Was Plato wrong? When does perception of what is real by an individual "not constitutive of reality?" Where does our worlds begin and end? Perhaps in our mind...
Christopher Nolan's much anticipated film "Inception" brings the imagination back to theaters. Again he brings the futuristic chaotic beauty of our own creative destruction back to the realms of our mind. If nothing more than the theory and the epic exploration of the limits of our imagination and how fact and fiction can be manipulated, distorted, and eventually form fitted, is what this movie brings - I am game.
"Dreams feel real while we are in them. Its only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange"- Inception 2010
The Cave Analogy is an allegory used by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work The Republic. There are some similarities to Plato's work and the quote above. Plato imagined a group of people who have lived chained in a cave all their lives facing a blank wall. The people watched shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and began to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to Plato, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to seeing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not consititutive of reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners.
Was Plato wrong? When does perception of what is real by an individual "not constitutive of reality?" Where does our worlds begin and end? Perhaps in our mind...
Last modified on Tuesday, 27 July 2010 23:09
Was Plato wrong? When does perception of what is real by an individual "not constitutive of reality?" Where does our worlds begin and end? Perhaps in our mind...
Published in
Beyond Thought