Perception/Reality

I love the Allegory of the Cave. I live by it. I totally agree with RoadClosed, just playing devil's advocate. Ever notice how much the Matrix used from the allegory of the cave?

sorry guys,

none of this is real.. you are all victems of mass hysteria.. now take your pills, and those nasty Coputer things will dissapear, and when you wake up in the morning you will be safely back in your cave enjoying a freshly killed rabbit for breakfast..


now it is the blue tables you take tonight.. remember that

cheers

"Is that air that your breathing?"

Something I missed. Not sure why but I either never heard of the cave or forgot about it, even though I have had many classes with Plato involved. So I googled and found this site, for those in my boat...

http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm

This relationship with shadows is fascinating because when I was younger I was exposed by Carl Sagen in a series about the cosmos. In one episode he was talking about a 4th dimmensional object (bear with me if I am wrong but I was very young). And I remember him stating that we (as humans) cannot possibly percieve this object but we could see it's shadow! And he demonstrated it. It's amazing to me ALWAYS, when I read the stuff that people thought of over 1 thousand and 2 thousand years ago. We owe a lot to those inventors and thinkers of logic.

Perhaps in the future, mankind will be unbound and when we turn our heads we will percieve the real 4th dimensional object.

Yeah, well if you haven't read the alegory of the cave, grab a peek at it. Then check out William James (Principles of Psychology: Spirituality) and Vygotsky (Thought and Language). You should be able to google them for interesting links.

Here is a Vygotsky link:

http://www.sk.com.br/sk-vygot.html

Wrap some brain cells around that!

:-D

you percieve your own reality. Everything you hate or love is your own creation.

take the line from matrix: what is real? how do u define real? is real means what we see ,hear,touch etc.,, then these r just the electrical signals interperated by our mind!!!

IMHO

There is reality distinct from our perceptions and understanding of it. However, we can only ever relate to that reality through our perceptions - so trying to define it is both pointless and impossible. The reality we deal with daily is our perceived interpretation of reality, and it is only this reality that makes any sense to us.

Our personal understanding/perception of reality is defined by our personal history, experience, culture - whatever. So we never truly share reality with anyone - because our experience of an event ( which does have, IMO, a reality of its own ) will always be affected by who we are. Is it the same room ( to pick up an example from before )? Yes, but NONE of the people have a grasp of the real room. Each has a partial ( even if significant ) grasp of the real room.

Yes, this is Plato's cave. Except that you can never turn around. While it is important to understand the limits of ones own perception, if we want to engage with others, we can only do this throught the shadows.

Does that make any sense?