Ancient Philosophical Influences

• The realm of the forms is where our souls lived in a state of contemplation before we were born.
• Forms are unchanging and perfect examples of things
• Plato's theory of Forms suggests that everything has its own form or essence
• The realm of the particulars is earth. Here lives modified versions of all perfect things found in the realm of the forms.
• Our bodies and senses live in the realm of the particulars, but our minds live in the realm of the forms
• The form of the good is the most important of all the forms. It is not something we’ve seen but something we can infer from our experience
• Philosophers are the only people who can recognise the form of the good so all countries should be lea led by philosopher kings
• The allegory of the cave is used to demonstrate how far removed from reality humanity is
• In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, humans are chained up facing a wall with shadows projected on it.
• Humans mistake these shadows as real life because they have never experienced anything else
• When one person escapes their chains and sees the true world outside, they realise what they were seeing was just an illusion
• They go to tell the others what they saw but the prisoners eyes cannot adjust back to the dark, and they don’t believe him
• Plato wants us to understand that once we begin to question the world around us and begin to wonder what is real and what is an illusion, it is a painful but worthwhile experience
• “To the the truth is nothing but the shadows of the images” - Plato
• Aristotle was an empiricist which meant he believed we can gain information through evidence and experience
• Potentiality: what the item could become
• Actuality: when it actually becomes what it potentially could be
• 1. Material cause: the matter the substance is made of
• 2. The efficient cause: cause of the object existing
• 3. The formal cause: what gives the matter is substance
• 4. The final cause: the reason something exists (the prime mover)
• The prime mover: something unmoved and unchanging, without being moved itself
• Strengths of Aristotles theory:

  • appeals to our experience of cause and effect
  • influenced early thinking about God
  • four causes have applications to daily life
  • overcomes problems of infinite regress
• Weaknesses of Aristotles theory:

  • what moved the prime mover?
  • transcendent and disinterested, doesn't interact with the world the way god would
  • the idea that the prime mover create things by thinking is vague
  • is the prime mover is disinterested why would it create the world
  • where did the matter in the world come from?
  • confides us to the scientifically demonstrable
  • why does there have to be a purpose, why can’t it just be? - bertrand russell