Philosophical Arguments Of Plato And Aristotle

Philosophical Arguments Of Plato And AristotleThis paper tends to use known facts and dialogues as the starting point from which to draw inferences and solutions based on the philosophical dividing lines of Plato and Aristotle.THE caper OF CHANGEARISTOTLEThe basic nonions of Aristotles philosophy of nature push aside be understand from his analysis of change. When Aristotle undertook to excuse how it is that amours change, a fact appargonnt to each sensation, he had frontmost to confront the definemingly iron-clad logic of Parmenides. consort to Parmenides All change is guileless appearance authentic numberity is One, and this One, which only is, is unchanging. Parmenides had argued that there atomic number 18 only 2 alternatives for anything, beingnessness and non-being. No brand-new being keister mustinesser from non-being since vigour comes from nothing. Nor sight new being come from being since what has being, already is and does not begin to be being canno t come from being since it is already.The advance that Aristotle do over Parmenides consists in seeing that, although it is true that nothing can come from nothing, it is not entirely true that being cannot come from being. One must distinguish being-in-act from being-in- bureau. While it is true that from being-in-act, being-in-act cannot come since it would already be. The alternative from which being can come is not non-being, but being-in-potency. From being-in- potency there can come being-in-act.Potency, in this case, is defined as the capacity for growth and development. inadvertent CHANGEIn his analysis of change, Aristotle sight that every change implies duality. It implies a guinea pig in potency which, by the action of several(prenominal) agent, pases into act, i.e. receives about new perfection or actuality. Motion presupposes the acquisition of something and the corruption of something else. The subject of change is what corset the same through with(predicate) th e change. However, through the change, it acquires something new and loses what it previously had. Motion implies a passive principle and an active principle, intrinsic to the thing that changes. This he described as accidental change. therefrom, there ar triad principles necessary for change to conceive place. There must be something new that comes to be, something old that passes a vogue, and something that stays the same throughout. In the Aristotelian tradition, these principles receive the name trend, privation and matter.Form is what comes to bePrivation is what passes awayAnd matter is what stays the same throughout the change.In the case of a statue, the shape of the sculpture, Michelangelos David for instance, is the form that comes to be when a formless obturate of marble becomes a statue. The formlessness of the block is itself the privation of the statue shape, and the potency for the statue shape. The marble, first in block shape, later in David shape, is what stays the same throughout the change. The case of the approach to be of a statue is an instance of an accidental change what changes argon the accidents of the marble. What stays the same is the subject of the marble.SUBSTANCIAL CHANGEFor Aristotle, motion is the technical name for changes in accidents. There ar three kinds of motion for Aristotle a change in quality (which he c alls alteration), a change in quantity, size (called growth or diminution), and a change in place (called local motion). In all cases, motion, as such, is defined as the act of a being in potency up to now as it is in potency. Motion is the process that a capacity goes through in which it loses one accidental form or actuality and gains an some opposite.Aristotle discovered these principles of nature (matter, form and privation) by analyzing accidental changes. He found that they could too let despatch the more fundamental kinds of changes, changes that involve the passing away and coming to be of s ubstances.Example If one admits that sodium and centiliter are distinguishable substances (and they certainly appear distinguishable one is a white metal, the other a green gas), and that they are each different from salt (also on the face of it so), then one can see that the change from sodium and chlorine to Sodium chloride (salt) is a substantial change.PLATOPlato argued that both the material determinations discernd and the person perceiving them are constantly changing but, since knowledge must be touch only with unchangeable and universal objects, knowledge and perception are basically different.In his conjecture of forms Plato meant to solve the ethical and intellectual problems as good as that of change and permanence How can the population appear to be both enduring and changing? The world we perceive through the senses seems to be always changing. The world that we perceive through the mind, using our concepts, seems to be permanent and unchanging. Which is most real and why does it appear both ways? These are the arguments Plato sought to solve.The general structure of the solution Plato splits up subsistence into twain kingdoms the material realm and the transcendent realm of forms.Humans flip entree to the realm of forms through the mind, through reason, given Platos possible action of the subdivisions of the human soul. This gives them admittance to an unchanging world, invulnerable to the pains and changes of the material world. By detaching ourselves from the material world and our bodies and developing our ability to concern ourselves with the forms, we find a value which is not open to change or disintegration. This solves the first, ethical, problem.Splitting creative activity up into two realms also solves the problem of permanence and change. We perceive a different world, with different objects, through our mind than we do through the senses. It is the material world, perceived through the senses, that is changing. It is the realm of forms, perceived through the mind, that is permanent and immutable. It is this world that is more real the world of change is merely an imperfect image of this world.A form- This is an defraud property or quality. Take any property of an object pause it from that object and consider it by itself, and you are contemplating a form.Platos characterization of forms to explain permanence and changeThe forms are transcendent- This means that they do not exist in space and time. A material object, for instance a b guideetball, exists at a particular place at a particular time. A form, the roundness, does not exist at any place or time. thence a form such as roundness will never change it does not even exist in time. It is the same at all times or places in which it might be instantiated.The forms are also pure- This means that they are pure properties separated from all other properties. A material object, such as a basketball, has many properties roundness, ballness, orangeness, elasticity, and so forth These are all put together to make up this somebody basketball.But the form, Roundness, is just pure roundness, without any other properties mixed in.In merit of the fact that all objects in this world are copies of the forms, the forms are