Plato's Method Research Articles

Intuition in Plato and the Platonic tradition

ABSTRACT In this paper, I examine what is for Plato and all those who follow in his footsteps the ne plus ultra of cognition, namely, intuition (nous or noēsis). This is the paradigm of cognition, meaning that all forms of human (and even animal) cognition are inferior manifestations of this. Intuition is mental seeing, analogous to physical seeing. Among embodied souls, it is seeing a unity of some sort manifested in some diversity or plurality. Thus, someone who sees that the Morning Star is the Evening Star, or that S at t1 is identical with S at t2, or that f = ma, etc., sees the unity ‘behind’ the diversity. The disembodied intellect that is the Demiurge (or, for Aristotle, the Unmoved Mover) sees paradigmatically the diversity of all intelligible being as a unity. Because mental seeing or intuition is paradigmatic for all cognition, cognition is essentially a unificatory process. Plato's method of collection and division displays both this process and its reverse. In the light of this core doctrine, I examine some of the insights that Platonists, especially Plotinus and Proclus, arrived at regarding a host of issues, including the nature of the first principle of all and the nature of normativity.

Effect of quality management on the training effect of cardiopulmonary resuscitation

Objective The quality management method was introduced into the teaching of pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation(CPR), and to improve the quality of training and realize teaching objectives. Methods Quality management team analyzed the examination results of CPR by Plato method, and cleared the risk factors associated with quality problem.A standard operating procedure was used in teaching and assessment of the CPR, and doctors′ examination results of CPR would be analyzed by a statistical approach. Results Platonic analysis showed that heart compressions and artificial ventilation were risk factors associated with quality problem in CPR.In the total frequency of deductions, the proportion of the heart compressions was 36.8% and artificial ventilation was 15.7%.According to the standard operating procedure, the quality of heart compressions in CPR was improved.In the total frequency of deductions, the proportion was only 3.5%. Conclusion The quality management method can be applied in the teaching of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, which can improve the teaching quality. Key words: Cardiopulmonary resuscitation; Quality management; Standardized training of resident doctors; Teaching quality; Children; Skills

The Play of the Fourfolds

famous Fourfold (das Geviert) of Earth and Sky, Mortals and Immortals, is a wellknown staple of late Heidegger's focus upon poetry. In this essay I want to call attention to another Fourfold, one involved in Plato's Line of Knowledge as the always already that must be presupposed in lived context of Heidegger's Fourfold. And, indeed, Heidegger's later Fourfold presupposes another that appeared in his earlier work in Being and Time together with The Origin of Work of Art and that leads to a third as basic ground. Plato's Line of Knowledge in his Republic is sandwiched between two sets of images: that of Sun in relation to vision and visible on one hand and complex image involved in Allegory of Cave on other.1 Heidegger commented upon latter,2 but not upon former. Parallel to Allegory of Cave, Line itself is an image. This is not accidental, but essential to Plato's method. In spite of its title, dialogue called Statesman is actually a piece dealing with method in philosophy. Eleatic Stranger says investigation of statesman has been for sake of making us better thinkers about all subjects.3 He appeals to paradigm of weaving that involves warp and woof, hard-twisted vertical strands and soft-twisted horizontal strands. In philosophy there is hard-twisted vertical strand of apodeixis, showing from top down, exhibited most powerfully in geometry and displayed by Eleatic Stranger in various hierarchical logical divisions he employs. But there is also soft-twisted, more horizontal strand of paradeigma, showing alongside, that is, metaphorical and allegorical comparisons. In Plato's practice, fabric of philosophic thought is woven out of two strands, one more distance from our lifeworld, other more deeply enmeshed within it. center of Republic employs several images. It is focused upon Good as object of philosophic endeavor. treatment of it follows an initial distinction between philosopher and cultivated denizens of purged city whose education culminates in appreciation of beautiful things.4 philosopher is said to be in love with vision of Beauty Itself that is present within those beautiful things.5 Socrates goes on to name object of philosophy as Good that he describes, among other things, as an incomparable Beauty.6 He goes on to present an image of it in two triplets: just as power of vision and capacity to be seen depend upon of Sun or its surrogate in order that both capacities can be actualized, so power of intellection and capacity for being understood depend upon of Good for actual understanding. What has to be determined is what such light is by working through what follows. So we have a first literal set of claims about object of philosophic love that opens a space of meaning within which a metaphoric comparison is situated, with Good occupying position of Beauty Itself. Within that space Socrates goes on to place image of Line of Knowledge. Heidegger did not write on that, but he did focus upon way Good opened space of meaning by reflecting upon parallel allegory of Cave. Heidegger explored fuzzy strand of Cave Allegory; we want to explore tightly twisted strand of Line of Knowledge. In Line, Socrates gives an example that shows difference and relation between visible and intelligible and their respective objects.7 A literal line is produced in visual space that is divided by a given proportion (any proportion will do), followed by its subdivisions divided in turn by same proportion. We are invited not simply to gawk at line so produced or attend to its aesthetic qualities, but to reflect upon fact that what it exhibits is a theorem, an intelligible object. …

Dialectic and Plato's Method of Hypothesis

Dialectic and Plato's Method of Hypothesis

Dialectic as "Philosophical Embarrassment": Heidegger's Critique of Plato's Method

Dialectic as "Philosophical Embarrassment": Heidegger's Critique of Plato's Method

