Plato's Cave in the Age of Misinformation |
Most people believe that self-awareness is important. Self-awareness partly involves recognizing that there are limits to our knowledge and understanding of things, making us open to considering alternatives to what we believe. Of course, it's troublesome to admit that we are not wholly knowledgeable. Sometimes, the more self-aware we think we are, the less self-aware we actually are.
Philosophy has always emphasized cultivating intellectual humility so that we can revise our views when we have reason to think they are mistaken. Plato's well-known allegory of the cave—one of the first things many students learn in their introductory philosophy classes—illustrates this well.
The allegory is found in Book 7 of the Republic. The story is one in which prisoners have spent their entire lives chained in place deep in a cave, unable to move their heads to look behind them. They perceive shadows on the cave wall, which are cast by moving objects behind them. But because they cannot turn their heads, they are unaware of what is really causing........