Back to the beginning: the cave

[Silver]

Heh. Theists say that atheists sit in their cave of sin and are in dire need to be saved from God's just wrath in the form of hell.

Yeah, I'm going to to be respectful of a philosophical mind than one that prefers mythology.

[Angrboda]

If you're not familiar with Plato and his Allegory of the Cave, then by all means, read up.

I remember discussing this in philosophy class, and my atheism reinforced the argument I made.  

The shadows on the wall are the theists reality.  When the theists escape the cave at the behest of another, they are so blinded by the light of truth outside of the cave, because they have spent so much time in the darkness of the theistic cave, that they are shocked by reality.

Within this allegory actually exists the recipe for cognitive dissonance, for the human condition tends to bind us when we are confronted with the truth of reality.  Prisoners of faith cannot free themselves from their chains, even if one of their own flock shows them the way.

Those who are too confused and incapable of accepting reality tend to return to the safety of the cave; i.e., religious faith.

Only the one who personally accepts the journey toward reality can realize the truth for himself.

Discuss.

Plato is whirring in his grave like a jet engine.

[robvalue]

Let's take a simple example for starters: I look at a rock. We'll assume for now that I actually am looking at a rock, and not dreaming, hallucinating or having information implanted in my head.

How do my eyes detect the rock? They pick up light that is reflected off it. So right away, even if I could experience this light directly, I'm experiencing a shadow, and not the rock itself.

But then, my eyes have to detect this light and convert it into something. They turn it into electrical impulses. They have encoded the light, and by doing so, have turned it into a specific format. These impulses are a shadow of the shadow.

Then finally, the brain receives these signals and constructs a model of the rock. It's made of colours, which don't really exist at all. They are a representation. The brain experiences itself, and its own internal models. It never experiences anything else.

Different animals might encode the light differently, and produce different types of models in their brain for the same "rock". A machine set up to detect light might end up outputting the frequency of the light.

Informally, we say we experience the rock. But since this is a "back to the beginning" philosophical type thread, I was pointing out that this isn't actually the case. What we do is to work backwards from our shadows, to see what would logically produce it.

I thought about theism, and the cave thing doesn't quite work. Theists are seeing the same shadows, but their interpretation of what they represent differs. Perhaps as a metaphor within a metaphor they are trapped in a cave of sorts, but it doesn't quite fit. It's more like they are expanding the cave in their minds in ways that aren't actually real. The way I see theists chained up is in their programmed responses, and their faulty logic, which keeps them from unbiased analysis.

[The Grand Nudger]

I wish people would stop trying to use colors as an example in these conversations....it really doesn't work, lol.

[robvalue]

Plato never could have known that Tony Iron would later make that super power suit, in his fucking cave!

[Aroura]

Just because this is not how Plato originally used the metophor does not make other interpretations of the metaphor wrong.

I mean, he believed some pretty whacky shit.

[robvalue]

Theists are chained up looking only at a very narrow, specific interpretation while atheists are able to look all around at the possibilities they have discounted.

Also, I notice that by failing to recognise the fallibility of our senses, they often jump to conclusions about anecdotes (including their own).

I find it fascinating that many questions about reality are simply malformed, such as “What does it really look like?”

[ignoramus]

I know my brain will live its whole life in darkness.
I think I might drill a hole in my head to let my brain experience what it really means to see the light!

We really are all brains in a jar... That jar is our skull.
We have to trust our less than ideal (but just good enough to not get eaten) senses as we have nothing better.

Kit, why are you theist bashing? What's really wrong...? Are the oldies in the nursing home driving you nuts with visions of God?

[vulcanlogician]

I think what Rob was getting at is that we are limited in our perceptive abilities. For instance, if there lay a garden outside your window, you could simply look outside and know what was there. But what if you didn't have a window? What if you could only peer through a tiny hole in the wall and observe a patch of green? Could you ever figure out that a garden was on the other side of the wall? Maybe it's a forest... maybe something else... after all, a patch of green doesn't tell you much.

That adequately describes our predicament as knowledge-seeking beings. With time and effort, we can perhaps learn that there is an assortment of different plants on the other side of a wall. But so much else is hidden. 

Our capacity to know is finite. Can we ever discover the ultimate nature of the universe/reality? Probably not. We may never come to know a great many things. In some cases, such knowledge may simply be impossible.

No, that is a poor analogy.

It's akin to the falsehood of "if a tree falls in the forest and no is around to witness it, does it still fall?"

Of course, it still falls.  Logic and what we know of trees falling dictates this.

It is no different than any other perceptions we know to be realistically accurate.  

Therefore, equating what we know to be perceptively accurate with faith-based interpretation just doesn't fly.

Not really. Keep in mind that I was more responding to Rob's statements (or what I interpreted his statements to mean) and also adding my own elaborations.

I was was talking about the limits of human knowledge, not the accuracy of our perceptions. In quantum mechanics there are several types of phenomena which will forever remain beyond human apprehension--not just because they are utterly divorced from our intuitions --though this is the root of the problem.

I think it's pretty reasonable to postulate that there could be a great many phenomena that will forever remain outside the detection of our instrumentation, not to mention our sensory perceptions. And though Plato thought otherwise, it is even quite possible that certain phenomena can't be quantified by mathematics.

As to others' comments on Plato's cave, I have something to say about that too. But I wanted clear up what I said before. Just because I say that there are limits to knowledge, doesn't mean that I have a "faith-based interpretation" concerning things that lie outside outside the grasp of our apprehension.

[Whateverist]

Something that doesn't resemble word salad.  Sorry, but even we atheists are not free from it's green grasp.

What I want is an example: concrete means providing a proper example.

I think what Rob was getting at is that we are limited in our perceptive abilities. For instance, if there lay a garden outside your window, you could simply look outside and know what was there. But what if you didn't have a window? What if you could only peer through a tiny hole in the wall and observe a patch of green? Could you ever figure out that a garden was on the other side of the wall? Maybe it's a forest... maybe something else... after all, a patch of green doesn't tell you much.

That adequately describes our predicament as knowledge-seeking beings. With time and effort, we can perhaps learn that there is an assortment of different plants on the other side of a wall. But so much else is hidden. 

Our capacity to know is finite. Can we ever discover the ultimate nature of the universe/reality? Probably not. We may never come to know a great many things. In some cases, such knowledge may simply be impossible.

Not if you buy a bottle of my patented Christ Oil.  Just rub it on anyone you like when you start feeling your atonement power waning.  Then toss the victim newly anointed son of God into a volcano or string him up.  Soon you'll feel the certainty in the answers to all those questions returning most vividly.