The shadows cast upon the wall in Plato's myth of the cave are one degree removed from reality. But if we know they are shadows, we are saved from the shackles of dogmatism. And knowing we live in a cave can turn our imaginations loose in new freedom. This confrontation with destiny releases us to experience a sea change in the realm of possibility. We can find new forms, new ways of relating to each other, new styles of life.

- Rollo May, Freedom and Destiny

...it would be a very naive sort of dogmatism to assume that there exists an absolute reality of things which is the same for all living beings. Reality is not a unique and homogeneous thing; it is immensely diversified, having as many different schemes and patterns as there are different organisms. Every organism is, so to speak, a monadic being. It has a world of its own because it has an experience of its own.

 

- Ernst Cassirer

The Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Human Nature