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116-489: The concept of signs has been around for a long time, having been studied by many classic philosophers such as Plato , Aristotle , Augustine , William of Ockham , and Francis Bacon , among others. The term semiotics derives from the Greek root seme , as in semeiotikos (an 'interpreter of signs'). It was not until the early part of the 20th century, however, that Saussure and American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce brought

232-486: A Platonist or Pythagorean, in that such a one would have "the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable and effective tool of his research." British philosopher Alfred N. Whitehead is often misquoted of uttering the famous saying of "All of Western philosophy is a footnote to Plato." Many recent philosophers have also diverged from what some would describe as ideals characteristic of traditional Platonism. Friedrich Nietzsche notoriously attacked Plato's "idea of

348-488: A belief in the immortality of the soul, and several dialogues end with long speeches imagining the afterlife . In the Timaeus , Socrates locates the parts of the soul within the human body: Reason is located in the head, spirit in the top third of the torso , and the appetite in the middle third of the torso, down to the navel . Furthermore, Plato evinces a belief in the theory of reincarnation in multiple dialogues (such as

464-510: A cogent system that is regarded by some as the beginning of modern scientific psychology. William Shakespeare explored the role of the unconscious in many of his plays, without naming it as such. Western philosophers such as Arthur Schopenhauer , Baruch Spinoza , Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , Johann Gottlieb Fichte , Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann , Carl Gustav Carus , Søren Aabye Kierkegaard , Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and Thomas Carlyle used

580-560: A copy becoming more real than reality, the signifier becoming more important than the signified . French semiotician Roland Barthes used signs to explain the concept of connotation —cultural meanings attached to words—and denotation —literal or explicit meanings of words. Without Saussure's breakdown of signs into signified and signifier, however, these semioticians would not have had anything to base their concepts on. Saussure, in his 1916 Course in General Linguistics , divides

696-486: A critique of the Freudian unconscious. He argues that the Freudian cases of shallow, consciously held mental states would be best characterized as 'repressed consciousness,' while the idea of more deeply unconscious mental states is more problematic. He contends that the very notion of a collection of "thoughts" that exist in a privileged region of the mind such that they are in principle never accessible to conscious awareness,

812-400: A descendant of two kings, Codrus and Melanthus . His mother was Perictione , descendant of Solon , a statesman credited with laying the foundations of Athenian democracy . Plato had two brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus , a sister, Potone , and a half brother, Antiphon. Plato may have travelled to Italy, Sicily , Egypt, and Cyrene . At 40, he founded a school of philosophy,

928-489: A different doctrine with respect to Forms to Plato and Socrates. Aristotle suggests that Socrates' idea of forms can be discovered through investigation of the natural world, unlike Plato's Forms that exist beyond and outside the ordinary range of human understanding. The Socratic problem concerns how to reconcile these various accounts. The precise relationship between Plato and Socrates remains an area of contention among scholars. Although Socrates influenced Plato directly,

1044-483: A fellow disciple of Plato. A variety of sources have given accounts of Plato's death. One story, based on a mutilated manuscript, suggests Plato died in his bed, whilst a young Thracian girl played the flute to him. Another tradition suggests Plato died at a wedding feast. The account is based on Diogenes Laërtius's reference to an account by Hermippus, a third-century Alexandrian. According to Tertullian , Plato simply died in his sleep. According to Philodemus, Plato

1160-558: A few people were capable or interested in following a reasoned philosophical discourse, but men in general are attracted by stories and tales. Consequently, then, he used the myth to convey the conclusions of the philosophical reasoning. Notable examples include the story of Atlantis , the Myth of Er , and the Allegory of the Cave . When considering the taxonomic definition of mankind , Plato proposed

1276-472: A participant in any of the dialogues, and with the exception of the Apology , there is no suggestion that he heard any of the dialogues firsthand. Some dialogues have no narrator but have a pure "dramatic" form, some dialogues are narrated by Socrates himself, who speaks in the first person. The Symposium is narrated by Apollodorus, a Socratic disciple, apparently to Glaucon. Apollodorus assures his listener that he

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1392-409: A sign "depends on its relation to other words within the system;" for example, to understand an individual word such as "tree," one must also understand the word "bush" and how the two relate to each other. It is this difference from other signs that allows the possibility of a speech community. However, we need to remember that signifiers and their significance change all the time, becoming "dated." It

1508-419: A tripartite class structure corresponding to the appetite/spirit/reason structure of the individual soul. The appetite/spirit/reason are analogous to the castes of society. According to Socrates, a state made up of different kinds of souls will, overall, decline from an aristocracy (rule by the best) to a timocracy (rule by the honourable), then to an oligarchy (rule by the few), then to a democracy (rule by

1624-496: A very special mechanism is situated at their intersection. Oddly enough, it is a face: the white wall/black hole system. […] The gaze is but secondary in relation to the gazeless eyes, to the black hole of faciality. The mirror is but secondary in relation to the white wall of faciality. What distinguishes this radical use and systemization of the signified and the signifier as interplaying in subjectivity from Lacan and Sartre as well as their philosophical predecessors in general

1740-493: Is a central figure in the history of Western philosophy . Plato's entire body of work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years—unlike that of nearly all of his contemporaries. Although their popularity has fluctuated, they have consistently been read and studied through the ages. Through Neoplatonism , he also greatly influenced both Christian and Islamic philosophy . In modern times, Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of

