On Giving Birth

Plato says it's better to give birth to true virtue rather than to give birth to images of virtue.

Isn't it better to give birth to a representation?

Plato is right. 

If you're able to produce a truth, that is better than producing an approximation of the truth. 

That doesn't mean that the representation might not be useful in certain situations, but if you have the whole truth, then that is better overall. 

In the case of virtue, Plato argues that people who act immorally are simply ignorant - if we know how we should act then we will do so. Here again, the whole truth is better than an approximation or representation. There are always elements of a representation which do not fully match that which is represented, and so that virtue, in representation form, would be incomplete, imperfect, and therefore less virtuous. 

Interesting, but how could we know something in representation form is imperfect if we have not grasped the perfected form?

Not eating for a couple of days would make one think about this more....

And where can we grasp the whole truth? If you say we've grasped it in the place in which this supposed truth is being grasped, then you would have two graspings - that which supposedly exists in the place where the truth is and moreover that which exists in your grasping it...

So how can you even say, in words, whether Plato was right??

Have in mind specifically Plato's Symposium in which when Diotima is speaking says, "The person is turned to the great sea of knowledge, and, gazing upon "this", he gives birth to many gloriously beautiful ideas and theories, in unstinting philosophy, until, having grown and strengthened there, he "catches sight" of such knowledge, and it is the knowledge of such beauty....."

It's a developmental process but clearly the question is why one should aim for some abstract thing, for example, why not stop at knowledge and go no further? Why not give birth in a representation, for that matter, how do you even know where you are giving birth, per se?

Basically he says to see the beauty in bodies, then souls, then laws, then knowledge, until finally you see the beauty in everything. 

But why see the beauty in everything? Isn't it better to not be so lulled?

In Plato's Republic the World of the Forms is where we grasp the truth. It is the world of illusions in which we live where we find representations (shadows and reflections). Plato is very clear, seek the truth, cast off anything which is not the truth. 

It's the Theaetetus where Plato tries to get to grips with what knowledge is, and he fails, and admits he fails. 

This refrain of 'how can we know' is not that interesting. It's enough that it's true and we believe it. 

Hemlock.

Right but when you say cast off that which is not the truth you are assuming that you know which is not the truth. It seems you're saying that everything that we see in our world is an illusion and so should be cast off? But I guess I'm not clear why necessarily everything we see isn't the truth, or, essentially, how we know what we don't see is the truth. Regarding your Theaetetus, if Plato fails to define, what is knowledge, then how you can say it's enough that something is true? You seem to say belief is sufficient for truth but that's still not clear... In Plato's On Representations of Truth (as well as his other dialogues) he believes this form of Truth is something you can see, you can evidence. If everything that you see in the world is an illusion, how can you see the truth as not an illusion?

man, you seriously need to stop sitting in your cellar for months on end in total darkness.

As I said, this refrain of 'how can we know' is not that interesting. It's barely philosophy.  

I definitely did not say that belief is sufficient for truth! That would be ludicrous. 

Plato wasn't interested in evidence, that's Aristotle's thing. Plato says that pure reason and rationality allow us to see the truth. He doesn't mean see he means see. Remember, according to Plato we 'experience' (not through our senses) the World of the Forms before we are incarnated in our bodies, so really, we are remembering the truth, rather than coming to know it ex nihilo. 

Can you explain the relevance of Generation Um... to Platonic thought? Sorry, I don't understand. 

So if we don't experience truth through our senses (as I think you're saying, that everything we perceive through the senses is untruth) then it really is a process, an exercise of "getting in touch with" our primordial "selves" - essentially freedom from conceptualizing what we perceive by sense. 

I guess the next question would be, well, the Meno's Paradox: how can you know that which is in you if it is fruitless to learn what you already know - because you already know it. You say truth is something to be remembered (perceived by the mind) rather than evidence (perceived by the senses). But if you say that the truth-possessor is possessing the truth, then I would say you are doubling your truths; that which exists in the truth in itself, and that which is connected with a truth-possessor. And surely this a problem?

My answer is yes.

It's not that we need to get in touch with ourselves. It's that we need to use reason to discover the truth. A simple examlpe would be solving 2x + 3 = 17. Pure reason allows us to discover the truth - that x = 7. A more interesting truth would be pythagoras' theorem, which can be deduced through pure reason. Or, ultimately, things as complex as the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem can be worked out deductively - through pure reason. 

Plato was confident that non-mathematical concepts such as beauty and justice can be worked out through pure reason too. 

The paradox is illosory, or, at least easily soluble. 'Learn' is the wrong word, we aren't really learning, we're recalling, recollecting, remembering etc. Correct the use of language and solve the problem (Wittgenstein, naturally). 

@kaynight - unless he was telekinetic. 

But if I recall correctly (could be completely wrong), Wittgenstein did say that the limits of language are the limits of our world. So how can you correct the use of language? If you say anything, example: That which has the characteristic of a recaller is recalling something, why do you need to say the recaller recalls, because then you have two recallings, that which exists in virtue of a recaller, and the act, the volition of recalling.

I guess it's not clear how you can even tell me here what anything is. Like Descartes famous Cogito, the self, speech - calling yourself I, is itself a representation of thought...