Knowledge and Perception in Plato

Knowledge and Perception in Plato The majority of modern men assume that empirical knowledge is based on or comes from perception. However, there is a quite distinct belief held by philosophers such as Plato and those of certain other schools, to the effect that the only genuine knowledge is conceptual in nature and that nothing deserving of the title "knowledge" can be obtained via the senses. According to this perspective, "2 + 2 = 4" is a true statement of knowledge, but "snow is white" is a statement that is so ambiguous and unclear that it cannot be included in the philosopher's corpus of truths. Perhaps Parmenides is the source of this viewpoint, but Plato is the one who gave it full expression in the intellectual community. In this chapter, I plan to limit my discussion to Plato's critique of the Theaetetus's (the first half of which) argument that knowing and perception are the same. The goal of this conversation is to define "knowledge," but it concludes with no other conclusion than a negative one. Several definitions are put out and then rejected, but no acceptable definition is offered. The first definition that has been proposed, and the only one that I will discuss, is given by Theaetetus in these words: "It seems to me that one who knows something is perceiving the thing that he knows, and, so far as I can see at present, knowledge is nothing but perception." Socrates connects this idea with Protagoras's theory that "man is the measure of all things," meaning that any given thing "is to me such as it appears to me, and is to you such as it appears to you.” Socrates continues, saying, "Perception, then, is always something that is, and, as being knowledge, it is infallible.” A significant portion of the argument that follows is concerned with characterizing perception; once this is done, it is not difficult to demonstrate that such a thing as perception has turned out to be Plato feels that this is true of objects of sensation, but not of objects of genuine knowledge. Socrates adds the idea of Heraclitus, that everything is continuously changing, i.e., that "all the things we are pleased to say 'are' really are in process of becoming," to the doctrine of Protagoras. His uplifting beliefs, however, are subdued throughout the conversation. It follows that knowledge is of what becomes, not of what is, from Heraclitus's theory, even if it is only relevant to objects of sense, and the definition of knowledge as perception. As of right now, there are a few extremely simple problems. It is contradicted to say that 6 is both huge and tiny as it is smaller than 12 yet greater than 4. Once more, after a few years, Socrates will be shorter than Theaetetus, who is still a youngster and not quite grown. At the moment, Socrates is taller than Theaetetus. Socrates is therefore both lofty and short. Like most of the major philosophers up until Hegel (included), Plato seems to have been perplexed by the concept of a relational proposition. Nevertheless, these riddles may be disregarded because they don't really relate to the argument. Going back to perception, it is said to result from an interaction between the sense organ and the object, both of which, in accordance with Heraclitus's philosophy, are continually changing and altering in turn, changes the perception. In good health, Socrates finds wine to be sweet; in bad health, he finds it to be sour. In this case, the change in perception is brought about by a change in the perceiver. A few challenges are made to the Protagoras doctrine, and a few of these are later withdrew. Protagoras is pushed to have acknowledged that as pigs and baboons are likewise percipients, they are measures of everything. The veracity of perception in dreams and in psychosis is questioned. If Protagoras is correct, it is implied that no one is more knowledgeable than another: he is not only as smart as the gods, but, more importantly, he is no smarter than an idiot. Moreover, if the opinions of one man are equally valid as those of another, then those who conclude that Protagoras is erroneous should be treated with the same respect that he has. Placing himself in Protagoras' shoes for the duration, Socrates sets out to address several of these issues. Dreams are real in the sense that they are perceptions. Regarding the pig and baboon dispute, this is written off as obscene harassment. Regarding the argument that one man is equally smart as another if each man is the measure of all things, Socrates offers Protagoras a very intriguing response: although a judgment cannot be truer than another, it can be better in the sense that it has better outcomes. This implies realism. * Despite being Socrates' invention, he is not satisfied with this response. For example, he claims that a doctor who predicts how my sickness would progress actually knows more about my future than I do. Furthermore, when persons disagree about what the State should declare, it is evident that some men have better knowledge of the future than others. As a result, we are forced to conclude that a smart man is a more accurate gauge of things than a fool. All of them refute the idea that every human being is the measure of everything, and they only subtly challenge the idea that "knowledge" is synonymous with "perception," to the extent that one theory influences the other. There is a straightforward counterargument, though, which is that perception and memory must coexist. This is acknowledged, and the suggested definition is updated accordingly. Next, we address critiques of Heraclitus's theory. First, this is taken to an extreme, according to what we are informed, in line with what his followers did among the intelligent young people of Ephesus. According to the theory of flux, everything is always changing in both directions. A thing might change by mobility or by