1856-752: Is already implicitly known, or at exposing the contradictions and muddles of an opponent's position." Karl Popper , on the other hand, claims that dialectic is the art of intuition for "visualising the divine originals, the Forms or Ideas, of unveiling the Great Mystery behind the common man's everyday world of appearances". During the early Renaissance, the Greek language and, along with it, Plato's texts were reintroduced to Western Europe by Byzantine scholars. Some 250 known manuscripts of Plato survive. In September or October 1484 Filippo Valori and Francesco Berlinghieri printed 1025 copies of Ficino's translation, using

1972-477: Is also referenced by Jewish philosopher and Talmudic scholar Maimonides in his The Guide for the Perplexed . The works of Plato were again revived at the times of Islamic Golden ages with other Greek contents through their translation from Greek to Arabic. Neoplatonism was revived from its founding father, Plotinus. Neoplatonism, a philosophical current that permeated Islamic scholarship, accentuated one facet of

2088-407: Is being thought by a thinker or that it could be thought by a thinker. Processes that are not causally related to the phenomenon called thinking are more appropriately called the nonconscious processes of the brain. Other critics of the Freudian unconscious include David Stannard , Richard Webster , Ethan Watters , Richard Ofshe , and Eric Thomas Weber. Some scientific researchers proposed

2204-502: Is by no means universally accepted, though Plato's works are still often characterized as falling at least roughly into three groups stylistically. Plato's unwritten doctrines are, according to some ancient sources, the most fundamental metaphysical teaching of Plato, which he disclosed only orally, and some say only to his most trusted fellows, and which he may have kept secret from the public, although many modern scholars doubt these claims. A reason for not revealing it to everyone

2320-417: Is essentially self-conscious. Sartre also argues that Freud's theory of repression is internally flawed. Philosopher Thomas Baldwin argues that Sartre's argument is based on a misunderstanding of Freud. Erich Fromm contends that "The term 'the unconscious' is actually a mystification (even though one might use it for reasons of convenience, as I am guilty of doing in these pages). There is no such thing as

2436-498: Is in this way that we are all "practicing semioticians who pay a great deal of attention to signs … even though we may never have heard them before." Moreover, while words are the most familiar form signs take, they stand for many things within life, such as advertisement, objects, body language, music, and so on. Therefore, the use of signs, and the two components that make up a sign, can be and are—whether consciously or not—applied to everyday life. Jacques Lacan presented formulas for

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2552-410: Is incoherent. This is not to imply that there are not "nonconscious" processes that form the basis of much of conscious life. Rather, Searle simply claims that to posit the existence of something that is like a "thought" in every way except for the fact that no one can ever be aware of it (can never, indeed, "think" it) is an incoherent concept. To speak of "something" as a "thought" either implies that it

2668-555: Is not conscious, but rather that which is actively repressed from conscious thought. In the psychoanalytic view, unconscious mental processes can only be recognized through analysis of their effects in consciousness. Unconscious thoughts are not directly accessible to ordinary introspection, but they are capable of partially evading the censorship mechanism of repression in a disguised form, manifesting, for example, as dream elements or neurotic symptoms . Such symptoms are supposed to be capable of being "interpreted" during psychoanalysis, with

2784-497: Is partially discussed in Phaedrus where Plato criticizes the written transmission of knowledge as faulty, favouring instead the spoken logos : "he who has knowledge of the just and the good and beautiful ... will not, when in earnest, write them in ink, sowing them through a pen with words, which cannot defend themselves by argument and cannot teach the truth effectually." It is, however, said that Plato once disclosed this knowledge to

2900-412: Is recounting the story, which took place when he himself was an infant, not from his own memory, but as remembered by Aristodemus, who told him the story years ago. The Theaetetus is also a peculiar case: a dialogue in dramatic form embedded within another dialogue in dramatic form. Some scholars take this as an indication that Plato had by this date wearied of the narrated form. In most of the dialogues,

3016-427: Is structured into a unified field through the intervention of a certain 'nodal point' (Lacanian point de capiton ) which 'quilts' them [to] […] the 'rigid designator', which totalizes an ideology by bringing to a halt the metonymic sliding of its signified […] it is a signifier without the signified'. The signified is [an untranslatable , atmospheric irreducibility of the-chain-of- signifiers - abstracted ];

3132-626: Is that which represents a subject ( fantasy - construct ) for another signifier'. Originating in an idea from Lévi-Strauss, the concept of floating signifiers, or empty signifiers, has since been repurposed in Lacanian theory as the concept of signifiers that are not linked to tangible things by any specific reference for them, and are "floating" or "empty" because of this separation. Slavoj Žižek defines this in The Sublime Object of Ideology as follows: [T]he multitude of 'floating signifiers' […]

3248-510: Is that, beyond a resolution with the oppressive forces of faciality and the dominance of the face, Deleuze and Guattari reproach the preservation of the face as a system of a tight regulation of signifiers and destruction of signs, declaring that "if human beings have a destiny, it is rather to escape the face, to dismantle the face and facializations". Plato Plato ( / ˈ p l eɪ t oʊ / PLAY -toe ; Greek : Πλάτων, Plátōn , born c.  428-423 BC, died 348 BC),

3364-438: Is the focusing of the energy of several ideas into one, and displacement is the surrender of one idea's energy to another more trivial representative. The manifest content is thus thought to be a highly significant simplification of the latent content, capable of being deciphered in the analytic process, potentially allowing conscious insight into unconscious mental activity. Allan Hobson and colleagues developed what they called

