Philosophy - Reality and Plato

Metaphysics

Study of being/reality; asks what exists and what it means to exist.

Reality

Being; something that has existence and essence.

Essence/Being

WHAT it is; the nature that makes something the kind of thing it is.

Existence

THAT it is or the activity of being.

Perception

The brain's effort to understand what it's sensing.

Sensation

The raw information received through the senses before the mind interprets it.

First Principle/Axioms

Basic truths that do not need to be proved and serve as starting points for reasoning.

A priori

Learning without sensory experience or exposure through logic or reason alone.

Allegory

A story or representation in which the literal things symbolize a deeper meaning or truth.

Universals

Non-physical, invisible perfect forms of a particular shadow.

Particulars

Physical, individual things that derive their essence from the metaphysical world; a thing is a thing because of its relationship to the universal.

Privation

Something that cannot exist but is rather a deception of the absence of its opposite.

Plato founded…

the Academy of Athens

Plato founded the fields of…

1. 1. metaphysics

2. 2. epistemology