altering in quality. We was said that intelligent people thought at Ephesus because everything is always changing, not just in terms of quality but also in all other aspects. There are embarrassing repercussions to this. We cannot state, "This is white," since by the time we finish our statement, if it was white before we started speaking, it will no longer be white. Since seeing is always changing into not-seeing, we cannot be correct when we claim to be seeing anything. * Seeing cannot be termed seeing instead of not-seeing, and perception cannot be labeled perception instead of not-perception if everything is changing in every manner. What the above argument amounts to is that, whatever else may be in perpetual flux, the meanings of words must be fixed, at least temporarily, since otherwise no assertion is definite and no assertion is true rather than false. And when we say “perception is knowledge,” we might as well say “perception is not-knowledge." For debate and knowledge to be feasible, there has to be a relatively consistent element. I believe this has to be acknowledged. However, this admission is compatible with a significant lot of flux. Currently, Parmenides is not being discussed since he is considered too magnificent and grand. In these statements, Plato expresses his desire for a static cosmos and his distaste for the Heraclitean flux, which he has been tolerating for the sake of argument. He is a "reverend and awful figure," "there was a sort of depth in him that was altogether noble," and he is "one being whom I respect above all." However, he does not go on to formulate the Parmenidean counterargument to Heraclitus following this show of devotion. This brings us to Plato's last refutation of the idea that perception and knowledge are the same thing. He starts out by making the observation that we see via our eyes and hearing rather than with them, and he continues by making the observation that some information is not associated with any sense organ. For example, even if no sense organ can see both, we can know that sounds and colors are different from one another. The same is true for honorable and dishonorable, excellent and evil; there is no separate organ for "existence and non-existence, likeness and unlikeness, sameness and differences, and also unity and numbers in general." We experience hard and soft by touch, but it is the mind that determines that they exist and that they are opposites. "The mind contemplates certain things through its own instrumentality, others through the bodily faculties." The intellect alone is capable of reaching existence, and without reaching existence, we are unable to attain truth. Since we cannot know that anything exists via the senses alone, it follows that we cannot know anything through the senses alone. Because perception "has no part in apprehending truth, since it has none in apprehending existence," it is therefore not knowledge. It is not at all easy to separate what can be accepted from what must be rejected in this argument against the identification of knowledge with perception. Plato addresses three interrelated theses: (1) Perception is knowledge; (2) Man is the measure of all things; and (3) Everything is in flux. (1) The first of them, which is the only one about which the argument is mostly focused, is rarely addressed on its own, with the exception of the last section that we have just been discussing. It is claimed here that although comparison, existence knowledge, and number comprehension are fundamental to knowledge, they cannot be categorized as perception since they do not involve the use of any sense organ. There are different things to say about them. First, let's talk about resemblance and unlikeness. For my part, I should accept that the two shades of color that I am seeing are, in fact, similar or dissimilar, depending on the circumstances, not as a "percept," but rather as a "judgement of perception." A percept, I should say, is not knowledge, but rather something that happens, and that belongs equally to the fields of psychology and physics. Like Plato, we naturally see perception as a relationship between an observer and an object: in this case, "I" and "table" are logical creations. Instead, we say, "I see a table." Crude occurrence is essentially just few colored patches. These evoke tactile imagery, can elicit verbal responses, and have the potential to evoke memories. When touch-related visuals are added to the perception, it becomes a "object," which is assumed to be physical; when words and memories are added to the perception, it becomes a "perception," which is a component of a "subject" and is thought to be mental. The percept itself is an event, neither true nor false; the percept as expressed in words, however, is a judgment that can be true or untrue. The phrase "knowledge is perception" must be read as meaning "knowledge is judgments of perception." This is the only way that the proposition can be grammatically sound. I refer to this judgment as a "judgement of perception." Going back to similarity and unlikeness, it is feasible for the likeness or unlikeness of two colors that I observe at the same time to be claimed in a perceptual judgment and to be a part of the datum. Plato's claim that humans lack a sense organ for discerning similarity and unlikeness overlooks the cortex and makes the erroneous assumption that all sense organs must be located on the body's surface. The following is the case for considering similarity and unlikeness as potential perceptual data. Assume, as Plato does, that we perceive two shades of color, A and B, and that we determine that "A is like B." Assume further that this conclusion is accurate generally and in this particular instance. Therefore, A and B have a similarity relationship rather than just our opinion that they do. If our judgment were the only one in place, it