Here are some links to Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," which provides a good deal of insight into Plato's philosophy as a whole.

Allegory of the Cave

Discussion Points and Diagram

Take a look over. It's pretty short. What are some of your thoughts?

I find the cave to be one of the most interesting allegories. I'm not sure what exactly it is refering to, but it can be seen as a very broad allegory, it can span many things. Mostly though, a life of truth (actually getting out of the cave) or a life of illusions (what we mostly see).

Someone who gets out of the cave should....what? Come back and tell those in the cave what he saw? He'd be killed or called insane. And some might say that was Jesus, someone who could see beyond the cave and then told others of it, and died for his actions.

Some might see the cave merely as something not needing a "divine answer" but rather just looking into oneself. Become introspective and you see beyond the illusions that we can cast for ourselves.

I find it amazing how pervasive this image is. The idea of "enlightenment" for example.

This idea--of transcending the way that things are normally perceived and procuring a new vision, and the difficulty of explaining that vision back to those who remain "ignorant"--seems to run through so many religious/philosophical traditions.

It is really somthing that can be percived and applied in many, many ways. Which is why its so cool ;).

One of my books for my ancient history class had the vast majority of Plato's Cave in it. After reading it I had disagreed with a number of points made in it. However since it was not in it's entirety I can not really say. Basically just consider this a reminder to read the whole thing as refered to in this thread and I'll eventually get to responding.

(I've been meaning to do so for over a month now but kept forgetting to do so)

Look how long its been between my response and it being posted. It took me a while too :lol:

I don't understand who the puppeteers are. Can they leave the cave? Are they enlightened humans? Why are they showing these shadow images to the prisoners? What do they gain from it? Why don't they release the prisoners if they were once human so they too can have the opportunity to transcend out of the cave? Are they gods trying to prep humanity for transcendence? Or have they found humans cannot transcend & therefore this was the best means they found for their existence? Who are they to judge us? I say kill them all.

I would guess that the puppeteers (in my interpertation of this) would be those in power. Those ruling us. Governments, Kings, etc. And why would they release us? Why would they let us go? For doesn't that deminish their power in some way?

See instinctively I know to kill them all. But you have piqued my interest. Maybe I'll read it in entirety.

It's a bit early but here's what I have:



There are two things which I see "The Allegory of the Cave" as mean.

One is about how we see things. That we only really see images on a wall and draw our conclusions, be it knowledge or belief. The meaning behind the allegory in such a case I would dispute for our perception is not so flawed because of reason. Yes, if one puts a hand in hot or cold water then warm the hand will feel either cold or hot, the opposite of what the first was. Yes, if one puts an oar in water that is perfectly straight one sees it as being bent however through reason, a part of "The Form of Man," one can see through this error of visual judgement. One can stick their hand down into the water to feel the oar, one can test it's flexibility prior and after it's use, one can even look at the way light reflects off of water and the objects within.

Interesting enough Plato in his later works and in an effort to explain how one gets from Reasoning specifically in the way of mathematical and deductive reasoning to understanding of forms (ideas) he said that we are souls before we are born. We know the forms when we are souls and in life we merely recognize them. This is interesting for it contradicts his Theory of the Cave when he says they will only know what they see in the cave. Truth to the chained up individual would not only be shadows in such a case. However since this is a rather late idea of his and he doesn't go back to his work editting the ideas I think we can assume that he acknowledges this change.

In truth though, much depends on how the individual would think. Personally, I would assume that a person in such a predicament would go crazy in such a scenario but that aside, I believe that they would know more then just the shadows. The person themselves would be 3 dimensional having a length, height and width. The chains which hold them unless also a metaphor would be so as well. You can touch and feel the chains but you can not touch and feel shadows. If someone is carrying something as said in the allegory but they turn around the object momentarily shrinks or outright disappears. Using what the individual knows of three dimensional objects, not just from themselves and the chain but also from the wall of the cave if long enough and they can focus their eyes on other portions of it's length, even if their head is still. But shadows are but two dimensional and since one through deductive reasoning can come to the conclusion that objects exist in three dimensions in such a case shadows can not possibly be the only truth which the prisoner knows. The person would realize, if reasoned out, that the shadows are not the objects but an image representing it. This would be more easily noticeable if the light were to create a shadow of ones self on the same wall.



