I have not read the republic as a collection. My impression is it doesn’t make any particular useful points: philosopher kings, states, etc.
The cave though has always been interesting, more for the art and imagery it has inspired than Plato’s use of it. Its included there and I’m sure it has some context I don’t understand.
I particularly like the idea of AI as the shadows om the wall of a cave. There’s something about the stretched contortions that aligns with the weird hallucinatory outputs.
It shows. The Republic is not a political treatise. Everything in it about city-states, philosopher kings, etc., is an overarching metaphor. He states multiple times throughout that it’s not a realistic political system, would be impossible to implement, and wouldn’t even be desirable. From the outset it’s framed as a device to illustrate a point about how individuals should compose themselves in relation to their three-part natures: rational, spirited, and appetitive.
In modern terminology we could call it the intellect, the emotions, and the body/instincts. The whole spiel about the philosopher kings is merely to say that a person’s rational nature should be in charge of their emotions and physical drives. This isn’t interpretation, he literally states it plain as day multiple times.
Although he does make a point that someone who’s thoroughly educated and has a strong reasoning capacity would make a better (more just) ruler than someone driven by hunger/greed/lust/whim. But that’s more of an aside. And he’s not exactly wrong, either…
Anyway, the context surrounding the Cave analogy was basically him making the point that everything we experience is more or less a hallucination represented by the shadows on the wall. It’s a surprisingly accurate intuition, given what we know now about psychology and perception.
Coupled with the Cave analogy is another analogy where he describes a spectrum between knowledge and belief. For Plato, “knowledge” was a very precise term, and much of what we think we know is merely belief. Anyway, the Cave is basically about how we all tend to live in belief, mistaking it for knowledge, in the same way the cave dwellers mistake the shadows for objects.
To put it another way, much of what we view as objective reality is actually highly subjective. Even the most concrete, systematized models of understanding reality, at their core, are ultimately founded upon basic assumptions.
He also talks about people who have left the Cave (ignorance) and seen the world above in broad daylight (knowledge). When they return to the Cave, everyone thinks they’re crazy and they get shunned because nobody wants to hear their crackbrained ideas about “sunlight” and “trees,” so they become a pariah.
And if you’ve ever tried to explain climate change to a denier, then you likely have some experience of what it’s like to engage with the ignorant from a standpoint of knowledge.
Isn’t that the right hand which is fucked up?
Which is begging the question: If you see a picture of an animal and want to point out something on one of its legs, do you use its perspective or yours to indicate left or right? How about chair legs? And so on.
I am using the side of the person who is looking, as I have no respect for the slop of abominable intelligence. If that would be a real human, or made by one, I would use the perspective of the person in the picture as well as less harsch language
As for animals, see before, and I use front and back legs
Left hand, the fingers are fucked, its AI
forgive me Karl Marx for I have slopped
Forgive me Alan Turing
Forgive me Plato (specifically the Cave, not his The Republic bullshit)
The Cave analogy was from The Republic…
I get the feeling you haven’t read it. What do you think it’s about?
I have not read the republic as a collection. My impression is it doesn’t make any particular useful points: philosopher kings, states, etc.
The cave though has always been interesting, more for the art and imagery it has inspired than Plato’s use of it. Its included there and I’m sure it has some context I don’t understand.
I particularly like the idea of AI as the shadows om the wall of a cave. There’s something about the stretched contortions that aligns with the weird hallucinatory outputs.
It shows. The Republic is not a political treatise. Everything in it about city-states, philosopher kings, etc., is an overarching metaphor. He states multiple times throughout that it’s not a realistic political system, would be impossible to implement, and wouldn’t even be desirable. From the outset it’s framed as a device to illustrate a point about how individuals should compose themselves in relation to their three-part natures: rational, spirited, and appetitive.
In modern terminology we could call it the intellect, the emotions, and the body/instincts. The whole spiel about the philosopher kings is merely to say that a person’s rational nature should be in charge of their emotions and physical drives. This isn’t interpretation, he literally states it plain as day multiple times.
Although he does make a point that someone who’s thoroughly educated and has a strong reasoning capacity would make a better (more just) ruler than someone driven by hunger/greed/lust/whim. But that’s more of an aside. And he’s not exactly wrong, either…
Anyway, the context surrounding the Cave analogy was basically him making the point that everything we experience is more or less a hallucination represented by the shadows on the wall. It’s a surprisingly accurate intuition, given what we know now about psychology and perception.
Coupled with the Cave analogy is another analogy where he describes a spectrum between knowledge and belief. For Plato, “knowledge” was a very precise term, and much of what we think we know is merely belief. Anyway, the Cave is basically about how we all tend to live in belief, mistaking it for knowledge, in the same way the cave dwellers mistake the shadows for objects.
To put it another way, much of what we view as objective reality is actually highly subjective. Even the most concrete, systematized models of understanding reality, at their core, are ultimately founded upon basic assumptions.
He also talks about people who have left the Cave (ignorance) and seen the world above in broad daylight (knowledge). When they return to the Cave, everyone thinks they’re crazy and they get shunned because nobody wants to hear their crackbrained ideas about “sunlight” and “trees,” so they become a pariah.
And if you’ve ever tried to explain climate change to a denier, then you likely have some experience of what it’s like to engage with the ignorant from a standpoint of knowledge.
Isn’t that the right hand which is fucked up?
Which is begging the question: If you see a picture of an animal and want to point out something on one of its legs, do you use its perspective or yours to indicate left or right? How about chair legs? And so on.
I am using the side of the person who is looking, as I have no respect for the slop of abominable intelligence. If that would be a real human, or made by one, I would use the perspective of the person in the picture as well as less harsch language
As for animals, see before, and I use front and back legs