3480-477: Is virtue. In the Republic , Plato poses the question, "What is justice?" and by examining both individual justice and the justice that informs societies, Plato is able not only to inform metaphysics, but also ethics and politics with the question: "What is the basis of moral and social obligation?" Plato's well-known answer rests upon the fundamental responsibility to seek wisdom, wisdom which leads to an understanding of

3596-525: The Gorgias and his ambivalence toward rhetoric expressed in the Phaedrus . But other contemporary researchers contest the idea that Plato despised rhetoric and instead view his dialogues as a dramatization of complex rhetorical principles. Plato made abundant use of mythological narratives in his own work; It is generally agreed that the main purpose for Plato in using myths was didactic. He considered that only

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3712-529: The Laws features Socrates, although many dialogues, including the Timaeus and Statesman , feature him speaking only rarely. Leo Strauss notes that Socrates' reputation for irony casts doubt on whether Plato's Socrates is expressing sincere beliefs. Xenophon 's Memorabilia and Aristophanes 's The Clouds seem to present a somewhat different portrait of Socrates from the one Plato paints. Aristotle attributes

3828-611: The Republic was prototypically totalitarian ; this has been disputed. Edmund Gettier famously demonstrated the Gettier problem for the justified true belief account of knowledge. That the modern theory of justified true belief as knowledge, which Gettier addresses, is equivalent to Plato's is, however, accepted only by some scholars but rejected by others. Primary sources (Greek and Roman) Secondary sources Unconscious mind In psychoanalysis and other psychological theories,

3944-645: The Academy . It was located in Athens, on a plot of land in the Grove of Hecademus or Academus , named after an Attic hero in Greek mythology . The Academy operated until it was destroyed by Sulla in 84 BC. Many philosophers studied at the Academy, the most prominent being Aristotle. According to Diogenes Laërtius , throughout his later life, Plato became entangled with the politics of

4060-527: The Meno , Socrates uses a geometrical example to expound Plato's view that knowledge in this latter sense is acquired by recollection. Socrates elicits a fact concerning a geometrical construction from a slave boy, who could not have otherwise known the fact (due to the slave boy's lack of education). The knowledge must be of, Socrates concludes, an eternal, non-perceptible Form. Plato also discusses several aspects of epistemology . In several dialogues, Socrates inverts

4176-448: The Phaedo and Timaeus ). Scholars debate whether he intends the theory to be literally true, however. He uses this idea of reincarnation to introduce the concept that knowledge is a matter of recollection of things acquainted with before one is born, and not of observation or study. Keeping with the theme of admitting his own ignorance, Socrates regularly complains of his forgetfulness. In

4292-649: The Renaissance , George Gemistos Plethon brought Plato's original writings to Florence from Constantinople in the century of its fall. Many of the greatest early modern scientists and artists who broke with Scholasticism , with the support of the Plato-inspired Lorenzo (grandson of Cosimo), saw Plato's philosophy as the basis for progress in the arts and sciences. The 17th century Cambridge Platonists , sought to reconcile Plato's more problematic beliefs, such as metempsychosis and polyamory, with Christianity. By

4408-735: The Scholastic philosophers referred to Aristotle as "the Philosopher". The only Platonic work known to western scholarship was Timaeus , until translations were made after the fall of Constantinople , which occurred during 1453. However, the study of Plato continued in the Byzantine Empire , the Caliphates during the Islamic Golden Age , and Spain during the Golden age of Jewish culture . Plato

4524-461: The activation-synthesis hypothesis which proposes that dreams are simply the side effects of the neural activity in the brain that produces beta brain waves during REM sleep that are associated with wakefulness. According to this hypothesis, neurons fire periodically during sleep in the lower brain levels and thus send random signals to the cortex . The cortex then synthesizes a dream in reaction to these signals in order to try to make sense of why

4640-418: The attentional blink ) or through distracting stimuli like visual masking . An extensive line of research conducted by Hasher and Zacks has demonstrated that individuals register information about the frequency of events automatically (outside conscious awareness and without engaging conscious information processing resources). Moreover, perceivers do this unintentionally, truly "automatically", regardless of

4756-428: The disclosed barrier (between the-chain-of-signifiers qua signified) is a metaphor - repression - transference journey through place . In their theory of schizoanalysis , Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari made radical uses of the ideas of the signified and the signifier following Lacan. In A Thousand Plateaus , extending from their ideas of deterritorialization and reterritorialization , they developed

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4872-610: The justified true belief definition in the Theaetetus , concluding that justification (or an "account") would require knowledge of difference , meaning that the definition of knowledge is circular . In the Sophist , Statesman , Republic , Timaeus , and the Parmenides , Plato associates knowledge with the apprehension of unchanging Forms and their relationships to one another (which he calls "expertise" in dialectic), including through

4988-457: The metaphysical tradition that strongly influenced Plato and continues today. Heraclitus viewed all things as continuously changing , that one cannot "step into the same river twice" due to the ever-changing waters flowing through it, and all things exist as a contraposition of opposites. According to Diogenes Laërtius, Plato received these ideas through Heraclitus' disciple Cratylus . Parmenides adopted an altogether contrary vision, arguing for

5104-456: The unconscious mind (or the unconscious ) is the part of the psyche that is not available to introspection. Although these processes exist beneath the surface of conscious awareness, they are thought to exert an effect on conscious thought processes and behavior. Empirical evidence suggests that unconscious phenomena include repressed feelings and desires, memories, automatic skills, subliminal perceptions , and automatic reactions. The term

