The Myth Of The Cave, By Plato

In this paper, I will investigate how Plato’s epistemology revolves around the following tenets: how the souls of humans and never-changing Forms make knowledge possible. In the Meno he uses the Socratic Method to introduce the theory of recollection—solving Meno’s paradox and proving the existence of humans’ immortal soul—and defines knowledge as justified true belief. Using his “Myth of the Cave” Plato contends that sense experience cannot lead to knowledge, but in fact knowledge can only be found in ideal models—Forms. I will argue that though false premises and problematic justification of the immortal soul exist as severe challenges to Plato’s epistemological view, Plato’s arguments ultimately cannot be concretely proven incorrect nor …show more content…
To illustrate that an intelligible world exists, or rather the realm of the Forms, Plato creates the Myth of the Cave. Inside the cave, human prisoners only experience a material world and its objects through shadows from projected objects. These prisoners represent ordinary people who see this world as real and thus trust their sense perception and experience as the truth. Plato states that genuine knowledge only exists of objects that are unchanging. Thus, physical objects cannot be knowledge unless they never change; this idea is represented by the shadows moving and constantly changing. Since the visible world is always changing and cannot be a source of knowledge, there must be a non-sensual world which the physical things of the visible world can exist …show more content…
Plato advocates innateness of knowledge because the slave boy seems to recollect knowledge with few questions very quickly. In a different view however, the slave boy can be seen as quickly acquiring the knowledge through experience of the dialogue with Socrates. Socrates’s questions to the slave boy could, instead of triggering the innate knowledge, be informing the slave boy of the reasoning behind the geometric theorem. Socrates can trigger using the prompts because he already knows of the square geometry so he can guide the slave boy. Thus, Socrates is essentially teaching and the slave boy is learning through experience. Earlier in the Meno, Plato states that Socrates and Meno cannot define virtue because both are ignorant. If Socrates was ignorant of the geometric theorem, how could he trigger and guide the slave boy? Plato’s proposal of the immortal soul can attempt to answer this question because the soul lives in an intelligible realm, one outside the visible world. The act of knowing would be to make the material world comprehensible by showing its relation to the intelligible world. Socrates could merely be more able to know than the slave boy, and thus have a better connection to his own soul and the intelligible world. However, Plato’s theory of recollection revolves the notion that an eternal soul actually exists—humans forget the soul because of birth, and the soul passes on after death. The soul would