Plato’s theory of forms is unconvincing discuss Plato was a duellist and thus believed that there are two worlds; the material world and the world of ideas/Forms. The world of ideas or Forms is the true reality and the world of appearances is just reflections of world of Forms. Plato believed that our knowledge of the Forms was a priori which means that our souls knew the Forms before it was inside us, therefore we have knowledge prior to experiencing the objects with our senses. Plato believes everyone is born with an intuitive but imperfect understanding of the Forms. He also believes the philosopher is able, through using his intellect, to achieve true knowledge of the abstract Forms without using his senses.
However this version of the verification principle has been criticized as being too strict as statements such as History, can not be seen as meaningful as they cannot be empirically verified by the senses, and it neither a tautology of all the events that have taken part in the past. The second part to the verification principle was made and developed by A.J Ayer. Ayer believed that with using the weak verification to prove statements you would be able to verify them in principle unlike the strong verification principle, which can only be proved meaningful if it is observed, or
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that focuses on questions about being. It’s the study of the nature of existence. 3. What are some questions that philosophers ask about knowledge? Philosophers ask questions about knowledge like, what is knowledge, how do we acquire knowledge, what do we really know, these questions fall into the category of epistemology.
He argued that they were part of the structure of the mind and that we would have no experience without them. He says that sight, smell, touch etc. are all meaningless to us unless they are brought under these innate concepts. Kant believes in a world beyond our conceptual scheme called the noumenal world which he says we can know nothing about and it is impossible to discuss. People have criticized this view by say that how can Kant know that the Noumenal world exists if there is no evidence of it.
For example, planets could not have put themselves into orbit, yet they are in perfect order and placement so therefore there must be a designer, an intelligent being, that did so. This argument suggests that everything has been designed to have a purpose, even if it is unaware of this itself. Aquinas believed that this designer is God. One of the earliest forms of the teleological argument was formed by Aristotle in the 4th century BC. Aquinas’ design argument was influenced by Aristotle’s ideas presented in his work Metaphysics.
The issues with this option mainly deal with the definition of a theistic God. If morality is independent of God and God’s commands only exist because the moralities of actions are predetermined, then God is no longer sovereign. If morals are independent of God’s commands then God is not sovereign over morality. This goes against the definition of a theistic God which defines God as the creator and ruler over everything. It also puts limits on God’s power.
A moral relativist would believe that there is no definite set of rules that apply universally. Instead they believe that all decisions should be made upon circumstances at the time and more importantly why the action was made. This is called cultural relativism. The theory of relativist morality was first established by Protagoras who asked questions such as, “what is good for you?” He did not believe that our knowledge was all fixed or that it extended depending on our experiences, as Plato did being a moral absolutist. He stated, “Man is the measure of all things”.
Hence, our conception of one substance would be understood via an external property in relation with the other substance. Since substances cannot be understood in terms of external properties in relation with each other then they cannot be said to account for one another either because they do not relate to each other. Hence, since they cannot account for another, then they cannot cause or produce one another. From this line of reasoning Spinoza provides the corollary that substance cannot be produced by anything outside of it because there only exist substance and their
Plato also suggested that the theoretical form was never ending, unlike the physical form which starts at our conception/birth and ends at the moment that we die. By this way of thinking Plato states that the human mind and thought process is immortal and unable to end. Since we really do have knowledge of these supra-sensible realities, knowledge that we cannot possibly have obtained through any bodily experience, Plato argued, it follows that this knowledge must be a form of recollection and that our souls must have been acquainted with the Forms prior to our births. But in that case, the existence of our mortal bodies cannot be essential to the existence of our souls—before birth or after death—and we are therefore immortal.
Descartes believed that in order to have this idea of a being that is truly infinite; something must have put that idea in our mind. He believes that it could not have been ourselves because we are not infinite beings; however we have this idea of what a perfect being is and therefore something outside of us must have put that idea there. In order to prove that a perfect being was the outside force that would have put that idea in our minds, Descartes follows his central argument. The main pillar of Descartes’ argument is the causal adequacy principle. This causal principle revolves on the idea of existential dependency.