Descartes Meditations On First Philosophy

The movie The Matrix is renowned of it’s confusing plot and attempt to produce a physical example of Descartes philosophy, but to what extent does this question the perception of reality. In the reading, Zynda focuses on three major questions of the Matrix and it’s relation to Descartes. The first question is how do we know we are dreaming? Second, can body exist without mind and vice versa? Third, What is real and how do you define it? The problem is how do we know what are reality is and can we trust our own senses. The three questions that The Matrix and Zynda pose are simply the same but in different form. Descartes answers that we cannot trust our own physical senses because they are too easily fooled. Furthermore this begs the question of what

Since our senses are unable to confirm what is real and what is .not outside our mind then we have no way of knowing what is real or what is our reality. How do we know if we are dreaming or if this is reality? We don’t, from the book Meditations on First Philosophy he poses the idea that our senses deceive us the do not have the ability to decide if what we perceive is real and more importantly is the reality we sense our own? However, Zynda counterpoints Descartes rationalism with George Berkeley’s idealism. Idealism is the idea that there is nothing beyond our physical senses. Berkeley believes that your reality is your own and because it is the only one you are able to sense, it is the only reality. That what we perceive from our physical senses is reality, this counterpoints the The Matrix because The Matrix is suppose to make us question our version of reality. Descartes poses the possibility of an “evil genius” that sub-councioussly plants our sensory experiences. The Matrix uses the idea of “evil robots” as their “evil genius” planting the lucid dreams sensory details within the brains of the humans in the dystopian world. But what is the difference