 So Plato's dragging his kicking and screaming out of the cave wanting us to know what is really real wanting us to be able to see the difference between appearance and reality. Now to describe this difference between appearance and reality well we have to start with appearance and then get to reality and this is the four kinds of belief and the first or four kinds of knowledge I should say and the first kind the book uses the term imaginings and this is the basically just the perceptual content so right now I'm hearing some bugs I see greens and browns around me I feel the heat and the light from the sun I feel the humidity of the air this is all the perceptual content if I were to say go over to this tree right here I feel the rough edge of the tree I even dare to try to choose some of this I'm sure it would taste like something but I'm not going to do that so this is the first step in in this knowledge now to be clear our knowledge is not just this step our knowledge is not just the perceptions right that would be to halt the process altogether to say that there's no difference between our perceptions and anything else and so there's no difference between perceptions and what we might call like real knowledge or knowledge of the real we just say well that that's just you know here's our perception here's the knowledge of the real right now to say that you know there's there's our perceptions and then there's more beyond that Plato's taking a big kind of step here now again the book uses the word imagining another word that might be useful especially in our context is imaging so think about what's happening right now I mean the video is interpreting information encoding it on a disc to be to be transferred to a player which produces something very much like the perceptual content that I'm having right now right well that uh that you know that that's an imaging process it's giving the perceptual content so that's the first step it's imaging well the next step according to the book is called belief or believing now you might wonder exactly what that believing is well you know take a look at your computer screen okay you're getting some perceptual information right now you're hearing a voice over the speaker now ask yourself are you thinking that that information is from your computer or is it from me um I mean in a roundabout way you might say it's from me but you know my I am not speaking in wherever you are viewing this video I am not in your study hall or in your living room or what have you speaking to you at the moment all right that is technically speaking it's the computer that's producing that sound right now not me where from where I am the uh I am producing a sound my vocal cords and the camera is recording it and so to speak so believing is is the idea that yes there's this perceptual uh information right there's sight sound taste touch and smell but uh that this perceptual information is coming from something so one way to look at it that you know all this you're perceiving right now is coming from me and the trees and the uh the the bugs making the sound right now my voice or another way to think about it is that the believing is from the computer itself right so those are two different kinds of beliefs with this with uh you know something like the same perceptual information right so with believing you're moving from the shades the shadows that are on the wall right the appearances to uh the cut the cutouts it's the actual physical objects that are around you so in believing I I see this I feel it all right but what's what the you know the step from you know the step from perceptual content to believing is there's something there that's involved uh that you know that's somehow involved or causal related to my perceptual content so with uh imagining and believing we're still dealing with the particular individual things I am perceiving and having beliefs about this thing right here now that's the interpretation outside that's the inspection that's with the particular thing the next step is the interpretation what we had talked about in class what we had practiced a little bit trying to find the definition or the essence of this thing and what do we call this we call this a tree right specifically this is a cedar tree I could tell by the strippy kind of bark and the needles a little bit by the structure of the trunk right this is different from I don't know if you can see this from right back over there we got some oak trees right different kind of perceptual content so when I am thinking I've gone from particular to the abstract it's kind of like this first step so I look at this and I say this is cedar this is cedar I define it um you know I abstract away from these particular things these particular cedar trees to the individual cedar trees to the form the definition the essence of cedar okay so you'll again you go through the process of inspection to look at individual cedars and see what they have in common same thing with the oak I go to the individual oak and I abstract away from the oak to find what they have in common uh so when I move from that seed from that tree right there that individual thing right there to cedar I'm moving from believing to thinking and that's where I've moved from that particular to the form now it takes a lot of work right it takes a lot of it takes a lot of inspection to have really good interpretation so now you know now we're moving into into interpretation and this step of thinking is with the form of this particular of this individual tree the next step is perfect intelligence now this is really involved so let's start kind of from the ground up right we start with imagining right the perceptual content we go to believing right so I'm going for the perceptual content the first step of more reality that's a concrete thing gone from the shadows to the cutouts right then I go from the cutouts to the solid objects right so I go from this particular tree this particular oak to the form oak and then now in the and now allegory the cave the next step was to go from the solid objects to the sun and here's how that works so I have this particular oak and I've seen other oaks and from that I get the form oak we've got that tree right there I'm actually not sure what that is but I can see it's a different kind of tree than oak right um I see the cedars behind it now here's an oak um I don't know what that is let's call it let's just call it pine for the sake of argument it's not a pine but let's not it's not a pine let's call it an elm for the sake of argument it's not an elm but let's just call it an elm tree and then back here we have cedar so oak uh pine I'm sorry elm and cedar right what all three of these have in common is tree these are all kinds of trees right so I'm abstracting even further away not only do I see what oak hasn't you know what particular oaks have in common with oaks but I see what oaks and elm and cedar all have in common such that they are all tree so these are this is a relationship between the forms where forms of a particular things are grouped together that's like the first step and then these forms are grouped together so we go from this oak to the form oak alongside elm and cedar to form tree so that's an overall form for these now there's more forms and there's more particular things in front of you in front of the camera right now right so