Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Theaetetus', 'Introspection' and 'Possibility'

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6 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 1. Perception
Perception is infallible, suggesting that it is knowledge [Plato]
     Full Idea: Perception is always of something that is, and it is infallible, which suggests that it is knowledge.
     From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 152c)
Our senses could have been separate, but they converge on one mind [Plato]
     Full Idea: It would be peculiar if each of us were like a Trojan horse, with a whole bunch of senses sitting inside us, rather than that all these perceptions converge onto a single identity (mind, or whatever one ought to call it).
     From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 184d)
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 8. Adverbial Theory
The adverbial account of sensation says not 'see a red image' but be 'appeared to redly' [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: Some who reject the act-object conception of sensation favour an 'adverbial' account, where (instead of the act of 'seeing a red image') it is better to speak of 'being appeared to redly'.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Introspection [1994], p.398)
     A reaction: The point is that you couldn't perceive without a colour (or travel without a speed), so the qualifying adverb is intrinsic to the process, not a separate object. The adverbial theory will imply a fairly minimal account of universals.
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)