ABSTRACT
Plato’s belief that there is only one way of explaining things and that there could not be two rival idealisations to which phenomena might approximate, might have seemed both to support and be supported by another element in his position. He was clearly struck by the fact that although, as he supposed, the use of terms like ‘good’, ‘equal’, ‘just’ commits their users to a view of the world of which they are only dimly, if at all, aware, and which they can certainly not justify, nevertheless these terms are in very common use, and from an early age. Not only are the terms used, but people show, under questioning, an ability to see that certain proposed accounts of what constitutes justice, knowledge or whatever are inadequate, and in a way that suggests familiarity of some sort with some standard against which the proposed answers are measured. Under questioning we become clearer about the standard, but from early on it is operative. It therefore seems a good question to ask how people know what justice, knowledge and the rest are, i.e. what they consist in. They cannot have gained this knowledge by observation of phenomena, for the use of the terms is already an implicit judging of the phenomena relative to some standard. Further, it is not just the terms ‘good’, ‘fine’ and their like that carry this implicit world view, but also the terms that embody classifications of things in terms of functions and thereby allow of qualification by the first set of terms. We start, then, with a ready acceptance of a language which, considered as a whole, supposes the world to be structured in a certain way. Yet how could we know that it is so structured, when establishing that it is is so obviously an extremely complicated matter requiring a lifetime of investigation and argument? The only answer is that we start life with this knowledge.