5220-410: The unconscious; there are only experiences of which we are aware, and others of which we are not aware, that is, of which we are unconscious . If I hate a man because I am afraid of him, and if I am aware of my hate but not of my fear, we may say that my hate is conscious and that my fear is unconscious; still my fear does not lie in that mysterious place: 'the' unconscious." John Searle has offered

5336-435: The "twin pillars of Platonism" as the theory of Forms, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the doctrine of immortality of the soul. In the dialogues Socrates regularly asks for the meaning of a general term (e. g. justice, truth, beauty), and criticizes those who instead give him particular examples, rather than the quality shared by all examples. "Platonism" and its theory of Forms (also known as 'theory of Ideas') denies

5452-464: The 19th century, Plato's reputation was restored, and at least on par with Aristotle's. Plato's influence has been especially strong in mathematics and the sciences. Plato's resurgence further inspired some of the greatest advances in logic since Aristotle, primarily through Gottlob Frege . Albert Einstein suggested that the scientist who takes philosophy seriously would have to avoid systematization and take on many different roles, and possibly appear as

5568-571: The 1st century AD: Axiochus , Definitions , Demodocus , Epigrams , Eryxias , Halcyon , On Justice , On Virtue , Sisyphus . No one knows the exact order Plato's dialogues were written in, nor the extent to which some might have been later revised and rewritten. The works are usually grouped into Early (sometimes by some into Transitional ), Middle , and Late period; The following represents one relatively common division amongst developmentalist scholars. Whereas those classified as "early dialogues" often conclude in aporia ,

5684-769: The European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." There is a traditional story that Plato ( Ancient Greek : Πλάτων , Plátōn , from Ancient Greek : πλατύς , romanized :  platys , lit.   'broad') is a nickname . According to Diogenes Laërtius, writing hundreds of years after Plato's death, his birth name was Aristocles ( Ἀριστοκλῆς ), meaning 'best reputation'. "Platon" sounds like "Platus" or "Platos", meaning "broad", and according to Diogenes' sources, Plato gained his nickname either from his wrestling coach, Ariston of Argos, who dubbed him "broad" on account of his chest and shoulders, or he gained it from

5800-742: The Form of the Good. Plato views "The Good" as the supreme Form, somehow existing even "beyond being". In this manner, justice is obtained when knowledge of how to fulfill one's moral and political function in society is put into practice. The dialogues also discuss politics. Some of Plato's most famous doctrines are contained in the Republic as well as in the Laws and the Statesman . Because these opinions are not spoken directly by Plato and vary between dialogues, they cannot be straightforwardly assumed as representing Plato's own views. Socrates asserts that societies have

5916-553: The Forms are the causes of everything else, he [i.e. Plato] supposed that their elements are the elements of all things. Accordingly, the material principle is the Great and Small [i.e. the Dyad], and the essence is the One ( τὸ ἕν ), since the numbers are derived from the Great and Small by participation in the One". "From this account it is clear that he only employed two causes: that of the essence, and

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6032-607: The Forms were the truths of geometry , such as the Pythagorean theorem . The theory of Forms is first introduced in the Phaedo dialogue (also known as On the Soul ), wherein Socrates disputes the pluralism of Anaxagoras , then the most popular response to Heraclitus and Parmenides. For Plato, as was characteristic of ancient Greek philosophy, the soul was that which gave life. Plato advocates

6148-537: The Islamic context, Neoplatonism facilitated the integration of Platonic philosophy with mystical Islamic thought, fostering a synthesis of ancient philosophical wisdom and religious insight. Inspired by Plato's Republic, Al-Farabi extended his inquiry beyond mere political theory, proposing an ideal city governed by philosopher-kings . Many of these commentaries on Plato were translated from Arabic into Latin and as such influenced Medieval scholastic philosophers. During

6264-451: The Qur’anic conception of God—the transcendent—while seemingly neglecting another—the creative. This philosophical tradition, introduced by Al-Farabi and subsequently elaborated upon by figures such as Avicenna , postulated that all phenomena emanated from the divine source. It functioned as a conduit, bridging the transcendental nature of the divine with the tangible reality of creation. In

6380-415: The brain is sending them. However, the hypothesis does not state that dreams are meaningless, it just downplays the role that emotional factors play in determining dreams. There is an extensive body of research in contemporary cognitive psychology devoted to mental activity that is not mediated by conscious awareness. Most of this research on unconscious processes has been done in the academic tradition of

6496-403: The brain structure of every individual". In addition to the structure of the unconscious, Jung differed from Freud in that he did not believe that sexuality was at the base of all unconscious thoughts. The purpose of dreams, according to Freud, is to fulfill repressed wishes while simultaneously allowing the dreamer to remain asleep. The dream is a disguised fulfillment of the wish because

6612-547: The breadth of his eloquence, or his wide forehead. Philodemus , in extracts from the Herculaneum papyri , corroborates the claim that Plato was named for his "broad forehead". Seneca the Younger , writing hundreds of years after Plato's death, writes "His very name was given him because of his broad chest." According to the traditional story, Plato was originally named after his paternal grandfather, supposedly called Aristocles;

6728-480: The causation of good and of evil". The most important aspect of this interpretation of Plato's metaphysics is the continuity between his teaching and the Neoplatonic interpretation of Plotinus or Ficino which has been considered erroneous by many but may in fact have been directly influenced by oral transmission of Plato's doctrine. A modern scholar who recognized the importance of the unwritten doctrine of Plato

