Plato Theories Pdf

[Gaynelle Alnutt]

Wellhere we are, the much anticipated workshop on the current status of fundamental physical theory, organized by philosopher Richard Dawid at the Center for Mathematical Philosophy based at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany.

This is somewhat of a big deal: some high caliber physicists and philosophers are here, and I got calls from journalists interested in covering the workshop, including from Nature and Scientific American. The basic idea is to look not just at the science, but at the philosophy underlying discussions on the usefulness (or lack thereof) of string theory, multiverse theory, and similar speculative ideas that have been debated within the physics community over the last several years.

According to Gross, since physical phenomena scale as the log(energy), physicists can extrapolate theory to very high energy. Unfortunately, experiments scale only as energy^2, which means that they cannot easily be extrapolated to very high energy. This is just a fact of nature. [And, perhaps, a fundamental limitation on human epistemic access to nature?]

[Rovelli has a good general point, though I must also signal that modern philosophers of science do not make a sharp distinction between the two contexts, as discovery and validation are continuously interacting processes.]

Philosophical considerations cannot settle things in terms of string theory as a scientific theory, but part of the discussion has to do with the way science works, which is very much a philosophical issue.

The canonical view of science is that scientific theories must make testable predictions, which can be the only ones capable of confirming (or not) the theory. Without empirical confirmation, the theory remains speculative.

Dawid concluded by admitting that non empirical confirmation is certainly more cumbersome and less conclusive than empirical confirmation, but nonetheless plays a crucial role in current advancements in fundamental physics. He also suggested that this framework has been deployed before, for instance in the high level of confidence that physicists had concerning the existence of the Higgs boson, far in advance of its discovery [though my understanding is that there was strong, empirical, indirect evidence for the Higgs way before its existence was confirmed directly].

Dardashti focused on the limits to scientific theorizing that results from underdetermination. If we want to go non-empirical, then physics should change, with much more emphasis in justifying assumptions and working out the math.

Aristotle, Bacon, Newton, Mill et al. supported the idea that science works from induction, with theories generated from observations. Then the early 20th century revolution in physics came, and the focus changed from inferring theories from data to the consideration of the consequences of theories, using such consequences to assess the theories themselves. In a sense, theory became prior. And now, at the beginning of the 21st century the domain of theory actually falls beyond the range of empirical data.

According to Kragh one should not cultivate history of science for the sake of science, but the former can occasionally be useful to the latter. [I have made precisely the same point about philosophy of science, and I think, again, that this can be said also for sociology of science.] Kragh also made some remarks on how much Popper is mischaracterized and oversimplified by scientists, very similar to the ones I had previously made in my own presentation.

Achinstein, for all his support for pragmatic speculation, is worried by the idea of non empirical confirmation. Scientists should use non empirical considerations in order to argue for working on a theory, but definitely not as a substitute for empirical support of it.

Is there anyone else out there, who is knowledgable about both the premise of block time, as an aspect of the fabric of spacetime and the conservation of energy and willing to give a response as to how they might conflict, or not, as it appears Coel is apparently ignorant of one or the other and unable to give any response?

Plato regarded the rational soul as immortal, and he believed in a world soul and a Demiurge, the creator of the physical world. He argued for the independent reality of Ideas, or Forms, as the immutable archetypes of all temporal phenomena and as the only guarantee of ethical standards and of objective scientific knowledge. Virtue consists in the harmony of the human soul with the universe of Ideas, which assure order, intelligence, and pattern to a world in constant flux. Supreme among them is the Idea of the Good, analogous to the sun in the physical world. Only the philosopher, who understands the harmony of all parts of the universe with the Idea of the Good, is capable of ruling the just state. In Plato's various dialogues he touched upon virtually every problem that has occupied subsequent philosophers; his teachings have been among the most influential in the history of Western civilization, and hisworks are counted among the world's finest literature.

Plato's thought is divided into three periods. Thefirst has to do with moral issues and the pursuit of excellence and whatvirtue means. The second period is concerned with the Theory of Forms, Knowledge,and the human soul and it's destiny. The third period is concerned primarilywith the philosophical method.

The second period is probably his most influential period. His doctrineof the soul became dogma in the Middle Ages, and his theory that the worldis derived from permanent, unchanging forms (or, ideas) is the forerunnerof modern Idealism. He had a very strong influence on the early Middle Ages.

At the heart of Plato's philosophy is his theory of Forms, or Ideas. Ultimately, his view of knowledge, his ethical theory, his psychology, his concept of the state, and his perspective on art must be understood in terms of this theory.

Plato's theory of Forms and his theory of knowledge are so interrelated that they must be discussed together. Influenced by Socrates, Plato was convinced that knowledge is attainable. He was also convinced of two essential characteristics of knowledge. First, knowledge must be certain and infallible. Second, knowledge must have as its object that which is genuinely real as contrasted with that which is an appearance only. Because that which is fully real must, for Plato, be fixed, permanent, and unchanging, he identified the real with the ideal realm of being as opposed to the physical world of becoming. One consequence of this view was Plato's rejection of empiricism, the claim that knowledge is derived from sense experience. He thought that propositions derived from sense experience have, at most, a degree of probability. They are not certain. Furthermore, the objects of sense experience are changeable phenomena of the physical world. Hence, objects of sense experience are not proper objects of knowledge.

Plato's own theory of knowledge is found in the Republic, particularly in his discussion of the image of the divided line and the myth of the cave. In the former, Plato distinguishes between two levels of awareness: opinion and knowledge. Claims or assertions about the physical or visible world, including both commonsense observations and the propositions of science, are opinions only. Some of these opinions are well founded; some are not; but none of them counts as genuine knowledge. The higher level of awareness is knowledge, because there reason, rather than sense experience, is involved. Reason, properly used, results in intellectual insights that are certain, and the objects of these rational insights are the abiding universals, the eternal Forms or substances that constitute the real world.

The myth of the cave describes individuals chained deep within the recesses of a cave. Bound so that vision is restricted, they cannot see one another. The only thing visible is the wall of the cave upon which appear shadows cast by models or statues of animals and objects that are passed before a brightly burning fire. Breaking free, one of the individuals escapes from the cave into the light of day. With the aid of the sun, that person sees for the first time the real world and returns to the cave with the message that the only things they have seen heretofore are shadows and appearances and that the real world awaits them if they are willing to struggle free of their bonds. The shadowy environment of the cave symbolizes for Plato the physical world of appearances. Escape into the sun-filled setting outside the cave symbolizes the transition to the real world, the world of full and perfect being, the world of Forms, which is the proper object of knowledge.

The theory of Forms may best be understood in terms of mathematical entities. A circle, for instance, is defined as a plane figure composed of a series of points, all of which are equidistant from a given point. No one has ever actually seen such a figure, however.

What people have actually seen are drawn figures that are more or less close approximations of the ideal circle. In fact, when mathematicians define a circle, the points referred to are not spatial points at all; they are logical points. They do not occupy space. Nevertheless, although the Form of a circle has never been seenindeed, could never be seenmathematicians and others do in fact know what a circle is. That they can define a circle is evidence that they know what it is. For Plato, therefore, the Form circularity exists, but not in the physical world of space and time. It exists as a changeless object in the world of Forms or Ideas, which can be known only by reason. Forms have greater reality than objects in the physical world both because of their perfection and stability and because they are models, resemblance to which gives ordinary physical objects whatever reality they have. Circularity, squareness, and triangularity are excellent examples, then, of what Plato meant by Forms. An object existing in the physical world may be called a circle or a square or a triangle only to the extent that it resembles (participates in is Plato's phrase) the Form circularity or squareness or triangularity.

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