If philosophy is “primarily an instrument of doubt”, as Scientific American contributor John Horgan writes in the fifth part of his series, and it counters our “terrible tendency toward certitude”, can that sense of doubt prevail to a point that it collides with the clarity of mind one achieves with common sense? In an attempt to provide further evidence of the proclamation that philosophy is an instrument of doubt, Horgan cites Socrates definition of wisdom being the knowledge one has of how little they know. He also cites Socrates’ parable of the cave, and it’s warning that we’re all prisoners to our own delusions.

“In Socrates’ Allegory of the Cave, Plato details how Socrates described a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them, and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners’ reality. Socrates explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not reality at all, for he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the manufactured reality that is the shadows seen by the prisoners. The inmates of this place do not even desire to leave their prison; for they know no better life.”

“In the allegory, Plato [also] likens people untutored in the Theory of Forms to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. All they can see is the wall of the cave. Behind them burns a fire. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a parapet, along which puppeteers can walk. The puppeteers, who are behind the prisoners, hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners are unable to see these puppets, the real objects, that pass behind them. What the prisoners see and hear are shadows and echoes cast by objects that they do not see.” 

A strict reading of the allegory suggests that the cave is a place where the uneducated are physically held prisoner. The prisoners are also imprisoned in a figurative sense, in that they’re imprisoned to their ideas about the world from a narrow perspective. A strict reading would also detail that the philosopher is the one person in the story free of a cave, and thus an enlightened man who knows the true nature of the forms.  

Socrates bolstered this interpretation when he informed a young follower of his named Glaucon that:

“The most excellent people must follow the highest of all studies, which is to behold the Good. Those who have ascended to this highest level, however, must not remain there but must return to the cave and dwell with the prisoners, sharing in their labors and honors.”

In the first installment, Socrates suggests that the philosophers are the enlightened ones who must lead to the prisoners to a better life, but in the second installment he cautions philosophers, in a round about way, to avoid staying in the highest level. The initial reading could lead us to believe Socrates wanted philosophers to remain in tune with the plight of the prisoner, or he wanted them to remain humble. Another interpretation of the second cautionary quote is that Socrates was warning present and future philosophers about remaining in the philosopher’s cave for too long, thus becoming prisoner to their own insular, echo chamber. Inherent in the latter interpretation is the warning that by remaining in the philosophers cave, one might lose perspective and clarity and become a victim of their own collective delusions. Modern terminology refers to the philosopher’s cave as an echo chamber.

The philosopher could accept an idea as a fact, based on the idea that the group thought contained within the philosophical cave accepts it as such. This philosopher may begin to surround themselves with like-minded people for so long that they no longer see that cave for what it is. The intellectual might also fall prey to the conceit that they’re the only ones not living in a cave. The intellectual might also see all other caves for what they are, until they come upon their own, for theirs is that which they call home. As Horgan says, citing the responses of “gloomy” students responding to the allegory of the cave, “If you escape one cave, you just end up in another.”

One of the only moral truths that John Horgan allows, in part five of his series, that trends toward a “terrible tendency toward certitude” is the argument that “ending war is a moral imperative.” This is not much of a courageous or provocative point, as most cave dwellers have come to the same conclusion as Mr. Horgan. Most cave dwellers now view war as something that we should only utilize as a last alternative, if at all.

For whom are we issuing this moral imperative, is a question that I would ask if I were lucky enough to attend one of Mr. Hogan’s classes. If we were to issue the imperative to first world countries, I would suggest that we would find a very receptive audience, for most of the leaders of these nations would be very receptive to our proposed solutions. If we were to send it out to tyrannical leaders and oppressive governments of third world governments, I am quite sure that we would have an equally receptive audience, as long as our proposed solutions pertained to the actions of first world countries.

Former Beatles musician John Lennon engaged in a similar pursuit in his “make love not war” campaign, but Lennon directed his campaign to first world leaders almost exclusively. Some of us now view this venture as a colossal waste of time. If Lennon directed his moral imperative at the third world, and their dictators were genuinely receptive to it, Lennon could’ve changed the world. If these third world leaders agreed to stop slaughtering, and starving their country’s people, and they also agreed to avoid engaging in skirmishes with their neighbors, all of us would view John Lennon as a hero for achieving actual peace in our time. This scenario also presupposes that these notoriously dishonest leaders weren’t lying to Lennon for the benefit of their own public relations, and that the leaders did their best to live up to such an agreement while quashing coup attempts by other tyrannical leaders who have other plans. This is, admittedly, a mighty big asterisk and a relative definition of peace, but if Lennon were able to achieve even that, the praise he received would be unilateral.

