Had the prisoners in Plato’s allegory asked themselves ‘why am I imprisoned’, or by another questioned, “Why have you accepted such a fate?” might they have responded “why indeed,” curiosity aroused, would not a search for truth commence? Those once Imprisoned by ignorance now “enlightened” by truth would they not now be freemen? Liberators of their own destiny?
Behind the prisoners was a large fire and between the fire and prisoners was a walkway. The fire cast shadows upon the wall and the prisoners believed the shadows to be reality. The walkway allowed people to walk through the cave with great ease. As the people crossed through the cave, past the fire, an illusion was created; the fire cast shadows onto the wall that the prisoners were watching. The prisoners spent their lives debating what the shadows were as they couldn’t see the walkway and had no knowledge that this existed.
the bottom line? That means no other senses are involved, So it is suggested that Plato was a rationalist philosopher. According to the text, Plato is looking for what he thinks is a higher knowledge (and he can only get this from reason). In the cave; it is suggested that none inside has reason. They are looking at nothing but shadows on a wall which are being cast from a fire.
Although all three had some differences I saw the greatest difference in the Meditations I reading. In the Matrix the character Neo was made aware by Morpheus that the world he was living in was not the real world and was given the opportunity to see what the real world was like. He was made aware that he was really a prisoner trapped inside of a computer program and that everything that he perceived was created by a machine and was really a false reality. In the Allegory of the Cave the prisoners were chained to some rocks with their hands, feet and head bound in such a way that they were only able to look straight ahead. They were very aware that the cave in which they sat was real.
While in contrast, in Meditation 1 Descartes takes a more introspective approach by analyzing reality with systematic doubt. In his systematic approach, Descartes peals away the layers of his reality purposely doubting both his senses and reasoning imposing on himself the possibility of an unknown world, ultimately concluding that we can have no certain knowledge of reality. In both The Matrix and The Allegory of the Cave the people live in controlled worlds where their reality has been altered by outside influences. In the Matrix, the primary character, Neo, discovers that the world in which he lives is a simulation created by a computer (The Matrix). Neo exists not in the reality that he has experienced but in a giant machine, along with the rest of the human population, where he is attached to a computer that controls all his experiences.
‘Our ethical decisions are merely the result of our social conditioning’. Discuss. The base of our ethical decisions can only be described as a mystery to a non-philosopher, but debates have taken place between many philosophers determining whether our decisions are due to having free will, or if everything we do is pre-determined anyway. Libertarianism is the view that human agents can, when faced with a moral choice, freely act and retain moral responsibility for that act. However determinism take an opposite view to this; hard determinism is the theory that everything in the universe, including all human actions and choices has a cause which proceeds it.
Only true reality can be found in the world of forms, in which everything is unchanging. Plato’s analogy is set in a cave, the cave is meant to represent the physical world, from which people only see what Plato describes to be an illusion. The prisoners within the cave know of nothing but what they have seen for all their lives. Behind the prisoners are a low wall and a walkway, in the walkway a fire burns, every now and then people walk past the fire carrying objects that reflect into the cave as shadows. The prisoners see the shadows and think that what they see is reality, like we think about our world now.
Although Socrates hasn’t been around for several thousand years, his philosophy and ways of thinking were phenomenal. He started off his story with a group of people who since birth were trapped in a cave. Eventually they were chained and even unable to move their head. The only thing they are able to see were shadows of figures and people off of the light cast by a fire behind them. One man was freed, but was blinded and confused by the fire that was behind him.
In reality, the man has no freedom to choose…he cannot leave the room, should he wish to or not. However, his ignorance of his situation leads him to believe that he has chosen to remain in the room. Thus, he merely has the illusion of free will. So, in order to make moral choices we would need to be free because choices cannot be made if we are determined. If our lives are determined then our choices are not our actual choices, they are an illusion.
Contents Introduction 3 The Ancients 4 The Athenian Tiad 4 Medieval and Renaissance Thought 5 The Hellenistic Philosophy of determinism and free will 5 Renaissance 7 Modern Thought 8 Conclusion 9 Introduction Determinism and free will are topics of great debate among psychologists and philosophers of the present age. The determinist school of thought states that the causes of a behavior are pre-determined and thus predictable. Whereas the idea of free will proposes that humans have choice and freedom in determining their behavior. For example a person would be free to decide whether he is going to act nicely or behave rudely with someone, and it is not determined by previous events or factors. The two beliefs are, however,