6844-491: The character of a writer were attributed to that writer even when the actual author was unknown. The works taken as genuine in antiquity but are now doubted by at least some modern scholars are: Alcibiades I (*), Alcibiades II (‡), Clitophon (*), Epinomis (‡), Letters (*), Hipparchus (‡), Menexenus (*), Minos (‡), Lovers (‡), Theages (‡) The following works were transmitted under Plato's name in antiquity, but were already considered spurious by

6960-420: The city of Syracuse , where he attempted to replace the tyrant Dionysius , with Dionysius's brother-in-law, Dion of Syracuse , whom Plato had recruited as one of his followers, but the tyrant himself turned against Plato. Plato almost faced death, but was sold into slavery. Anniceris , a Cyrenaic philosopher, bought Plato's freedom for twenty minas , and sent him home. Philodemus however states that Plato

7076-484: The common man's intuition about what is knowable and what is real. Reality is unavailable to those who use their senses. Socrates says that he who sees with his eyes is blind. While most people take the objects of their senses to be real if anything is, Socrates is contemptuous of people who think that something has to be graspable in the hands to be real. In the Theaetetus , he says such people are eu amousoi (εὖ ἄμουσοι), an expression that means literally, "happily without

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7192-542: The complete written philosophical work of Plato, based on the first century AD arrangement of Thrasyllus of Mendes . The modern standard complete English edition is the 1997 Hackett Plato: Complete Works , edited by John M. Cooper. Thirty-five dialogues and thirteen letters (the Epistles ) have traditionally been ascribed to Plato, though modern scholarship doubts the authenticity of at least some of these. Jowett mentions in his Appendix to Menexenus, that works which bore

7308-410: The concept of form as distinct from matter, and that the physical world is an imitation of an eternal mathematical world. These ideas were very influential on Heraclitus, Parmenides and Plato. The two philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides , influenced by earlier pre-Socratic Greek philosophers such as Pythagoras and Xenophanes , departed from mythological explanations for the universe and began

7424-547: The context of manifold, jumbled sense data that the mind organizes at an unconscious level before revealing it as a cogent totality in conscious form." Eduard von Hartmann published a book dedicated to the topic, Philosophy of the Unconscious , in 1869. Sigmund Freud and his followers developed an account of the unconscious mind. He worked with the unconscious mind to develop an explanation for mental illness. It plays an important role in psychoanalysis . Freud divided

7540-477: The differences between conscious and unconscious perception. There is evidence that whether something is consciously perceived depends both on the incoming stimulus (bottom up strength) and on top-down mechanisms like attention . Recent research indicates that some unconsciously perceived information can become consciously accessible if there is cumulative evidence. Similarly, content that would normally be conscious can become unconscious through inattention (e.g. in

7656-487: The doctrines that would later become known as Platonism . Plato's most famous contribution is the theory of forms (or ideas) , which has been interpreted as advancing a solution to what is now known as the problem of universals . He was decisively influenced by the pre-Socratic thinkers Pythagoras , Heraclitus , and Parmenides , although much of what is known about them is derived from Plato himself. Along with his teacher Socrates , and Aristotle , his student, Plato

7772-492: The existence of unconscious mechanisms that are very different from the Freudian ones. They speak of a "cognitive unconscious" ( John Kihlstrom ), an " adaptive unconscious " ( Timothy Wilson ), or a "dumb unconscious" (Loftus and Klinger), which executes automatic processes but lacks the complex mechanisms of repression and symbolic return of the repressed, and the "deep unconscious system" of Robert Langs . In modern cognitive psychology , many researchers have sought to strip

7888-453: The famous Euthyphro dilemma in the dialogue of the same name: "Is the pious ( τὸ ὅσιον ) loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" ( 10a ) In the Protagoras dialogue it is argued through Socrates that virtue is innate and cannot be learned, that no one does bad on purpose, and to know what is good results in doing what is good; that knowledge

8004-533: The good itself" along with many fundamentals of Christian morality, which he interpreted as "Platonism for the masses" in Beyond Good and Evil (1886). Martin Heidegger argued against Plato's alleged obfuscation of Being in his incomplete tome, Being and Time (1927). Karl Popper argued in the first volume of The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) that Plato's proposal for a " utopian " political regime in

8120-424: The help of methods such as free association , dream analysis, and analysis of verbal slips and other unintentional manifestations in conscious life. Carl Gustav Jung agreed with Freud that the unconscious is a determinant of personality, but he proposed that the unconscious be divided into two layers: the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious . The personal unconscious is a reservoir of material that

8236-445: The hidden or disguised meaning of the events and elements of the dream. It represents the unconscious psychic realities of the dreamer's current issues and childhood conflicts, the nature of which the analyst is seeking to understand through interpretation of the manifest content. In Freud's theory, dreams are instigated by the events and thoughts of everyday life. In what he called the "dream-work", these events and thoughts, governed by

8352-424: The highest importance." In 1890, when psychoanalysis was still unheard of, William James , in his monumental treatise on psychology ( The Principles of Psychology ), examined the way Schopenhauer , von Hartmann , Janet , Binet and others had used the term 'unconscious' and 'subconscious.'" German psychologists, Gustav Fechner and Wilhelm Wundt , had begun to use the term in their experimental psychology, in

8468-494: The history and development of words and language over time. Succeeding these founders were numerous philosophers and linguists who defined themselves as semioticians. These semioticians have each brought their own concerns to the study of signs. Umberto Eco (1976), a distinguished Italian semiotician, came to the conclusion that "if signs can be used to tell the truth, they can also be used to lie." Postmodernist social theorist Jean Baudrillard spoke of hyperreality , referring to

