To: Greg or e who wrote (10249 ) 4/3/2001 3:35:40 PM From: Neocon Read Replies (1) | Respond to You will recall that Plato, in the Republic, invoked the image of the Divided Line. The means of knowing were assigned to each segment: noesis, or intellectual intuition, such as we have with axiomatic expressions; dianoia, or discursive reasoning, such as we employ in mathematics, involving the use of postulates and the mediation of inference; pistis, belief or opinion, which can be more or less likely; and fantasia, the imagination, through which we grasp mere images. Each coordinates with particular sorts of objects: the eide, or intelligible forms underlying the design of the universe; the mathematicals, those objects about which we have almost certain knowledge, except for the dependency on postulates; the objects in the world, about which we can have only belief or opinion (although when the opinion is sound, we can call it "right opinion") because there is too much indeterminacy, and they themselves are too changeable; and the images of things, which are wholly insubstantial as such.
