Veil of Perception

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the perception problem in his theory of forms. The allegory of the cave illustrates that our perceptions of the world are inherently unreliable, and that what we sense is ‘shadows’ of the true forms of objects. While Plato was making an entirely different point about the nature of reality, he too understood that perception cannot be trusted fully, that we are prisoners in our bodies, and unable to see the ‘true’ universe. Objectivity is impossible for us, because we cannot escape our frame of reference, and that frame of reference fundamentally changes everything we perceive.

In a more metaphorical sense, even ethics concepts illustrate the subjective nature of our experience of the world. The ethical theory of cultural relativism takes that to the extreme by positing that the very nature of ethics is relative, and we therefore must respect the customs of every culture, regardless of whether it coincides with our own ethical ideas. While we summarily dismissed the concept ...

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