Can someone please explain the intricacies of Plato's cave? I see it thrown around a lot but it seems to me people are just using it as a symbol to signal their presumed superiority. Does Plato's cave boil down to a lesson about seeing beyond symbols and abstractions and thinking for yourself based on things you see in real world? Or is there something more to it?
>pic unrelated

You see impressions of things which convey an aspect of truth but not the whole truth. You only discover the whole truth through knowledge symbolized by leaving the cave. This knowledge may be painful or hard to accept which Plato symbolizes with the blinding sun.
>Or is there something more to it?
It syncs up nicely with his theory of forms in which a form is present in many worldly things but not in a pure way. You can never seize hold of goodness itself but you can glimpse its shadow.

>>17759652
How do you know you left the cave and didn't just walk into another room in a cave? What's the practical lesson of Plato's cave? Was it intended as a lesson to recognize when something is crafted by other people to try to manipulate you, or is this meaning modern interpretation?

>>17759623 (OP)
It's like the Matrix except it's epistemological instead of purely metaphysical.

>>17759623 (OP)
>pic
This is why the subway is so dangeous, you could get murdered by a black guy.

>>17759706
In context, it was just describing the process of learning (Plato's) philosophy.
At the time, philosophy and religious experience were closely tied together.
So you should compare it to "seeing the light" in Christianity.

Exiting the 'cave' and seeing the reality that this materialistic existence is a mere shadow representation of the deeper and more true world of forms that is impressed onto imperfect matter was a big part of Platonic religious ritual.
Standard Platonists didn't really believe that there were evil entities trying to confuse or trick them.

>>17759623 (OP)
No, it's about metaphysics, retard. you are a hylic, you will never get it.

>>17759706
How indeed...

>>17759623 (OP)
It's a case for needing a philosopher king (like plato himself, what a coincidence) to interpret what is reality and what isn't. In other words, man cannot know reality truly by himself.

>>17760941
Basically, a dialectic foot in the door for mysticism.

>>17760814
>In context, it was just describing the process of learning (Plato's) philosophy.
Seems pretty harmless. Why did Plato say you are blinded by the sun and trying to guide other people out of cave may be met with hostile response?

Also, is there any practical real-life benefit or lesson to be learnt from knowledge about world of forms? Does it help you experience beauty more fully or something?

>>17759623 (OP)
>are you an intellectual
>yes
>ah shit dropped my spaghetti
this didn't happen

>>17759623 (OP)
In interesting take is that you are meant to return to the cave to produce the shadows.

>>17761007
Plato had a lot of controversial opinions about religion.
He lays out a creation myth for the universe that involves zero traditional Greek Gods. Instead he believed that there was a single unknowable and incomprehensible source point, a universal mind that everything is a thought of which creates the perfect forms of everything, and the divine craftsman that tried to impress those forms into imperfect matter and resulted in an imperfect world.
If you notice, there's no Zeus, Kronos, Hera, Athena, etc. If they're involved, they either have to be rewritten to be aspects of the above, or just turned into more minor spirits and supernatural entities.

When he read myths and legends, he did so from a perspective that they were basically just metaphors and tall tales, rather than real religious documentation. And therefore he advocated for the censorship and rewriting of Homer and Hesiod and the like, in order to make the Gods and Heroes all more moral and good so they'd teach better lessons to the masses. If it wasn't a real story about something that actually might have happened, it could instead at least teach good civics lessons to children.
If you walked around the local agora and started talking about how this universe was a mere imperfect impression of the perfect world of forms that was the product of the divine mind and divine craftsman, and everything else that Plato thought and taught, you'd probably be in danger of being accused of blasphemy if not just insanity.

You could make an argument that seeing the world through the lens of forms could help one appreciate beauty more.
Plato believed that things that we think are beautiful are themselves basically conduits for the divine. Instead of just thinking that someone or something is pretty, you should instead try and interpret divine truth from it.
This followed the Greek fascination with geometry and mathematics. Where proportions and patterns were considered connected to the divine.

