 Okay, well let's talk about the four characteristics of form. This has to deal with, you know, what kind of thing form is and how we know it. So first of all, you know form through reason as opposed to perception. Now perception is what just the appearance is, right, which you get from your five senses. So the greens, the browns, the blues, the grays in the sky, the heat that I'm feeling, the sounds of the birds, these are all, you know, the sounds, you know, chirping, these are all what I have through perception. By reason, I know the meanings of these things, the definitions of them, and it played a sense what they are. So that might seem like a very obscure example. We'll think about it this way, right? So think about this thing here. That's a square, right, good. That's a square. By appearances, you see the colors. But you, yeah, this might be a little convoluted. You don't actually see square. Square is what you interpret. It's what you comprehend. By perception, and perception is just the colors. So another way of looking at this, so back here, right, you see greens and browns and all that. Blues, grays, some whites. You're not looking at trees. There's no tree in front of you. What is in front of you is a screen of some kind, either a computer, a laptop, or a tablet, or a phone, right? That's what's in front of you. Not a tree, not a trail, not the sky, not even me. I am not in front of you. A screen is. So you don't look at the thing. That's not what you get by appearances. What you get are the sensations, the colors, right? Okay. This is Plato's point, right? This is what you know by perception. You know what is caused by these things, not the things themselves. Okay. But getting back to our square here, right? So get back to this. By perception, you get the colors, right? By reason, you comprehend square, right? So think back to geometry, eighth grade geometry. What's the definition of square? Well, four-sided, right? So you know, this definition of square, what all and only squares have in common, right? So it's at least four- sided, right? If it's less than four sides, it's a triangle. If it's more than four sides, it's some other figure, not a square. Okay, so it's four sides. But not every four-sided figure is a square, right? So there are plenty of four-sided figures that are not squares. If they have unequal sides, it's not a square. You say, well, okay, equal sides. Well, if it's equal sides, right? It's still not a square. It's still not a square. It has to at least have equal sides and four sides, but still not a square. What do you need for square? Well, you need equal angles, right? Okay, that's fine. Keep in mind, not every equal angled four-sided figure is a square, right? So you need all and only squares. Now, when you put this together, a quadrilateral that has equal sides and equal angles, that's the meaning of square. Aqualangular, equilateral, quadrilateral. All right, great. Now, that doesn't look like any particular square. You can have lots of different squares with lots of different appearances, lots of different sizes, same shape, but lots of different sizes, lots of different colors, solid, outlined, lined, right? Implied, you know, not actually being there just dotted, I mean dots. You know, if it's not connected, if the dots aren't connected, it's not a line. If it's not a line, it's not a square. All right, so it's only implied. You know, these are all different sorts of appearances, but not the meaning of square. The meaning of square is equilateral, equalangular, quadrilateral, and that's what you interpret. That's what you comprehend. That's what you understand, not what you perceive. Okay, so that's the difference between knowledge by perception and knowledge by reason. The other kind of, you know, the other kind of knowledge that we're dealing with here is objective knowledge. I know the thing. I know squareness, the form of square. And one of the reasons why Plato is going to say this is, you know, it's not subjective knowledge. Subjective knowledge, well that's the appearances, right? Not just appearances, right? The contents of my own thoughts are subjective knowledge. Only I know what's happening in my head. Nobody else does. Only I know what I feel like out here. Nobody else knows what I feel like out here. There's all kinds of different people running around right now. So for instance, you know, there's some people that literally, I mean, we haven't seen them, but they're jogging around these trails. It's like, well, you feel a lot different than I do because I only feel like walking. Right there. These people are full on jogging over rocks and dirt uphill, downhill, everything else, right? I don't know what that feels like because I only feel like walking. And, you know, walking in the shade on top of that, right? So that's subjective knowledge. What, you know, what I know, what I feel, what I experience, objective knowledge is knowledge of the thing. Now, Plato says that this knowledge here, the four-sided, the equilateral, equi-angular quadrilateral, that's objective knowledge. That doesn't change or depend upon any particular person. That knowledge is