there's sunglasses there's human being there's hat now each of these has a form the form of sunglasses even though this is like only one particular kind of sunglasses there are more than there are more than these so what is the definition of sunglass in general such that this is one of them and as you move up in this abstraction you see how all the forms are related together now here's the idea for plato the more you move up in abstraction the more real you know the more there's more reality that you know no perceptions are fleeting they come and go they are more fleeting than this particular oak tree i can stop looking at the oak but the oak is still there right there's that's probably going to come a time where i cease to exist but this oak continues to exist these particulars exist for a very long time all right so the oak outlasts my perceptions in the same way the form of oak outlasts you know is is an eternal thing it outlasts it's more real than this particular oak tree because this oak tree there's a point when this oak tree did not exist there will be a point when this oak tree does not exist but the form of oak will continue to exist so what plato wants us to see here is that the further up you move in abstraction the more reality you're grasping so we move up from oak and elm and cedar to tree and we move up from tree to plant we move up from plant to living things so on and so forth as we move on up in abstraction when you see how all of this is related to each other you understand reality you understand existence and that's what it means by perfect intelligence perfect intelligence in the sense that in the sense that is complete complete intelligence complete knowledge there's nothing for which you do not know i imagine this is really hard for you to swallow you're thinking oh well what are these forms supposed to be right they're more real than these things here so can i you know hold them can i interact with them and you say that they're permanent does that mean that they're really hard and dense like the perminian one i think you are kind of missing the point here now at this point we're wondering what the forms are well remember that little exercise we did in class you know when we looked at the squares right and we saw squares of different sizes different colors different locations and when we were thinking about what makes a square square it wasn't any one of those particular squares it's what they all had in common so there's this essence this definition of square and i asked you to imagine this essence of square right so the the essence of square is equilateral equi-angular quadrilateral and i asked you to imagine that and you imagined it or you tried but what you got was a particular square you didn't imagine equi-angular equilateral quadrilateral maybe right now you're trying to do it and you see the words but that's not the same thing that essence that form of square is what you comprehend it's not here right we move from inspection to interpretation well what you comprehend uh has no parts this tree has parts it has bark it has sap it has branches it has needles it has roots if you start taking away the parts you destroy the tree the form of tree has no parts to destroy it has uh it it does not decay it does not um it is not composed it is an existing thing independent of this tree just like the essence of square is an existing thing independent of any particular square you imagine or draw or see now since it has no parts it cannot be destroyed it cannot be created play does says these forms have always existed have always existed they are permanent they're eternal and they're not eternal because they're incredibly dense and nothing can affect them they're eternal because they're immaterial immaterial they are not made of matter think back the distinction that Pythagoras made between form and matter these things are not material they can't be composed they can't decompose so where are the forms where you're asking where the immaterial thing is that's a nonsense question immaterial things don't have a location so think about the number one the number one is a form it's immaterial I can't hold the number one in my hand I can hold individual things in my hand but not the number one I can hold up an individual finger but that's not the number one the number one doesn't come into existence or cease to exist with particular things it's eternal immaterial so this question of where are the forms nowhere they have no location they're a separately existing thing what are the forms the immaterial they are the essences they are the essences of these particular things around us they are permanent um they're you know they're related to each other and they're related to these things but they're uh but their existence does not depend upon these particulars these concrete individual things so now we might wonder well what's this relationship between the forms and these particular things I mean I I can't interact with the forms I can't hold them on my hand they can't be created or destroyed they're these permanently existing things which are you know they're not dependent upon these things around us so I mean why think that this is true well look back at what Plato has to say he says that um you know the the form of cedar and oak and elm that these outlast these particular trees well since they outlast them they're more real than the particular things they're more permanent than these particular things so here's here's the first step in the claim is that the forms are more real than these particular things now another question is um you know is there any relationship between the forms and these particulars between the universal and the particular and the idea is this like well if the form has been around you know since longer it doesn't really make sense to say it that way but you know since the forms are permanent and eternal and these things come and go you know the idea is um that somehow the forms are responsible for the existence of these particular things you know there's one or two ways you can go you cannot say look you know the forms are permanent these particular things are not the particular things come and go well the question is well where do the particular things come from you could say they're either spontaneous or that they come for something more real you can't I mean if you try to say they come for something less real that's like saying that the trees come from my pictures of the trees my imaginings of the trees now that that's not going to do it because there's lots of things I imagine that don't actually exist um so it's so you know the other option is to say that the particulars just spontaneously come into existence well it's not really going to work in a Greek mindset because that's creating more problems than uh than solving them and the Greeks are real interested in trying to unite everything so instead of saying that they're spontaneous it's like well these particular things they must come from something else so they're not going to come for something less real they're going to come for something more real so these particular trees all come from somehow come from the form tree and there's lots of language that's used to describe this um the forms cause the trees don't think of it in your sense of cause right um we think very mechanical um you know very mechanical sense of causation