Reality

Introduction

In the conventional view of reality, truth founds itself on sensible reality grounded on perceptions, and reflection concerning perception, of the world as we experience it. This view is related to, but not identical with, empiricism. Conventional reality has its basis in perspectives and is, accordingly, dependent on a particular point of view. For this reason it is considered to fall within convention since it relies to some extent on shared beliefs concerning experience that inn turn rely o perceptions from a particular point of view. There could be as many perspectives as there are people, these appearing with greater or lesser degrees of refinement with some perspectives being highly organized conceptualizations of the world, e.g., scientific theories of reality that use highly specialized methods to verify their findings.

Because of the regress problem, establishing a foundation of truth and reality is a problematic that underlies all disciplines, including mathematics. The desire to establish an underlying ground of all or part of reality, that is, to say what reality "really is" has been a long-standing preoccupation of philosophy and the sciences.

Platonic Realism

In Plato, philosophy concerns itself with the nature of Being itself, "what is." Platonic philosophy distinguishes between "what is" and material existence. What is Real is "what is" in itself. These are the Forms. Here is derived the term "Platonic Realism" which refers to a view of reality that grounds truth, the ultimate Reality, in a Being outside sensible reality, the Forms, and beyond the Forms, the Good that is beyond Being. For Plato, seeing the Forms does not depend on sensible perception but on another form of 'seeing' only possible for the soul [Ψυχή].

In Plato being is itself and nothing but itself. The Form of Justice is simply Justice itself. To define, we use predicates but a form would have no predicates in the usual sense we are accustomed to since its definition gives you something that has the same thing on either side such that Justice=Justice. No matter what predicates you add to a thing itself - the Form - for Plato, it remains the same. On the other hand, when we say that Mary has blue eyes and Bill has brown eyes, we refer to items pertaining to sensibility, particular biological traits.

In this sense, it is easier so see why, for Plato, knowledge is not 'acquired' but instead involves anamnesis. Real knowledge involves a vision of the shining of the Beautiful, its Eidos. For one thing, how would we bring something immutable into material life, such that we could acquire it? For another, would what we acquire be the Being of the Beautiful or merely another image of the Beautiful? The objects of immanent, sensible experience remind us of the 'thing itself.' We see a bed and this evokes the Idea of a bed, and so on. Knowledge is the extent to which you can connect the bed of experience to the immutable Form of the bed.

So there is a form of the relation between numbers, the form of specific numbers, and the abstraction of 'number itself. In immanent existence, the forms are all mixed up in matter and predicates abound. But what of the varying degree to which some of us are able to make these relations, to gain knowledge? I may see a beetle climbing on a branch and think about bugs. If I am no entomologist I may not go to the specific Form of beetle, only the form in general. My inability to understand the intricacy of number does not prevent me from a vision of the form of 'number' in general or the abstraction but may prevent me from seeing the intricacy of their relationships.

Because it is external to sensible version of reality, it does not seem that there can be change in something like Beauty or Justice. Inn life this appears to be true because these are all mixed up and we see justice and truth in varying degrees, as composed in matter, and able to be broken up, degrade, disperse or scatter. Plato's explanation is that the beautiful we experience is beautiful because it participates in the Form of Beauty, not in itself. Accordingly, if I want to know if a a sunset is beautiful, I go to the Form that gives the sunset its beauty. The relation of the particular sunset to Beauty is temporary. The sun goes down. The beauty of the sunset cannot fade. Perception of beauty in this world involve establishment of a relationship with what is truly Beautiful. Unlike finite beauty, the Form of the Beautiful has not beginning or end, no temporal status. When we perceive the beautiful sunset as being present, we soon perceive the facts to be otherwise when it has gone down. In thinking Platonic Realism, we must get around the idea of causality. The Real does not come to be and cease to be in a material sense. The scientific cause of the 'appearance' of a sunset, the movement of the sun, may have to do with the movements of bodies in space. The Form of the sun or of a sunset has no underlying, temporal cause. When we experience the sunset, all that has happened, from the point of view of Platonic Realism, is an experience of the beautiful itself. The bond to the beautiful of the sunset or to the Form of the sun itself is real but it is not the thing itself in virtue of itself. It is the establishment of a temporary relation.

Conventional reality, for Plato, is less than satisfactory and knowledge of it can be categorized as doxa,the stuff of beliefs and opinions, rather than the act of real knowledge. This would take the form of a 'seeing' rather than an 'acquiring'. The norm by which to measure Reality is the Form. Knowledge is simply to apply the Form to sensible things as if the Form were a yardstick.