real and exists and doesn't change depending upon who you are. Nobody gets to say, well, I feel like making squares five-sided today. Not a square. I feel like having a square with uneven angles or unequal angles. It's not a square. Nobody gets to change the two plus two equals four. Now Plato's going to play, you know, this is mathematics that's kind of easier to see. It's a nice little example of this, but Plato applies the same thing here to these objects out here, right? Nobody gets to change that these are trees. And if you say, you know, I kind of think that's a dog today, well, you're mistaken. That's not a dog. It's a tree. So it's objective knowledge. Knowledge that does not change, does not vary depending upon the person. Well, there is a whole lot to be seen by the light of the sun. Let's talk about the last two characteristics of form. You know, we already talked about subjective, the knowledge of particular things is subjective, and that it is known through appearances. Now I also want to make something clear. I want to make a further distinction, right? Objective knowledge is not intersubjective agreement. We can all look out here and say, yeah, that's green, right? I see green. And then we all agree that that's green. Okay. But that's merely intersubjective agreement. That's all of us, you know, in a sense, just kind of pointing to the same thing and agreeing to call it green. But it's not like we know what the other person is seeing. There's just some kind of cooperation almost. You know, all of us can point out here, say, yeah, that's a tree. And that's intersubjective agreement. But that's not objective knowledge. Groups of people can be mistaken just like an individual and groups of people change their minds just like individuals. But objectivity is the thing, knowledge of the thing, independent of what people believe. Your beliefs have to conform to objective knowledge, not the other way around. So objectivity, objective knowledge is knowledge of the thing. It's not just an intersubjective agreement. It's not just our subjective experience or what we believe. Okay. So this leads to two things that Plato says about form, about the existence of form and what it is. So first of all, you know, it's like you said, I said this a couple of times. So it's a universal. It's what all these things have in common. See, these are all trees, right? It's what trees have in common. It's not any particular tree. So weirdly enough, the form of tree doesn't look like tree or doesn't look like, so it doesn't look like any particular tree. And you maybe we could press this even further when we're talking about even color, right? So we all agree that this is green. But did you notice that there's a whole lot of different shades of green back there? You got some blue greens near the top of the mountain even further off. There's even more blue. Got some pretty dark greens over here, vivid greens, right? That's desaturated out of the background. This is very saturated up forward. You know, there's, if you look carefully up forward, you're gonna see greens with more yellows in them. In the back, it's not so much, nearly as much yellow. So we say that that's all green, but you got lots of different appearances back there. Weirdly enough, the form of green does not look like any particular shade of green. It's what greens have in common. So the form is the universal, not the particular, right? I can maybe know that particular okay, but that doesn't mean that I know all of them. That's not what it has in common with other things. What's in common is the universal. All right, now the last thing, the last characteristic of form that Plato's dealing with here, or he's going to talk about form, is that it's eternal. That's supposed to temporary, right? These trees will eventually die at some point, not anytime soon, so don't get sad. There was some point in time in which these trees did not exist. That happened a long time ago. These trees started to exist, relatively speaking. But there's going to be a point, there was a point in time in which they didn't exist. There will be a point in time in which they do not. But the form of tree stays the same. So forms are eternal according to Plato. And maybe it's just like a small part of argument of this, right? We talk about dinosaurs, right? Over the edge here, we've got dinosaur footprints. This is Government Canyon Park, by the way, in Texas. So if you want to see dinosaur footprints, an actual real dinosaur footprints, go to Government Canyon Park and hike the three some odd miles to get here. We have a meaning for dinosaur, right? We have an essence of form for dinosaur, but there are no more dinosaurs. Dinosaurs don't exist. Particularly ones don't exist. There are no corporeal dinosaurs, but the form of dinosaur, that's still around, right? That still exists. You think about squares, right? The form of square did not pop into existence with the first time somebody drew it. The meaning of square was discovered, not decided upon. So these are the last two characteristics of form. That they're universal, right? Not the particular. And that they're eternal, not temporary.