More to the point: what is outside of reality?

When you use All there is nothing left to talk about because there can be nothing out of All.
Maybe think on the questioning again.

All of reality is a prison. The question is, what is outside of that prison? — an-salad

Prison is preferable to reality. Discuss.

All of reality is a prison. The question is, what is outside of that prison? — an-salad

why do you presume there is an outside?

All of reality is a prison. The question is, what is outside of that prison? — an-salad

I think the more appropriate representation is "the belief held by most people, as to what constitutes 'all of reality', is a prison". Once we dismiss this belief, to see that reality is much different from what most people believe it to be, then we are released from that prison.

What does this thread have to do with Plato's cave allegory?

First, he does not say that all of reality is a prison.

Second, one must escape the cave to know what is outside.

All of reality is a prison. The question is, what is outside of that prison? — an-salad

Unreality, aka the world of ideas, aka the world of the forms.

Except that Plato swaps reality and unreality about, so that the forms are real and the material world the unreal.

Why do you think he does that? In other dialogues he says something different.

Why do you think he does that? — Fooloso4

Dude, psychologising Plato is a big ask, but philosophy is obsessed with the mind, thinking and ideas, and seemingly always has been. This obsession is religious in character, and sets the scene for later religious disembodiments and dualisms. The ratios of rationality were his new gods, and of course the elitism of the educated mind bathes in the light of reason while the primitive barbarian remains in the darkness of superstition...

Perhaps another question, more tractable, and possibly with the exact same answer, would be "Why do we still care why he did that all these years later?"

Dude, psychologising Plato is a big ask — unenlightened

It is not a matter of psychologising but contextualizing. The Republic is a political dialogue. Politics of the soul and politics of the city. In both there is the importance of education.

"Next, then," I said, "make an image of our nature in its education and want of education, likening it to a condition of the following kind. See human beings as though they were in an underground cavelike dwelling ..."

(514a)

Images play a central role in this image of our education. The images on the cave wall are shadows of puppets. What the cave dwellers see are the images created by the puppet masters. They are the poets, the makers (the Greek poiesis means to make) of images. The poets were the educators. Through their images of gods and men, they were teachers of what is just and noble and good.

The Greek term for Form is eidos. It is transliterated in English as idea. Eidos also means the shape or look of something, what something looks like. The poets or image makers give us our ideas of what it looks like to be just or noble or good.

Plato too is an image maker. A poet in competition with the others to shape the images we see, that is, to shape our opinions. With his play of images the Forms play another role. The philosopher seeks to know not simply what something looks like but what it is. This is the escape from the cave of opinion.

The image of knowledge of the just itself, the beautiful itself, and the good itself, remains just that, an image. Something to aspire to. We do not escape the world of opinion but we can be aware of the opinion makers and that we live in a world of opinion. We can discuss what things look like to us and why this opinion is better than that without mistaking our opinions for truth and knowledge.

without mistaking our opinions for truth and knowledge. — Fooloso4

Could you elaborate a little on the distinctions that Plato draws between pistis, doxa, and noesis? Do you think that he equates noesis with opinion?

Pistis - trust. On the divided line is trust in 'things' around us.

Noesis - knowledge of things that are as they are.

Doxa - opinion or belief. It does not appear on the divided line.

"Then it will be acceptable," I said, "just as before, to call the first part knowledge, the second thought [Dianoia], the third trust, and the fourth imagination; and the latter two taken together, opinion, and the former two, intellection. And opinion has to do with coming into being and intellection with being; and as being is to coming into being, so is intellection to opinion; and as intellection is to opinion, so is knowledge to trust and thought to imagination ..."

(Republic (533e -534a)

Thanks, guys :)