Philosophy Of The Movie Inception

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 fantasizing film Inception directed by Christopher Nolan opened up many doors for individual’s to understand the brain’s vulnerability to new ideas while they are dreaming. The main character, Cobb, and the rest of his team open up an individual’s mind while they are dreaming, through each level of consciousness. Inception helps a person better understand that the nature of reality is within a persons mind. Christopher Nolan created the perplex concept of inception through the five levels of consciousness throughout the entire film.

In every great piece of art there is usually an inspiration of some sort that gave the artist influence on their production. In contemporary society, we often see modern artists use influences from past theories, ideas, designs, etc. Inception, the 2010 sci-fi action film, is a movie about illegal spying by entering the minds of certain individuals by sharing dreams. Dom Cobb and his partner, Arthur, use this tactic to extract or plant desired information from or into their unconscious. Mr. Saito, an exceedingly wealthy business owner, asks Cobb and Arthur to perform “Inception” (imbedding an idea inside a person’s mind without them recognizing) on his only remaining business competitor, Maurice Fischer. Saito wants Cobb to implant the

Descartes’ method of radical doubt focuses upon finding the truth about certain things from a philosophical perspective in order to truly lay down a foundation for ideas that have the slightest notion of doubt attached to them. He believed that there was “no greater task to perform in philosophy, than assiduously to seek out, once and for all, the best of all these arguments and to lay them out so precisely and plainly that henceforth all will take them to be true demonstrations” (Meditations, 36). The two key concepts that Descartes proves using the method of doubt are that the “human soul does not die with the body, and that God exists” as mentioned in his Letter of Dedication, since there are many that don’t believe the mentioned concepts because of the fact that they have not been proven or demonstrated. (Meditations, 35). In order to prove the above, he lays out six Meditations, each focusing on a different theme that leads us “to the knowledge of our mind and of God, so that of all things that can be known by the human mind, these latter are the most certain and the most evident” (Meditations, 40).

While watching the movie, Inception, one begins to realize the dilemma the character, Dom Cobb, has regarding whether he is dreaming or is in the real world. Since one can never truly answer the question of how much of the movie is a dream, the movie is a great vehicle to examine the philosophical question of whether one can determine the difference between dreaming and reality. From a philosophical point of view, one can use the rationalist theory advanced by Rene Descartes to analyze this dilemma. In order to thoroughly explore the dilemma Cobb experiences, one should use an opposing philosophical theory, such as David

The Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences is one of the most influential works in the history of modern philosophy, and important to the evolution of natural sciences. In this work, Descartes tackles the problem of skepticism. Descartes modified it to account for a truth he found to be incontrovertible. Descartes started his line of reasoning by doubting everything, so as to assess the world from a fresh perspective, clear of any preconceived notions. Whereas Francis Bacon’s Scientific Method wanted to replace the deductive reasoning by inductive reasoning. The important concept in this reformed

     Descartes overall project is to find a definite certainty on which he can base all his knowledge and beliefs. A foundation that he will be able to prove without a doubt. To find a definite certainty he uses a methodical doubt, this states that anything that could be doubted must be taken as false. This is done to find an absolute certainty for

René Descartes was an extremely influential 17th-century philosopher and came up with many ideas that still persist to this day. One of those ideas was Cartesian skepticism, which states that “the view that we do not or cannot have knowledge in regard to a particular domain,” knowledge, in this case, is justified, true, beliefs. He first comes up with his idea of skepticism in the first part of his work “Meditations On First Philosophy,” aptly named “Of the things which may be brought within the sphere of the doubtful.” In his first meditation, he discusses his doubts with sensory illusion/error, possible dream states, and regarding deception by an evil demon. However, after dissolving his first two doubts, he gets stuck on the third and

Descartes claimed that anything that is based on senses to distinguish reality from dreams should be doubted because sometimes he is convinced that he is sitting by the fire, only to realize he is actually lying in bed (Windt). This shows his skepticism because if we can’t be certain of whether we are dreaming or not, then how can we be certain of anything around us? Descartes’ doubt about reality is skeptical thinking because our belief about anything that is real and existent could be yet another dream and our perceptions could be false

The method of doubt was created by Descartes to place our claims to knowledge on a solid foundation. Using this strategy, he did not accept any opinion as genuine knowledge unless it was possible for him to doubt their truth. Eventually, he realized that there is only one belief that he had which passes the method of doubt test: cogito ergo sum, meaning “I think, therefore I am.” He acknowledged the cogito ergo sum as an indubitable claim that forms the foundation of all our knowledge. By focusing on the dream argument and the evil demon argument, Descartes expands on the topic of doubt. In the dream argument, Descartes points out that while dreaming, our perceptions appear real to us even though it is not. He notes that it is difficult to distinguish dream experience from waking experience, causing a

To begin with, Descartes holds Cartesian skepticism that doubts the trueness of every past and present opinions, including the ones we gain by sensation. He believes that our sense organs can deceive us not only about the external world, but the trueness of our beliefs as well. Descartes states in his Sixth Meditation that faculty of sensation is a sort of passive activity that receives sensorial ideas from something else than itself. He examines what kind of thing can contain such sensory ideas or holds

The entire concept of the film alludes to the French philosopher Rene Descartes who believed that “dreams and waking life can have the same content” making it difficult to differentiate between the two. Descartes contributed to the idea that the “reality” awoken into could possibly be another dream. He addresses that majority of humans have experienced a dream that seemed real as if they were experiencing it, only to awake into reality. Inception supports this theory and demonstrates the struggle of knowing what is real through the characters in the film. It emphasizes Descartes belief that humans lack certainty when the characters have manipulated the “dream in a dream” concept to the point where they begin to question whether they're existing

Descartes’s theory of knowledge is essentially based in skepticism. He argued that in order to understand the world, first a person has to completely suspend their judgements of the world around them. This is the impression that the world makes on their mind. In this way, the physical world is not what leads to knowledge. Instead, the mind finds rationally seeks knowledge. The question is, essentially, “should we believe beyond the evidence?” (Kessler, 2013, p. 332). In this way, the ideas are rooted in the nature of doubt. This is an inherent nature of the mind, which is the result of the nature of man as made by God. In this way, the mind is guided by god towards knowledge in its infallible ability to reason about reality. In this way, the mind’s reasoning ability, even in the absence of physical reality, can ultimately lead to knowledge. I don’t fully agree with Descartes’ proposition that only the mind can produce certain knowledge and that our senses are constantly under the attack and being deceive by some evil deceiver. In order to go against Descartes propositions concerning about doubt I will use Locke to oppose it.

Ultimately, Descartes' "radical doubt" challenges how we look at the mind and how it represents us with information and knowledge. He uses his radical doubt theory to explain how the information that we receive through our senses is distorted and can not be utilized as a means of knowledge. Essentially, Descartes is questioning reality and the risk of deception that it poses in the process of acquiring knowledge. Although Descartes makes a valid argument in regards to the nature of reality, there is a huge discrepancy with his theory of "radical doubt" in regards to epistemology; how can there be a question of reality at all when all knowledge is, according to rationalists, innate?

Rene Descartes was a philosopher of the 17th century. He had this keen interest in the search for certainty. For he was unimpressed with the way philosophy is during their time. He mused that nothing certain was coming forth from all the philosophical ideologies. He had considered that the case which philosophy was in was due to the fact that it was not grounded to something certain. He was primarily concerned with intellectual certainty, meaning that something that is certain through the intellect. Thus he was named a rationalist due to this the line of thought that he pursued. But in his work in the meditation, his method of finding this certainty was skeptical in nature; this is ‘the methodic doubt’.