Plato and the Nature of Reality

Is there an absolute truth which exists? What evidence do we have for making statements about the nature of reality that goes beyond our own sensory perception?

One of Plato’s best known ideas has to do with truth. In Plato’s view, there was an absolute truth that existed, somewhere, in some sense, in reality. Still, he wasn’t sure if people would ever manage to find and discern this truth.

The idea of true forms pervaded much of Plato’s thoughts on the nature of reality. To him, pure forms were the perfect idealized form of concepts that we were familiar with. He developed this concept by thinking about tree recognition. We know a tree is a tree even though no two trees look alike. People recognise a tree as a tree and not a bush, even if trees look different from each other. Plato believed this ability comes from an awareness of the perfect form of the tree. This perfect form exists somewhere in the universe.

This idea of reality is comforting because it grounds us in the idea of absolute truth. There is only one version of reality. We are not exposed to a world where multiple versions of a single event all contain validity. The problem with Plato’s concept of the true forms is that there is absolutely no evidence to support it. Plato wanted reality to uphold certain standards, and the true forms enabled him to state that these standards existed. We can recognize trees because we have been told what a tree looks like and because they have similar characteristics. But what about a tree that has characteristics of a bush? Is it more like a tree or more like a bush? Is it an amalgamation of the true forms of a tree and a bush? Or is there a true form that combines the two forms?