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Ideas for 'works', 'Theaetetus' and 'Aristotle on Substance'

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4 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / C. Rationalism / 1. Rationalism
Thought must grasp being itself before truth becomes possible [Plato]
     Full Idea: If you can't apprehend being you can't apprehend truth, and so a thing could not be known. Therefore knowledge is not located in immediate experience but in thinking about it, since the latter makes it possible to grasp being and truth.
     From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 186c)
With what physical faculty do we perceive pairs of opposed abstract qualities? [Plato]
     Full Idea: With what physical faculty do we perceive being and not-being, similarity and dissimilarity, identity and difference, oneness and many, odd and even and other maths, ….fineness and goodness?
     From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 185d)
You might mistake eleven for twelve in your senses, but not in your mind [Plato]
     Full Idea: Sight or touch might make someone take eleven for twelve, but he could never form this mistaken belief about the contents of his mind.
     From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 195e)
Aristotle is a rationalist, but reason is slowly acquired through perception and experience [Aristotle, by Frede,M]
     Full Idea: Aristotle is a rationalist …but reason for him is a disposition which we only acquire over time. Its acquisition is made possible primarily by perception and experience.
     From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Aristotle's Rationalism p.173
     A reaction: I would describe this process as the gradual acquisition of the skill of objectivity, which needs the right knowledge and concepts to evaluate new experiences.