Introduction to Smoke, Mirrors and Flames

Let the high Muse chant loves Olympian:
We are but mortals, and must sing of man.

AN eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pier-glass [mirror] or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially, and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now absent . . . . .  Middlemarch by George Eliot,   Chapter 27 Vimeo clip

 If you think “seeing is believing” consider the ways tricksters such as magicians using “sleight of hand” victimize you because of your inherent blindness.

Source: This is edited from the html version of the file http://org.elon.edu/philosophy/ptp2/woolfrey%20paper.doc

Plato’s Allegory reminds us that reflection makes many of us uncomfortable. When you recognize that idea in Plato, it gives you time to grow accustomed to that idea.  It does not take you long to begin reflecting on the fact that you are at the stage of your life now where you are supposed to be realizing your own identity.  You are in college to examine what you know, to acquire new perspectives on the world, new ways of thinking.   Having permission—a class requirement—to ask ‘Why?’ [And its corollary, “Who says so?”] helps you to begin understanding your obligations as moral agent in a society that may (or not!) one day be regarded as civilized by intelligent beings.

Encourages the entertaining of alternative viewpoints:  In order to know how well your own argument stands up to scrutiny, you have to know what the alternatives are.  A common philosophical tool involves the collecting and examination of alternative viewpoints: Here is my problem or question.  What are the possible explanations?  Of all possible alternatives, which does the best job of resolving or explaining the issue?  Why this is important, we all understand, is that it flexes our reasoning powers, helps to shed light on your prejudices and biases, and guides you through a search for the best answers.

Minimizing confusion and building consistency: Discussion does not provide answers as often as it helps to clarify questions.  Digging down into the roots of a question, however, sheds light on its complexity.  When we understand the basis of the question, we can see more clearly where a study of that question leads.  When we see that the foundation of one question is visibly linked to the foundation of another question, we discover how building connections between ideas is imperative for logical and ethical consistency.  For instance, many people believe morality is relative, shades of gray, or necessarily based on a particular religious interpretation and thus black and white.

Check your premises: When unfounded assumptions are questioned, we are inclined to reject relativism or religion for equally invalid reasons and falsely conclude that everything is relative and trivial or, conversely, without a god there is no moral basis for any behavior.  Communication opens up these perspectives into component parts and, exposing them to questions, demonstrates their logical inadequacies.  Communication is transformative when it can expose our self-deception or build our confidence in our reasoning abilities.

The lessons of the Cave communicate one such set of tools. 1) moral reasoning is more than mere human opinion (or ethical subjectivism),
2) our cultural conditioning can be critically assessed, and 3) our society, sometimes despite our best intentions, is not a meritocracy but, arguably, should aim to be. Hannah Arendt, (a writer who aptly characterized Germany’s Nazi “Kultur” as “the banality of evil”) wrote that "the habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass or to attract attention”  should be a guard against evil actions. 

Philosophy is not the only discipline that makes a habit of examining claims asserted, but since that activity is philosophy’s most essential feature, it is an excellent place to turn for the acquiring of that habit. The more one understands about how our belief systems are formed and how our perspectives are shaped, and the more one understands how many different ways of seeing there are in the world, the closer one gets to the “truth.”  As the Buddha observed:  “We all have a piece of the truth.”  The more pieces one knows about, the closer one is to escaping out of the cave, in brief, we are more enlightened.  The more practice we get at collecting those shards of light, the more likely we are to be acquiring the habit of examination needed for critical thinking.

Plato:    the allegory of the cave

 The directions:  To guide you on your discovery of the meaning of the "allegory of the cave," first read the brief allegory, then work on the questions below, together, before producing your short summary. Feel free to change your answers as you work through, discuss with others, and gain understanding of, the various aspects of the story.

( Plato: The Republic bk. VII, 516b-c; trans. Paul Shorey)

. . .  Imagine prisoners, who have been chained since their childhood deep inside a cave: not only are their limbs immobilized by the chains; their heads are chained in one direction as well so that their gaze is fixed on a wall.

Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which statues of various animals, plants, and other things are carried by people. The statues cast shadows on the wall, and the prisoners watch these shadows. When one of the statue-carriers speaks, an echo against the wall causes the prisoners to believe that the words come from the shadows.

The prisoners engage in what appears to us to be a game: naming the shapes as they come by. This, however, is the only reality that they know, even though they are seeing merely shadows of images. They are thus conditioned to judge the quality of one another by their skill in quickly naming the shapes and dislike those who play poorly.

Suppose a prisoner is released and compelled to stand up and turn around. At that moment his eyes will be blinded by the sunlight coming into the cave from its entrance, and the shapes passing by will appear less real than their shadows.

The last object he would be able to see is the sun, which, in time, he would learn to see as the object that provides the seasons and the courses of the year, presides over all things in the visible region, and is in some way the cause of all these things that he has seen.

(This part of the allegory, incidentally, closely matches Plato's metaphor of the sun which occurs near the end of The Republic, Book VI.)[1]

Once enlightened, so to speak, the freed prisoner would not want to return to the cave to free "his fellow bondsmen," but would be compelled to do so. Another problem lies in the other prisoners not wanting to be freed: descending back into the cave would require that the freed prisoner's eyes adjust again, and for a time, he would be one of the ones identifying shapes on the wall. His eyes would be swamped by the darkness, and would take time to become acclimated. Therefore, he would not be able to identify the shapes on the wall as well as the other prisoners, making it seem as if his being taken to the surface completely ruined his eyesight. (The Republic bk. VII, 516b-c; trans. Paul Shorey).[2]

The prisoners would reject or resent any claims made and threaten the enlightened prisoner to be silent.

1 Plato was suggesting that the prisoners in the cave represent you and me, average persons.  What then do the shadows in front of the prisoners signify?

2 Who or what do you think the persons represent who are carrying the objects reflected in the firelight?

3 How would you explain why Plato thinks that persons released from their chains, on turning around and encountering objects being carried, would be confused, perplexed?

4 What do you think the sunlight represents?

5 And why would this person need so much time to adjust to the light?

       (Remember you're explaining the allegory.)

6 What's so hard about going back into the cave?

7 Why does Plato think, in the last paragraph, that the person who had been in the sunlight would be killed?

8 If there's time, produce, as a group, a two or three sentence summary of what Plato is trying to symbolize about human existence with this allegory.

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A Critical Perspective by William Irwin:

William Irwin discusses at length the analogies between The Matrix and Plato’s Allegory. His book , The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real, (2002)

has been acclaimed in reviews as a “must read for those interested in learning more about philosophy who are open-minded to present day applications of basic theories. . . this collection of essays offers a unique opportunity to explain sometimes complex theories of philosophy in a palpable and comprehensible manner that I think anyone can appreciate.”

Irwin has several other books interpreting popular culture icons ranging from Star Wars to the Simpsons to Seinfield.  The following excerpt from Irwin’s book, The Matrix, refers to the allegory of the cave (also variously called the simile, myth, or parable of the cave) (514a-521b).  “The account, however, serves just as well to describe Neo's predicament upon being freed from the Matrix.  The prisoners in the cave are chained by the neck, hands, and legs. They have been this way since birth and so have no conception of any other way of life. Shadows appear on the wall in front of them, as their jailers pass animal figures before the light of a fire in the manner of a puppet show. The prisoners watch shadows on a wall, shadows not of real animals but of carved figures. The light that makes these shadows possible is firelight, not the best possible kind of light, sunlight. Yet these prisoners do not know that they are prisoners and do not suspect there is any reality but that which they experience. One day, however, one of the prisoners is set free of his chains, is dragged to the outside world, and by the light of the sun beholds things as they actually are. Rather than selfishly remaining in the outside world, the prisoner returns to tell the others, who reward his kindness with mockery and resistance, believing he has gone insane.

This story parallels the life of Plato's teacher, Socrates, who was thought mad and ultimately put to death for trying to draw attention to a higher plane of reality. Of course it also parallels the story of Neo, who one day is freed from the Matrix to behold "the desert of the real." . . . .”  [For a discussion of the complicated connection between Plato and Socrates see [Irwin’s] "Jerry and Socrates: The Examined Life?" in Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and Nothing (Chicago: Open Court, 2000), pp). 3-5.  This book has received many good reviews but I have not read it, yet.]