where we're dealing with uh shall we say the transfer of energy from one uh from one piece of matter to another something like that that's not what they're talking about they're thinking more along the lines of terms of um explanation or um origin right so yeah the one way to describe it is that these particular things are caused by the forms another way to say is that these particular things participate in the forms so this raises a lot of questions for Plato this is kind of a difficulty but the point but the point to remember for Plato here is that these particular things all these particular things they in somehow at somehow depend on the forms for their existence they depend on the forms for their existence so we have this idea that these concrete these particular things depend on the forms for their existence and that is supposed to give something of an explanation of the relationship between particular things in the forms well what's the relationship between the forms well look at what's happening here we can start to see a pattern for Plato that each of these particular things right all the particular cedar depend upon the one form of cedar and all the elm depend upon the one form of elm and all the oak depend upon the one form of oak well keep going the form cedar and oak and elm they depend upon the one form of tree so we keep having this dependence under a hierarchy and tree falls somewhere along you know there's probably a few steps in between but tree is going to be under plant keep going you'll plant under living thing so this dependence of the particular on the form continues from the more specific form to the more general form the specific forms are cedar elm and oak the more general form is tree next you know we have tree and say bush and ivy and they fall into the more general form of plant and it keeps going and going now where does that lead that is a really interesting question so without a doubt these forms are seeming very spooky to you you're wondering how we come to know these things to begin with well that's a really interesting question if you think about what's going on here as Plato describes it and you know this part's pretty accurate where we start with the perceptual content the imaginings and we go from there to belief now you may not think that that's such a huge step but you know if our brain was not wired the way it was we wouldn't naturally make that step there are people who can't make the step from perceptual information to belief that there's objects out there and you might say that you know you push it even further you know you might say okay well maybe you could talk about this form thing but i'm not really buying it it's like well Plato would say you're you're already used in the language anyway when you walk out here you do not say hey look at that and that and that and that and that and that and that no you look out and you say look at the trees you're dealing with a form you're dealing with an abstract an essence a definition a meaning so you already Plato's gonna say you're already committed to this idea how do you know about these well it's it's difficult because we are going from perceptual to believing and then from believing to form and then form to you know sorry believing to to thinking and then thinking to perfect intelligence many of the ways that we think already do this all right we're already committed to this kind of idea we're trying to unify everything under one and you know not just material objects but uh uh concept and concepts as well so uh how does this come about because frankly the minute you move from perceptual content you are no longer dealing with perceptual content the minute you move from perceptual content to say yeah that thing right there you have left perceptual content you're doing something else and even more so when you move from that thing right there which is uh believing to thinking you again have left perceptual content think about what you're doing with the squares when you have finished looking at the individual squares and you so and you define them all under the term square the essence square you're not dealing perceptual content the essence or the form of square does not look like any particular square so the minute we leave perceptual content all right the question is well how do we know about this that's a great question um Plato had three things he suggested three things one you know first and foremost is recollection not creating these forms we don't create the forms with our minds right we remember the forms with our minds and the uh the idea there is that at one point our souls were disembodied and they were with the forms you probably don't like that explanation but we'll you know we'll discuss a little bit in class the other way to know the form is through dialectic but again I think Plato's going to push on this and say yeah you know through through dialectic we're comparing notes with one another but we're still ultimately going to rely upon recollection because we're going to have to rely on you know our knowledge of the forms to be identified that these individual things are trees to begin with which is an essential part of dialectic well last way we come to know about these things is probably the most interesting it's through desire through love you might wonder how is this supposed to work well you know think about when you're falling in love with a person anyway that's a way to start we're falling along with a person um what you get is the perceptual content first you know we don't have access to each other's minds right we hear voices we uh see facial expressions we uh you know we we spend time when we have experiences with the person that's inspection the interpretation is when we start to try to um understand what the intentions are what the desires are that we don't see intentions here you infer the intentions and the reason why I do that is is out of love because you want not necessarily romantic love but you know love and care for the person that you know you're going from the particular things to you know the not particular things I mean to to really what is the content or the meaning or the essence of this person well the same thing happens with with us when we're just looking around I mean look what happens with humanity inevitably once humanity starts encountering the world after you know try to solve such problems as how to live until tomorrow start to start to wonder what's all this around us what is this reality and it's that desire to know it's that desire to know what reality is that's what impels us to understand the form to understand these universes right so we do start with trees right we do start with you know it's individual you know it's do start with cedars and elms and and uh and uh uh oaks and we move from there to trees to know more to get the plants to get to living so it's this desire to know and probably most importantly when you step out here you see beauty and beauty is something we want something we crave if we don't experience beauty in our lives we were really miserable so from the from this beauty right we have this desire to know from the beauty of the trees we want to know the trees from the beauty of all this around us we want to understand all this around us so that's those are the three main ways that we come to know us through recollection through dialectic and through desire