This error was the result, Aristotle believed, of Plato's assumption that since the human mind could contemplate a particular object and its abstract form separately then both must exist separately. Aristotle claimed that the human mind naturally thought in the abstract and that the fact that a person could separate forms from objects in their own mind didn't necessarily mean that forms existed separately from objects.
The differences between Aristotle and Plato can be recast into modern analytic philosophy of the mind. Currently, the debate is over phenomenal states. What does it mean to have a conscious experience of anything? For example, Commander Data on Star Trek and Geoff the philosophy TA can have unique experiences of red that are a function of one being an automaton and the other a human being. The idea is that the organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is to be that organism—something it is like for the organism. This idea seems to allow for the notion of Forms because there are objective facts about the world on one hand and conceptual schemes of representation on the other. The objective form is attached to the experience of red that is somehow universal for all individual organisms. In Nagel’s essay “What is it Like to Be a Bat,” Nagel presents the dilemma of the objective versus the subjective character of an experience, apart from the particular point of view from which its subject understands the experience. There is some phenomenological feature of an experience that is different from the material reduction of that experience, like the physical or chemical reduction of the experience in the minds of the organism. There are indeed intrinsic structures within cognition that allow us to know particular things, as Aristotle might have said. For example, in trying to reflect on what it is like to be a bat seems to lead us to the conclusion that there are facts that do not consist in the truth of propositions expressible in a human language. We can be compelled to recognize the existence of such facts without being able to state or comprehend them. This notion of qualia, or the intrinsic, eternal, perhaps immaterial content of phenomenal experience that is beyond our cognitive abilities—seems analogous to Plato’s forms, but also seems to allow for an Aristotelian explanation of physical causation.
Although Aristotle gives an extensive critique of Plato’s theory of forms, and concludes that the perceptible things understood through sensory experience and empiricism are more real than Plato’s abstract forms, Aristotle and Plato do not present views that are incompatible. Rather, their theories seem to overlap. There are elements of Aristotelian and Platonic thought in current metaphysical debates about the nature of phenomenological experience. Plato would probably argue that the redness of an apple, the beauty of a particular woman, or the tallness of a tower are extrinsic to the objects, that they are somehow manifestations of eternal forms. Aristotle would respond that the color, appearance, or height of a particular object is a property that is intrinsic to the object, that there are principles and universals linked to your understanding of real, perceptible things, but that that knowledge of universals can be attained through empirical investigation. The question what is real thus remains categorically ambiguous.
hope u had a successful hajj
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