Re: Financial topics
Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 8:02 am
A version of this question actually occurs in the Meno, where Meno asks Socrates:
How will you look for it [i.e. virtue], Socrates, when you do not know at all what it is? How will you aim to search for something you do not know at all? If you should meet with it, how will you know that this is the thing that you did not know?
This answer given to this in the Meno, of course, is just the theory of Recollection, that we already know what virtue is.
QUESTIONS ANSWERED BY PLATO'S THEORY OF FORMS: How can we use terms like "justice," "goodness," etc. to judge and condemn every actual instance of justice or goodness in the world? What are we talking about if it is not anything that we can actually see or point to in the world?
This is still a very serious issue in the 20th century, often called (after David Hume) the problem of "Is and Ought" (or "Fact and Value") since what we see in the world merely "is," yet when we talk about matters of value, we mean what "ought" to be. What "ought" to be doesn't always, or often (or ever), seem to exist, so how do we know about it?
How will you look for it [i.e. virtue], Socrates, when you do not know at all what it is? How will you aim to search for something you do not know at all? If you should meet with it, how will you know that this is the thing that you did not know?
This answer given to this in the Meno, of course, is just the theory of Recollection, that we already know what virtue is.
QUESTIONS ANSWERED BY PLATO'S THEORY OF FORMS: How can we use terms like "justice," "goodness," etc. to judge and condemn every actual instance of justice or goodness in the world? What are we talking about if it is not anything that we can actually see or point to in the world?
This is still a very serious issue in the 20th century, often called (after David Hume) the problem of "Is and Ought" (or "Fact and Value") since what we see in the world merely "is," yet when we talk about matters of value, we mean what "ought" to be. What "ought" to be doesn't always, or often (or ever), seem to exist, so how do we know about it?