Consciousness: Plato's Illusion And Form

Consciousness is a state of awareness. This includes a person’s feelings, sensations, ideas, and perceptions. There are many different states of consciousness.

Plato is remembered as one of the worlds best known philosophers who along with his writings are widely studied. Plato was a student of the great Greek philosopher Socrates and later went on to be the teacher of Aristotle. Plato’s writings such as “The Republic”, “Apology” and “Symposium” reveal a great amount of insight on what was central to his worldview. He was a true philosopher as he was constantly searching for wisdom and believed questioning every aspect of life would lead him to the knowledge he sought. He was disgusted with the common occurrence of Greeks not thinking for themselves but simply accepting the popular opinion also known as doxa. Plato believed that we ought to search for and meditate on the ideal versions of beauty, justice, wisdom, and other concepts which he referred to as the forms. His hostility towards doxa, theory of the forms, and perspective on reality were the central ideas that shaped Plato’s worldview and led him to be the great philosopher who is still revered today.

Reality versus illusion is described by Plato in chapter seven of The Republic. Plato creates an allegorical view of what it means to be alive, and the journey of gaining a sense of reality. He begins setting the scene by describing a dimly lit cave containing the men who have lived there since the beginning of life. The men are chained up and unable to turn their heads, only facing a a stone wall. They have not seen the source of light within the cave (which is both a burning fire and sunlight), nor the objects that depict the shadows on the wall. They know only what they see, ignorant to the world just beyond the cave. Plato continues by questioning what would happen if one man were to become free from his restraints and exposed to the sunlight outside the cave,

Consciousness is your awakened state of mind in which you are cognizant of and are able to distinguish between realities while also being preemptive to one’s thoughts, emotions, and feelings through the establishment of the fundamental aspect of student-object relationships in which one is not only aware and mindful of his surroundings, but oneself as well at any given moment as the present renders sentiments of familiarity, presumably rectifying preconceived notions that consciousness is merely an illusion and is rather more so a universal force and a collective body of existence and self-realization.

Plato, arguably one of the most famous philosophers in history is known for his dialogues and theory of Forms. The theory of Forms argues that ideas (non-physical forms) are more real than tangible objects or what our senses perceive. According to Plato, there is the visible realm and intelligible realm. Reality could be divided into three different levels; the level of appearances, the real level, and the ideal level which he explains through the analogy of the ‘Divided Line’ in The Republic.

of forms before it was planted in the body. The soul is made up of non

We perceive a different world through our mind than we do through the senses. It is the material world, perceived through the senses and this world changing. It is the realm of forms,which one sees through the mind, this world is permanent. It is this world that is more real; the world of change is merely an imperfect image of this world. A form is an abstract property or quality. Take any property of an object and separate it from that object and consider it by itself, this is a form.For instance,when we talk of a triangle we say that it is a three sided enclosed figure and the sum of whose all sides is 180degrees,but have we ever seen a perfect triangle what we have seen is just a close approximation of an ideal triangle but not an ideal triangle.

Consciousness can be defined as one’s awareness of their actions, thoughts, or surroundings. It is the ability to understand things beyond our eyes. And what I mean by that is one can see things through their eyes, but consciousness allows one to comprehend it on a deeper level. It leads to how we behave, how we function.

The world of sense is at a constant change, so how can the truth be

The physical world only has one constant - change. The human senses give an idea of the present reality. However, seeing is not believing. The perception we develop through the senses (seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, and hearing) does not consist of real truth. Real truth is not what is in front of us, but of absolute concepts and unchanging truths. Plato encouraged looking past what is directly visible in order to find truths that exist independent of the physical world. The understanding of the idea of reality through the discussion of the Divided Line and the allegory of the cave directly contributes and proves his theory of Forms and lie at the heart of his philosophy, which I think is convincing because of the extent of his discussions through experimental-based and direct evidence.

For starters consciousness is a mystical network. It has several different extraordinary characters. One David Chalmers says it has a “unified and a differentiated character”, that he feels defines consciousness and makes it simple. But is it really that simplistic?? I mean consciousness is something everyone is aware of at every waking moment of life until death. Never has it been something

Plato was interested in how we can apply a single word or concept to many words or things. For example how can the word house be used for all the individual dwellings that are houses? Plato answered that various things can be called by the same name because they have something in common. He called this common factor the thing’s form or idea. Plato insisted that the forms differ greatly from the ordinary things that we see around us. Ordinary things change but their forms do not. A particular triangle may be altered in size or shape but the form of a triangle can never change. Plato concluded that forms exist neither in space or time. They can be known not only by the intellect but also by the senses. Because of their stability and perfection, the forms have greater reality than ordinary objects observed by the senses. Thus true knowledge is knowledge of the forms.

Plato’s Republic introduces a multitude of important and interesting concepts, of topics ranging from music, to gender equality, to political regime. For this reason, many philosophers and scholars still look back to The Republic in spite of its age. Yet one part that stands out in particular is Plato’s discussion of the soul in the fourth book of the Republic. Not only is this section interesting, but it was also extremely important for all proceeding moral philosophy, as Plato’s definition has been used ever since as a standard since then. Plato’s confabulation on the soul contains three main portions: defining each of the three parts and explanation of their functions, description of the interaction of the parts, and then how the the

Consciousness allows a person to recognize their existence, and subsequently, to form their essence. The

In Book IV of Plato’s Republic, Socrates reasons that the embodied human soul is a tripartite plurality consisting of a rational part, an appetitive part, and a spirited part. An individual, or a society, thrives when these three parts strike a balance. In a just and perfect society, people from each of the three groups must maintain a delicate position compromised of control and influence relative to the other groups. An important feature of Socrates’ ideal city is its lack of intersectionality. Each person in the various classes must complete their specific job requirements, without meddling in outside affairs, in order to maximize the city’s efficiency. The ideal city is made up of the craftsperson, the auxiliary and the guardian ruler classes. The three classes directly parallel the three parts of the soul. The craftsperson represents the appetitive part of the soul, while the auxiliaries parallel the spirited soul and lastly, the guardian rulers embody the rational soul.