Con one really "know" anything?

[ComradeChris]

I can't remember the exact name of the theory, but it essentially says that during our existing lives, where our "soul" is in a body, we can never know something perfect or know something completely.

I think this is best shown with examples. The idea of a triangle is a concept that we can only fully understand when our soul is not in our body (ie we're dead and waiting to be reincarnated). We can never "know" a triangle in this existance. We can never understand it to it's fullest. But we spend our lives trying to "know" something, but only when our souls leave our bodies through death are we (our souls) fully aware. And when we are reincarnated into another body, we forget everything and then continue to spend that new life acquiring knowledge.

An example I like is can one ever "know" a cup, or even it's contents? What is is made of? Where did this colour come from? And that colour itself is only realized because of concept of whatever colour is is of which we speak. So for instance: we can see blue because there's a concept of what blue is. I think Plato discussing this theory in Crito or Phaedo...I can't remember which.

Perfection only exists in concept and never in reality is another main theme in this theory. Any thoughts?

[CommieBastard]

He argued that there were perfect 'forms' which are the underlying reality from which we derive the reality we perceive.
In the triangle example, the reason why we can never understand the triangle is because the only triangles we perceive are flawed, so we have no direct perception (and therefore no understanding of the nature of) of that truly triangular thing.

One problem I have with Plato's theory of forms is that there would be no way to distinguish between a reality based on his hypothesis, and one with only slight alterations that would severely alter the implications.

Take for example if we were to argue that the reason for the inconsistency between a triangle we see and the perfect concept of the triangle is due to other perfect concepts attempting to assert themselves simultaneously and in the same location. The object that we then perceive is the interference pattern between the various present forms. We would still perceive 'imperfectly' but we would have some kind of direct awareness of the forms, which could be built upon and theoretically developed within living perception.

It also falls prey to another fallacy, which is the assertion that knowledge of the underlying source of a phenomenon gives knowledge about the phenomenon in and of itself.
Plato asserts that the forms are these perfect universal underlying ways in which a thing should appear. Why is it the case that a triangle which is geometrically perfect is anymore special than a triangle that is not? There is only one reason, because we have arbitrarily decided that in order to understand those triangles that we do see, we model them as the 'perfect' triangle we know and love today. We could easily have picked an 'imperfect' triangle as our model for understanding triangles, but this would have made geometry much more difficult. When using simple equations to work out how to act towards the world, we inevitably simplify some of the details which are negligable causal factors, such as the near imperceptible bumpiness of triangles that stops them from being perfect. So, we choose to model the triangles we see as being 'perfect'. In truth there is no feature of 'perfect' triangles that makes them any more real or any more consequential than 'imperfect' ones, our current understanding has to be that each thing that exists is the perfect form of itself and only itself.

[ComradeChris]

Originally posted by [email protected] 9 2005, 11:35 PM
He argued that there were perfect 'forms' which are the underlying reality from which we derive the reality we perceive.
In the triangle example, the reason why we can never understand the triangle is because the only triangles we perceive are flawed, so we have no direct perception (and therefore no understanding of the nature of) of that truly triangular thing.
Thank you, you seem to be better at describing that than I am.

I only pose this question because of a very good argument one of the memeber of my Philosophy club made.

Using the example of a glass, do we know what the glass consists of? I mean you can say glass, then atoms, then quarks and quirks, and then (although a little less shaky) energy or radiation...but what about after radiation? What does radiation consist of? And if we know that, what does that which makes up energy/radiation consist of? And maybe in that reasoning we can realize where something is flawed, but it is beyond our comprehension to this time anyway.

[CommieBastard]

Assuming we have any reason to believe in a physical reality, as such.

The extent to which we know of glasses is the extent to which we know of our experiences of glasses.
An experience can never be disproved, though what we might claim it relates to can be.
The fact is, we are only capable of understanding what experience relates to in terms of itself.
Thus, reality is composed of our personal experiences only, and our knowledge consists of (some) statements about these experiences.