would be arbitrary and unable to distinguish between truth and falsity. Likeness cannot be merely something "mental" between A and B because it is obviously capable of truth or falsity. The judgment "A is like B" is true (if it is true) in virtue of a "fact," just as much as the judgments "A is red" or "A is round." The mind plays no more role in the perception of likeness than it does in the perception of color. I now turn to existence, a topic that Plato emphasizes greatly. He claims that in terms of sound and color, we have a concept that encompasses both simultaneously—that is, the idea that they exist. Since existence is a part of everything and one of the things the mind can comprehend on its own, truth cannot be reached without first understanding existence. This is not the same argument against Plato as it is in the case of similarity and unlikeness. Here, the claim is made that what Plato says about existence is improper syntax, or more accurately, faulty grammar. This point is significant in relation to Plato as well as other topics, such the ontological case for the presence of the Deity. Let's say you tell a child that "lions exist, but unicorns don't." You can demonstrate your point about lions by taking him to the zoo and telling him, "Look, that's a lion." Unless you are a philosopher, you will not add, "And you can see that that exists." If you do add this, you are uttering nonsense. Saying that "lions exist" indicates that "there are lions," or that "'x is a lion' is true for a suitable x," but we are not able to claim that the appropriate x "exists"; rather, we can only use this verb to describe anything, whether it be fully or partially. "The largest lion in the Zoo" is a full description as it refers to just one item, but "Lion" is an inadequate description since it applies to several items. Let's say that I am observing a brilliant red area. I may say "this is my present perception" or "my present perception exists," but I can't say "this exists" since "exists" only really means something when it's used as a description rather than a name. * This eliminates existence as one of the concepts that the mind associates with physical objects. Now let me explain how I comprehend numbers. Here we have two quite distinct things to consider: arithmetic assertions on the one hand, and enumeration empirical propositions on the other. The former type of statement is "2 + 2 = 4," whereas the latter is "I have ten fingers." I should concur with Plato that pure mathematics in general and arithmetic in particular are not derived from perception. Tautologies, which are similar to the adage "men are men," but typically more complex, make up pure mathematics. We only need to understand the meanings of the symbols in order to determine whether a mathematical proposition is correct; when we do away with definitions— whose main function is abbreviation—we find that the symbols are words like "or," "not," "all," and "some," which, like "Socrates," do not actually denote anything in the real world. Two sets of symbols are said to have the same meaning in a mathematical equation; if we limit our analysis to mathematics alone, this meaning must be comprehensible without requiring any prior knowledge of what is perceptible. Thus, mathematical truth is, as Plato claims, independent of experience; nonetheless, it is a very specific kind of truth that is limited to symbols. Enumeration propositions, such "I have ten fingers," are in a separate category and are undoubtedly dependent on perception, at least in part. Though it's obvious that the notion of "finger" is abstract from observation, what about the concept of "ten"? It may appear that we have reached a Platonic or really universal concept at this point. We cannot claim that "ten" is abstract from perception since every perception that may be interpreted in one way as ten of any sort of object can also be interpreted in another way. Assuming that I assign the term "digitary" to every finger on a single hand, I can then state, "I have two digitaries," which expresses the identical perception fact that I previously explained with the aid of the number ten. As a result, perception is less important in the statement "I have ten fingers" while conception is more important in a statement like "this is red." Nevertheless, the difference is merely in degree. The complete response to propositions containing the word "ten" is that, upon accurate analysis, these propositions are found to contain no constituent corresponding to the word "ten." Since ten is such a large number, it would be difficult to explain, so let's substitute "I have two hands." This means that, regardless of x, "x is a hand of mine" is true when and only when x is either an or b. In this case, the word "two" does not occur. It is accurate to say that the letters a and b exist in pairs, but we don't require this information, any more than we do to know that they are black, white, or any other color. Therefore, numbers are formal in a very specific sense. The facts support different claims that different collections, each with two members, have a form rather than a component in common. This sets them apart from claims made regarding the moon, George Washington, or the Statue of Liberty. All the claims that might be made about the Statue of Liberty have one thing in common: they all pertain to a specific area of space-time. However, except from a similar structure, there is nothing shared by the statements "there are two so-and-so's." Compared to the relationship between the symbol "red" and the meaning of a statement in which it appears, the relationship between the symbol "two" and the meaning of a proposition in which it happens is significantly more intricate. In certain ways, we may argue that the sign "two" has no value because, in a true statement, it denotes the absence of any comparable