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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 mind and body were to be considered separate entities. In the dialogues of Phaedo, written in his "middle period" (360 BCE), Plato expressed his distinctive views about the nature of knowledge, reality, and the soul: When the soul and body are united, then nature orders the soul to rule and govern, and the body to obey and serve.
Socratic questioning (or Socratic maieutics) [1] is an educational method named after Socrates that focuses on discovering answers by asking questions of students. According to Plato, Socrates believed that "the disciplined practice of thoughtful questioning enables the scholar/student to examine ideas and be able to determine the validity of those ideas". [2]
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]
In Plato's theory of epistemology, anamnesis (/ ˌ æ n æ m ˈ n iː s ɪ s /; Ancient Greek: ἀνάμνησις) refers to the recollection of innate knowledge acquired before birth. The concept posits the claim that learning involves the act of rediscovering knowledge from within oneself.
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.
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.
Plato's conception of Forms actually differs from dialogue to dialogue, and in certain respects it is never fully explained, so many aspects of the theory are open to interpretation. Forms are first introduced in the Phaedo , but in that dialogue the concept is simply referred to as something the participants are already familiar with, and the ...