8584-439: The idea of "faciality" to refer to the interplay of signifiers in the process of subjectification and the production of subjectivity . The "face" in faciality is a system that "brings together a despotic wall of interconnected signifiers and passional black holes of subjective absorption". Black holes, fixed on white walls which antagonized flows bounce off of, are the active destruction, or deterritorialization, of signs. What makes

8700-768: The idea of a changeless, eternal universe and the view that change is an illusion. Plato's most self-critical dialogue is the Parmenides , which features Parmenides and his student Zeno , which criticizes Plato's own metaphysical theories. Plato's Sophist dialogue includes an Eleatic stranger. These ideas about change and permanence, or becoming and Being, influenced Plato in formulating his theory of Forms. In Plato's dialogues, Socrates and his company of disputants had something to say on many subjects, including several aspects of metaphysics . These include religion and science, human nature, love, and sexuality. More than one dialogue contrasts perception and reality , nature and custom, and body and soul. Francis Cornford identified

8816-503: The ideas of the signified and the signifier in his texts and seminars, specifically repurposing Freud's ideas to describe the roles that the signified and the signifier serve as follows: There is a 'barrier' of repression between Signifiers (the unconscious mind : 'discourse of the Other ') and the signified […] a ' chain ' of signifiers is analogous to the 'rings of a necklace that is a ring in another necklace made of rings' […] 'The signifier

8932-535: The influence of Pythagoras , or in a broader sense, the Pythagoreans, such as Archytas also appears to have been significant. Aristotle and Cicero both claimed that the philosophy of Plato closely followed the teachings of the Pythagoreans . According to R. M. Hare , this influence consists of three points: Pythagoras held that all things are number, and the cosmos comes from numerical principles. He introduced

9048-434: The information processing paradigm. The cognitive tradition of research into unconscious processes does not rely on the clinical observations and theoretical bases of the psychoanalytic tradition; instead it is mostly data driven. Cognitive research reveals that individuals automatically register and acquire more information than they are consciously aware of or can consciously remember and report. Much research has focused on

9164-484: The instructions they receive, and regardless of the information processing goals they have. The ability to unconsciously and relatively accurately tally the frequency of events appears to have little or no relation to the individual's age, education, intelligence, or personality. Thus it may represent one of the fundamental building blocks of human orientation in the environment and possibly the acquisition of procedural knowledge and experience, in general. The notion that

9280-546: The material cause; for the Forms are the cause of the essence in everything else, and the One is the cause of it in the Forms. He also tells us what the material substrate is of which the Forms are predicated in the case of sensible things, and the One in that of the Forms ;– that it is this the duality (the Dyad, ἡ δυάς ), the Great and Small ( τὸ μέγα καὶ τὸ μικρόν ). Further, he assigned to these two elements respectively

9396-510: The mechanism of repression : anxiety-producing impulses in childhood are barred from consciousness, but do not cease to exist, and exert a constant pressure in the direction of consciousness. However, the content of the unconscious is only knowable to consciousness through its representation in a disguised or distorted form, by way of dreams and neurotic symptoms, as well as in slips of the tongue and jokes . The psychoanalyst seeks to interpret these conscious manifestations in order to understand

9512-414: The mind into the conscious mind (or the ego ) and the unconscious mind. The latter was then further divided into the id (or instincts and drive) and the superego (or conscience ). In this theory, the unconscious refers to the mental processes of which individuals are unaware. Freud proposed a vertical and hierarchical architecture of human consciousness: the conscious mind , the preconscious , and

9628-405: The muses". In other words, such people are willingly ignorant, living without divine inspiration and access to higher insights about reality. Many have interpreted Plato as stating – even having been the first to write – that knowledge is justified true belief , an influential view that informed future developments in epistemology. Plato also identified problems with

9744-482: The name "Plato" was only used as a nickname; and the philosopher could not have been named "Plato" because that name does not occur previously in his family line. Modern scholarship tends to reject the "Aristocles" story. Plato always called himself Platon . Platon was a fairly common name (31 instances are known from Athens alone), including people named before Plato was born. Robin Waterfield states that Plato

9860-595: The nature of the repressed. The unconscious mind can be seen as the source of dreams and automatic thoughts (those that appear without any apparent cause), the repository of forgotten memories (that may still be accessible to consciousness at some later time), and the locus of implicit knowledge (the things that we have learned so well that we do them without thinking). Phenomena related to semi-consciousness include awakening , implicit memory , subliminal messages , trances , hypnagogia and hypnosis . While sleep , sleepwalking , dreaming , delirium and comas may signal

9976-402: The notion of the unconscious from its Freudian heritage, and alternative terms such as "implicit" or "automatic" have been used. These traditions emphasize the degree to which cognitive processing happens outside the scope of cognitive awareness, and show that things we are unaware of can nonetheless influence other cognitive processes as well as behavior. Active research traditions related to

10092-660: The other hand, if one derives one's account of something by way of the non-sensible Forms, because these Forms are unchanging, so too is the account derived from them. That apprehension of Forms is required for knowledge may be taken to cohere with Plato's theory in the Theaetetus and Meno . Indeed, the apprehension of Forms may be at the base of the account required for justification, in that it offers foundational knowledge which itself needs no account, thereby avoiding an infinite regression . Several dialogues discuss ethics including virtue and vice, pleasure and pain, crime and punishment, and justice and medicine. Socrates presents

