MORE PEIRCE & PLATO’s CAVE
Philosophy 020E/1
Thursday, September 23, 1999
Another extension
First report now due a week from today
September 30
Citing lectures & tutorials
Freed, September 23, 1999
Shani, September 24, 199
Four methods for conducting inquiry
Tenacity
Authority
A priori
Science
Tenacity
Arriving at settled opinion
Sole end of inquiry
Why not stick with what we have?
Treat threats with contempt & hatred
Adopt ostrich position
Authority
Social impulse
Let will of community decide
People who reject established beliefs are
Terrified into silence
Method involves cruelties & atrocities
No better method for mass of mankind
Problems with authority
Wider social impulse works against it
People in other cultures have different beliefs
Beliefs must withstand public scrutiny
A priori method
This is Plato’s method
Accept as true what
is agreeable to reason
seems intuitively right
fits in well with what we think
Problems with a priori method
Makes conducting an inquiry
Like acquiring a taste
Taste a matter of fashion
Rests on no fact in the world & so not
Stable
Reliable
Science
Only one that doesn’t conflict with facts
For reliable beliefs we need method where
Beliefs caused by nothing human
Something our thinking does not affect
Truth is a public concept
Ultimate community opinion decides
Mystic’s "insights" not knowledge
Fundamental idea of method of science
There are real things whose character
Is independent of what we think about them
These real things affect our senses
According to regular laws
So we can learn by perception
How things really are
Everyone led to same conclusion
With enough experience & time to reason
Why method of science gives us knowledge about reality
Method in line with facts
We can’t doubt that there are realities
Doubt would not irritate if we didn’t think so
So social impulse will not work against it
We use scientific method whenever we can
Has had great success in settling opinions
Plato’s Cave Allegory
Like prisoners in a cave
Chained by legs & neck
Can only see what is in front of us
A world of shadows
We think our words refer to the shadows
Prisoner were set free would discover
Saw before was meaningless illusion
When he looked at the sun
He could see things’ true nature
Not their shadows & reflections
The prisoner’s return to the cave
He would be laughed at
They would kill him
For trying to set them free
What the allegory
means
The cave is the world of the senses
Ascent from the cave means
Acquiring more intelligence
The final vision of the sun is
Awareness of what is eternal & ideal
This is true education
The objects of true knowledge
Ideas
General & Ideal
Idea of Humanity vs.
Bob & Alice, Ted & Carol
Universal ideal of justice
Not opinion of time or place
More real because more permanent
The ideal of geometry
Over the doors of Plato’s Academy
Let no man ignorant of geometry enter here
Without Abstract Ideals & Laws
A mass of incoherent particulars
All life in the cave--our senses--can give us
Deceptive shadows