Philosophy 1000-030
December Term 2013
Final Paper
Compare and Contrast
' Life is a Matrix '
Plato vs David Hume
By Richard Stribling
Compare and Contrast Plato vs. David Hume
By : Richard Stribling
“Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to
wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real
world?”(Matrix Movie , 1999). This quote from the Matrix outlines the question that has been bounced
around philosophy since its inception. Many philosophers and various religions have attempted
throughout the ages to answer the most primal and simplest of questions pertaining to reality and our
ability to acquire knowledge. This leads to another question of what is knowledge and what makes
knowledge true. In this paper I will contrast Plato's and David Hume's concepts on such issues as
wisdom, knowledge and what is ultimately reality.
Lets start with Plato, who was born after the great Socrates in 427 B.C. Born into an aristocratic
and influential family to a mother who was thought to have been a previous philosopher herself. Plato's
life was one worthy of emulation and praise. He was gifted with the best education available to him in
the fields of grammar ,music, and gymnastics by the most distinguished scholars available in his time.
He was extremely athletic and was actually a highly accomplished wrestler during his youth because of
his purported broad shoulders and athletic build. Plato had also had studies in philosophy before he was
introduced to a man by the name of Socrates.
The exact relationship between Socrates and the young Plato has been a topic of much debate
over the years and because Socrates was not big into documentation however it was reported that at his
trial for corrupting the youth of Athens he mentioned Plato by name as one of the youth who might of
possibly been corrupted by him. In Plato's writing titled “Apology to Socrates” Plato makes it clear that
was a very dedicated and devoted follower of Socrates. Another text titled Phaedo makes mention of
all those who were present at Socrates suicide at the prison and makes the explanation of Plato's
absence as say “ Plato was ill “(Phaedo 59b). Unlike Socrates, Plato was a large publisher of his
philosophical ideas as it is thought that over 250 known manuscripts were penned by the scholar
throughout his lifetime and much of his writings are highly read and studied. Some of his most popular
include The Apology, The Crito, The Republic and The Symposium. To this day he is still one of the
most accomplished writer of all the previous known philosophers.
Some of Plato's principal philosophical views were expressed in the ideas of Philosopher Kings,
The Forms, and the Allegory of the Cave. Plato spent much of his time on his attempts to disprove the
earlier sophist philosophical views of relativism and skepticism. After Socrates order of suicide Plato
had turned his back on the established order of the Athenian government. After Socrates was put to
death, he came to the conclusion that the very important decisions, that affect the majority of the
populations well being, needed to be performed by individuals of superior intelligence. According to
Plato, Socrates was one of the wisest men that he ever met, and for the Athenians to put him to death,
revealed to Plato that they were not fit to make the most accurate decisions for the people. This is when
Plato decided to start his own school. His main objective was to produce what he called philosopher
kings, a unique group of people who focus on wisdom. He strongly disagreed with the democratic form
of government because most people were not wise enough to know what brought true happiness and
order in society.
The Academy was Plato's educational institution when he was about forty years of age. The
curriculum taught was mainly Mathematics, Geometry, Music and Science. Only the most intelligent
students were admitted into the Academy. Students who showed great progress, and exemplified great
discipline had the opportunity to learn what Plato called “ ultimate philosopher”. The main doctrine
that Plato taught was his metaphysical doctrine of the theory of the forms. Plato's theory of the forms
was used to help understand the level of being. It was a transcendental theory that asserted that there
were multiple plains of existence above and beyond our own. Plato believed that everything that exists
in this world derived from a realm beyond this existence. He claimed that everything existed in forms
and particulars. Lets take a chair for example. The reason why we could identify a chair is because it
contains the characteristics of “ chairness”. According to Plato, that form that we identify as a chair
exist in this transcendental plain. Everything that is present in this world initially existed in the realm of
the forms.
In one of Plato's published philosophical books titled The Republic Plato also designed the
conceptual idea that is called the Allegory of the cave to support his thesis that there were three levels
of awareness in the world. The first being occupied by those born with little or no imagination. The
second was reserved for those with an informed and wider range of basic understand and the third was
the highest level in which the soul needed no interpretation. Overall it is his assertion that without one
leaving the cave of innate idea's one can not develop a sense of what is actual and true and what is a
simple figment of our imagination. He attempted to prove this by stating that before philosophy one is
not able to grasp the difference between reality and illusion and that only through the philosophical
process of something such as the forms or the divided line is one able to see clearly what is being and
what is becoming.” A philosopher recognizes that before philosophy, his soul was "a veritable prisoner
fast bound within his body... and that instead of investigating reality by itself and in itself it is
compelled to peer through the bars of its prison.””(Elliott, R. K. (1967). "Socrates and Plato's
Cave". Kant-Studien 58 )
David Hume was in my opinion very contrastly different from Plato. In contrast to Rene
Descartes who stated “I think therefore I am”, Hume’s metaphysical view of the self states that we are
formed by the use of sense data or the combination of a group of sense data all converging on one point.
