I try to keep a detailed history of my episodic and semantic memory (Damjanovic, 2010). Was I taught how to do things, like tying my shoe, by the Matrix, or did I learn aspects like my procedural memory before I entered? Was it the Matrix who taught me how to log an algorithm in its predecessor or was it my teacher in 10th grade? Or was she a simulation as well? The world is the same as I thought it was, my semantic memory, in touch and correct as far as I know, and what I know to be true is not much. Nevertheless, I thought I was living in Tennessee, however I escaped and found out I was actually in rural Idaho, at one of the many Matrix headquarters. This is what I like to believe is my first real episodic memory (Dautenhahn, 2002). It …show more content…
But once I started to question the way of things, such as believing everything I saw, heard or thought, or thought I remembered, I escaped. But now I have to venture through the complexity of the other aspects of cognition and try to decide what is real and what wasn’t simulated.
I perceived the world to be real only a week ago. The world I was living in seemed right, seemed real, but my perception was clouded by the Matrix. What I thought was a class at college, a school in rural Tennessee was actually a simulation controlled by a super computer. Perception, the way one organizes, gives meaning to and manufactures recognition of everything and anything (Gray & Wegner, 2012). We perceive things differently, everyone sees, hears and senses the world differently by giving things different latent constructs. My perception is plagued by the falsities provided by the Matrix, where I question what my actual previous knowledge is and what is my simulated knowledge, or is it the same (Matlin, 2013)? My interpretation, after reading about the computer processing system that controlled my mind and other sources on perception through old books, is that I am able to read and write because I learned how to recognize the patterns that make up each letter, word, and slash that creates each word in my lexicon, otherwise known as my vocabulary. Whether this was taught by the forces at hand or
We are blinded, only see shadows, hear echoes, and the world around us is a mere shadow of what truly exists “Hence, the only way to believe oneself to have knowledge is to be simpleminded; those sophisticated enough to see the relativity of everything, but still not wise enough to turn their faces toward the light, can only despair, or delight, in the lack of real knowledge” (BS). In relation to his beliefs are the ideas of the famous Rene Descartes. He doubted the certainty of the external world and came to the conclusion that our senses can’t be trusted. Additionally, Descartes ' stated that you can’t trust your senses because there has been times when you are dreaming or imagining what you have experienced rather than it being real. Certainly it becomes questionable whether in fact we can believe if any of our principles are true. In The Matrix, Neo finds out the truth and answer to his question. The Matrix is just an illusion of the world around and the humans are plugged in by a computer program. Those who are plugged in have never truly saw the world for what is. Similar to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the humans are prisoners forced to see shadows which are copies of things in the real world. When Neo is finally confronted with the truth he can’t imagine the thought of ever going back. Instead he plans on exposing the truth by revealing how the world they live in truly looks.
Unable to know any better, people’s blindness to the truth about their existence throughout the ages has been relative to the questioning of reality. We search but are unable to the see the truth through the illusion that the world before us has portrayed. One might ask, how do we know what is real and what is simply illusion brought by our subjective view of the world? But when attempting to understand the nature of our existence, about why we are here, the complexities of life often make it difficult to interpret this subject. The film The Matrix centers on this same concept that the known world is an illusion. The movies core theme of reality and illusion is definite to the humans understanding of what the true meaning of life is. Ones
People seem to think that everything that happens to them everyday is real. The question is, though, “What is real?”. Is everything you see everyday really real or is it fake? We might see fantasies that other people or machines have created for us. Maybe we are the ones that are not enlightened yet. Numerous essays and films have been produced on this subject. One essay is “The Allegory of the Cave” written by Plato in 360 B.C. Also, the movie The Matrix was filmed in 1999. Even though many differences can be drawn between “The Allegory of the Cave” and The Matrix, there are many similarities as well.
The recognition of a false world is not new; many have described an alternate reality where we sometimes find ourselves. Alice in Wonderland is a story which questions what is real and what is not. Alice, falling down a rabbit hole, finds herself in a world which challenges everything she believes about life. More recently, the movie, The Matrix follows this Alice in Wonderland theme, and gives us a science fiction scenario of a false world. There, Nemo discovers his reality is completely generated and implanted in his mind by artificial intelligence. He discovers his mind is actually in a dream-like sleep. His real life is a kind of prison, but his mind is programmed to believe it is interacting in, what we find, is a false world.
In 1999, Larry and Andy Wachowski directed The Matrix, a movie featuring the future in which reality as perceived by most humans is actually a simulated reality or cyberspace called "the Matrix”. This fake reality was created by sentient machines to pacify and subdue the human population. To some, this movie represents just another brilliant Hollywood sci-fi action film, but for others, it challenges the understanding of perspective, reality and appearance ("The matrix 101," 2003). The Matrix heavily relies on the concepts of Irish Philosopher George Berkeley who believed reality, or reality as humans perceive it, is fundamentally mental and therefore immaterial which is known as Idealism.