>>17759623 (OP)
Plato's epistemology, or his theory of what knowledge actually is, was what we now call "exaggerated realism."

Basically, he thought that the way we "learn" things is not best described as "gaining" new knowledge, but he thought "learning" is actually a process of remembering eternal truths that we already knew in our previous existence before we were born.

He was also careful to distinguish opinions about facts that can change over time, versus eternal, unchanging truths. When we learn truths, we simply remember, "oh yeah, that is true isn't it" as though it was some locked knowledge of truth that was always buried in our subconscious that we successfully brought to the surface, and that's how we gain knowledge.

Plato advocated for a process that he called dialectic, which simply means going through a kind of drawn-out process of talking about things such as you find in Plato's dialogues. In a dialectic, true facts are that which can withstand sustained questioning, and that which is false falls away when it is revealed to not hold up to sustained scrutiny. This type of dialectic is considered to be a process of intellectual honesty, and it is in line with the principles that Socrates stood for.

Plato in particular held that our knowledge of unchanging truths (which we can "learn" or "recover" through dialectical means) really comes from a completely separate reality of unchanging forms. The analogy of the cave is meant to represent how that separate reality relates to the physical world of change.

In the physical world, particular objects can change or lose their form over time. This is represented by the shadows on the cave wall. Observed properties of particulars that hold true today might become false later. To him, these flickering and shifting imperfect shadows that we see are just transient reflections of what exists in the world of unchanging forms, where objective and unchanging "truths" exist, which we can learn about through dialectic.

>>17761291
>And therefore he advocated for the censorship and rewriting of Homer and Hesiod and the like
Wasn't this some kind of political push having to do with contemporary politics at the time? Assuming Plato truly fashioned himself as educator and sophist (is this just modern interpretation?) it would make sense the ruling class eventually would be fed up with him. Some cynic revealing the man behind the curtain and getting large enough following to actually threaten the power structures. Obviously it wasn't factually about gods being real or not, there was something else at play.


>>17762092
Kinda conflicting ain't it? The notion of perfect forms/eternal truths which are represented in real world - if you cannot fully see them in real world then why is Plato's Cave about walking out of the cave into open world (presumably the realm/concept of perfect forms). Are the perfect forms just some kind of construct of mind? Is dialectic just sophistry?

I'm not sure I'm buying this interpretation. I think this world of perfect forms is the same thing is the concept of heavenly stems and other similar concepts from philosophies from around the world but I still don't understand what are these concepts representing.

>>17761259
That is Plato's "noble lie" for people who can't into philosophy.

>>17762710
>Are the perfect forms just some kind of construct of mind?
It might help to reframe this around what Forms are supposed to be according to Plato. Plato developed his theory of Forms as the result of Socratic Inquiry. Socrates was going around asking people for, though Socrates in the dialogs I don't think uses this exact wording, but he was looking for a cause of why so and so act is just, why so and so person is honorable, why so and so sculpture is beautiful. He was getting into it with people who argued that "man was the measure in all things". So if man is the measure of what is honorable or not, then there isn't really a cause in the sense of why *this* action/person is honorable, because they aren't actually honorable at all. What's honorable to an athenian doesn't have to be honorable to a persian. It's a kind of relativism. So Plato's theory of Forms is trying to argue for why things like honorable or beautiful aren't relative. There is something that in some way causes this act to be honorable, or that sculpture to be beautiful. A sculpture is beautiful because of some relation to the Form of Beauty. He isn't exactly certain on how that relation works, but he's certain the Form is the cause of this sculpture being beautiful. And so for Plato, the Form is in a way more real than physical things, since physical things are what they are in virtue of the Forms. Without the forms there could not be anything at all. A Form isn't really "represented" in the real (material) world, the material world has some uncertain relationship to the Forms but this relationship is one where the material world is inferior to the Forms. Which makes sense if you think about it, because things can only be because they have a some kind of relationship to a Form. If something was related to no forms at all, it wouldn't even be, since it by definition wouldn't be anything.
Does that help?

