Reality and Knowledge
Epistemology (the study of knowledge) has occupied philosophers and laypeople alike for as long as human beings have had a conception of reality and knowledge. Many philosophers, beginning with Plato, have argued that reality and knowledge are essentially abstract concepts. Aristotle argued, in contrast that knowledge and reality must be based on the senses and inductive reasoning, while Hume argued that our understanding of reality and causation is fundamentally flawed, and that skepticism was the only workable way to knowledge of the world and the internal self. The philosopher George Berkeley presented what is perhaps the most extreme argument against an Aristotelian view of reality in arguing that the material world does not exist, and that objects are simply made of up ideas. While Berkeley's view of reality as based solely upon the mind is extreme and somewhat tenuous, Hume's understanding of the limitations causality and human understanding seems to have real merit. Essentially, we cannot totally rely on our five senses to gain knowledge of the external world.
All men by nature desire to know," writes Aristotle in his Metaphysics. It is this desire that has driven humankind to attempt to understand the basis of our knowledge about ourselves and the world about us. This desire likely began as soon as human self-insight developed, and has continued to the present day, as movies like the Matrix challenge our conceptions about reality and truth. Great philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, David Hume, and George Berkeley have made important contributions to this study of knowledge and reality. This paper will examine the insights of these philosophers, and their diverse understandings about the limitations of human knowledge and the external and internal world.
Plato, born in 428-7 B.C.E, was perhaps the earliest philosopher in the Western tradition to contemplate the nature of reality. He developed the theory of forms or ideas as the basis of human reality. To Plato, the world that perceive through our senses is only "an imitation of the pure, eternal, and unchanging world of the Forms" (The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Plato). To Plato, the idea or form of beauty can only be approximated...
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