element. We may go on and on about how numbers are timeless, unchangeable, and so on, but we also have to admit that they are logical fabrications. There's more to this. Plato states that "both together are two, and each of them is one" in reference to sound and color. Having just discussed the two, we now need to address the one. This error is quite similar to the one about existence. Only unit classes are subject to the predicate "one," not objects. We can state that "the earth has one satellite," but stating that "the moon is one" is a syntactical mistake because of the unclear meaning of such a claim. Because the moon is made up of many components, you may as well claim that it is "many." It is an astronomical truth to say that "the earth has one satellite." However, if you replace "a satellite of the earth" with "the moon" or any other proper name, the result is either meaningless or merely a tautology. This is because there is a c such that "x is a satellite of the earth" is true when, and only when, x is c. The above considerations have shown that, while there is a formal kind of knowledge, namely logic and mathematics, which is not derived from perception, Plato's arguments as regards all other knowledge are fallacious. "One," therefore, is a property of certain concepts, just as "ten" is a property of the concept "my finger." However, to argue "the earth has one satellite, namely the moon, therefore the moon is one" is as bad as to argue "the Apostles were twelve; Peter was an apostle; therefore Peter was twelve." This argument would be valid if we substituted "twelve" for "white." It is true that he has provided no reasonable basis for presuming his conclusion to be accurate, but this does not establish that his conclusion is incorrect. (2) I now take up Protagoras' viewpoint, according to which man is the measure of everything, or, in other words, according to one interpretation, that every man is the measure of everything. Selecting the appropriate level for the talk is crucial at this point. It goes without saying that we must first make the distinction between perceptions and inferences. Every man is naturally limited to his own perceptions; whatever he knows about other people's perceptions comes from drawing conclusions from what he has heard and read about them. Dreamers and madmen have perceptions that are just as valid as everyone else's; the only thing that can be said against them is that because of their peculiar circumstances, they are likely to lead to incorrect conclusions. However, what about inferences? Are they just as private and intimate? We have to accept that they are, in a way. I have to trust what I am told for some reason that makes sense to me. It is true that my reasoning may be based on someone else's claim, but it could be a very good reason if I were a judge hearing testimony, for example. And no matter how much of a protagorean I may be, it is acceptable to believe an accountant's assessment of a set of numbers over my own, since I have often discovered that even when I first disagree with an accountant, a little more consideration demonstrates that he was correct. I may concede that another guy is smarter than I am in this particular sense. When correctly understood, the Protagorean viewpoint does not include the belief that I am impervious to error, but rather that the proof of my faults must be shown to me. Just as someone else may be condemned, so too can my former self. However, all of this assumes that there is some objective criterion of accuracy that applies to inferences rather than perceptions. The intellectual anarchy which Plato infers from Protagoras does indeed follow, if whatever conclusion I chance to make is as good as any other. Therefore, it appears that Plato is correct on this crucial issue. However, the empiricist would contend that perceptions serve as a barometer for accurate inference from empirical data. (3) Plato parodies the theory of universal flux, and it is hard to believe that anybody ever accepted it in the extreme form he gives it. Assume, for instance, that our perception of color is always shifting. A term like "red" may refer to a wide range of colors, so if we say, "I see red," there's no reason this shouldn't hold true throughout the duration of the statement. Plato arrives at his conclusions by applying logical oppositions like seeing and not-perceiving, knowing and not-knowing, to processes of constant change. However, such oppositions are not appropriate for characterizing these kinds of processes. Let's say you are watching a guy go down a road in the fog, and you notice that he is getting dimmer and dimmer until you are certain you don't see him anymore, but there is a hazy interval in between. For our convenience, logical oppositions have been created, but Plato dismisses the idea that constant change necessitates a quantitative apparatus. Thus, most of what he says on this topic is irrelevant. However, it also has to be acknowledged that speech would not be possible without words having some sort of set meaning. Once more, though, it's simple to be overly precise. Words do have meanings that vary. Take the term "idea," for instance. We can only learn to assign this word a meaning similar to Plato's through a rigorous educational process. While it is required that word meaning changes occur more slowly than the changes they depict, it is not necessary for word meanings to remain unchanged. Maybe this doesn't apply to the abstract terms used in mathematics and logic, but as we've seen, these terms simply refer to the form of propositions, not their substance. Once more, logic and mathematics prove to be odd in this situation. Plato overassimilated other information into mathematics due to the influence of the Pythagoreans. Even if he and many of the best thinkers had made the same error, it was nonetheless an error.