Plato idea of equality
...hing else. There are many things for look similar but no matter how far or deep you look you will never find two things that are perfectly equal. A good example of this would be oranges. They all look alike but two are never perfectly equal. One last example is ball bearings because even though they are made by a machine to look the same, their very minute differences in the size and internal structure of them. Plato concludes that the only way to explain that people know that one equals one or I am me and you are you is that it had to have come from somewhere. He thinks that because there is no example of equality in the world for our senses to learn this idea, then the knowledge was pick up from our “preexisting soul”. He says that it was forgotten at birth, but the basic structure is there and only needs to come to maturity. This notion of remembering some knowledge is called by Plat “recollection” as we use our senses and experience to mature the ideas. This is a fine and dandy idea if he was trying to prove to himself the existence of the soul and to drive home the idea of the Forms. I look at it as you said in class. The facts the one equals one and all barking dogs bark are both true by definition. I don’t need to be in contact with the Forms to know that a cat is a cat. I use my experiences and senses data to learn the similarities and differences between things that look more-or-less equal. If a child is born into two different, one g...