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PostScript^UM #56

M. Beatrice Fazi
Cave Machines:
On the Platonic Representation Hypothesis

In 2024, four MIT researchers named a hypothesis after Plato’s cave: neural networks, trained on different data and tasks, converge on one representation of reality. In Cave Machines, M. Beatrice Fazi takes the conjecture at its word, following it back to Plato, where it comes apart. The models never turn from the wall; the reality behind their agreement falls away. What remains is stranger than realism: representation as construction, structure built, not found, and a cave that is all there is.

M. Beatrice Fazi is a philosopher working on the philosophies of computation, technology and media. She has published extensively on the limits and potentialities of the computational method, on digital aesthetics and on the automation of thought. She is Associate Professor at the University of Sussex (United Kingdom), author of Contingent Computation: Abstraction, Experience, and Indeterminacy in Computational Aesthetics (2018) and co-author of Digital Theory (2025).

EN | 10.5 x 16.7 cm | 36 pp | soft cover | 2026
ISBN 978-961-7173-70-3 (Printed)