The Allegory of the Cave

1. Thoery of Forms

1.1. Forms/Ideas

1.1.1. Highest Echelon of Truth/Reality/Knowledge

1.2. Materialistism/ Immaterialism

1.2.1. Illusion

2. The Cave

2.1. Prisoners chained up and immboilised

2.2. Large fire behind the prisoners

2.3. Walkway between the prisoners and the fire

2.4. People walk along this path everyday, carrying various items on their heads and casting shadows on the wall

2.5. The shadows on the wall is all the prisoners can see

2.6. The echoes off the wall are all the prisoners hear

2.7. These shadows and echoes are the prisoners reality

3. Outside the Cave

3.1. One of the prisoners is freed from the cave and brought outside

3.2. He is dazzled by the sunlight

3.3. He doesn't understand the things he sees

3.4. He is desperate to return to the cave, as that is all he knows - his reality

3.5. Eventually, he adapts and begins to understands the world

4. Return the the Cave

4.1. When the freed prisoner returns to the cave to tell the prisoners of the world outside the cave, they can't understand or visual what he is saying

4.2. The freed prisoner looks at the cave wall, but his eyes. now accustomed to the daylight, cannot focus on the shadows properly

4.3. He is unable to name the names of the shadows on the wall as they pass and is mocked and ridiculed by the other prisoners for corrupting his eyes - for corrupting his reality.

5. Hyper-Dimensionality

5.1. A shadow on a wall is a 2d representation of a 3d object

5.2. A 3d object in our reality represents the shadow of a 4d object in 3d

5.3. A tesseract is to a cube as a cube is to a square

5.3.1. A shadow in 3 dimensions of a 4 dimensional hypercube

5.4. Carl Sagan - 4th Dimension

6. Perception

6.1. Phenomenalism

6.1.1. Subjective Idealism/ Immaterialism - George Berkeley

6.2. Internal V External

6.3. Objects exist only as sensory stimuli

6.3.1. "Bundles of sense-data"

6.3.1.1. Atomical structure

6.3.1.2. Quantum Mechanics

6.3.1.2.1. Reality breaks down the harder and closer we look

6.3.1.2.2. Randomness

6.3.1.2.3. Double-slit experiment