Having read the synopsis from The Matrix, the excerpt from Plato, The Republic, Book VII, 514A1-518D8 “The Allegory Of The Cave”, and the excerpt from Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 1641 “Meditation I Of The Things Of Which We May Doubt”, I am able to conclude that there are similarities as well as differences among these readings. Each question the state of reality in which we live. Is our reality a true state of reality or is it a state of mind we have allowed ourselves to exist in?
What is reality? What is known? These questions are constantly being reviewed keeping people anxiously waiting for the real answer. The Matrix is a popular movie dealing with many philosophical ideas from, Gods, Beauty, Reality, and existence. The Matrix deals with an intelligent “computer hacker,” Neo, who questions many things such as reality as he lives two different lives day vs. night. With that being said, Neo starts to ponder how does he know what is real, true, or all knowing. As humans we face this challenge everyday, how do we actually “know?” We know because of our senses, evidence, observations, assumption, and Epistemology.
Messages become shorter when passed from one person to the next. Memories can be modified to fit one’s personal social experiences (i.e., conventionalization). Memory is unreliable, sensory stimuli are not stored as is but are actively transformed by the brain for storage depending on individual factors such as personal relevance and expectations. The most essential information is better remembered, but what is considered “most essential” may depend on an individual’s experiences. This suggests memory does not function as a video recording, but is a highly complex process that is influenced by an individual’s levels of attention, motivation, expectations, experiences, emotional state, etc. It also suggests that memory is an active process that involves constructing narratives out of events rather than passively recording
Constructive perception is in part something that our minds manufacture. Thus what we perceive is determined, not only by what our eyes and ears and other senses detect, but also by what we know, what we expect, what we believe, and what our physiological state is. Just because something seems or feels real doesn’t mean that it is real.
Imagine living through life completely bound and facing a reality that doesn’t even exist. The prisoners in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” are blind from true reality as well as the people in the movie “The Matrix” written and directed by the Wachowski brothers. They are given false images and they accept what their senses are telling them, and they believe what they are experiencing is all that really exists. Plato the ancient Greek philosopher wrote “The Allegory of the Cave”, to explain the process of enlightenment and what true reality may be. In the movie “The Matrix”, Neo (the main character) was born into a world of illusions called the matrix. His true reality is being controlled by the puppet- handlers called the machines who
The second philosopher that analyses the problem of what is reality and what is not in the Introduction to Philosophy textbook is Christopher Grau. Grau, in his essay, expands on Descartes idea of the “evil demon” by basing it off of The Matrix with his theory, The Brain in a Vat Theory. The theory is just like it sounds. Just like in Total Recall, an extremely intelligent device has the ability to give humans and gives them a false reality of a life. What Grau is purposing is that we, as people, could quite possibly be hooked up to a super computer and given false memories and experiences as well.
How do I know that I really am typing this paper and it is not some scientist or computer making me think that I am? I believe that in order to argue against the idea of being a brain in a vat you have to define what is real or what is reality and I believe that there is not a simple answer to that. In the Matrix movie Morpheus says, “What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical
Reality is difficult to define, though it is usually perceived as the state of things as they are, as opposed to other abstract ideas. In the Matrix, the main character Neo, who has always questioned his reality, realises that the truth and reality is far beyond his imagination and reality as he knows it to be. The Matrix explores the questions ‘what actually exists?’ and ‘what is real?’ through the two worlds Neo finds himself in, as the Matrix is not as it seems. This is also the case with Cypher realising the power in knowledge. It also explores the components of ignorance being bliss, as what you don’t know is potentially for the better. Which leads to reality in 2015, with promotion, false truths
Memory makes us. It is, to an extent, a collection of unique and personal experiences that we, as individuals, have amassed over our lifetime. It is what connects us to our past and what shapes our present and the future. If we are unable remember the what, when, where, and who of our everyday lives, our level of functioning would be greatly impacted. Memory is defined as or recognized as the “sum or total of what we remember.” Memory provides us the ability to learn and adjust to or from prior experiences. In addition, memory or our ability to remember plays an integral role in the building and sustaining of relationships. Additionally, memory is also a process; it is how we internalize and store our external environment and experiences. It entails the capacity to remember past experiences, and the process of recalling previous experiences, information, impressions, habits and skills to awareness. It is the storage of materials learned and/or retained from our experiences. This fact is demonstrated by the modification, adjustment and/or adaptation of structure or behavior. Furthermore, we as individuals, envision thoughts and ideas of the present through short-term memory, or in our working memory, we warehouse past experiences and learned values in long-term memory, also referred to as episodic or semantic memory. Most importantly, memory is malleable and it is intimately linked to our sense of identity and where we believe we belong in the world.
We do not learn till later that the movie is simply a computer data that creates a dream world for its prisoners. We can honestly say that nothing in the scientific world of the movie was real. The Matrix was created by fake machines. Morpheus in the movie explains to Neo after he is reborn into reality. The term Morpheus comes Greek mythology, his name refers to the ability to change. The term fits well with it because, Morpheus has control over the dream world