The Matrix, Descartes First Meditation, And Plato 's The Allegory Of The Cave

Descartes wonders what else that he can know by using this same logic, but first must establish the idea of God and that God is not deceiving him. He reasons that God exists because he as a mortal could not create the idea of such a powerful being, and only a being as powerful as God could have caused an idea of a God that is perfect. Descartes goes on to reason that because God is perfect, then God would not deceive him about anything. It’s not that Descartes is being deceived, but rather his lack of knowledge or understanding about the matters at hand is causing the problem he is facing.

As we know, Socrates chose to never write or have his ideas published. We learned of his outlook and ideas through the writing and dialogues of a student whom admired everything about him, Plato. In the “Allegory of the Cave,” we read a dialogue that occurs between Socrates and another student, Glaucon. Socrates describes chained human beings living in an underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the light. Due to being chained, these people cannot see the light of day, nor can they see anything that is not directly in front of them. There is a fire burning behind them, which casts a shadow on the wall they are facing. “To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images” (Plato, 3). Because the shadows are all they see, they are all that is real to them. If one of these prisoners were to be freed to the world above, their neck would be stiff, the light would shock their eyes and they would no longer be able to see the realities they once saw in the shadows. Once the person adjusts to the light, they will be able to understand that the sun is the cause of everything

In Plato’s allegory, he begins with a set of three people, prisoners of the cave that have never seen anything other than what the cave and their binding allows. “The prisoners are tied to some rocks, their arms and legs bound and their head is tied so that they cannot look at anything but the stonewall in front of them” ("The Simile of the Cave." Republic, 1974). What they are able to see is shadows of a fire and those people or animals- free to the

The Matrix and the Allegory of the Cave focus on one central idea: What is real?. They engage the audience in a fictional world where people live in false realities without knowing it. They make us question our own knowledge. Their storylines connect in that the protagonist discovers that everything he knows is a big lie and now he must discover the truth. The protagonist is thrown all of the sudden into the real world and then, he continues to seek the absolute truth. Neo and the prisoner inquire whether knowing the truth is a blessing or a curse.

In the Allegory of the Cave there are chained prisoners in cave who can only stare at the cave wall in front of them. At the back there is a long entrance with a staircase the width of the cave and a fire burning in the distance. They see only shadows projected in front of them from a raised platform and hear an echo that they attribute to what they observe. They talk about and name the shadows of objects they see before them. To them the truth are the shadows. Then one day one of the prisoners is released. He is told that what he saw before was an illusion. Once he is outside it takes a while for his eyes to adjust to the sun. First he observed the shadows of thing then their reflection and finally the actual object. Remembering his previous state he goes back to the cave and tries to explain that everything is an illusion but they laugh at him and think he’s crazy. They believe it best not to ascend and they choose to remain as they are. The cave represented opinion. The shadows that are cast on to the wall represented physical objects. The prisoners represented the common people (Welles).

Plato's Allegory of the Cave is also termed as the Analogy of the Cave, Plato's Cave, or the Parable of the Cave. It was used by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work The Republic to illustrate "our nature in its education and want of education". It comprises of a fictional dialogue between Plato's teacher Socrates and Plato's brother Glaucon. Socrates gives a description of a group of people who spent their lifetime facing a blank wall chained to the wall of a cave. These people saw and tried to assign forms of the shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them. These shadows as put by Socrates, are what the prisoners can view close to reality (Law 2003). He further compares a philosopher to the prisoner who is freed from the cave and comprehends that he can envision the true form of reality instead of the shadows which the prisoners saw in the cave and these shadows do not depict reality at all.

What if one were 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. They are given false images and they accept what their senses are telling them. They believe what they are experiencing is not 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.

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

After describing the setting of the cave, Socrates asks his audience to imagine that one of the prisoners breaks free from his bonds, and sees the fire and the statues themselves. He notes that there would first come pain as his eyes adjust to the new light, and disbelief, as everything he had previously thought to be real is suddenly proven artificial. However, Socrates assures his audience that the man would eventually come to realize that the people and the fire are more real than the shadows had ever been. He would ultimately grasp how the fire creates the shadows of the statues, creating a mere copy of the real thing. He would then conclude that the fire and the statues are the most real things in the world.

The Republic is considered to be one of Plato’s most storied legacies. Plato recorded many different philosophical ideals in his writings. Addressing a wide variety of topics from justice in book one, to knowledge, enlightenment, and the senses as he does in book seven. In his seventh book, when discussing the concept of knowledge, he is virtually addressing the cliché “seeing is believing”, while attempting to validate the roots of our knowledge. By his use of philosophical themes, Plato is able to further his points on enlightenment, knowledge, and education. In this allegory, the depictions of humans as they are chained, their only knowledge of the world is what is seen inside the cave. Plato considers what would happen to people

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?

In book VII of Plato's most popular work, The Republic, Plato symbolically describes a fictitious story in the form of dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon, in which prisoners have been chained in an underground cave and have been restricted to only viewing the cave wall in front of them. Far off behind them, men are carrying figures of animals and different objects so that their shadows are casted on a wall ahead of them. One of the prisoners are liberated and walks toward the mouth of the cave into the light. He begins to notice that the shadows he has seen his entire life are not real; there is a world other than the cave.

In the movie The Matrix we find a character by the name of Neo and his struggle adapting to the truth...to reality. This story is closely similar to an ancient Greek text written by Plato called "The Allegory of the Cave." Now both stories are different but the ideas are basically the same. Both Stories have key points that can be analyzed and related to one another almost exactly. There is no doubt that The Matrix was based off Greek philosophy. The idea of freeing your mind or soul as even stated in "The Allegory of the Cave" is a well known idea connecting to Greek philosophy. The Matrix is more futuristic and scientific than "The Cave" but it's the same Idea. Neo is

The short stories, written by both authors Plato and Descartes; The Matrix, The Allegory of the Cave, and Meditations on First Philosophy, focuses on what individuals believe to be reality or not within the world. The stories bring on questions of what is in fact illusion. Overall, the stories provide a guide to the truth. According to Wachowski, A, & Wachowski, L (1999) in the Matrix, Mr. Anderson questions everything in the world as he knows it. He wonders if what he is involved in a computer program instead of the life as he knows it. The computer program could be controlling human beings, such as himself. Morpheus convinces Mr. Anderson that the world that he knows is an illusion and a system of deception (Wachowski, A, & Wachowski, L,

Plato once said that, “Ignorance [is] the root and stem of all evil”. Ignorance is the cause of everything that is wrong and bad in the world since people are unable to see the truth. If people start breaking free from ignorance, mankind will become happier and more transparent. In the short story, “Allegory of The Cave” by Plato and The Matrix by the Wachowskis, they portray the idea that in order to gain enlightenment, one must break free from ignorance; which opens himself to knowledge; this new truth must then be shared with others for the good of mankind.