The Matrix And Descartes Comparison

In The Matrix the puppet-handlers and the machines spawned from a singular consciousness called A.I. (artificial intelligence). In both The Matrix and "Allegory of the Cave," the puppeteers have created artificial surroundings as a way to control and operate the information the prisoners receive. Plato also stated that eventually one of the more intellectual prisoners would break free from the cave and into the outside world.

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.

After the early 21st century, humans built these machines, which are now held in a nuclear-winter-like setting. Being deprived of sunlight as an energy source, they have enslaved the human race and are farming people as a source of bioelectrical energy. The humans are kept in an unconscious state in podlike containers in a vast holding field, plugged in to a central computer. In the scenario of The Matrix, everything in the world; cars, buildings, cities, and countries are part of a complex computer-generated virtual reality, which within the humans interact. Everything they see, smell and hear is part of this virtual construct and does not really exist. A computer merely stimulates their brains and deceives them into believing that they are all living normal 20th-century lives, eating sleeping, working and interacting together. They are all blinded to the truth about how and why they exist. After a handful of people have escaped from the nightmarish world of the Matrix, they find out the truth and reach out to those still consumed with the falsities of this world. One of these, a man named Morpheus, hacks into the Matrix and contacts Neo, telling him,

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.

The purpose of Morpheus is not to tell Neo what the truth is but to only show him the path that he must take to discover this truth, and Neos identity will be revealed through this truth. Their first “upload” known as a residual self-imaging program, gives a mental projection of the digital self. It is here that Neo realizes the distinctions between reality and fantasy. In this program, he is taken a step closer to finding out what the truth really is. When in this program, he believes that an object such as the chair in front of him is real because he can feel it. Subsequently, Morpheus informs him that reality is not based on senses, because if reality and senses were the same, reality would simply be electrical signals processed by the brain. Morpheus also reveals the truth about the fantasy Neo had been living throughout his life in The Matrix. He said “The Matrix in itself is a computer generated dream world, built to keep humans under control, so that machines could consume energy by harvesting them.” When Neo heard this, he didn’t want to believe it anymore. Neo struggled with the idea that he didn’t know what he was and if he or what he was living in was real. He began to question whether choosing the red pill was a good idea to begin with. He wants to go back, but he realizes that he can’t.

The Matrix, Plato’s, The Republic, and Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 1641 were somewhat similar as the individuals described in these stories, were existing in a world where deception encompassed

In Meditation Two of René Descartes’ Meditation on First Philosophy, he notes the sight of “men crossing the square.” This observation is important as Descartes states, “But what do I see aside from hats and clothes, which could easily hide automata? Yet I judge them to be men.” This is an important realization as Descartes argues that instead of purely noticing the men through sight, it is actually “solely with the faculty of judgement,” the mind, that perceives and concludes that the thing wearing a hat and clothes are men. I argue that this view of the outside world by Descartes is incomplete as his idea of “I” is faulty, as well as having a misunderstanding on the importance of the senses.

Deception is the foundational issue prevalent in The Matrix, Plato’s allegory of the cave, and Rene Descartes meditations. In each of these excerpts the goal of answering the question of what is real and how to uncover the truth is essential. Another question that arises throughout all three excerpts is whether or not the individuals will be able to handle the truth when it is finally learnt. In The Matrix Morpheus reveals to Neo that the life he had previously accepted as an absolute reality is really a virtual reality that is manipulated by a computer which is essentially controlling the mind of every individual as they lie unconscious connected to this

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

Everything that is learned remains imminent without every actually being able to look for outside possibilities. He discussed to Glaucon about a situation where society has built a wall to “hide” possibilities of what the “unknown” is. This followed Neo’s struggle in being able to emotionally understand what he has been “hidden” from through his

In the looking at of the framework the Matrix, Plato's The Republic (The Allegory of the Give in), and Descartes Meditation I, I can see distinctive likenesses and furthermore separates. They all demand reality in which they are living, and rather or not is it veritable or controlled by an option that is other than what's normal. In every single one of these stories the all-inclusive community were suspicious of what reality truly is or isn't. They all in like way anticipated that would leave what they saw as reality to watch what they recognized to be true blue reality. There were also several complexities between them also. For instance, in The Matrix it was controlled by a structure, Plato's surrender was controlled by humanity, and Descartes

Many ancient philosophers, including Plato, explored metaphysics in relation to reality before Descartes’s in-depth questioning of the subject. However, Descartes’s views on mind/body dualism differ greatly from Plato’s. As Marleen Rozemond (author of Descartes's Dualism) points out, Plato believes that the body is simply a vessel for the soul to use, while Descartes provides proof that the body and soul are interconnected (172). One does not simply use the other; though they are separate, the mind affects the body and the body affects the mind. Cartesian dualism tells us that "although the whole mind seems to be united to the whole body, I recognize that if a foot or arm or any other part of the body is cut off, nothing has thereby been

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.

In reviewing the synopsis for The Matrix (1999) as well as the two excerpts from Plato and Descartes, there is much to be said about similarities and differences. We will begin by looking at the similarities, followed by the differences. I will then address question number 2, which asks, Can we prove that the world we are experiencing is real? How do we know we are not dreaming, living in a Platonic cave, or trapped in some sort of matrix? Similarities

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