We often read Plato’s cave allegory for its trajectory: out of darkness into light. The back of the cave—where imagination projects fantasies onto shadows—is a place to flee. This part of the allegory reduces reality testing to thought or imagining, ignoring action and the people or things engaged. Yet thinkers prominent in our time—Immanuel Kant and W. V. O. Quine—suppose that our experience of the world is that of the cave’s prisoners: we too mistake fantasies for reality. This is an odd stance when practical life and science—beliefs informed by action and experiment—are better tests of reality than their arguments for world-making.

中文翻译：

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我们被困在柏拉图的洞穴里了吗？

我们经常读柏拉图的洞穴寓言是因为它的轨迹：从黑暗走向光明。洞穴的背面——想象力将幻想投射到阴影上——是一个逃离的地方。寓言的这一部分将现实测试简化为思想或想象，而忽略了行动和参与的人或事。然而，我们这个时代杰出的思想家——伊曼纽尔·康德和 WVO 奎因——假设我们对世界的体验就是洞穴囚犯的体验：我们也将幻想误认为是现实。当实际生活和科学——由行动和实验形成的信念——比它们创造世界的论点更能检验现实时，这是一种奇怪的立场。