Irwin continues:  “Who frees the prisoner in Plato's allegory is unclear, though in The Matrix it is Morpheus (in Greek mythology the name of the God of sleep, who brings changes in shape via dreams). Like Plato's prisoner who must be dragged upward, Neo is at first horrified by the sight of the other unwitting prisoners who slumber, plugged in gooey pink cave-pods. Neo does not want to accept that what he now sees is real, that previously he had been living in a dream world. "Most of these people are not ready to be unplugged," Morpheus assures him. Like Plato's prisoner's gradual, painful period of adjustment to the world outside the cave, Neo's rehab is painful. "Why do my eyes hurt?" Neo asks. "Because you've never used them," Morpheus replies.

"The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet," wrote Aristotle. And we do well to keep in mind that "education" literally, etymologically, means "to lead out," as the prisoner is led out of the cave and as Neo is led out of the Matrix. The Hippocratic Oath reminds physicians that they are guardians and trustees, not owners, of medical knowledge. They must share the knowledge to help others. No solemn oath binds those who receive education in philosophy, though the duty to share is no less attendant. Plato's escaped prisoner would prefer to bask in the light of the sun, of goodness and knowledge, but he returns to help others. "Would he not feel like Homer's Achilles, that he would far sooner ‘be on earth as a hired servant in the house of a landless man’ or endure anything rather than go back to his old beliefs and live in the old way?" (Republic 515d) Neo, unlike Cypher, would similarly endure anything rather than return to a false reality. [Note: Cypher is a character who “sells out” to the enforcers of the Matrix.]

 . . .  As Plato's Socrates continues with the story, somehow one of the prisoners is freed (by whom, we are not told), and forcibly led up a tunnel to the outside. It is an extremely painful process of adjustment. No artifice up here; nature and truth rule. Enlightenment is initially baffling and difficult; but once adjusted, the eyes feast, the soul has found what truly nourishes:

MORPHEUS: Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain. But you feel it. You've felt it your entire life. That there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is but it's there, like a splinter in your mind driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?

NEO: The Matrix?

MORPHEUS: Do you want to know what IT IS? The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

NEO: What truth?

MORPHEUS: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

 . . . .  And what if the Enlightened one were forced to return and to wake up his or her former cave dwellers from their dogmatic slumber? Socrates recounts a scene of violence and death: they would react with outrage at this mad story about an outside, real, happy world. Clearly, one must discover for oneself that one has been living in illusion, that one is not free but a slave of a system, that there exists the good and true by nature. Coming to the truth is a transformation of soul that is as much a discovery of self-that one has a soul, and that soul has a certain nature-as a discovery of what is real. Inevitably, this is a path of suffering as well as--eventually--of happiness. Not surprisingly, both The Matrix and the Platonic simile show us this proposition as well as state it, the better to allow us spectators of the drama a chance to look in the mirror.

The Platonic image of the matrix raises a score of questions, including of course "What is real? How do you define 'real?"' And those are questions explicitly posed in The Matrix (the words quoted are put by Morpheus, the liberator of prisoners, to Neo, "the [New] One" who will bring about the equivalent of a liberating revolution for all). Anyone familiar with the movie will already see many parallels between the movie and Plato's simile.

Even the mysterious Morpheus fits into the analogy. I mentioned that an unnamed agent liberates the Platonic prisoner; that agent must himself or herself have been liberated somehow, and be an expert in awakening. One does not awake oneself, though one may stir with primeval recollections just as Neo does, to the point that one has the vague feeling of not being quite sure if one is awake or asleep (Morpheus asks Neo if he has ever felt that way). Morpheus is the name of the Greek god of dreams. Why is the liberator in The Matrix named after that divinity? It seems odd, after all, that the awakener should be the expert in sleep. The god's name comes from the Greek word "morpho," meaning shape or form; for the god could summon up, in the sleeper, all sorts of shapes and forms. Who better than divine Morpheus to understand the difference between wakefulness and dreams?

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