The Allegory of the Cave is rhetorically powerful, suggestive but also baffling. It presents a picture of our ability to have knowledge of the world (our ‘epistemic predicament’) in which knowledge is difficult and our experience (on which we base knowledge of the empirical world) is misleading.
It also suggests an answer to our main question: what is the value of knowledge? If we mainly trapped inside the cave (whatever exactly that means) then escape seems highly desirable and surely no-one would wish to return to the cave’s ignorance once they had been outside? Knowledge, it seems, is valuable in itself (intrinsically valuable) before we have asked any questions about what it might be good for (ie instrumentally valuable).
So in addition to its instrumental value, Plato seems to think that knowledge is valuable in itself or intrinsically. But, of course, this is merely an allegory. It is not an argument for the view of knowledge it makes vivid. To see whether it can serve as the basis for such an argument (and thus provide rational reason to believe that knowledge is like that: difficult but valuable) we need to think how the allegory works, what the elements stand for, what is thus assumed and so forth.
In class we had a number of suggestions for the various elements. Thus for example, does the wall stand for sensation / the senses, through which we encounter the world? The fire remained confusing. But the key question is what, exactly, are the shadows? On what view of perception, of our experience of the empirical or natural world, does it make sense to separate ‘shadows’ from the ‘objects’ of which they are shadows but which we cannot directly see?
One answer is provided by Plato’s theory of forms. If we believe that the empirical world is a mere ‘shadow’ of an ideal world of forms, then our perception of what is really real (the forms not the empirical world) will be indirect. But that’s a high price to pay for an interpretation of the allegory. (By that I mean: if you have to believe in the forms to have any use for the allegory, you may not have a use for the allegory.)
An easier route is just to think that our perceptions can be misleading (see Bacon, Descartes and others). If so, one might say that how things appear (appearances) may not be a good guide to how they are. And if so, shadows can stand for appearances through which we ‘access’ the world. But if so, how does the idea of leaving the cave work? How can we see the world as it really is? Via very good lighting and having a look from all sides? (See what Bacon and Descartes say.) And is that enough to suggest the intrinsic value of knowledge if we can somehow bypass mere appearances?
Two more things came out of discussion.
First, in other disciplines one might not start with the assumption that knowledge is so very difficult. One might, eg., study in psychology the many ways we acquire knowledge apparently unproblematically every day, or through education. (See later in the term.) The idea that all or any knowledge is very difficult is a characteristically philosophical one. (That observation about the nature of philosophy does not show us, however, how to avoid sceptical arguments from Descartes, Hume or even the Matrix, however.)
Second, one reason Plato seems to have for thinking that knowledge is intrinsically good is that knowledge is of the forms including the form of the good. But it is not clear, whether Plato intended this or not, that knowledge of the good is obviously itself a good. Perhaps if anything is a good for someone (ie it has intrinsic value for them) then they have somehow to grasp the form of the good? But that seems some way off what Plato is saying. In other words, whilst the allegory does suggest that knowledge is good in itself (because no one would want to return to ignorance even if one's ignorant state was also a state of ease and comfort), it does not suggest why that is so. It still leaves us baffled.
Consulting colleagues, Peter Lucas suggests: "Well, what lies in the back of this is the Socratic paradox that virtue is knowledge. Not necessarily an appealing thought, stated baldly, but: The main theme of the Republic is that excellence in the state and in the individual are isomorphic - everything depends on achieving the right sort of harmony (hierarchy) between the rational, spirited and appetitive parts of the soul (state). We are expected to believe, I think, that an individual who has evaded the snares of the sensory world, and grasped the forms, in the light of the (form of the) good, will inevitably be in this happy condition. (This is what the education of the guardians aims at: they are being educated to exemplify this condition, whilst also performing the role of the rational part in the state).
I'm not sure if that amounts to an argument (it is more of a premiss, or set of premisses - a picture of human excellence according to which the enquiry into the nature of knowledge and the enquiry into the nature of virtue converge on a conception of human flourishing.)"
And Peter HK adds: "I'm not sure I have anything to add to what Peter's just said."