10208-547: The people), and finally to tyranny (rule by one person, rule by a tyrant). Several dialogues tackle questions about art, including rhetoric and rhapsody. Socrates says that poetry is inspired by the muses , and is not rational. He speaks approvingly of this, and other forms of divine madness (drunkenness, eroticism, and dreaming) in the Phaedrus , and yet in the Republic wants to outlaw Homer's great poetry, and laughter as well. Scholars often view Plato's philosophy as at odds with rhetoric due to his criticisms of rhetoric in

10324-417: The poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge (in his Biographia Literaria ). Some rare earlier instances of the term "unconsciousness" ( Unbewußtseyn ) can be found in the work of the 18th-century German physician and philosopher Ernst Platner . Influences on thinking that originate from outside an individual's consciousness were reflected in the ancient ideas of temptation, divine inspiration, and

10440-487: The power exerted by the face of a subject possible is that, creating an intense initial confusion of meaning, it continues to signify through its persistent refusal to signify. Significance is never without a white wall upon which it inscribes its signs and redundancies. Subjectification is never without a black hole in which it lodges its consciousness, passion, and redundancies. Since all semiotics are mixed and strata come at least in twos, it should come as no surprise that

10556-716: The predominant role of the gods in affecting motives and actions. The idea of internalised unconscious processes in the mind was present in antiquity, and has been explored across a wide variety of cultures. Unconscious aspects of mentality were referred to between 2,500 and 600 BC in the Hindu texts known as the Vedas , found today in Ayurvedic medicine. Paracelsus is credited as the first to make mention of an unconscious aspect of cognition in his work Von den Krankheiten (translates as "About illnesses", 1567), and his clinical methodology created

10672-421: The presence of unconscious processes, these processes are seen as symptoms rather than the unconscious mind itself. Some critics have doubted the existence of the unconscious altogether. The term "unconscious" ( German : unbewusst ) was coined by the 18th-century German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling (in his System of Transcendental Idealism , ch. 6, § 3 ) and later introduced into English by

10788-465: The primary speaker is Socrates, who employs a method of questioning which proceeds by a dialogue form called dialectic. The role of dialectic in Plato's thought is contested but there are two main interpretations: a type of reasoning and a method of intuition. Simon Blackburn adopts the first, saying that Plato's dialectic is "the process of eliciting the truth by means of questions aimed at opening out what

10904-577: The printing press  [ it ] at the Dominican convent of San Jacopo di Ripoli  [ it ] . The 1578 edition of Plato's complete works published by Henricus Stephanus ( Henri Estienne ) in Geneva also included parallel Latin translation and running commentary by Joannes Serranus ( Jean de Serres ). It was this edition which established standard Stephanus pagination , still in use today. The text of Plato as received today apparently represents

11020-420: The processes of collection and division . More explicitly, Plato himself argues in the Timaeus that knowledge is always proportionate to the realm from which it is gained. In other words, if one derives one's account of something experientially, because the world of sense is in flux, the views therein attained will be mere opinions. Meanwhile, opinions are characterized by a lack of necessity and stability. On

11136-609: The public in his lecture On the Good ( Περὶ τἀγαθοῦ ), in which the Good ( τὸ ἀγαθόν ) is identified with the One (the Unity, τὸ ἕν ), the fundamental ontological principle. The first witness who mentions its existence is Aristotle, who in his Physics writes: "It is true, indeed, that the account he gives there [i.e. in Timaeus ] of the participant is different from what he says in his so-called unwritten teachings ( Ancient Greek : ἄγραφα δόγματα , romanized :  agrapha dogmata )." In Metaphysics he writes: "Now since

11252-695: The reality of the material world, considering it only an image or copy of the real world. According to this theory of Forms, there are these two kinds of things: the apparent world of material objects grasped by the senses, which constantly changes, and an unchanging and unseen world of Forms, grasped by reason ( λογική ). Plato's Forms represent types of things, as well as properties , patterns, and relations , which are referred to as objects. Just as individual tables, chairs, and cars refer to objects in this world, 'tableness', 'chairness', and 'carness', as well as e.g. justice , truth , and beauty refer to objects in another world. One of Plato's most cited examples for

11368-440: The rules of language and the reality principle , become subject to the "primary process" of unconscious thought, which is governed by the pleasure principle , wish gratification and the repressed sexual scenarios of childhood. The dream-work involves a process of disguising these unconscious desires in order to preserve sleep. This process occurs primarily by means of what Freud called condensation and displacement . Condensation

11484-470: The sign into two distinct components: the signifier ('sound-image') and the signified ('concept'). For Saussure, the signified and signifier are purely psychological: they are form rather than substance . Today, the signifier is often interpreted as the conceptual material form, i.e. something which can be seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted; and the signified as the conceptual ideal form. In other words, "contemporary commentators tend to describe

11600-408: The sign. In order to understand how the signifier and signified relate to each other, one must be able to interpret signs. "The only reason that the signifier does entail the signified is because there is a conventional relationship at play." That is, a sign can only be understood when the relationship between the two components that make up the sign are agreed upon. Saussure argued that the meaning of

11716-446: The signifier as the form that the sign takes and the signified as the concept to which it refers." The relationship between the signifier and signified is an arbitrary relationship: "there is no logical connection" between them. This differs from a symbol, which is "never wholly arbitrary." The idea that both the signifier and the signified are inseparable is explained by Saussure's diagram, which shows how both components coincide to create

