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.
They try to prognosticate movements of the shadows; the sounds are made by individuals with the shadows, this is what they think as true reality. The detainees in this scenario are presented to be ignorant unenlightened individuals yet to discover philosophical truth. They are bamboozled into believing that the flickering shadows which are seen on the wall and they believe that what they see at face value are real objects and also the sounds the people make are being made by the shadows. Plato’s argument is that shadows and games are comparable to the five senses which mislead an individual. His theory is that objects which are seen in the World of Sense, Plato believes that that objects we see in the physical world are imitations of objects in the World of Forms.
The professors placed him in a cage and studied him as if he were a rat or a monkey. Soon the slender alien learned to sensibly string many words and phrases together. One might have thought he knew what they meant--if one was silly. He tried to teach his academic jailers the superior language of the universe, but they jeered at him: parrot-talk! He tried to teach them logic, for which deed he had to endure resentment and blows.The mathematicians were amazed at his mathematical prowess, but they got furious when he tried to impart his knowledge of advanced extraterrestrial math.
He believes in what he sees and feels while dreaming, but can not trust his senses to tell him that he is not still dreaming. His senses can not show him proof that the world exists. Descartes concludes that he can not base judgement on his senses, and for what he knows, himself and the rest of the world might be under the control of an evil demon. Rene Descartes’ evil demon is perceptibly shown in the Matrix as the unreal intelligence that forces a virtual reality on humans. Just as Descartes realized that the perceptions in his dreams were strong enough to convince him the dreams were real, the humans who are plugged into the Matrix have no idea that their reality of sence is false, created artificially instead of coming from actual experiences.
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.
As well as the shadow of the fire, the prisoners can also see shadows of people crossing the footbridge behind them, carrying stone animal statues; again they believe these shadows to be real. One of the prisoners escapes from the empirical world of the cave, making a hard journey to the outside, into the real world. His eyes take a while to adjust in the sunlight in the real immutable world. He then chooses to go back into the cave to tell the other prisoners the knowledge he had gained from the outside world, however they did not believe in his knowledge and decided they wanted to ridicule and mistreat Plato- a similar thing happened to his early teacher Socrates, when he tried to share his knowledge and theories with people. Furthermore, this could also show the prisoners are content with what they already know in their idea of
Imprisoned By Unseen Captors The characters in Plato's Allegory of the Cave are afraid of the unknown world outside the cave; they are content being prisoners; never do they question the veracity of their chains. Fear and ignorance, their “unseen captors.” Many can relate to the quandary of testing the integrity of what we believe to be true. We may have been raised in a dogmatic, rigid environment, never allowed to question why. Often in our society, our actions reflect the actions of others; as the prisoners in the cave, we tend to accept the status quo without question. Could we likewise be trapped?
Finally, I used prejudice as an example of people who are ignorant and will never change. 5. The reasons are logically arranged in my paper because I go through my paragraphs like Plato does in The Allegory of the Cave, which is by the steps to enlightenment with the men in the cave. 6. All of my reasons are backed with evidence from our time.
Paul Starita Pol Sci 201 10/26/12 Examining Justice and Education In The Apology, Socrates defends himself in a court of law after being accused of creating new deities and corrupting the youth. In this text, we find subtle opinions and explanations about the nature of justice. The Republic is a text written by Plato, where Socrates and several of his students deeply explore justice and how an ideal society might look. Especially present in The Republic, both texts have undertones of how education ought to be and why it is so important. These two texts define justice as an important virtue that every person should learn to possess through a balanced, self-discovering education.
Plato the great philosopher once said, “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” One who can not see the light, or one who is unable to see reality and truth is what Plato proposes to be the ultimate tragedy. What he speculates is that reality is not what every person believes it to be. He formulated that a persons true ideals for a perfect reality are within the conscious, while the actuality of the world is imperfect. He states that one’s being is what one makes it out to be, what one conjures within their own mind. Basically he is theorizing that it is possible and plausible for someone to create a complete reality inside their own head.