A RESEARCH ON THE ROLES OF PERCEPTION IN PLATO'S PHILOSOPHY

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It is almost universally accepted that Plato rejects perception to attain knowledge (episteme) which is of unique, unchanging and transcendent objects, i.e. Forms (Ideai, Eide). But Plato maintains at the same time as follows : the notion that the objects of senses have deficiency compared to the Forms does not occur to us except by sight or touch or one of the senses. (Phdn.75a) This passage suggests that perception is a necessary condition to the cognition of Forms.In order to reveal Plato's view of perception, I traced in the Earlier Socratic Dialogues the method of the example (paradeigma) and the inductive reasoning (epaktikoi logoi) which are attributed to Socrates by Aristotle. In these dialogues Plato usually makes Socrates to start argument from daily experiences and common opinions to atain definitions of ethical terms. In the procedure Plato seems to have encountered a puzzle concerning investigation, i.e. 'In order to attain a universal, we must collect examples of the same … More kind, but in order to collect examples of the same kind, we must already have obtained the universal idea.'To solve the puzzle Plato introduces the theory of recollection (anamnesis) in the Middle Dialogues. The interpretation which I suggest is that the famous experiment of anamnesis with a slave boy in the Meno is intended to show the empirical development of understanding concerning the concept of '2', and that the fundamental of dialectic (dialektike) is revealed in the process of the experiment. This is against the interpretation of G.Vlastos who argues the experiment is to show the innate ability of logical reasoning independent of sense experience.I reconstructed the procedure of dialectic in the Phaedo and the Republic, and made clear the role of opinion, experience, and perception. Especially at the moment of perception was grasp some general feature of objects. Though obscure it may be, this is the starting point (arche) of dialectic to grasp Forms. This function of perception is investigated in a later dialogue, the Theaetetus. The 'hypokeimena' of Aristotle is a legacy of Plato's voyage of speculation on the relation between knowledge and perception. Less