Evaluation of Plato's Theories

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Evaluation of Plato's Theory of Forms

Aristotle showed that the theory of Forms was subject to a criticism which reduced it to absurdity. There is a lack of empirical support for the theory of Forms.

Plato's claims summarised

Plato claims there are two worlds, which is known as dualism.
He also argues that true knowledge is only grasped through the intellect.
The Forms are non-spatial, they are the things which really exist. The Forms are also an ideal standard - meaning they are absolute and objective.
- We implicitly appeal to such standards whenever we debate the morality of a course of action - without an ideal standard of justice, it would not be possible to judge whether something is just or unjust.

"One Over Many"

“One Over Many” is not strictly an argument for the Forms.
All it proves is that there are properties of things. Those properties might be immanent - in this world - or they might simply be names we give to things - this is known as nominalism.

The Third Man Argument

Aristotle showed that the theory of Forms was subject to a criticism which reduced it to absurdity.
- If we have a collection of large things and their form “largeness” then we should consider the collection of things large, as well as the form “largeness” itself large.
- But in that case, do we not have to appeal to a further form to consider largeness large? And why should we stop there?

Aristotle's criticism explained

This criticism undermines the idea that the Forms can be ideal standards. It shows that we would need to appeal to an infinite amount of Forms simply to make one judgement.
The name of this argument comes from the idea that if you need a Form of a man to explain a particular man, why do you not also need a third man, a Form of the Form of the man to explain that?

Lack of empirical support

There is a lack of empirical support.
It is not really surprising that Plato provides little empirical evidence for his theory as he shows, especially in the analogy of the cave, that he believes empirical data is next to useless in gaining real knowledge.
Plato is a rationalist and, as such, makes use of logic and a priori reasoning for his proofs.

Modern criticism of Plato

From a modern standpoint, it looks suspicious that the theory has so little grounding in empirical data, and indeed, appears completely counter-intuitive.
For instance, if this world is not really real, and the World of Forms is invisible and only knowable through the intellect, how is it that we are able to predict the behaviour of this world so well through scientific theories? And not just predict, but also manipulate and make the natural world work for us through the use of technology?

Disconnection from science

Plato was not able to see the astounding success of science, which would come nearly 1800 years after his death.
However, it is possible that even if he could have foreseen it, he might still have pointed to the prisoners making guesses about the objects that threw their shadows on the wall in his cave analogy and implied that science is still just a really sophisticated version of this game.