Naslov
Hypothesis and Epistēmē in Plato

Autori
Zovko, Marie-Élise

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, neobjavljeni rad, znanstveni

Skup
Guest Lecture

Mjesto i datum
Macerata, Italija, 15.11.2017

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Pozvano predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Podatak o recenziji nije dostupan

Ključne riječi
Plato, hypothesis, episteme, method, analogies, forms of intelligence, stages of knowledge, proportion, peri phuseos historia, method

Sažetak
Plato stands at the beginning of scientific method which led to our understanding and use of hypothesis today. Plato had a clear vision of the functioning of a hypothesis. Since Galileo, we think of hypothesis as something to be tested, corroborated, verified by experiment.The purpose of experiment is thereby not only to corroborate, verify, prove or disprove, but also to refine, otherwise modify and thereby improve our hypothesis. Hypotheses are usually connected to a practical interest, a task to be accomplished a problem that needs to be resolved.Socrates and Plato did not conduct experiments in the way Galileo did.Their discovery was that ideas form the basis for our investigation of the world, of the causes of generation, existence, decay. The advantage Plato and also Socrates had was not that they tested their hypotheses by physical experiment, but rather that they experimented in ideas. For Plato, reality is the reality of the ideas. Hypothesis in this sense does not require proof through empirical facts but rather through its inner consistency (truth), and its ability to adequately represent and explain or justify (logon didonai) the facts. By nature, explanation precedes what is to be explained, it is ‘earlier’ in a metaphysical and epistemological sense. Reality is not the reality of atoms and chance, reality is ideas, intellect, mind – and this, in the view of Platonism, is the origin of everything natural or material in a mundane sense.While physicalist and scientistic neo-ontologies attempt to reduce knowledge to its descriptive content and associated practice to potential technological applications, for Plato and his teacher Socrates knowledge of things is inextricably tied to the Delphic imperative to "know thyself". Definition and argument (logos), in their turn, are inextricably bound to the attainment of the inherent excellence (aretē) of the knower and of the things known – and with the question how to “live well”, i.e. how to live a good and happy life. In Plato's "theory of ideas", descriptive, mathematical, and ethical predicates are ultimately grounded in the triad of ideas: beauty, goodness, and justice, which function not only as standards of truth and causes of being, but as ideals for the direction of our moral behaviour. Knowledge is nothing without knowledge of the good.Theory is thus inseparable from morality. In his two accounts of hypothesis, in the Phaedo and in the Republic, Plato explores how the positing of the strongest logos enables us to "save the phenomena" from the endless regress of the mere enumeration of proximate causes (historia peri phuseos)

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

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