11832-456: The so-called "middle dialogues" provide more clearly stated positive teachings that are often ascribed to Plato such as the theory of Forms. The remaining dialogues are classified as "late" and are generally agreed to be difficult and challenging pieces of philosophy. It should, however, be kept in mind that many of the positions in the ordering are still highly disputed, and also that the very notion that Plato's dialogues can or should be "ordered"

11948-488: The term "featherless biped", and later ζῷον πολιτικόν ( zōon politikon ), a "political" or "state-building" animal ( Aristotle 's term, based on Plato's Statesman ). Diogenes the Cynic took issue with the former definition, reportedly producing a recently plucked chicken with the exclamation of "Here is Plato’s man!" (variously translated as "Behold, a man!"; "Here is a human!" etc.). Plato never presents himself as

12064-423: The term into more common use. While both Saussure and Peirce contributed greatly to the concept of signs, it is important to note that each differed in their approach to the study. It was Saussure who created the terms signifier and signified in order to break down what a sign was. He diverged from the previous studies on language as he focused on the present in relation to the act of communication , rather than

12180-403: The unconscious mind —each lying beneath the other. He believed that significant psychic events take place "below the surface" in the unconscious mind. Contents of the unconscious mind go through the preconscious mind before coming to conscious awareness. He interpreted such events as having both symbolic and actual significance. In psychoanalytic terms, the unconscious does not include all that

12296-436: The unconscious desire in its raw form would disturb the sleeper and can only avoid censorship by associating itself with elements that are not subject to repression. Thus Freud distinguished between the manifest content and latent content of the dream. The manifest content consists of the plot and elements of a dream as they appear to consciousness, particularly upon waking, as the dream is recalled. The latent content refers to

12412-629: The unconscious include implicit memory (for example, priming ), and Pawel Lewicki 's nonconscious acquisition of knowledge. Ellenberger, in his classic 1970 history of dynamic psychology. He remarks on Schopenhauer's psychological doctrines several times, crediting him for example with recognizing parapraxes, and urges that Schopenhauer "was definitely among the ancestors of modern dynamic psychiatry." (1970, p. 205). He also cites with approval Foerster's interesting claim that "no one should deal with psychoanalysis before having thoroughly studied Schopenhauer." (1970, p. 542). In general, he views Schopenhauer as

12528-468: The unconscious mind exists at all has been disputed. Franz Brentano rejected the concept of the unconscious in his 1874 book Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint , although his rejection followed largely from his definitions of consciousness and unconsciousness. Jean-Paul Sartre offers a critique of Freud's theory of the unconscious in Being and Nothingness , based on the claim that consciousness

12644-527: The word unconscious. In 1880 at the Sorbonne , Edmond Colsenet defended a philosophy thesis (PhD) on the unconscious. Elie Rabier and Alfred Fouillee performed syntheses of the unconscious "at a time when Freud was not interested in the concept". According to historian of psychology Mark Altschule, "It is difficult—or perhaps impossible—to find a nineteenth-century psychologist or psychiatrist who did not recognize unconscious cerebration as not only real but of

12760-486: Was Heinrich Gomperz who described it in his speech during the 7th International Congress of Philosophy in 1930. All the sources related to the ἄγραφα δόγματα have been collected by Konrad Gaiser and published as Testimonia Platonica . Plato's thought is often compared with that of his most famous student, Aristotle , whose reputation during the Western Middle Ages so completely eclipsed that of Plato that

12876-614: Was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms. He raised problems for what became all the major areas of both theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy , and was the founder of the Platonic Academy , a philosophical school in Athens where Plato taught

12992-510: Was buried in the garden of his academy in Athens, close to the sacred shrine of the Muses. In 2024, a scroll found at Herculaneum was deciphered, that confirmed some previous theories. The papyrus says that before death Plato "retained enough lucidity to critique the musician for her lack of rhythm", and that he was buried "in his designated garden in the Academy of Athens". Plato never speaks in his own voice in his dialogues ; every dialogue except

13108-444: Was coined by the 18th-century German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge . The emergence of the concept of the unconscious in psychology and general culture was mainly due to the work of Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud . In psychoanalytic theory , the unconscious mind consists of ideas and drives that have been subject to

13224-478: Was not a nickname, but a perfectly normal name, and "the common practice of naming a son after his grandfather was reserved for the eldest son", not Plato. According to Debra Nails, Plato's grandfather was the Aristocles who was archon in 605/4. Plato was born in Athens or Aegina , between 428 and 423 BC. He was a member of an aristocratic and influential family. His father was Ariston, who may have been

13340-623: Was once conscious but has been forgotten or suppressed, much like Freud's notion. The collective unconscious, however, is the deepest level of the psyche, containing the accumulation of inherited psychic structures and archetypal experiences. Archetypes are not memories but energy centers or psychological functions that are apparent in the culture's use of symbols. The collective unconscious is therefore said to be inherited and contain material of an entire species rather than of an individual. The collective unconscious is, according to Jung, "[the] whole spiritual heritage of mankind's evolution, born anew in

13456-604: Was sold as a slave as early as in 404 BC, when the Spartans conquered Aegina, or, alternatively, in 399 BC, immediately after the death of Socrates. After Dionysius's death, according to Plato's Seventh Letter , Dion requested Plato return to Syracuse to tutor Dionysius II , who seemed to accept Plato's teachings, but eventually became suspicious of their motives, expelling Dion and holding Plato against his will. Eventually Plato left Syracuse and Dion would return to overthrow Dionysius and rule Syracuse, before being usurped by Callippus ,

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