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The prisoners are described as being bound in a dark cave, facing into a wall. They can only see the shadows of their guards as they come and go behind them. It is as if the shadows are the reality, real people who can talk and move.

Plato compares this very limited view of the world with the ordinary physical perceptions of mankind. Plato believes that true reality is much more than what we perceive, and that a philosopher's role is to investigate this higher meaning for the enlightenment of all. To that end, he postulated that all earthly things were simply representations (like the shadows) of some higher form or concept, much as all wooden tables in the world mirror the same basic function that is "a table." His theory said that such "Forms" (Ideas) were real, and he endeavored to discover their true nature.

Plato also uses the light (the Sun outside, brighter than the cave lights) as a metaphor for intellectual illumination, which could only with difficulty be explained to those who had not experienced it firsthand.

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Q: In Plato's Myth of the Cave what does he mean by For the prisoners reality would consist of nothing but the shadows?
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