>>17759623 (OP)
Plato believed there were multiple universes and ours is an inferior reflection of better realities
Platonism inspired Gnosticism, which Jews then plagiarized to create Christianity

>>17762710
>Is dialectic just sophistry?
Sophistry would be what the skeptics like Protagoras and Gorgias taught. Plato and other non-skeptic philosophers were against that outlook. The skeptics are characterized as basically saying that all there is is opinion and denying the existence of objective truth entirely.

The practice of just telling people whatever they want to hear, and using fancy rhetoric as a tool to get ahead while disregarding the ideas of truth and falsehood altogether, is characterized by Plato and others as lowly sophistry. You could call Protagoras and Gorgias "sophists" or just "skeptics," but in any case, their worldview was denounced by Plato and others.

>Are the perfect forms just some kind of construct of mind?
Aristotle and others have had different views of forms. Aristotle's epistemology was very different: in his view, a mind is able to conceive of the forms through abstraction from the study of particulars, rather than by an inward-facing dialectic. The forms are still seen as objective, but they are immanent in particular objects. Forms can be studied because they are observable in particulars and can be conceived of by the mind through abstraction from observations. But in reality the forms only actually exist in composite with matter. Matter likewise only exists in composite, and every particular always has four causes. Under this view, there is no such thing as causeless, purposeless matter: everything that has actual existence has a final cause or telos. So that differs from the exaggerated realism of Plato's view.

There are also views like conceptualism and nominalism which deny the objective existence of forms altogether, and reduce them to subjective mental constructs at most. A nominalist will reject that there is any actual connection or relationship between the objects that we group together with words, but that our words are merely labels that we choose, for no apparent reason, to use. Radical skepticism leans that way.

>>17762739
Okay, so if one puts it simply it's: Through reasoning and discourse we determined there are some shared values/concepts resonating within men no matter their place of birth or upbringing. Things like going on a quest, or the concept of a mentor, or looking at certain thing and recognizing it as beautiful etc. Because these appear regardless of culture it means they are not constructs of mind but external truths.

Can this concept in general be also/tie into what later philosophers called natural law?

How does this tie back to Plato's Cave? Why did Plato say you are blinded by the sun and trying to guide other people out of cave may be met with hostile response? What's the lesson to be had from Plato's Cave? Why is the picture/symbol of Plato's Cave so popular in contemporary culture relative to other philosophical concepts?

Generally, what's the real-life benefit of knowledge about universal truths? Besides being better at arguing about abstract concepts. Personally, I don't think thinking about this makes any change in my ability to create or perceive beauty.

>>17762754
If Plato was against lowly sophistry why did he argue for changing the myths into Gods being more honorable, to educate people? On one hand there's the idea of good-faith, honest discourse; on other hand the idea of the need to educate people by presenting them some kind of crafted narrative? Seems quite cynical doesn't it?

>>17762806
>Can this concept in general be also/tie into what later philosophers called natural law?
I am not very certain of this so I cannot give a response.

>How does this tie back to Plato's Cave?
The idea of the cave is that what we actually see are like the images being projected - they are these sort of inferior representations of the real thing (the Forms). When you exit the cave you can "see" the real things themselves, the real chickens and trees and so on not just some (material) chicken or some (shadow puppet) chicken. He's basically saying when we rely on individual perceptible things - particulars is a term later used for this - we're getting tricked. We shouldn't be paying attention to this individual (particular) chicken so much as the Form of chicken that in some way unites them all. Same with justice or beauty. We shouldn't be admiring some particular statue for being beautiful and instead we would be better off admiring the Form of Beauty itself. That's because the Form *is* Beauty, while the statue is just, in some way, an inferior representation of that Form.
>Why did Plato say you are blinded by the sun and trying to guide other people out of cave may be met with hostile response?
So one thing you have to always keep in mind about Plato is that he is the worlds biggest simp, like bar none. He simps so hard for Socrates. And so Socrates was going around, and without really using the term himself, he was asking about Forms. Why is this just and not that and so on. And he was also pretty obstinate in this. A lot of the dialogues is Socrates making other reputable people look dumb and that people who paid them money for lessons or otherwise respected these people were basically conned by these people. You may have thought your a smart athenian because you paid Protagoras a bunch of money to give you philosophy lessons, and it turns out Protagoras was a dummy who didn't even know anything, then you also look like a dummy too 1/2

