PHI 1301 Lecture 10

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If there are parts, then there must be a whole... what is that whole?

Who is the Philosopher?

Personal attributes of the philosopher left to own study and reflection

Suffices:

• What is philosophy?
• What is the proper "object" of philosophical inquiry?

How do we connect with the world reality?

• senses (especially sight and sound)
• memory and reason (imagination and intellect)

Platonism

There are two dimensions of reality

• The "things" that are ever coming, becoming, and going
• The "forms" of things themselves; universal

Opinion: of becoming

• individual things
  • changeable
  • temporal
  • material
  • sensible (= perceptible)
• interested in
  • instances of ...
  • some of ...
  • tokens of ...
  • part of ...
• The lover of sights and sounds dwells here

Knowledge: of being

What is

• unchanging
• eternal
• immaterial
• intelligible

The forms/idea/ideal

• instead of instances/some, all
• instead of tokens, type
• instead of parts, whole

Participation in Forms

Each individual instance ($x_{1},x_{2},\ldots$) participates in the form ($X$)

Mathematically, one would write $x_{i}\in X$

In object-oriented programming, forms are represented by classes.

For Next Time

• Prepare a reading of text: Book 6 (487–502)
• Handout: "A Sad Story"