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In philosophy, Plato's epistemology is a theory of knowledge developed by the Greek philosopher Plato and his followers. Platonic epistemology holds that knowledge of Platonic Ideas is innate, so that learning is the development of ideas buried deep in the soul, often under the midwife-like guidance of an interrogator.
The Theaetetus is one of the few works of Plato that gives contextual clues on the timeline of its authorship: The dialogue is framed by a brief scene in which Euclid of Megara and his friend Terpsion witness a wounded Theataetus returning on his way home after from fighting in an Athenian battle at Corinth, from which he apparently died of his wounds.
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge.Also called theory of knowledge, it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowledge in the form of skills, and knowledge by acquaintance as a familiarity through experience.
Meno 's theme is also dealt with in the dialogue Protagoras, where Plato ultimately has Socrates arrive at the opposite conclusion: virtue can be taught. Likewise, while in Protagoras knowledge is uncompromisingly this-worldly, in Meno the theory of recollection points to a link between knowledge and eternal truths. [15]
Here, Socrates aims at the change of Meno's opinion, who was a firm believer in his own opinion and whose claim to knowledge Socrates had disproved. It is essentially the question that begins "post-Socratic" Western philosophy. Socrates begins all wisdom with wondering, thus one must begin with admitting one's ignorance.
In Plato's dialogues, the soul plays many disparate roles. Among other things, Plato believes that the soul is what gives life to the body (which was articulated most of all in the Laws and Phaedrus) in terms of self-motion: to be alive is to be capable of moving oneself; the soul is a self-mover. He also thinks that the soul is the bearer of ...
Plato's most self-critical dialogue is the Parmenides, which features Parmenides and his student Zeno, which criticizes Plato's own metaphysical theories. Plato's Sophist dialogue includes an Eleatic stranger. These ideas about change and permanence, or becoming and Being, influenced Plato in formulating his theory of Forms. [54]
Plato believed that we possess innate ideas that precede any knowledge that we gain through experience. As formulated by Noam Chomsky, accounting for this gap between knowledge and experience is "Plato's problem". The phrase has a specific linguistic context with regard to language acquisition but can also be used more generally.