Intellectual - Sensory
Intellectual
The fundamental question that arises is: What is understandable and what is perceptible? When we deal with the understandable, we assume that something that our brain has understood through the senses “is,” that is, exists in space. However, the space of the visible world contradicts Plato’s definition, which is by its very nature alien to the phenomena of the visible world. The world of Platonic wisdom is not material, it is not earthly, but a creation of the Mind and the Good, and as the First Idea, it is the concept of the Good!
His natural philosophy, which is entirely teleological, contradicts the modern rule that what is intelligible is what our senses explain. By separating the concepts of cognition and sensation, Plato’s world is defined as: “Nothing is in the mind that was not first in the senses.”
The intelligible world of the great philosopher is the true, eternal, unchanging world, while the sensible world is its corruptible, imperfect counterpart.
The scientific and philosophical communities of subsequent cultural periods attempted, and largely succeeded, to delve deeply into the metaphysical aspects of Platonic thought. Plato’s student Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and John Locke explained that “the intelligible world is a derivative of the sensible world.” John Locke separated the sensible world of physics, chemistry, and biology from the intelligible world of logic, mathematics, and geometry.
Kant argues that the most basic concepts are constructed within us through our senses. By analyzing the physiological correspondence between the intelligible world and the physical world, we can see that Kant was right to distinguish between “a priori” and “a posteriori” concepts. This explains why there are concepts such as space and time, like Aristotle’s “categories” or Kant’s a priori, which we seem to have acquired without ever having derived them from our senses.
This is because these concepts do not belong to forms of energy that can stimulate our senses. All these perceptions of what our mind conceives and becomes perceptible, or what our senses dictate and becomes verifiable, are referred to the realm of the intelligible world, i.e., the world that man perceives, understands, or feels.
Sensory
The evaluative distance that separates the sensible world from the intelligible according to Plato is quite large. In searching for the true number, the true speed or slowness, in searching for the true dimensions, shapes, positions, and momenta, while our sensible world offers them to us through their visible, apparent reality, their authentic essence is found only in the intelligible world.
In Plato’s Timaeus (92c), Plato refers to the four qualities of the sensible world, which are: Maximum, Excellent, Most Beautiful, Perfect. However, because the visible world, the sensible, manifests itself as a faithful reflection of the intelligible, the final conclusion is that the properties of the sensible world are properties of the intelligible world.
Plato asserts that the Creator, as Good and philanthropic, constructs the world: “according to these things and in this way they are.” This world is the most beautiful and perfect because it is similar to the whole and not to any part of it. The whole is derived from the intelligible world, which includes all the intelligible beings of nature and the world. According to Plato, because God only loves, thinks only good, and “bears no envy,” he creates a visible world ” in its own image,” that is, similar to itself, which is why the sensible world, as similar to the intelligible, must be considered a “world of true Love.”
Experiencing modern scientific achievements and classical philosophical quests in our time, we have cultivated the question “whether reality is what our senses perceive or not.” Is everything a virtual reality created by human physiology through our brain and sensory organs? Is it true that scientific views on matter and its derivatives overturn or, sometimes, reinforce theological, social, or even scientific dogmas?
In this way, do they lead educated societies to new cultural priorities that are slowly becoming the guiding principles of our lives? The ultimate question? Scientists of our time claim that the entire universe is not real, but is a gigantic “hologram” whose true nature is invisible. If this proves to be true in the future, will many of the scientific community’s views and beliefs about the universe be overturned? Or will scientific views on the “Whole” continue to differ forever?