>>17763395
And Socrates was not really the friendliest person. Like he was respectful in how he spoke, but he wasn't like very friendly - at least in the dialogues. So anyways, Socrates made some enemies. And eventually the people of Athens got so tired of Socrates, for his philosophizing and some argue other reasons as well, but they put him on trial for "corrupting the youth". Socrates was trying to find out about the Forms, and the athenians were so unhappy that Socrates was trying to find the *truth* (according to Plato at least) that they sentenced him to death. So from Plato's perspective, the guy he gushes and simps over was killed because the people preferred to live with their lies rather than learn the truth. That's the violent reaction he's talking about in the cave.
>Why is the picture/symbol of Plato's Cave so popular in contemporary culture relative to other philosophical concepts?
This I am not sure about.

>Generally, what's the real-life benefit of knowledge about universal truths?
Well that sort of depends - I think Plato would argue from what really we would think of today as like an ascetic or mystic kind of mindset. If there is some universal concept of Good - then we're better off knowing it than not right? After all, we want to be good don't we? So how can we be good if we don't even know Good (the Form)? Same with like, we like beautiful things right? So it would be bad if we liked something that wasn't actually beautiful but we thought it was anyways right? At the least because we could spend the time/money/whatever on the actually beautiful thing rather than the thing we only thought was beautiful. So there's some sense of like, it's a way to inform how you live. Of course, a lot of people don't find such arguments convincing so I think there's a lot of support for you in not finding it very impactful.

>>17759623 (OP)
that's the part where you wanted to call the guards, but there were none, like my man Guru from Gangstarr said, suckas need bodyguards

>>17763395
But how can you see the world of forms, the idealized concepts when you live in real world? Arguably it's impossible to actually perceive the universal truths in their pure form, you always see them only as their imprints in real world. If you were able to comprehend the universal concepts in their original form you would have to be completely inhuman and able to completely leave the real world, ain't that so? I don't buy this interpretation of Plato's Cave.

>So how can we be good if we don't even know Good (the Form)? Same with like, we like beautiful things right? So it would be bad if we liked something that wasn't actually beautiful but we thought it was anyways right?
idk anon I know funko pops are slop and I always knew this with certainty, regardless of my knowledge or understanding of world of forms.

>>17763581
>But how can you see the world of forms, the idealized concepts when you live in real world?
So Plato will argue that knowledge of the forms is in some way inborn in us. It's the use of reason and thinking that will improve our understanding of this innate knowledge we have of Forms. From Plato's perspective it is sort of required to argue this because we never perceive a Form as you said. So there has to be something that allows us to know this individual sculpture is related to the Form of Beauty. If we don't already know what a Form is in some sense, how could we perceive there is a relationship between this sculpture and Beauty? It doesn't seem possible. So Plato argues that some kinds of knowledge - knowledge of Forms specifically - is innate in us. That knowledge isn't something we learn so much as recover. In a more poetic sense, Plato would say that when we're born or we live an unexamined life that knowledge is obscured, it's hard to see, we don't comprehend it very well. But as we apply our reasoning we will remove the veil of ignorance we have over this knowledge.
So basically Plato would say we have that knowledge already, but we don't have it in a perfect way. That's why we can recognize there is such a thing as beauty at all, but still fail to recognize some individual beautiful things as beautiful. Theoretically someone who was very learned and wise would have no such limit and would always be correct in their judgements about what is beautiful or just or whatever.

The theory of forms is itself metaphorical. Ask yourself why it isn't true -- because there aren't really forms, not because truth is necessarily accessible to us. Plato is correct that the individual human lens is flawed fundamentally, and that something exists outside it, which is why the allegory of the cave is still played today when the theory of forms is irrelevant. It's basically true, but the truth is without form.

