Just as Descartes realized that the sensations in his dreams were vivid enough to convince him the dreams were real, the humans who are plugged into the Matrix have no idea that their sensations are false, created artificially instead of arising from actual experiences.
What is the connection between the Matrix and philosophy?
The Matrix is considered a philosophical film that contains many existing philosophical and religious themes, like prophecy, love, truth, karma, the nature of reality, and living in a simulation. But there seems to be a particularly close connection between The Matrix and Plato's Allegory of the Cave.
Four of the most striking philosophical precedents for the Matrix trilogy are Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, Plato's allegory of the cave, Socrates' visit to the Oracle of Delphi, and the work of Descartes. The films refer to all four of these at various points.
Rationalists believe that we cannot be sure there is a world out there at all. How would we know if, for example, we're really all wired into the matrix? Or an evil demon is deceiving us? The matrix is a movie that is a great example of this method.
Skeptics argue that we cannot know with certainty that the external world exists. Hence, they maintain that it is possible to doubt our knowledge of the external world, much as the main characters in The Matrix come to doubt the everyday world they seem to live in.
In the Matrix, fate rules—since the world is preconstructed and actions predetermined, all questions already have answers and any choice is simply the illusion of choice. In the real world, humans have the power to change their fate, take individual action, and make mistakes.
By raising the possibility that he doesn't know anything, Descartes is entertaining a form of global skepticism, the idea that we cannot know anything at all to be true or false. This is opposed to local skepticism, the idea that we cannot know anything about a particular aspect of the world.
Descartes was the first of the modern rationalists. He thought that only knowledge of eternal truths (including the truths of mathematics and the foundations of the sciences) could be attained by reason alone, while the knowledge of physics required experience of the world, aided by the scientific method.
Being “Slave” in the matrix meant being slave to sensory desires, limitations, and predispositions. The “code” meant the genetic code present in our DNA which dictates our lives. Being “programmed” meant being programmed by the evolutionary processes of life, birth and death.
The film draws inspiration from Plato's Allegory of the Cave, where prisoners are confined to a dark cave, perceiving only the shadows cast by objects behind them. Similarly, the humans in The Matrix are blissfully unaware that their lives are confined within a simulated construct.
In making this point, the film-makers draw on both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhist ideas. 40 Alluding to the Theravada ideal of the arhat, the film suggests that enlightenment is achieved through individual effort. 41 As his initial guide, Morpheus makes it clear that Neo cannot depend upon him for enlightenment.
The movie The Matrix and its sequels draw explicitly on imagery from a number of sources, including in particular Buddhism, Christianity, and the writings of Jean Baudrillard.
The Matrix Hypothesis implies only that a simulation of physical processes exists. By contrast, the Metaphysical Hypothesis implies that physical processes really exist (they are explicitly mentioned in the Computational Hypothesis and elsewhere).
A talk, a pill, and a short ride through a Machine sewer; that's the conventional path out of your digital prison, but it isn't the only one. In rare instances, individuals were able to break out of the simulation on their own steam. Morpheus tells of the original “the One,” the first person to wake from the Matrix.
The Wachowski siblings had always wanted to create fight scenes inspired by Hong Kong action films, and The Matrix provided the perfect opportunity to do so. This was a pivotal point in cinema, and few films have been able to achieve that level of impact since.
Thus for Descartes, when we think about the essence of God, existence is inseparable. This is the crux of the ontological argument for the existence of God. Once we accept the concept of a perfect God, we are unable to rationally deny the existence of that entity.
Descartes' ontological argument goes as follows: (1) Our idea of God is of a perfect being, (2) it is more perfect to exist than not to exist, (3) therefore, God must exist.
Freedom is a central theme in Descartes's philosophy, where it is linked to the theme of the infinite: it is through the freedom of the will, experienced as unlimited, that the human understands itself to bear the "image and likeness" of the infinite God.
The Evil Genius argument is the best possible skeptical argument—the evil genius is all-powerful and so can generate doubt about anything for which it is possible to generate doubt about. The argument works for propositions about complex objects as well as propositions about simple objects.
He did this through an introspective process. Firstly, he doubted the certainty of all his beliefs, deeming them unjustified. Then he went on to try and establish an absolute indubitable truth that does not inferentially rely on any of his preconceived beliefs.
For instance, in the Second Meditation, Descartes argues that he is nothing but a thinking thing or mind, that is, Descartes argues that he is a “thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, and also imagines and has sensory perceptions” (AT VII 28: CSM II 19).
The Wachowskis' approach to action scenes was influenced by anime and martial arts films (particularly fight choreographers and wire fu techniques from Hong Kong action cinema); other influences include Plato's Cave and 1990s Telnet hacker communities.
The answer is no, we are not living in the Matrix, and this is not a computer simulation. The easiest way to know this is to understand the incredible complexity of the known universe and its infinite interactions.
While influences from both biblical motifs and pop mysticism are in evidence, the film references these sources — along with many other sources, including classical Greek culture, Lewis Carroll, and Star Wars — in a way that is of aesthetic significance, not religious.
