Therefore...

Therefore, conceptual knowledge is the only genuine knowledge What guarantee, then, is there of the truth of conceptual knowledge? [Plato's answer is based on the metaphysics of certain of his predecessors, especially Parmenides: thought and being are identical; Parmenides speaks of or indicates the world of logical thought as true, and the world of sense perception as illusion.] For Plato, knowledge is correspondence of thought and reality [or being] knowledge must have an object.

If the concept is to have value as knowledge, something real must correspond to it realities must exist corresponding to all our universal ideas: there must be, for instance, pure absolute beauty corresponding to the concept of beautyconceptual knowledge presupposes the reality of a corresponding ideal or abstract objectsOr, in contrast to the transient world of the senses, which is mere appearance,…