This was called the Bundle Theory of Self. Hume did not believe in the concept of a fixed self. Using
this theory it should be stated that Hume was non religious and referred to God as something or
someone who could not and had not been able to be proven via sense data so therefore he must not be
real. David Hume however was agnostic and not atheist .“The wise man proportions his belief to the
evidence” was a famous quote in reference to what we should and should not believe is true. In one of
Hume's books titled An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume attempts to modify the
previous philosophers John Locke’s ideas my furthermore removing any'metaphysical residue'. Hume
states, ”The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation” (Socio. p305)
David Hume's view on true knowledge also differed from Plato’s in that he believed that true
knowledge was not attainable and that human experience is the closest thing that we are able to
understand in aspect to what we call the truth. Plato believed that knowledge was unchanging and that
the Sophist before him could never get over the idea of ever changing perceptions. Plato used to idea of
the forms to dispute Sophistry. For instance, we might think of a student who started a philosophy
course three months ago and ask our self, Is the student writing this paper today the same person that he
was when he stated college three months ago? Has that student not gained new opinions and wisdom
from hours of lectures and studying of a subject? Hume would say that the two individuals are different
because the mind or brain now consist of different ideas, the body is composes of different cells, and
the head has a different amount of hair. Heraclitus expressed this idea of Hume's the best by
saying ”We can not step twice into the same river, for the water for which we first stepped into has
moved on”( Soccio 308).
David Hume was vastly inspired by John Locke and took his idea of empiricism and stretched it
to the far extreme. Hume argued in keeping with the empiricist view that all knowledge derives from
sense experience, but he accepted that this has implications not normally acceptable to philosophers.
He states this of John Locke's views before him, "Mr. Locke divides all arguments into demonstrative
and probable. In this view, we must say, that it is only probable all men must die, or that the sun will
rise tomorrow.”. Hume’s interpretation of this was to divide all of human knowledge into two
categories, relations of ideas and matters of fact. He thought that the fact that a square had 4 sides was
a matter of fact whereas the idea that the sun rises from the east would be an idea as it had no certainty
or guarantee.
I have really enjoyed learning about both of these individuals as it has modified some of my
opinions and views that I use to outlook on everyday life. There are aspects of both Plato and David
Hume that I would overall tend to agree with. Plato's idea of philosopher kings really intrigued me and
although I strongly disagree with his form of philosophical dictatorship by allowing a groomed
individual to rule over all others, I believe that this is still going on today within the 2 political parties
here in the United States. The Democratic and Republican parties both submit their best candidates that
support their parties philosophical views the best in hopes of getting them elected to influence over the
rest of the American people. With myself being a fairly black and white type person I really tend to
understand David Hume's point of views and can clearly see the logic and thought he put into each one
of his ideas. Hume destroys the idea by Plato that one could simply be given the knowledge and
understanding through educational grooming and be fit to exercise reason and morality in rule over
others.
Plato views as a highly regarded idealist and his theory that self-examination was the way to
gain access to the pure form of truth were contrastly different from Hume's view that only trusted in
human perception and according to Hume, sense data is the only route towards truth. In regards to how
we all acquire the so called truth Hume would have no interest in self-examination whereas Plato
viewed sense data as problematic and as being layers from actual truth. While it is not blatantly stated
philosophy is unknown to many even though we all practice it in some way, shape, or form everyday in
our lives. We may not get as invested in it as the previous two philosophers that I have chosen to
compare and contrast but to varying degrees we use it to pick how we live our lives. We also all have
different interpretations of morality, reason, and intelligence that we all hold within ourselves to be self
evident truths. Many of us have our own divided line or as the Artist Robin Thicke would say 'blurred
lines' on what is the truth and what is a mere perception or figment of our imagination. With the
modern advanced in media and technology much of this is being distorted and twisted however with
philosophy as part of our everyday thinking pattern we are able to make our own judgments of what is
the truth and what is merely an abstract visible world distraction.
So I challenge each and every person reading this to ask yourself how you determine what you
consider to be a fact vs what is an illusion of everyday living and information as we know it today. Is
what you see when you look out the window in the morning truth or is it simply a matrix of millions of
different perceptions all verging on one place to make what we see and call reality? Have we all been
living in world blinded from what the truth actually is and do we have the ability to sort out via reason
or logic what that truth is? In one realm we are born a slave into a mental prison that we can not smell,
taste, or touch. We can not be born with the ability to tell what it is but it is our choice on whether we
want to make the effort to chase down the truth or whether we stay in our man made wonderland and
believe everything as it appears around us just because we don’t know better. It is my choice to escape
what is called the matrix of perception and decipher my own truths through logical and deductive
reasoning.
So after reading this paper and thinking things through are you choosing to live in a mainstream
society where everything is just as it seems to your perceptions which is what Hume would want you
to do or are you willing and able to expand your mind outside of the cave to see things as being vastly
different between what we call knowledge? The ultimate choice is up to you as you were born into this
world in my opinion with no innate ideas. I agree with Hume's opinion that knowledge is based on
perception and that I have to see it for myself through my faculty sense's in order to believe it as truth
as this would be a blue pill to take. Plato's idea would be to take the red pill and just believe everything
as it is according to the way things are in black and white. My choice would be to take the blue pill …..
which pill would you choose?