Plato's hypothetical refutation against Aristotle

As Socrates’s example clearly shows, wisdom at its wisest only achieves to wisdom as not knowing due to ‘the limited nature of human knowing—as he says, all human wisdom is worthless, nothing, in other words, fallible. Even in their best operation, even regarding those beliefs for which we have the best reasons, and spent the most time considering, human knowing is still fallible, and error is still possible’ (http://www.carroll.edu/msmillie/perspectives/wisdomasexcellence.htm). A clear cut difference between Aristotle and Plato here is, while Aristotle sticks to conduct his causal investigation, following the tradition of his predecessors, basically by counting on his own human might, Plato rather recommends Socratic dialectic to minimise the effect of human fallibility, since it helps to ‘overcome our own defensiveness, prejudice, haste, lack of confidence’ (ibid).

However Aristotle’s causal investigation could be more realistic or scientific, in Plato’s view it would be ended up to be described as it follows: ‘We learn about physical objects empirically, by means of the senses: we look at them, taste them, listen to them, and so on. But none of the information we gain in this way is reliable or trustworthy: we don’t have real knowledge of the visible world, just mere “opinion.”… Empirical evidence is at best irrelevant, at worst misleading’ (http://www.trinity.edu/cbrown/intro/plato_two_worlds.html). Having rejected to learn by means of the sense, Plato tries to replace it with means of Reason. Upon this differentiation, once again, Plato inevitably goes back to his two world theory. In his view, ‘Our physical bodies are a part of the visible world. Our bodies are responsible for our appetites. Our sense organs, by means of which we learn about the visible world… But there’s also another part of us which links us with the eternal realm of the Forms, namely our soul (which for Plato is more or less identical with our reason). So one result of coming to learn about the Forms is that we will become less concerned with physical matters; we will be less governed by our appetites, and less reliant on our unreliable senses for knowledge’ (ibid).

Plato

For reading the text in full: http://wrex2009.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/plato-and-aristotle-in-their-ontological-and-teleological-views/