Plato on how we acquire knowledge: Platonic Rationalism
Given the “Distinctness Thesis”, what human faculty can we rely on to give
us access to the “realm of the Forms”? What human faculty can we NOT
rely on to access this realm? How can “reason alone” get us knowledge?
PLATO’S EPISTEMOLOGY: the doctrine of innate ideas (i.e., “learning is
recollection”)
Why should we believe that all knowledge is based on innate ideas?
1. Argument from the Meno: we know stuff that we don’t know that we
know
2. Knowledge of particulars presupposes knowledge of universals
RATIONALISM: to know is to transcend the ever-changing flux of the
physical world and to grasp a permanent rational order behind the flux, an
order that will demonstrate the universal that defines the particular. This
“grasping” is an intellectual act of the mind alone, in its purest
manifestation, is exclusively formal (i.e., abstract). Such an intellectual act
can only take place if there are certain innate ideas upon which it can be
based. Knowing, then, is an act of making the observable world intelligible
by showing how it is related to an eternal order of intelligible truths.