Matrix Essay

In “Bad Dreams, Evil Demons, and the Experience Machine: Philosophy and The Matrix”, Christopher Grau analyzes Rene Descartes argument concerning reality. The argument starts on page 181 in the bottom left hand corner of the page and continues onto page 182, ending at the bottom right corner of the page. In this text, Grau explains Descartes argument that what one may interpret as reality may not be more than a figment of their imagination and then uses it to develop his own argument. Grau explains that you cannot know whether you are in the dream world or the real world, and therefore argues that we cannot be sure that our beliefs about the world are true.

According to Descartes’, “As I think about this more carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep.” This is the fundamental principle of the Dreaming Argument. The scenarios in which we experience whilst we are asleep are comparable to the scenarios we experience whilst we are awake. Often, we struggle to tell from our own perspective where our experiences are derived from; it is difficult to differentiate whether our experiences stem from reality or our dreams. The issue with this is that our unconscious

How do we know we are not dreaming some particular experience we are having, or we are not dreaming all our experience of this world? When we dream we imagine things happening often with the same sense of reality as we do when we are awake. In Descartes dream argument, he states there are no reliable signs distinguishing sleeping from waking. In his dream argument, he is not saying we are merely dreaming all of what we experience, nor, is he saying we can distinguish dreaming from being awake. I think his point is we cannot be for sure what we experience as being real in this world is actually real.

Yet he was not set free by his own free will. He was set free by those who controlled him. It is only then that he sees the world around him as a vast world to be discovered and he pities those who remain in the cave. He wants to turn toward real things not the illusions which previously controlled him. Yet in Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 1641 the question is brought to light of how we/he can be certain that the world we/he lives in is real and yet not an illusion forced upon us/him by a demon. This causes us to question our senses as to whether our dreams are real or just that…a dream. Descartes believed that our senses could not be trusted as being the truth. We see this exemplified in The Matrix as the people that were plugged in were not aware that what they were sensing was not true. Neo even questions his reality before he realizes there is an alternate one. He chooses the alternate reality which is actually the true reality. The reality not fed to him by another source. He wants others to know the truth as the dream state cannot be

Senses are an easy way to “know” it is proven evidence with our own eyes, nose, mouth etc. An example of this would be I hate eggs because of their texture. I have learned this due to my sense of taste and touch through my mouth and tongue. With that being said, I know I will not eat eggs. This is shown within the Matrix as Neo knew his surrounding due to eyesight and hearing. With these senses he was able to gain the abilities to be alert. This proves that senses help clarify how we know.

The pursuit of truth: Epistemology provides understanding for the reader to gain insight to the way that humans process and react to truth. Epistemology is the pursuit of intellectual virtue. It wants to provide an evidentiary basis for belief, rather than one of just opinion. Entwistle then brings up another important topic which is Metaphysics. Metaphysics can be defined as the philosophical investigation of the nature, constitution and stature of reality. Philosophical anthropology attempts to validate assumptions made by theologians and psychologists about human nature and behavior (Entwistle, pp119).

breaking down a door and pointing a gun at the head of a woman on a

Assume that win=2 draw=1 and lose=0. If the supremacy matrix is calculated, tie always occurs, which proves that if there is a small gap between win and draws, that supremacy matrix isn’t valid.

Descartes aim throughout the first segment of his Meditations to overthrow existing foundations of knowledge and encourages readers to remove prior knowledge and prejudices in order to fully accept the new foundations which he aims to establish. The method of doubt is used to find beliefs that can serve as a new foundation for knowledge. Only beliefs that are certain, immune from doubt, can perform this function. Descartes argued that what we believe on the basis of the senses cannot meet the standard. Consequently, he concluded, we do not know anything on the basis of our senses and the dream argument is formed.

    The Dream Argument states that because we are unable to eliminate the possibility that we are dreaming our perceived reality, we cannot know anything about it. Formally, we can express this as:

Since every alligator we encounter is grey/black, we say we know alligators are grey/black. This can be applied to every time we wake up from a dream. Every time we wake up we can’t be one-hundred percent certain that we are not dreaming. However, all evidences points in the direction that we are not dreaming. Therefore, we can say that we know something about the external without the need to be one-hundred percent certain that we are not dreaming. If we accept that knowledge of the external world does not require one-hundred percent certainty that we are not dreaming, then we can say that we do know something about the external world.

Probabilities: you would have a 1/3 or .33% chance of correctly answering each question. You would not combine the 4 questions because the questions are independent of each other.

Dreams, one of the many dimensions in our mind, gives a lot of different information then we are use to having in the day. The subconscious mind that takes control when we sleep, takes care of our passive memories and holds the key to our lives. Dreams are what lead us to this key which unlocks the door to another type of wisdom. The farther we get

Machines that rule the world. Broken down, this is the fundamental building block of two major motion pictures released decades apart from one another. Although the two films have similar fundamentals, each film is different in technological ways. Because there is a difference of seventy-two years between the release of Metropolis (1927) and The Matrix (1999), there are bound to be some distinct differences between the two films. These differences spring from the roots of the film: the film stock, cinematography, and the editing processes.

Many people may question how the movie the Matrix relates to ethics, or any other ethical theories. While watching the movie, I can honestly say that this movie relates to several different ethical theories. Ethics is basically the principle of how we behave and response to certain situations. It also consist of how our motives should be solved. In the movie the character cypher betray he friend, for the purpose of his selfish goals. Ethics relates to this part of the movie, because he is doing it for his own good which is egoism. Egoism is the belief to deal with self-interest, and own motives. Besides hyper-reality you can relate this to epistemology. Epistemology is determining whether we understand reality. We know from the movie that reality is real, but do people inside of matrix know? People inside the movie have no way of knowing because in reality they thought that everything that was going on was real. Hyper-reality is putting together reality and fiction. The Matrix uses this through the whole movie.