Plato's Cave: The Problem

Plato's Cave & Implications

Twenty-four centuries ago, Plato presented an analogy of perception in the story of the prisoners in the cave . The implications of this story for perception are that the sights and sounds that we perceive in the world around us are merely reflections of the outside world, manifested to us by way of our senses, and by whatever perceptual processing occurs in our brain.

This much, so far, appears uncontraversial, and would be acceptable to most scientists without question. A full consideration of this statement however leads to a rather significant and interesting conclusion that has not received sufficient attention in either the philosophical or psychological literature, and which has deep implications for the nature of perception and our efforts to model it artificially. The problem, simply stated, is that if your percept of the outside world is a phenomenon occuring within your head, then how is it that it appears to be outside your head?

Consider yourself at this moment reading this paper, as shown in Figure 1 (A).

Figure 1 (A)

Light from the room around you enters your eye, and through some mysterious neural processing leads to the formation of a percept in your head. Your percept of the room around you however does not appear within your head, instead, your head appears to be within the room.

How can this be?

Return to argument

Return to Steve Lehar