What Lennon did, instead, was direct the focus of his sit-ins, and sleepins, to the receptive leaders of the Britain and The United States. The question I would’ve had for John Lennon is, how often, since World War II, have first world countries gone to war with one another? Unless one counts The Cold War as an actual war, or the brief skirmishes in places like Yugoslavia, there hasn’t been a great deal of military action between the first world and the second world since World War II either. Most of what accounts for the need for military action, in modern times, involves first world countries attempting to clean up the messes that have occurred in third world countries.

If Lennon’s goals were as genuinely altruistic, as some have suggested, and not a method through which he could steal some spotlight from his rival, Paul McCartney, as others have suggested, he would have changed the focus of his efforts. Does this suggest that Lennon’s sole purpose was achieving publicity, or does it suggest that Lennon’s worldview was either born, or nurtured in an echo chamber, a philosopher’s cave, in which everyone he knew, knew, that the first world countries were the primary source of the problems when it came to the militaristic actions involved in war?

To those isolationists who will acknowledge that most of the world’s problems occur in the third world, they suggest that if The United States and Britain would stop playing world police and let these third world countries clean up their own messes, we would achieve a form of peace. To these people, I would suggest that the world does have historical precedent for such inaction: Adolf Hitler.

Some suggest that war with Hitler was inevitable. Hindsight informs us that Hitler was such a blood thirsty individual that he could not be appeased. Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain did try, however, and the world trumpeted Chamberlain’s name for achieving “peace in our time”. Chamberlain’s nemesis in parliament, Winston Churchill, suggested that Chamberlain tried so hard to avoid going to war that he made war inevitable. Churchill suggested that if Britain engaged in more diplomatic actions, actions that could have been viewed as war-like by Germany, such as attempting to form a grand coalition of Europe against Hitler, war might have been avoided. We’ll never know the answer to that question of course, but how many of those living in the caves of idealistic utopia of “ending war, as we know it,” would’ve sided with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and against Churchill, in the lead up to, and after, the Munich Peace Accords? How many of them would’ve suggested that Hitler signing the accords meant that he did not want war, and that heeding Churchill’s warnings would’ve amounted to a rush to war? Churchill also stated, and some historians agree, that the year that occurred between Munich and Britain’s eventual declaration of war, left Britain in a weaker position that led to a prolonged war. How many of those who live in anti-war caves would’ve been against the proposal to form a grand coalition of Europe against Germany, because it might make Germany angry, and they could use that action as a recruiting tool?

The point of listing these contrarian arguments is not to suggest that war is the answer, for that would be a fool’s errand, but to suggest that even those philosophers who believe they have the strongest hold on truth may want to give doubt a chance. It is also a sample of a larger argument. The larger argument suggests that while the philosopher’s viewpoint is mandatory to those seeking a well-rounded perspective, they also need to visit other caves every once in a while.

They may not agree with the cave dwellers in other caves, but they may hear different voices on the matter that influence their approach to problem solving. The point is if the only thing a student of philosophy hears in a day is doubt directed at the status quo, and that they must defeat that certitude, how far can that student venture down that road before they trip on the tip of a fulcrum, and everything they learn beyond that progressively divorces them from common sense?

We’re all prisoners in a cave of our mind. Our parents and teachers gave us the names of the shapes and shadows on our wall, and those answers provided us clarity and comfort. The philosophers, visiting our caves, taught us the intoxicating discipline of doubt. They taught us to doubt those principles and question the shapes and shadows further, and like a muscle that requires equal amounts of strain and relaxation our brains became stronger as a result. We learned to doubt our fundamental structures in ways that led us to question everything those who formed us hold dear, and it strengthened our intellectual resolve. At some point in this self-imposed challenge to pursue answers to simple questions that are more well-rounded, some of us revealed that not only have we eluded a life sentence in the common man’s cave, but we’ve become prisoners in the philosopher’s cave. Few know when their answers to the forms dancing on wall reveal this, but those of us who have, have had an intruder visit our cave to inform us “It’s a goat.”