The 'perfect'/'ideal' form of everything exists in the Wrold of the Forms.
Things in the real/visible world are imperfect Forms of those in the World of the Forms.
For Plato, our souls naturally exist in the World of the Forms and belong their.
We forgot the realm of the Forms, which was true, good and permanent.
But we remember glimpses of it, for example; we don't remember learning what a table is but we do know what it is.
Priori knowledge.
Learning is just a recollection of what we learnt in the realm of the Forms.
2 realms: the realm of the Forms, in habited by spiritual souls and the true beings in themselves, the realm of Apearences, this world in which things look more or less like their originals in the world of the Forms.
The highest form is the form of the good and it is the equivelent of the sun.
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The Cave analogy
The Cave - The visible world, where the shadows seem more real then truth itself.
Prisoners - People who havent discovered knowledge.
Shadow Play - The illustrates created by our senses.
Sun - The most perfect of all realities.
Return of the prisoner - Illustrates what happens when the philosophers enlighten others
Journey out of the cave - The philosophers discovery of true knowledge.
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Aristotle's Objections
Plato assumes for something to be pure it needs to be eternal. But we see white as pure and this isnt eternal. Something doesn't become whiter by being enternal.
If the Forms were so essential to true understanding then why don't we study them?
The Forms have no practical value
Practical knowledge is gained through practice and observation.
Somethings have no Form, numbers have no Form.
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Other Objections
He provides no justification for the World of the Forms.
Empiricists object to a priori knowledge because we gain knowledge by sense experience.
No empirical evidence for the Forms.
Karl Popper argues that Plato is determined to find certainty in a world on continual change.
Various philosophers argue have drawn attnetion to Plato's assumption that we have a name ('beauty') there must be something correpsonding to that term in reality.
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