Реферат: Platos Theory Of Knowledge Essay Research Paper

shadow. If you know a shadow is something "real" then you are beyond

the state of imagination which implies that a person is "unaware of

observation and amounts to illusion and ignorance". Belief is the next

stage of developing knowledge. Plato goes with the idea that seeing really is

not always believing we have a strong conviction for what we see but not with

absolute certainty. This stage is more advanced than imagining because it’s

based more firmly on reality. But just because we can actually see the object

and not just it’s shadow doesn’t mean we know all there is to know about the

object. In the next stage, Thinking, we leave the "visible world" and

move into the "intelligible world" which, Plato claims, is seen mostly

in scientists. It stands for the power of the mind to take properties from a

visible object and applying them. Thinking is the "visible" object but

also the hypotheses, "A truth which is taken as self-evident but which

depends upon some higher truth". Plato wants us to see all things as they

really are so we can see that all is inter-connected. But thinking still doesn’t

give us all the information we crave and we still ask "why?" For Plato

the last stage of developing knowledge, Perfect Intelligence, represents

"the mind as it completely releases from sensible objects" and is

directly related to his doctrine of Forms. In this stage, hypotheses is no

longer present because of its limitations. Plato summarized the Divided Line

with "now you may take, a corresponding to the four sections, these four

states of mind, intelligence for the highest, thinking for the second, belief

for the third and for the last imagining. These you may arrange in terms as the

terms in a proportion, assigning to each a degree of clearness and certainty

corresponding to the measure in which their object pose a reality". When

discussing the Divided Line, The Forms are the highest levels of

"reality". Plato concludes here that the "real world" is not

what we see but what we understand or feel in a "intelligible world"

because it is made up of eternal Forms. The Forms take on the explanation of