>>17762806
>Why is the picture/symbol of Plato's Cave so popular in contemporary culture relative to other philosophical concepts?
A foundational belief of modern intellectualism, inspired by conspiracy culture and derived from Marxist ideas about social power dynamics, is that there are materialistic and human powers in this world that are trying to keep the truth from you.
That are trying to keep you dumb, inane, misled, etc. They lie to you, they insult people that seek truth, etc. They being the government, the wealthy, certain ethnic groups, or a combination of the above.

Even someone that knows nothing about Plato's actual philosophy, can find the allegory of the cave relatable if they connect it to their own notions about society and truth being hidden by evil people.
Plato's idea about shadow puppets has nothing to do with the media propagandizing fake news at you. But if you are ignorant of the original meaning, it is really easy to project that onto the allegory.
People that embrace conspiracy culture find the idea of achieving literal enlightenment through their investigations a very attractive image.

>>17763732
I would maintain that the premise that God uses words is enough to prove their objective meaningfulness. The reasoning goes like this: if the Creator uses words, those words must refer to actual meaningful forms because the Creator is also the source of objective existence.

Many philosophers have made similar points to this, emphasizing that the forms all exist in the mind of God (aka nous). And that is the ultimate source of the forms in which particular people and objects participate. They are objective rather than subjective due to the nature of God, whose mind is on a different scale to individual human beings. Human minds might have subjective ideas and thoughts of different degrees of correctness - but the degree of measure of correctness becomes how close their ideas are to God's ideas.

Someone with an empirical approach to gaining knowledge (for example, through scientific induction) can easily hold this view while further emphasizing that these forms, which have a mind-independent existence, can be studied through observation, similar to what the scholastics taught. This empirical approach would differ from most medieval philosophers who were much more neoplatonic with their popular "hierarchy of being" theory and acceptance of the neo-pythagorean "emanation" theories of participation.

>>17761017
>are you an intellectual?
>y-you too *360 and walks away*

>>17763732
If I understand correctly you are saying Plato's theory of forms is invalid cause there's no such thing as universal, external truth? Basically complete 180 to how other anon understands it?

>>17763804
So you think depictions of Plato's Cave in contemporary culture are mostly all about the modern interpretation? Anyways, what's the original meaning?

>>17764185
Yeah, the original meaning is basically lost. The modern meaning of defeating the 'shadow puppeteers' is the focus.
The original meaning focused on conveying the difference between form and what you can materially see.
In Platonism hat we see and touch IRL are equivalent to shadows of the original form of that object that exists purely in the perfect intellectual cosmos beyond the material plane. To leave the cave is to truly understand that and start to be able to see the world for what it really is.

>>17763946
God does not use words. Words are a natural product with nothing mystical about them. They're flawed. I think this argument is totally spurious and backwards, assuming the christian God and using it to argue for platonic forms will just never work for me.
>>17764185
Universal truth exists, hence the appearance of universal truth, but using a word to represent truth is like using pencil and paper to represent a real object. That's why God is such a confusing concept, his real qualities and mythic qualities are all gathered under one simple word that doesn't do reality justice at all.

>>17765566
>like using pencil and paper to represent a real object
or a shadow on the wall

>>17759623 (OP)
Plato was an authoritarian elitist. He believed most people are stupid plebs who cant rule themselves and a select few of intellectual powerhouses should rule as philosopher kings.

People today misinterpret the cave allegory to mean something about self improvement through education or something, but this isnt at all what Plato meant. What he was saying is that most of you are born into the cave and can NEVER get out of it. Because of this, you might have some vague idea about different things (the shadows on the wall) but you are literally incapable of understanding it fully. This is why you need a philsopher king (someone from outside the cave) who can tap into the world of forms and understand these things fully for you.

You, as some normie, can see a shadow puppet of a horse, but will never understand fully what a horse is. Plato, and a few select elites like him, can see an actual horse and know what it is fully. Because of this, Plato should rule and you should do menial work and accept this as the natural order of things.

>>17765602
very cute rephrasing. obviously the self improovers want to be philosopher king.

>>17760814
>>17760822
reading these in sequence made me laugh