The Cave

Within the story of the Cave we learned about Metaphysics and epistemology, the nature of reality and knowledge. These two words relate to plato's "theory of forms". Within the story plato refers to the sun as being part of the visible world and good as part of the intellectual part of the world. After reading about Plato's "theory of forms" I see the difference between what plato thought of as the visible and the intellectual world. The visible world has copies of the forms orginally thought in the intellectual world. After reading this I understand the story, when looking at shadows one might think they are looking at a camel, but what do we mean when we say we are looking at a camel? When we look at a wall we could not possibly see a camel, we can only see what we think might relate to the form of a camel. But its the same when we look at the living camel, is what we are seeing the orginal form of a camel? no it is not, the camel in the visible world is only a form of the actual camel in our mind.

When the prisoners were looking at the cave they did not know what they were looking at except distorted pictures on the walls, and this was their reality. When the prisoners were released they were able to see the forms and understand the visible world.
My question is, did the prisoners see the shadows on the walls and match words with the shadows as we do forms? when we see a form such as a camel, what makes this a camel? To the prisoner the shadows were their forms in a way, did they give a name to their forms but not understand them? did they still have intellectual ideas of the forms?

When looking at our reality through the theory of forms I think about how our world is so focused on relating things to the forms. We constently name things with words like a chair, a shoe, somthing furry or soft. Our whole existence has to do with how we name things and what we consider the forms in the visible world to be. A goldfish could not be furry because the idea of the goldfish in our mind is not furry. But why do we call it furry in the first place? Why do we catergarize everything with a name or adjective?

Plato is narrowing down our world to this "theory of forms", our only excistence is the ideas that our found in our heads, how we relate what we see to. He makes it so everything we see around us is based on what we know in our mind. He also says that we know what everything looks like, but its not until we see the form in the visible world when we know what the orginal idea is in our mind. Could somthing ever exist in the intellectual world and not the visible world?

In class we talked about the sun being part of the visible world and the good being apart of the intellectual world. At the end you asked us if we considered the sun to be a good thing, most said yes, but you then asked why we thought this. Did plato consider the sun being the form of the good? If good is part of the intellectual world where we understand ideas, what comes across as good in the visible world? Knowing that nothing in our visible world is perfect or the orginal idea of the forms, this would mean that the sun is not perfect, but the good is perfect. I think plato wanted us to think of the sun being the form of the good.