Platos Theory Of Knowledge

Plato’s view on already having knowledge, of just having to “awaken” it.

From The Republic, his theory of knowledge is put in an analogy with people who lived in caves for most of their lives and then came out into the real “outside w

“But even if ‘p’ is true, A believes that p, A has evidence ‘q’ for the truth of ‘p,’ ‘q’ is in fact sufficient evidence for ‘p,’ and the evidence actually operates in A’s mind to support his belief that p, it still does not follow that A knows that p. For although ‘q’ in fact supports ’p’ conclusively, might not A be reasoning from ‘q’ to ‘p’ according to some false principle which in this particular case moves from a truth to a truth?” (Armstrong, p.216)

Synthetic a priori claims are such things as all proper mathematical judgments and things that happen in the world. They have to depend on other principles than the law of contradiction. Some examples for synthetic a priori statements could be “ 7+5=12” or “Newton’s Laws”. These would be synthetic because they are both made about the world and are a priori because, as it says in our text, “they carry with them necessity, which cannot be obtained from experience” (Kant, p. 174). Metaphysics would also be considered synthetic a priori. In all of the universe, these statements are true. They are never changing or false, wherever you go. Synthetic a priori judgments are knowledge that is independent of experience. These claims compare with Plato’s view by them being independent of experience, but also contrasting by them (the synthetic a priori claims) not being “remembered” or “brought back” as in Plato’s theory.

So to have knowledge, according to Armstrong, you need to have justification. But you must have one justification that, like I said before, holds to be true without any belief, otherwise you will just get nowhere. Whereas Plato believes that there is no justification for anything we know. So their theories are not very similar. They each have their own beliefs and reasons.

Although Armstrong and Plato have some similarity, their basic theory of knowledge contrast each other greatly. Armstrong’s theory on knowledge is that we need to have justification to prove every piece of knowledge that we have, kind of like evidence. But what ends up happening is that for every justification we make, we need another justification for that and then another one for that and it just keeps continuing on endlessly. Armstrong shows this by saying,

nowledge by adding something to my concept, and must therefore be called synthetical” (Kant, p.173), which means there is more to the claim than just the meaning of the words, so that makes it synthetic. For example, in the text Kant says, “A straight line is the shortest path between two points” (Kant, p.174). This statement would be synthetic beca

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