Plato's Method in Timaeus

Plato's Method in Timaeus

Masking in bone-conduction testing--proposal of ABC method

A new strategic masking technique, namely the ABC method, has been developed. In performing this method of measuring thresholds of bone-conduction, the vibrator is placed at the forehead with both ears occluded by air-conduction earphones. One of the earphones is for masking noise and the other is a dummy which balances out the occlusive effect of the test ear against the nontest ear. The ABC method is based on the ABC rule that, in bone-conduction testing, the effective masking noise level necessary to block out the nontest ear can be calculated by a simple equation: right AC (A) + left AC (B)--unmasked BCu (C) under the assumption that the BCu belongs to the nontest ear. In some cases of hearing loss, the above noise level might produce overmasking, then an additive safety noise level, BCu + Interaural Attenuation, is employed. This method offers testers step by step directions which consist of indications of the noise level and a criterion for determining whether the measured bone-conduction is free from cross hearing and overmasking for the given configuration of air-conduction of both ears, BCu, and the masking noise level. Compared to the well known Plato method, in which measurements of thresholds are repeated at several masking noise levels in order to find a single bone-conduction threshold, the ABC method can essentially find the threshold at only one masking noise level. Therefore the ABC method makes it possible to save a great deal of time in performing bone conduction testing.

Theory and Practice: An Examination of the Platonic and Aristotelian Conceptions of Political Theory

N OUR DAY it a commonplace in political science and the history of political thought to draw a number of sharp distinctions. Among our most cherished distinctions are those between and practice, thought and action, is and ought, fact and value, normative and descriptive discourse, analytic and propositions, philosophy and science. Quite often, in order to gain a historical purchase on these distinctions, we look back to the beginnings of political philosophy. There we find, quite conveniently all too conveniently, I suspect the once-living personification, the very embodiment, of our own cherished distinctions. Plato, we are told, was the first political philosopher, Aristotle the first political scientist. Of course, the difference not usually stated so baldly, but more often subtle and indirect. Thus one may choose to look at their respective methods of inquiry, finding that Plato was given to a priori postulation and deductive theorizing, while Aristotle employed inductive methods of inquiry. Plato's method yields but merely analytic truth, i.e., that which necessarily certain because of the linguistic conventions governing the use of key terms and propositions.' Aristotle's method, by contrast, yields testable empirical propositions which disclose synthetic truth. It would not be difficult to continue drawing out such distinctions between Plato and Aristotle, cast in a modern idiom which would be incomprehensible (not to say silly) to them. I shall attempt something else instead. My aim in this essay will not be to spell out the differences between the two thinkers, using my own language as a yardstick to measure their differences (nor to hit them with either, for that matter). Instead I shall, in a rather roundabout fashion, attempt to spell out the character of their differences. And, since there are too many varieties of difference between them to treat in an essay of this length, I shall concentrate most of my attention on a matter which has been of perennial interest to political theorists: the problem of the relationship between theory and practice. How did each conceive of theory? Of practice? Did one have anything to do with the other, and if so, what was the character of this relationship as they saw it? These are the sorts of questions that will inform and guide my inquiry.

IV.—FORMS AS CAUSES IN THE PHAEDO

I WISH to discuss two questions in this paper: (a) What sort of explanation did Plato think he was proposing in the Phaedo when he offered explanation in terms of the theory of Forms as an alternative to earlier methods of scientific explanation? (b) What relation does this kind of explanation bear to Aristotle's explanation in terms of formal causes? The first important point is that Plato's method is of quite unrestricted application. It arises out of dissatisfaction with certain hitherto accepted ways of answering questions beginning ' Why ...? ' At 96a 8-9 Socrates says that it seemed to him a wonderful thing to know the causes of each thing, why it comes to be and why it perishes and why it is. Mention of coming to be and perishing indicates that Socrates' interests included natural change (as is confirmed by his examples, e.g. inquiry into the causes of the generation of animals) and in general all phenomena which fall within the scope of natural science. But other questions are involved too: besides his scientific examples Socrates cites such questions as 'Why is ten greater than eight? ' and ' When one unit is added to another, is it one of the units which becomes two, and, if so, which one, or do both units become two? ' The latter question, at least, is clearly a conceptual question, in that it has to be answered by considering the meanings of terms used in talking about numbers, and by considering the logical relations of propositions formed from those terms. The first question ' Why is ten greater than eight?' is less easy to characterise; it is clearly not an empirical question, but it is not recognisably a conceptual one either. It just isn't clear what question is meant to be posed in these words. But the answer which Socrates says he had held, and which he later rejected, that ten is greater than eight because it contains two units more than eight, indicates that the question is to be interpreted as 'What feature of the number ten explains or accounts for its being greater than eight? ' Thus interpreted the question is a conceptual one, to be answered by showing how the relation between the numbers ten and eight is a particular case of the succession of numbers which constitutes the natural number system. The method of explanation in terms of Forms, therefore, provides answers to all questions of causation in the natural world, and to all conceptual questions which can be introduced by the word 'Why . . .? ' It is, therefore, anachronistic to

Plato's Sophist and the Five Stages of Knowing

Previous articleNext article No AccessPlato's Sophist and the Five Stages of KnowingM. W. IsenbergM. W. Isenberg Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Classical Philology Volume 46, Number 4Oct., 1951 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/363413 Views: 2Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Plato's Method of Dialectic.

Plato's Method of Dialectic.

Plato's Method of Dialectic.

Plato's Method of Dialectic.

Plato's Method of Dialectic

Plato's Method of Dialectic

Plato's Method of Dialectic

Plato's Method of Dialectic