Our Senses Can Trick Us

REALISM

At eighteen, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven 

His writings cover many subjects – including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, linguistics, politics and government – and constitute the first comprehensive system of Western philosophy.

  The first genuine scientist in history

  Tutored Alexander the Great starting from 343 BC.

  He believed all peoples' concepts and all of their knowledge was ultimately based on

perception.   The “Father” of Realist Philosophy

Aristotle took Plato’s Theory of Forms in a different direction:For Aristotle:                   Form:  That which makes a thing what it is and not                               something else.                              Does not exist by itself, only in individual cases.

He spoke of “shoeness” and “appleness” and “Justice” but ONLY as they existed in INDIVIDUAL shoes, apples, and men like Atticus Finch            Matter:  Ties a thing down to a particular way of being in a                           particular time and place.                            LIMITS FORM into an individual instance.  

Matter and Form are not separate and do not exist without one another!

  

Potentiality-----------------------------------------------------------Actuality  Matter                                                               Form

A Realist believes that:  the basis for understanding reality is in the world of PHYSICAL THINGS and our perceptions and experiences of those THINGS. 

What is REAL?  The physical world, the world of things How do we know what we know?                 * 5 Senses  (see, hear, taste, smell, touch)                *Correspondence:  Using reason, logic, and 

the scientific method to make comparisons and deduce an understanding of what a thing 

is. What is the best way to act?   Following the patterns                                                   and structures set up in nature Natural Law:  There is an order (patterns and                         regularities) to nature that can be                          discovered through science 

Humans’ Role: *OBSERVERS: Using senses and

understanding of cause and effect*SPECTATOR of the “WORLD AS MACHINE”                      *metaphor                      *spectator:  observant and reasoning                                  human                      *world as machine: the world is                          controlled by laws that it can be made                         to reveal through the scientific                           method