PLATO - Platonic Forms

from: http://www.niu.edu/~jdye/forms.html

Platonic Forms

"Sensible objects could not possibly be real; they could at best be “copies” or “images” (as Plato calls them) of underlying realities which can be thought about but which cannot be perceived. In short, what we usually call “the real world” is not that at all, but is rather just a world of appearance or seeming. Only the Forms really exist, for they are the “causes” (in the sense of archetypal standards) of whatever intelligible properties are discernible in those sensible things which seem to be most real. If we don’t know what beauty, or equality, or justice is ideally, how can we recognize particular instances of these? Interestingly, this means that the examples we began by considering–statements such as “This woman is beautiful”–cannot ever be cases of knowledge, because the subject expression designates a sensible, rather than an intelligible, object. We could never be certain of more than that “This woman seems beautiful,” because this opinion relies on ever changing and always incomplete observational evidence. The only statements which could express genuine knowledge would be those whose subject terms, as well as their predicate terms, designated Forms. In logical jargon, knowledge can be expressed only in universal propositions, not in singular propositions (propositions whose subject refers to some particular thing rather than to a Form). Scientific statements, as well as the definitions of virtues sought by Socrates in Plato’s dialogues, are not about particular facts or objects but about universals."

Copyright © 1995, 2003 James Dye
Updated: 02/08/2007 10:40:31