Plato Vs. Materialists

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have claimed that the ideas were nothing more than names people have attached to the objects they perceive. Names of individual objects and of classes of objects are merely ways of organizing perceptions into knowledge. People see one animal they decide to call "dog." All similar animals are called "dogs," and a whole category of animals is thereby named without any reference to eternal ideas or forms. Materialists insist that all activities of mind and emotion are based on physical properties. One example of accounting for this is that thought is only the function of a material brain and caused by electrical connections within the brain tissue. Materialism states that all matter is made of atoms, which are limitless in number, and the different appearance of objects are a result of the difference in size and shape of atoms and by the different ways these atoms combine. When the conclusions of nuclear physicists are taken into account, especially their studies on atomic ...

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Socrates is always at the center of the discussion and is often contemptuous and ironical, but he never strays from the importance of the subject being discussed.
Plato first introduces his Theory of Forms in Book V. It is here that he compares knowledge and belief. Socrates points out that to know is to know some thing; thus, knowledge must have objects. Likewise, to believe is to believe something; therefore, belief also must have objects. But knowledge is different from belief in that knowledge is infallible. Knowledge also involves the fact that the thing known exists. The objects of knowledge are also unchanging and eternal. Belief, on the other hand, may be true or ...

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