Plato argues that there is a difference between sense-perception and knowledge. Many of us assume that we know the world through our eyes. All we have to do is open our eyes and whatever is in front of us is real. When learning philosophy, the study of knowledge is called epistemology. Plato a well-known philosopher famously defined knowledge as “justified true belief”. Plato postulated that a reality outside of what a common human experiences exists. He goes to prove his theory by comparing human experiences through their senses to those of the caveman looking at shadow play on the cave walls. The cavemen have never really experienced anything but they are forced to believe that there is a reality thanks to those shadows.
Plato claims that there is a reality outside of that. For instance, when talking about cavemen, there is something or someone outside the cave that helps project those shadows. There is always a source of light for example the sun which proved the light, a whole world exists outside of the cave but since the caveman is focused on the shadows they don’t even notice that. To the caveman the shadows are a reality so anything that isn’t a shadow isn’t real. Plato argues that it doesn’t matter how accurately our senses can detect the shadows the argument is that there is a reality outside of what our senses can perceive. The original philosophy argument, from Plato 2500 years ago, didn’t doubt sense impressions as such: The cave analogy assumes that the sense impressions of the caveman accurately reflected the shadow play on the cave wall. Many philosophers including Plato argue that there is an entire world outside of what a normal human perceives. In simple words, the answer to the question is that you could always be missing something.