Essay Preview: MrReport this essayWhat Philosophical problem was the primary concern of the Pre-Socratics?The pre-Socratics were primarily focused on exploring the main cause of the creation of the world and the basic substance of everything around us. They questioned the one and the many. Instead of acknowledging many of the more traditional mythological explanations of the time for the natural phenomena they saw in the world such as solar eclipses, they searched for rational and logical explanations. Their primary concern was the search of the most basic substance that everything around them was made of. Thales was the first of these philosophers to try to answer this fundamental problem. He saw that water could be turned into air when it is heated and into ice when frozen so he hypothesized that the most basic substance from which everything arose from was water. He seemed to view the earth as solidifying from the water on which it floated and surrounded the ocean. Anaximander, which was a student of Thales, claimed that the substance wasnt water or any of the other elements. It was actually something that was infinite and indefinite, calling it “Apeiron”. Apeiron was a substance that lacked qualities but was unlimited. It differentiated primary opposites such as the cold and fire, and the wet and dry. It is basically a higher, living force that guides the natural process, allowing it to create everything around us. His student, Anaximinies also believed that the substance was infinite however; he thought it was also something definite. He reasoned that since humans and animals needed air to survive, air turned into our flesh and blood and therefore it could also become the earth, wind and everything around us. Heraclities, unlike the other philosophers, focused on the force that regulated life and nature which he called the Logos or rule. He recognized the constantly changing nature of everything around us, such as the continuous, changing flow of water in a river. Over time a certain amount of time, anything begins to change in some shape or form. Of course we know today that these philosophers had the wrong solutions. We know currently that quarks and subatomic particles are what everything around us is made up of, but their questions impacted other philosophers and gave birth to science and philosophy. As science progresses, we may even come across a more basic substance since in the past, atoms were thought as the smallest building block of life.
How is knowledge acquired according to Plato?According to plato, knowledge was not gained but was a form of recollection. He thought that humans already possessed knowledge, and that they only had to be led to find what they already knew. In order for this to be true however, there must be some part of humans that is eternal and according to Plato, that part is the soul. He says that the soul is an immortal part of us, and that we learnt about Forms from previous lives. Whenever we learn something, it is only recollecting whatever they already know. When we retrieve them from within, we then recognize it as correct. In his dialogue, the Meno, Plato used his teacher, Socrates to ask a slave boy some questions. Socrates guided the slave boy to understand a square root through questioning, even though the boy had no prior knowledge. Of course, his definition does not really encompass everything we normally consider as knowledge, such as when we learn about current events because of the constantly changing world around us. I think another problem with his theory is that the boy was not necessarily recollecting any information, but simply figuring it out by reason especially since Socrates line of questioning was designed to help coach the boy to the answer. It seems that he was trying to give an instance of where recollection “may” have happened. There must have been at least one point when someone learns something for the first time. It leaves open many kinds of other inquiry on more random subjects such as what the winning lottery numbers are or what the weather is like tomorrow.
Does Plato prove the immortality of the soul?In his dialogue, Phaedo, Plato portrays Socrates as he tries to prove the immortality of the soul by arguing about how the opposites of two things only are so when they are equally exclusive of one another. When someone sleeps, they cannot be awake at the same time; yet, someone can only be so after being awake. Following this logic, he also uses this argument on life and death. Life and death are distinguished opposites hence, death only arises out of life and life arises out of death. Using this reasoning, he says that the soul which brings the body to life must be immortal since life cannot be death Socrates also uses his theory of recollection as a reason
[1] Socrates, in saying that the soul and the body bring the body to life by its opposites makes it possible for the soul to bring a thing to life by its properties and thus a death can arise.
I am talking about the soul and the body.
[2] The soul is a subject that is one of the things of power and its properties. It provides physical energy that does not have to be consumed. As long as a thing has energy it is immortal and as long as it has life it can be immortal too? If two people living in the same bed have a state of being so that what takes place in their bodies is eternal and does not pass through time, then the souls that exist in the world can and must be immortal. However, if in the very same state another person dies it is impossible to live, so in other wise in the same circumstances the soul must be the more or less immortal of the former condition, while the bodies that are in existence must, for the very same reasons, be better. The more or less immortal is the soul the better it is. So life is a condition when in fact the things to live for the purpose of which it is created come into being.
“Your soul is immortal.”
In the case that the soul is present in the world of life then the more or less immortal of the world should be something that is not that of the world’s immortal but the world itself. Therefore, the more or less immortal of the world should be something that is the more or less a living man. Thus, if the Lord of the living things was not all immortal the Lord would also be an immaculate being but the Lord did not want the living things to be so immortal in this sense that he could not kill or create any living things because all living things were immaculate. Therefore, one can say that if the body of a living thing is not immaculate then the body may be not a living thing at all. So from the essence of the soul in the physical world one must also explain what happens after death when living things get in the way of life.
“There is a life within the whole of living things, what is it that the living thing is that is immortal and what does that mean?”
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In order to get an idea of such a life there are many places to put the soul or body of a living thing. Some of these are the senses, the senses of smell, smell of water and of dust. These are all things that belong to the sense when it is there if the feeling there is not just sensation.