Matrix Case

Essay

The movie The Matrix raises a lot of questions about what is real and what is not real and how we as humans perceive these things. Two other readings that deal with similar thoughts are Meditation I from Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes and Plato's classic work, The Republic. There are different aspects of these two works incorporated in The Matrix. In Plato's the Allegory of the Cave, he describes prisoners that are chained in a cave from a young age. They are chained in such a way that they cannot move their heads and are stuck looking forward. In the back of the room behind them there is a fire. All the prisoners have ever seen is the light from the fire and the guard's shadows as they walk across a platform. Sometimes the guards are carrying artifacts that cast a different shadow and they occasionally make a noise. The shadows and occasional noise is all the prisoners know to be true. That is their reality. That is similar to the "real world" in The Matrix. In both stories, a person's reality is being created by another person. It is not the real world but to them they do not know the difference. Another similarity in the stories is that there are individuals who learn the truth and want to spread the truth to others. In Plato's work a prisoner escapes and see what are causing the shadows and sees the sun for the first time and realizes his senses had deceived him. This is like the first time Morpheus shows Neo the extent of the matrix. I could imagine the total shock that Neo and the prisoner would feel when they realize that all they knew was a lie.

Whereas The Matrix shares the same storyline as Plato's story is does not with Descartes work. What it does share is the idea that you cannot know if what you are experiencing is a dream or not. In The Matrix the humans are being kept alive in a dream state that is being presented as reality. In Meditations on First Philosophy Descartes talks about how realistic dreams are. They can be accurate down to the shape of faces and how the body looks. He says that in a vivid dream there is no way to tell if you are dreaming or not. Unlike The Matrix where a person's whole life is produced for them via a computer, Descartes thinks that the reason dreams can be so realistic is that they are based in reality. A person is able to incorporate all the images and parts of a dream because they can base it on things they have experienced using their own senses.

After giving it some thought I don't think that there is a way to prove that the world in which we live in is real. If the advanced A.I. technology presented in The Matrix were real then there would be no way to prove that we aren't just living in a glorified dream. The matrix would make sure that our reality is infallible and so complex that we would have no idea that is false. That being said I do believe that our world is