Today is one of his favorite lectures. There is a handout as well. It's okay if we don't understand this all today, but it should become clear by tomorrow.
These notes are just little asides to the divided line handout that he passed out and further explained. There should be a copy of this handout attached.
The act of imagining.
He said a litttle about this a while ago. About everyone imagining a statue of Buddah outside. Then he continued about his statue made of marshmallows.
You imagine images, and you conjecture as well. His example for conjecturing is that he and his girlfriend are walking in the movie theater because she is dragging him to see How Stella Got Her Grove Back. But as he walks he sees that there is another movie called Biker Sluts from Bosnia. And he knows that if he steers her toward that movie, she is going to slap him. That's conjecturing.
The next level of the divided line.
Beliefs you believe a definite claim. About objects in space and time. He can believe that there will be a wad of gum on the bottom of the chair, and then he can look and have his belief proven. Beliefs can be proven and disproven. You can see the wad of gum with the fleshy eye.
The next level of the divided line is where everyone messes up.
Ta Mathemata.Ta Mathemata = discursive knowledge of a theoretical or practical nature.
Many people get confused here because they take it to mean science. But Ta Mathemata means science but also so much more. It can include the knowledge from a physics book, to knowledge in a cook book, to the knowledge of the little Chinese pictures in a manual that teaches you how to work your new digital answering machine that won't work because you don't know how to use it.
Now we want to see what the slave boy saw when he came up with the answer.
Episteme (with an accent over the last e) means Intuition, or "seeing." This takes beliefs and proves it to be no or yes. You can have knowledge about the physical but when you "see" with the mind's eye you see the eide (also accent on the last e) or the Form or Essence of the physical thing. Essence is difined like this. Essence is that without which something could not be what it is. If you took the back and the legs off a chair, it's essence would not be a chair.
Here is a chair, Plato says that below the divided line is where there are objects in space and time. Plato calls this world of space and time, The Realm of Becoming. Also the world of change and the world of existence. And it is always more or less perfect. So this chair is only more or less perfect. This is almost like Heraclitus.
The many things that change share an eide. Things in the World of Becoming particpate in the other Realm, called The Realm of Being. In the Realm of Being, nothing changes, it just is. In the Realm of Becoming, you only remeber things that you just knew in the Realm of Being.
This is the final level of the divided line.
Noesis Ta Agatha now let’s break that down.
Noesis is seeing that you see.
Ta Agatha is something like "together good."
Noesis Ta Agatha means seeing that you see and seeing that it is all good.
So at the top of the divided line you can see everything that goes on below it all at once and know that it is good.
Plato says that moral truths are just like mathematical truths. Mathematical truths are based on imaginary things, but both are objective. Remember the Euthuphro. I can know this chair and you can know this chair so it's not in either one of our heads but because you and I know about the four but only when we think about it, it's not in our head but instead of being in the physical or Realm of Becoming, it's in the Realm of Being. Plato says that ideas are not in our heads as modern times think. He has not yet seen an accident on College and Prospect with someone's brains blown out and an idea along with it. Plato says that 4 exisited before man. And that the cure for AIDS is just forgotten.
Some people now don't understand the whole 4 thing and the straight lines, so Mr. Clark adds about how a chair that we see with our fleshy eye is only an example of chairness. So things in space and time are only examples or representations of what is in the Realm of Being.
Now, on the divided line, make sure that you remember that real without scarequotes goes above the line and real with scarequotes goes below the line. And see with scarequotes goes above the line and see without scarequotes goes below the line.
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