Do you think Plato was right with this. Surely, what you learn comes after you are born. What do you think?

Question

Plato epistemolgy holds that knowledge is innate, and learning is buried deep inside the soul.
He believed each soul exsisted before birth, with perfect knowledge and when something is learned; it is simply recalled.

Surely not possible?

Hi all,

chris c
PKiriakis
Bill G
Everyone is crazy.. b.. me! (phew!)
Sky
jessie
mighty c
Mere Exposure
Tagette
jim g

I don't have a problem with any of the answers, they all lead me to search for the truth.
As in logic, what's valid what's not valid. What can be argued and proven, what can't.

Epistemology: Do we really know anything
and, if so what?

Yes I love that search for the truth..

Many thanks for answering.
I need to read your replies over again.

Still searching;-)

Hi, hypnoticed,
point taken. When I was reading philosophy for my ph.D, it was a constant battle going on in my head, and a few years on, I am still forming and reforming my opinions.
It's a journey that I'm sure will go on all my life. Wonderful though, I travel on.
Thank you for answering...

Answer 1

It is an interesting concept. We are born with certain drives/instincts built in, which could be seen as a form of innate knowledge. Other drives if not met by a certain age, are not expressed.
The argument hinges on how you define 'knowledge'. I do not think
we have an innate knowledge of how other people work or astrophysics, for example.

Answer 2

Plato's idea about learning is strictly the result of taking the matter from an idealistic point of view which inevitably leads you to believe the existence of soul and a Programmer.This deduction,however,can be sound when you observe some spicies,such as fish and insects,because as soon as they are born,they act on sheer instincts and perfect knowledge to survive without needing their parents.I believe this their way of existence and that they couldn't survive but for those instincts because they are reproduced in great numbers at one go to be looked after by parents.When it comes to humans,we can easily say it is not true,because the conscious is the make up of what you have experienced so far in the world and you acquire the knowledge as long as you live.

Answer 3

Clearly, biological systems would not be able to survive in their environments without some knowledge obtained before contact with the outside world. But it is also not possible for them to learn anything for which they simply do not have pre-existing neural connections. It is obvious that a newborn baby, for instance, does not have the intricate understanding of the world that someone twenty years old has. Furthermore, it is impossible to argue that everybody knows everything; after all, some people specialize in neuroscience and know nothing about painting, while others become painters and know nothing about neuroscience. Therefore, the most logical conclusion is to agree with the idea that the neural connections are there from the beginning, but not the knowledge itself. In other words, biological beings are innately given the potential for all possible knowledge they might ever have; but which knowledge they actually acquire is influenced by a variety of environmental factors.

Answer 4

This is very similar to the reincarnation beliefs of some cultures.
the Romaine culture believe that you are only reincarnated if you still have some lessons that you need to learn which you didn't learn in your previous life or lives.
This would mean that you are born with a full lifetime worth of memories which you are only subconsciously aware of.
Which again leads on to hypnosis and regression.
I must be boring you by now, so my answer is possibly if you believe in the romaine views or even in regressive hypnosis

Answer 5

This goes hand in hand with Platonic ontology and ethics. The true, the good, and the beautiful
are all transcendent, in the realm of the forms.
Knowledge/lack of knowledge of these things corresponds to the souls's degree of separation from the forms. Yes, in the West we are very used to the idea of Tabula Rasa....It's hard to think of it on these terms. I've always enjoyed Plato as a literary man more than as a philosopher myself.

Answer 6

The phrasing of your question is slightly unfair to Plato. Plato himself might argue that humans become aware of knowledge after we are born- we are not instilled with the consciousness of perfect knowledge from the moment we are born. Instead, since knowledge is instilled somewhere in us, we must, throughout the course of our lives, recall or learn it.

This theory of Recollection is demonstrated in Plato's Meno- where Socrates questions Meno's slave boy in order to prove that knowledge is not something that can be taught, but is something which is recollected. In the course of this dialogue, the slave boy (who was previously uneducated) answers Socrates' questions about the area of a square. Without ever giving the slave boy the answers, Socrates is able to point the slave boy towards an understanding the math problem by asking him guiding questions. If the slave boy was uneducated and had no previous knowledge of geometry, how then was he able to answer Socrates' questions without Socrates specifically instructing him? The knowledge of mathematics was recalled by the slave boy- who serves as a model of how true learning should occur.

If the notion that knowledge is somewhere lurking within us and waiting to be recalled still seems too outrageous- and you still believe that knowledge is something which must be passed on from generation to generation- ask yourself how the first person to discover mathematics, biology or any form of knowledge came upon this insight. Since this person was the first to discover this sort of knowledge, it must not have been taught to him by someone else. Thus, it must have come to them by another means- and according to Plato, this other means is recollection. Considering the genesis of new knowledge in this way, Plato’s notion of recollection seems to make a bit more sense.

Answer 7

Even though he had a problem naming it, as he said we must name everything, it's just the "universal knowledge" that we each try to understand. He figured if the truth comes from within us after deep contemplation then we must be extracting bit by bit from something greater that existed before we were born. His flaw was calling it "remembering" and building up a theory from there.

Many eastern philosophies believe in IT. Whatever they call "it"... Buddha, Zen, Enlightenment, Tao, or whatever. Some people link that knowledge to religion and so call it God, Brahman, Allah, etc.

Either by meditation or practicing a modest and faithful lifestyle, it is what we hope to become (or get as close as possible to) when we die (or are freed from being reincarnated). We have to seek it or awaken ourselves to understand it. It is the ultimate understanding that our minds or souls could evolve to grasp.

but I could be completely wrong, here.

Answer 8

Plato is right- but not with his hokey pre-existence off the soul- I think he presaged what the Romantics preach, that truth comes to individuals looking within. One must recognize truth when it is encountered- so there is some sort of 'knowledge' before hand.

Answer 9

yes because we don't learn things whilst we're still inside our mother's womb. we've yet to develop emotionally and develop that knowledge whilst being aware we are yet born. it's only as we age, and we get older that knowledge develops throughout our human existence via the different environments, situations we find ourselves in and the people we come in contact with during and throughout our lives. knowledge is something we are encompassed with, but that is only through obtaining and gaining that knowledge by learning it and utilising it to good effect in the first place by reading books and asking questions would that be entirely possible

Answer 10

Everything is a dichotomy eh? Evolution vs Creationism. Bush always right vs Bush never right. Perhaps there are more than two choices not even of polar opposite!

Who taught you to blink your eyes. Maybe nobody, perhaps you learned it after you were born by getting poked so many times.