During Wednesday's symposium I was Plato. As Plato, my belief
is that a person should know what to do before doing something. Someone brought
up the example of learning how to drive. Common knowledge of learning how to
drive ultimately involves a written/comprehensive test and then the skills
test. Plato would say that all a person would need is theoretical knowledge, while
Aristotle would say that a person would need practical knowledge to learn how
to drive.
My question would be, hypothetically speaking, would a person
be better off in a car without theoretical knowledge of what the signs of the
road mean, or with a little bit of theoretical knowledge? Of course we would
say the latter, however, if Plato were still alive, he would probably argue
that theoretical knowledge could possibly save the person’s life. Why?, well that is simple, what if the person
did not know what a rail road sign means and the person is standing on a set of
railroad tracks with a train headed his or her way. Obviously the person is not
going to wait on the train to hit the car in order to know that the railroad
tracks are something to be aware of. It would be logical for the person to know
beforehand what the sign means, and that goes for other signs mean as well.
Over all I think that we all need a balance of both
theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge because we might know what some
things are or what they mean but in other cases we, as humans are not perfect,
and need to learn how to do something by observing someone else do the thing
that we are trying to learn. That goes back to Plato’s philosophy of having a
balanced soul, which included fulfilling our reason, spirit, and appetites in
order to be happy, for today’s society anyways, so in my opinion all humans
need a balance between practical and theoretical knowledge.
I like the way that you established your position, and I have to say that I agree that we need a balance between the two types of knowledge in order to do something effectively. Using the car example again, if one day I were to have a child and teach said child to drive, I would want it to have a good sense of how a car operates and what to do in certain traffic situations (theoretical knowledge) before putting them behind the wheel. That being said, I'd also want them to have a good foundation in actually operating the vehicle (practical knowledge), so I would do the type of things my father did with me growing up (let my child sit in my lap at a young age and "help" me steer into the driveway, turn the headlights on and off, or use the windshield wipers, ect.) so that they have some experience to help encourage them when they get ready to drive on their own.
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