Question

Answer this questions

1) Draw an analogy between Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and a topic of your choice (religion, education, the media, a current event, addiction, relationships, etc.). You do not need to write a story. State your topic and explain the following symbolic representations: Cave, prisoners, fire, and sun. I provided an example from a former student below.

Topic: The Anti-Vaccination Movement

Cave = The misconception that vaccines are unsafe or harmful (cause autism) Prisoners = People who believe the autism myth and choose not to have themselves or their children vaccinated

Fire = All of the pseudo-scientific claims that cast these shadows of doubt and perpetuate mistaken beliefs about the importance and necessity of vaccines.

Sun = The truth that vaccines are a necessity in maintaining public health.

2. What is the major difference between Platonic and Aristotelian Forms?

Answer 1

• 2.Plato’s philosophy is abstract and utopian, whereas Aristotle’s is empirical, practical, and commonsensical.The most fundamental difference between Plato and Aristotle concerns their theories of forms. For Plato, the Forms are perfect exemplars, or ideal types, of the properties and kinds that are found in the world. Thus the properties “beautiful” and “black” correspond to the Forms the Beautiful and the Black.
• A thing has the properties it has, or belongs to the kind it belongs to, because it “participates” in the Forms that correspond to those properties or kinds. A thing is a beautiful black horse because it participates in the Beautiful, the Black, and the Horse.
• A person is courageous and generous because he or she participates in the Forms of Courage and Generosity.
• For Plato, Forms are abstract objects, existing completely outside space and time. Thus they are knowable only through the mind, not through sense experience. Moreover, because they are changeless, the Forms possess a higher degree of reality than do things in the world, which are changeable and always coming into or going out of existence.
• The task of philosophy, for Plato, is to discover through reason the nature of the Forms, the only true reality, and their interrelations, culminating in an understanding of the most fundamental Form, the Good or the One.
• Aristotle famously rejected Plato's theory of forms but not the notion of Forms.Plato's theory states that properties such as beauty are abstract universal entities that exist independent of the objects themselves. Instead,Aristotle argued that forms are intrinsic to the objects and cannot exist apart from them, and so must be studied in relation to them.
• Aristotle refuted Plato’s definition, believing it to be unclear and illogical in claiming that a chair can be understood to be a chair due to its relationship with a form existing outside of time and space. Instead, Aristotle’s method of defining an object's form was through the object's purpose, which it has been given by the designer.
• So, a chair is a chair because it has been designed to have the function of a chair. That of which the chair is made could have been given a different form if it had been arranged differently. This way, the form of an object exists within the object and all similarly designed and purposed objects, so it is unnecessary to disengage from this world in order to understand a form as it can be observed and understood on earth.
• Aristotle proposed that "nature does nothing in vain," as everything has a purpose given to it, perhaps by a God. With this, Aristotle looks not only at human artifacts, but also nature: eyes have different structures and methods of operation between species, yet they all share the form of an eye, as they all exist for the purpose of seeing.
• Even though both philosophers use form to understand objects, only Plato believes it is required to gain knowledge. Plato also thinks it essential to disengage from this world to discover an object's form, whereas Aristotle believes we need only study the objects and discover its function.
• Due to time limit,remaining questions can be asked as another question,they will be answered,thankyou for your cooperation