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Essay on Plato's Knowledge is Perception
Plato (ca. May 21 427 BC – ca. 347 BC), born Aristocles, was an immensely influential classical Greek philosopher, student of Socrates, teacher of Aristotle, writer, and founder of the Academy in Athens. In countries speaking Arabic, Turkish, Persian, or Urdu, he is called Eflatun, which means a spring of water, and, metaphorically, of knowledge.
Plato lectured extensively at the Academy, but he also wrote on many philosophical issues. The most important writings of Plato are his dialogues, although a handful of epigrams also survive, and some letters have come down to us under his name. It is believed that all the known dialogues of Plato survive; some of the dialogues which the Greeks ascribed to him are considered by the consensus of scholars to be either suspect (e.g., First Alcibiades, Clitophon) or probably spurious (such as Demodocus, or the Second Alcibiades).
Socrates is often a character in the dialogues of Plato. How much of the content and argument of any given dialogue is Socrates' point of view, and how much of it is Plato's, is heavily disputed. However, Plato was doubtless strongly influenced by Socrates' teachings, so many of the ideas presented, at least in his early works, were probably borrowings.
Plato believed that we learn in this life by remembering knowledge originally acquired in a previous life, and that the soul already has all knowledge, and we learn by recollecting what in fact the soul already knows.
Plato offers three analyses of knowledge, all of which he has Socrates reject. The first is that "knowledge and perception are the same." Socrates rejects this by saying that we can perceive without knowing and we can know without perceiving. In example, we can see and hear a foreign language without us knowing it. Therefore if we can perceive without knowing, then knowledge cannot be identical to perception....................
