Allegory

The cave allegory displays the idea that what we take to be the truth might have hidden layers that influence all that we know. I think he succeeds in this idea. The shadows on the wall are by-products of the reality of light and yet the prisoners are restricted from finding the truth by no fault of their own.

The main issue is how Plato assumes the emotions of people. "They would surely kill him" - Religion "Pity them"/ "Back into the cave" "to be beings"

Ignorance

One of the main ideas that I disagree with in this allegory is the is that people are wilfully ignorant. When coming back enlightened On the idea of ignorance, "Ignorance is bliss" is something people say, and Plato seems to agree. But I do not think that they are telling the truth. For them to be lying implies that people are not against the pursuit of knowledge like Plato and Pennycook think It splits people up into two categories. One which wants to know and understand the truth, and one which is forcefully against the pursuit of knowledge and content with ignorance.

Beings

Plato claims that the people would "believe [the shadows] to be beings"(Not the actual quote). This has the implication that in the real world, we could be in a similar boat. If these prisoners can call something a being that is clearly not. We have the same fallibility. However, beings here has a loose definition. What counts as a being?

Defining beings as something objective is an impossible task. For example if you asked me the definition of being when I first read this text, I would refer you to objects or people compared to photos of those things. Objects are beings, pictures of objects are not beings. We have built our definition of what a being is, off the assumption that a shadow/photo is not a being. So when the prisoners use this definition that we have created, it would reflect the belief that we hold. The shadows would not be beings, they are merely shadows. Using this line of thinking in the allegory, it makes the link that if there is something deeper to our world, the deeper 'things' would have different objective definitions. Which is a surprise to nobody.

To have two different definitions of beings for the two groups of people, we must describe a property that doesn't include shadows, but from the prisoners perspective, includes shadows. And this property carries the more impactful message, that what we believe makes up a being may not exist in our world. It was suggested to me that beings are defined with their consciousness. If the prisoners can believe the shadows are conscious and we don't, this is the definition we are looking for. Consciousness can be defined as the ability to perceive, but how do we know if a being is actually perceiving something? For the self its quite easy but for other things, it becomes more difficult. But I hope you'll agree an animal is more conscious than a plant and a plant more than a rock. An animal will react to loud noises, familiar smells and food showing the animal is perceiving these things. A plant might show perception in reaching for the sun. But a rock doesn't react at all. Perception can be shown through reactions. And therefore the prisoners would likely believe the consciousness of the shadows if they where to react. There is the possibility that the captors react to the prisoners and therefore the shadow of the captor would also react. But this weakens Plato's argument. In the same way when talking to a person, they may react with a mouth that is talking, arms that are moving, but I am under no illusions that these parts are conscious. When that person dies I will stop talking to them, as even though those parts are still around they were being controlled by a consciousness that is gone. Even in reality, beings have a deeper layer that is controlling what reacts and how. So the prisoners are not wrong. Shadows experience the same action-reaction as beings do, caused by the same perceptions, a direct consequence of consciousness. The difference between beings and shadows in terms of consciousness is not there.

Reality

That may not be the definition Plato was meaning. I would understand the argument that when talking about beings, he means real things that exist. So the quote rewords to "The prisoners would believe the shadows to be real", with the implication that we may never know what is real and what is fake. Except in the allegory the shadows are real, even when exposed to the truth of the sun. Look at your shadow, it is real, you are not imagining this shadow. Just because the shadows cannot tell the full story of reality it doesn't mean they don't make up a unique part of it. This idea shares a similar fate to consciousness. Taking this as the interpretation basically means that Plato is stating that people think real things are real. Even after the prisoners were given a poor representation of the truth, the shadows are still real.

And I am happy to bring this one step higher. It is impossible to have a prisoner that knows nothing about reality. If instead of trapping the prisoners facing a cave wall I forced them into pitch black, they would still know the reality of the colour black. If you insist that what they are seeing is not black but instead their perception of the colour, the prisoner would still know the reality that they can perceive and a colour that may or may not be black. The same thing even applied to all the other senses. Existing inside of a reality means that whatever information you are given is a direct result of a true reality. In other words, our ability to sense saltiness, red, loudness or pain means it must exist in the truest reality.

Making it more correct, reality is unlikely to have these descriptions, but the underlying experiences must exist in some form. If we are to imagine that we are those people in the cave, I could ask "What do we know about the true reality?". We know that shadows exist, we know objects take forms, we know colours exist. All these things proposed would be correct however if I state that things (the shadows of objects moving towards and away from the light source) must spontaneously get bigger and smaller, I would be wrong. The difference comes in my interpretation. In the abstract sense, I can only see the shadow changing, its my brain that links this change with a change in size, describing it as bigger and smaller. In fact, I was lying to you. In our reality objects do get spontaneously bigger and smaller. When we move closer and further away from on object, its size changes. Yet the fact that we don't describe this change as the physical object changing size shows that it is our brain's interpretation that controls 'bigger' and 'smaller'. These concepts are imagined and so are not necessarily reflected in reality. When we see something it would be correct to see that what we sense is a wall of colours. It is then our brain that interprets the brown in front of me as a table and the black on white as text. Describing the colour as red also counts as something the brain interprets, but the experience of red cannot be false.

Imagine we are back in the cave. On the topic you suggest that since we can see a dogs shadow, that also must exist in the true reality. You are not wrong. The dogs shadow exists in the cave and since the cave exists in reality, the dogs shadow must also exist in reality. Would it be common? No. Could we recognise the dogs shadow based off the dog? Probably not. In our world I believe this works in a similar way. I can say tables must exist, and when brought out into a fourth dimension I could find something that looks like a table. But the question is, is that actually a table? The answer for you might be no, if what we know about reality is false, that means that tables must be false. But in the fourth dimension, if something has 4 legs and lets me put things on it, that is a table. It might not be common to find a table in the fourth dimension and I probably couldn't recognise what a table truly is, but the categorisation of a table will always exist in my mind.

Knowledge

The shadows as a direct product of reality is why an issue with Pennycook's idea that someone who is given the truth of the situation would instantly be a God. The people in the cave are not idiots, and their reality is based on the real thing. In example of object permanence. If someone put an object on one side of the cave, it is likely to stay on that side until moved. Pennycook states that someone who knew the truth could figure that one out easily, and the people who have only see shadows would have no clue. However I do not think you would need to know any 'truth' to figure this out. I believe the people in the cave could easily figure out that an objects shadow that is moved to one side of a cave would then stay on that side until moved again. Babies figure out this fact at about a year old? so why wouldn't the cave people.

I can see how the enlightened person might have an easier time figuring out the 3rd dimension and things like that. But with enough time, I am sure the prisoners that take on the role of scientists will figure out the 3rd dimension and all the other quirks of their environment. I also thing that this is true of our world. If someone from the true reality comes to earth. They might explain the scientific models we have current or are working on, and they probably have better answers as to why things work the way that they do and an intuition of what's going on. But observations and trials of the things that matter to us would render this newcomer as just another great scientist.