The other thing which I see the allegory as standing for is a questioning of what's real. It gets asked what is "truer" for the individual or other assuming that truth is relative or perhaps speaking about what the former prisoner believes to be more real. In truth though, it isn't a question of if something exists for if you see it by your eyes or by your mind it is real. The question though is how does it exists, as an image or as an object.

So the soul could be our existence before we are physically existing. Interesting. I never thought of that concept. The word has always been used in terms of this plane of existence or an after life to me. But a prephysical existence might put a whole new slant on the idea of god/higher consciousness to me. Like maybe god is the collective consciousness of these pre-existant souls and maybe we created everything in the first place collectively. Hmmm... But then why do we seem to be so hell bent on f*cking everything up here? I gotta think about this.

But who are the puppeteers MetGreDKo? There are beings who are in control of what shadows are seen despite how they're perceived. I don't think governments alone can have people so tightly bound and limited in their perception all the time as in the allegory.

I don't have an image of liberty, justice, or love. But the concepts still exist for me. I don't think the statue of liberty is liberty. They're neither images nor objects. Only mental conjectures.

If you believe in free will then it would be us who act as the puppeteers for we either knowingly or not limit ourselves in what we see due to our biases. We choose not to see things differently for a feeling of security in "knowing" things or for some other reason. I believe that was what Plato was talking about.

I however do not believe in free will and so it would be the laws of physics that acts as the puppeteer.

So with the puppeteers the being the laws of physics we only perceive things based upon our experiences until that point. But I get the impression that the puppeteers are purposely showing these images in the allegory. Why are the laws of physics in enlightenment or what ever is outside the cave? Well, its because we don't understand all the laws of physics but it still implies a purpose behind them in showing these images. In that case the law of physics, the laws of physics seem to equate to some mean god and I don't like him very much. Holding out on the rest of us. Bah! Might be true but Bah!

In the case of free will and preexistence as souls, we are the puppeteers based on our biases based on our imprints as preexistent souls. Okay, then I ask myself why did we choose to chain ourselves to this existence? What was the appeal? Perhaps we got bored with immortal soul existence and decided to play with an existence that could die. A desire to experience death? Maybe we are these preexisent souls and we created everything collectively for some experiment, the purpose of which we don't know because you don't tell test subjects what your looking for. Kind of a buddhist slant. I dunno. It's more appealing to me think that as it goes back to that whole HOPE thing.

Perhaps puppeteers was the wrong word to use. Maybe the cave is the world we live in and the laws of physics is everything around us. Maybe the opening of the cave is the light of everything we don't understand or ignorance. Maybe the chains are our self imposed blocks to visions because of how we prefer to see the world. Maybe the shadows we see are things just passing by that cave opening or window and we can sense them but are unable to clearly perceive them because of the self imposed chains or because of the those forces in physics we can't physically coincide with in this existence ( the cave walls). Maybe we created the opening in the wall so could learn about those things we don't know and invited the light in, in the first place. But the light is harmful and can only be viewed this way in our current existence. Maybe the cave grows bigger as we learn and we can open the doorway/cave opening/window more or create more openinngs as the cave (the world we live in) gets bigger.

But he talked about anyone who goes outside the cave and comes back would killed or deemed insane....so its possible to leave the cave.

........ In the end all that runs through my mind is, is a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Hell of an exhausting mental exercise for me. I'm not even sure if I'm making any sense.

I don't mean the laws of physics as in a knowing puppeteers. I mean them just simply as the puppeteers. They dictate how we exist and so how we act. They are what cause us to put blinders on by having us think in certain ways due to certain genes reacting with the rest of our genetic make up. It knows not what it is doing for it is not a sentient being but it nonetheless pulls the strings.

