preview

True Knowledge

Decent Essays

Anthony Perez
Dr. Andrew Jones-Cathcart
Philosophy 101
February 14, 2017
Paper 1: Sense Perception, Knowledge, the Cave, and the Divided Line What is true knowledge? Is seeing really believing? Plato gives a great argument as to why our sense-perception of objects is not true knowledge of what we actually see. Also, the Allegory of the Cave comes hand in hand with the Divided Line and breaks down what true knowledge is in which Plato explains that true knowledge is; one, unchangeable and immutable and two, that true knowledge must be about what is real. Firstly, Plato uses the Allegory of the Cave as a sort of story like metaphor to compare what true knowledge is and what it takes to truly know something. The cave is described as an actual …show more content…

Only in the intelligible world or the last two stages in the divided line, ideas and forms exist. Plato describes ideas (or forms) as a concept that allows us to criticize other objects as well as allows us to know the objects of math, science, and the actual world. Ideas must be unchangeable, immutable and also they must be about was is real. It is easy to agree with Plato here on what an idea as well as true knowledge actually is. In order for something to be true, it cannot be interpreted and must be universal. For example, in geometry definitions are very precise like that of a square (which would be an idea or form in the intelligible world) which is; an object is called a square if and only if it is a rectangle with congruent adjacent sides. The object will only be a square if all the terms in the definition are met (the object is a rectangle and has adjacent sides that are also congruent). So, this idea would exist in the understanding level in the divided line due to the fact that the definition is universal and is true anywhere however it may not be in the highest form of true knowledge because it is based on real world images and proofs. The highest stage would be the dialectic stage. In this stage true principles of math

Get Access