Plato's Theory Of Forms Analysis

Here – along with the points made about leaving no stone unturned – we can introduce the concepts of assimilation, synthesis, dialectic, or other related notions as they characterize an Aristotelian approach. “Leaving no stone unturned” is first and foremost an activity directed toward the observable world itself; it is a slogan emphasizing one’s attitude toward gathering and integrating mind-independent facts. The mental integration involved here can be considered a form of assimilation/synthesis/dialectic: the bringing in of facts, reconstituting them as a whole in one’s mental architecture, approaching as much completeness as the subject matter and time/resource constraints allow. However, the facts of conflicting opinion, even of expert

That might be one way to modify Plato’s theory of Forms so that the reality of the Forms depends on the existence of human minds, even though that would be the only place they are contained. As his theory stands, however, the reality in which the Forms reside is both extra-mental and non-natural. Aristotle’s dialectical solution to the problems involved here was to acknowledge the reality of form, as part of the natural world, in unity with matter and governed by laws of causation subsuming form, matter, efficient cause (the force bringing about a change from one state to another), and final cause or telos. The problem Aristotle faced was one whereby he had to reconcile the kind of objective reality that would be provided by the existence of form – which he accepted – with the fact of impermanence, change, ephemeral fleetingness, and so on that characterizes the natural world, something that Plato downgraded to the status of something like mere appearance subordinate to the ultimate reality of the Forms. The latter he found as unsatisfactorily one-sided as the extreme opposite, namely that the fleetingness of appearances can’t provide us with enduring knowledge that is contained in the knowledge of Forms. The part that his dialectical analysis rejected is the insistence upon an independent, extra-mental realm of Forms, the plain and simple reason being – aside from a big problem regarding how the world’s concrete-particulars can so much as even “participate” in these abstract-universal Forms according the Platonic picture whereby these concrete-particulars provide some stimulus and glimpse into the underlying reality of the Forms – that the