What if we don't have the biases until we exist in physical form? When existing as souls all we know are forms. When we come to being physical beings though in the process of bringing our memory of the forms to conscious thought we let biases get in the way. Why do we let them get in the way? This is due to our not remembering the forms.

But then what differentiates the cave wall?

But if we don't remember them then I don't understand why we have a bias?

..... I need a picture....I'm just lost. I just don't understand why we're reacting with a bias before we've raised a consciousness of the form. There's got to at least be an awareness even if unconscious.

Psycholopher I blame you for my confusion since you started this thread. And your not adding much to clarify.

Plato did in fact think that when we were born, we had lost memory of the forms. All learning in fact was a type of recollection, rather than being the apprehension of something new.

There is a lot of this that I disagree with. For example, I do not believe in "forms," especially not in the way that Plato did (wherein the Form of "Chair" is actually MORE REAL than the particular chair that I'm sitting on).

But I think the broader analogy is rather poetic. That is that generally speaking, most people live their lives ignorant about the "true nature" of things. For Plato, that meant that most people did not bother to use their reason (which is in fact the light) to deduce that what they were seeing was not in fact reality, but mere shadows of reality (again--for Plato, the Forms were the ultimate reality). I find the allegory somewhat flexible, as you guys have actually pointed out.

It can be used as an allegory for God/religion--our material lives as the shadows on the wall, but God and Heaven as the ultimate reality).

Or as an allegory for science--most people live their lives ignorant of how things really work, and science is the process of seeing how the invisible creates the visible (how atoms bond to form the structure of reality).

Or as a Buddhist allegory--We are attached (very Buddhist terminology) to our ways of seeing, and enlightenment is freedom from the chains.

At the heart of it lies the same Matrix-like theme: What is apparent to our senses is only half the story. What most people think of reality is only the surface of reality.

Plato's exhortation is to look deeper, to look closer, to examine life fully and wholly.

Well if you put it that way it just seems to be a huge pictural statement of the obvious. Everyone knows they don't know everything and that our senses are limited thus our ability to reason without artificial aids (magnifiers) is limited.

Were there great (political, economic, religious) forces rising in his time that he's making a statement against? I don't know the history.

Well it's not exactly that, but more so that our common ways of understanding the world are usually not thoroughly examined. Socrates was concerned with making sure that we rationally investigated the assumptions we held about the world. It doesn't sound exactly novel, but there should be two things to keep in mind:

1. As the founder of western philosophy, he's considered the first major documented writer to do this.

2. Even though we do rationally investigate the world in science and such, most people don't do this seriously.

The laws of physics is the puppeteer and brain is the cave wall while the electrical pulses (?) going through the nerves are the images.

Because we don't remember the way things really are and so jump to over generalized conclusions about people or other.

Plato was the first thing that came up on my Theology course this year, and the teacher introduced his theory of forms from the allegory of the cave as a basis. Personally, I thought it was a very clever and perceptive way to sum the position up, but it seems to raise one of the criticisms, that I believe Aristotle proposed, of Platonic idealism as a whole - the journey from the world of perception to the world of the forms is analogous to the journey from the cave to our world of perception. From the analogous resultant, the world of appearances, the philosopher would have to progress once again if he were to understand the world of the forms as relates to the world of appearances - we can propose a further level of idealism that pre-exists or dictates the world of the forms. I'm not sure I've expressed that well, but there's something in what I'm trying to say there, at least.

Another thing that I didn't see mentioned (though it may have been) that I think this allegory shows well is, in our world of perception, the difference between the shadows and the reality - the outward appearance and the reality, and so forth, which is very much applicable to the differences between television and the reality of something we see on television, and provides what I think is an interesting question of the reality of a television image as compared to the reality of a sense datum that (we believe) corresponds to an existant object. (of course we can use other examples than television - pictures, video, optical illusion, or even magic, if you wish)