the bring ins of all that exists in this world. In general, whenever you want to explain why something is the way that it is, you point to some properties that the object has. That is, you explain what forms the object is a written matter of. The forms are causes in two closely cogitate waysThe forms are the causes of all our knowledge of all objects. The forms contribute all severalise and intelligibility to objects. Since we can only know something insofar as it has some order or form, the forms are the source of the intelligibility of all material objects.The forms are also the cause of the human race of all objects. Things are only said to exist insofar as they collect order or structure or form. H ence, the forms are the causes of the existence of all objects as well as of their intelligibility. Plato uses the sun simile to explain how the forms in general, and the form of the Good in particular, are causes in these two ways. fair as the sun gives light which allows us to see objects, the form of the Good provides order and intelligibility to allow us to know objects. Just as the sun provides the energy for the nourishment and growth of all alimentation things, so the form of the Good provides the order and structure which is the source of the existence of all things.REASON WHY WE THINK ARISTOTLES ARGUMENT IS MORE credibleIn place of Platos doctrine of Ideas with a separate and eternal existence of their own, Aristotle proposed a group of universals that represent the common properties of any group of real objects. The universals, unlike Platos Ideas, ache no existence outside of the objects they represent.Aristotle sought a general combined principal approach, unlike Pla to who insisted that the forms are the causes of the existence of all objects as well as of their intelligibility. Not implying that Plato was wrong but that Aristotles ascription of change to 3 principals seems to be logically containable i.e He did not separate Form from Privation nor from Matter. Form and matter, therefore, make up a substantial unity one cannot have form without matter, nor matter without some form. But, one can still distinguish these principles, and also understand that these principles are real features of the things that exhibit them.Aristotle thought that Platos theory of forms with its two separate realms failed to explain what it was meant to explain. That is, it failed to explain how there could be permanence and order in this world and how we could have objective knowledge of this world. By separating the realm of forms from the material realm, Plato do it im executable to explain how the realm of forms made objectivity and permanence possible in the material world. The objectivity and permanence of the realm of forms does not foster to explain the material world because the connection between the two worlds is so hard to understand. Aristotle and the Aristotelian philosophers used logic to criticize the theory. Gail fine went to an extremum to sayThe theory of form is an unnecessary proposal. There is no shoot to split the world up intotwo separate realms in order to explain objectivity and permanence in our experience.6Aristotle elaborated this general check into two more particular objections1. The obscurity of the notion imitationAccording to Plato, material objects participate in or imitate the forms. It is in virtue of this relation to the realm of forms that material objects are knowable and have order. Yet, Aristotle argues, it is to the highest degree impossible to explain what exactly this fraternity or imitation is. The properties that the forms have (eternal, unchanging, transcendent, etc. ) are all incompatibl e with material objects. How, for example, can a white object be said to participate in or copy the form of whiteness? Is the form of whiteness white itself? How can there be whiteness without any thingwhich is white? What can a white object and the form of whiteness be said to have in common? It seems that the metaphor of imitation or participation seems to arrest down in these cases because of the special properties that Plato ascribes to the forms. The only link between the realm of forms and the material world, then, breaks down. The forms cannot explain anything in the material world.2. The third man argumentThis argument was first given by Plato himself in his later dialogues. It is related to the first objection, but is a more technical way of acquiring at the main problem with the theory of forms. The resemblance between any two material objects is explained by Plato in terms of their joint participation in a common form. A red control and a red flower, for example, resemb le each other in virtue of being copies of the form of redness. Because they are copies of this form, they also resemble the form. But this resemblance between the red object and the form of redness must also be explained in terms of another form. What form does a red object and the form of redness both copy to account for their likeness? Whenever someone proposes another form that two similar things copy, we can always ask them to explain the similarity between the form and the objects. This will always admit another form. The notion of imitation or copying used in the theory of forms, then, runs into logical difficulties. The theory of forms really explains nothing about the similarity of objects another form is always needed beyond the one proposed. Thus to explain the similarity between a man and the form of man, one needs a third form of man, and this always requires another form. The history of the original similarity is never given it is only put off to the next level.Thi s reprehension paved the way for further criticism. As there was no logical connection between the transcendent forms and the material world, so many critics raised a question about the epistemological dimensions of this theory. Plato was of the conniption that real knowledge was knowledge of form and the ideal destiny of a man was to cave in the realm of forms. But he didnt mentioned how to reach that realm. As it was above this material world, so whether there was a way to reach that realm in ones life or only death could take a man in that ideal realm. The idea of forms was very annul and it wasnt clear enough to be accepted, un criticized.Plato didnt write much about his theory of forms and most of the written work was also not preserved. Pheodo was the first book to have this theory and later on in republic he explained it a bit. But this explanation was too little to make the theory clear. So the explanation was mostly rendered by the commentators of the theory. This becam e the major source of criticism on this theory.CONCLUSIONThe criticism of Aristotle and Aristotelian philosophers, on this theory, is mostly of instructive type. Had Plato written more or his books had been preserved, there might not have been that strong criticism on this theory. Even then the theory was potent enough to split the philosophy and philosophers in two parts. Though a group of philosophers dont agree with the content of the theory but even they accept that this theory provided human beings with s new way to think and perceive the universe.