Comparing Descartes And The Matrix

The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction film written and directed by The Wachowskis, starring Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne. It tells a story of a future in which reality to most humans is actually a computer program called "the Matrix”. In "the Matrix” humans are really sleep while their bodies are fed on my machines. The movie while directed to entertain audiences but also gave us many insights into philosophy. Many scenes in this movie reflect Descartes, and his many writings explaining them in a visual manner. In this paper I will show various examples of philosophy within the scenes and give commentary explaining each scene.

In Descartes “Meditations on First Philosophy” he gives his reasons for belief in a higher being aka God. He

It seems as the writers of this story took directly from his writings because three scenes from this movie take these 3 reasons and almost show them verbatim to what Descartes wrote about. The first scene is when Neo is being interrogated by the agents. He doesn’t comply with them when they ask him questions about Morpheus. Agent Smith says” And tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is a phone call if you are unable to speak?” The question unnerves Neo and strangely, he begins to feel the muscles in his jaw tighten. The standing agents laugh, watching Neo's confusion grow into panic. Neo feels his lips grow soft and sticky as they slowly seal shut, melding into each other until all trace of his mouth is gone. This scene is a great example of Illusions of our senses. In this scene his senses are playing tricks on him because he can no longer speak because he has no mouth. This scene makes him question if any of this is real. The next day he wakes up only remembering the terror of the night before and not actually going home or falling asleep. He looks around and asks himself was this all just a dream. In recent days Neo keeps fading to sleep them randomly waking up in his bed he doesn’t understand anymore what is real or what is a dream. Then later on Morpheus says “Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you

He talks about the subject using geometry as his example. He talks about how a triangle will never be drawn perfectly by our senses but we still have the idea of a perfect triangle in our head. He says the only way we know of such perfect triangle is reasoning. Descartes wrote that from our natural ideas from childhood we can use reasoning to find knowledge and truth. Descartes argued the only real knowledge that cannot be proved incorrect is that of reasoning. In the matrix the only thing that was known to knowledge by reason was the matrix. The matrix uses numbers that are correct and real inside the matrix or out. Math is learned by reason so in the matrix or in the real world the code that Neo knows still is true. In the end Neo finds out he is the one and in this scene he begins to see the matrix as numbers instead of looking like the real world. These numbers of the matrix are the same as in real life because no matter where you go reason will tell that the math you know is still correct. I do not think that reason can distinguish between reality and dreams because in dreams or reality math is consistent. No matter where you are if you use reasoning it well always be the same long as you using the same principles that you were birth