Within The Matrix, Free will and fate work together to maintain the delicate balance of the Matrix and the real world, fate being what is instilled in the humans stuck inside the Matrix, and free will for those who get out. In the Matrix, the computer generated world in which humans "live", it appears that fate is the central idea. This due to the fact that the computer system is prewritten, predesigned, and already programed. However, free will starts to take place in the minds of the individuals who begin to escape. For Neo, he possesses free will. While many inside the Matrix appear to have only fate to direct them, he has free will and knows that there is something suspicious about the world. In the Matrix, fate working as the prewritten …show more content…
All the people who become part of the real world and learn what the Matrix is, posses free will. They are able to choose between the red and blue pill. They make decisions for themselves the Matrix hasn't mapped out for them. By choosing the red pill Neo acknowledges his free will, he is able to decide what to do with his life and accept the repercussions from it. Besides for the major choice between the blue pill and the red pill, Neo also makes the choice of not cooperating with the agents after his capture. When interrogating Neo, they try to convince him to give up on finding out what the Matrix was and stay Thomas Anderson, they tell him "One of these lives has a future, the other does not." The Matrix has set out two options for Neo, either he conforms to the prewritten identity of Thomas Anderson and continues to live his ordinary life ruled by fate, or he lives as Neo and has no future. Agent Smith expresses here that the Matrix has written out two different paths for Neo when constructing his life. However the fact that Agent Smith acknowledges that there are two options seem to side with the idea that free will rules Neo life because he must make the decision between staying Thomas Anderson or Neo. Despite these two options presented to him Neo he uses his free will to create a third choice is which he remains Neo and lives. By choosing to remain Neo he once again exercises free will and chooses to become an enemy of the agents, something which his prewritten destiny of the Matrix would not have
Let me briefly explain a simplified plot of The Matrix. The story centers around a computer-generated world that has been created to hide the truth from humans. In this world people are kept in slavery without their knowledge. This world is designed to simulate the peak of human civilization which had been destroyed by nuclear war. The majority of the world's population is oblivious to the fact that their world is digital rather than real, and they continue living out their daily lives without questioning their reality. The main character, Neo, is a matrix-bound human who knows that something is not right with the world he lives in, and is eager to learn the truth. He is offered the truth from a character named Morpheus, who proclaims that Neo is “the One” (chosen one) who will eventually destroy the Matrix, thereby setting the humans “free.” For this to happen, Neo must first overcome the Sentient Program agents who can jump into anyone's digital body. They are the Gate Keepers and hold the keys to The Matrix.
In Elie Wiesel’s Night, Elie and other Jews judge what is right from wrong by using their conscience and free will. Because of Germany’s current leader at the time, Adolf Hitler, the promise of economic reform and a stronger military infrastructure quickly turned somber as the effect of these promises impacted the Jewish community. Without a doubt, many Jews were able to tell the difference between right and wrong using their conscience and make the choice to say it based on their free will. The same principle can apply to any individual no matter how severe the situation is. In the book Night, Elie and other Jews were sent to multitudes of camps for either labor or execution. In Elie’s case, extensive labor was forced upon him and his father. Elie and his dad were
In respect to the arguments of Ayer and Holbach, the dilemma of determinism and its compatibility with that of free will are found to be in question. Holbach makes a strong case for hard determinism in his System of Nature, in which he defines determinism to be a doctrine that everything and most importantly human actions are caused, and it follows that we are not free and therefore haven’t any moral responsibility in regard to our actions. For Ayer, a compatibilist believing that free will is compatible with determinism, it is the reconciliation and dissolution of the problem of determinism and moral responsibility with free willing that is argued. Ayer believes that this problem can be dissolved by the clarification of language usage and the clarification of what freedom is in relationship to those things that oppose freedom or restrain it. In either case, what is at stake is the free will of an agent, and whether or not that agent is morally responsible. What is to be seen from a discussion of these arguments is the applicability and validity of these two philosophies to situations where one must make a choice, and whether or not that person is acting freely and is thus responsible given his current situation. In this vein, the case of Socrates’ imprisonment and whether or not he acted freely in respect to his decision to leave or stay in prison can be evaluated by the discussion of the arguments presented in respect to the nature of free will in its reconciliation with determinism in the compatibilist vein and its absence in the causality of hard determinism.
“The Minority Report”, by Philip K. Dick, is set in the year 2054 where three mutants called “Precogs” have cognitive abilities to see into the future and predict crimes before they happen. These Precogs have been plugged into machines that decode their visions to serve the pre-crime division, which arrests individuals before they commit any crime. Founded and Headed by John Anderton, the pre-crime division has gone five years without failure and has cut down felonies by up to 99.9%. In order for this to happen, all three precogs have the same vision of an even. In some cases, the precogs have different visions, and then a computer analyses the visions and produces a majority report (where two precogs have similar visions) and a minority report
The red or blue pill, to be on time or get fired from his job, have a future or die and if he should save Morpheus or himself. When Neo faces these ‘choices’, he feels he still is in control of his life. In reality, it is just to make Neo feel safe meanwhile the decisions are made without Neo’s say. In the Allegory of the Cave, once the prisoner gets out, his choice is to go back into the cave and tell the others or stay outside, but he goes and tells the others. The other prisoners have a decision whether or not to believe the escaped prisoner, in which they choose not too. This is a similarity in these two stories because choices made these people who were just figuring out their lives were a lie feel more
The movie "Matrix" is drawn from an image created almost twenty-four hundred years ago by the greek philosopher, Plato in his work, ''Allegory of the Cave''.The Matrix is a 1999 American-Australian film written and directed by the Wachowski brothers. Plato, the creator of the Allegory of the Cave was a famous philosopher who was taught by the father of philosophy Socrates. Plato was explaining the perciption of reality from others views to his disciple Aristotle. The Matrix and the Allegory of the Cave share a simmilar relationship where both views the perciption of reality, but the Matrix is a revised modern perciption of the cave. In this comparison essay I am going to explain the similarities and deifferences that the Matrix and The Allegory of the Cave shares.In the Matrix, the main character,Neo,is trapped in a false reality created by AI (artificial intelligence), where as in Plato's Allegory of the Cave a prisoner is able to grasp the reality of the cave and the real life. One can see many similarities and differences in the film and the allegory. The most important similarity was between the film and the Allegory is the perception of reality.Another simmilarity that the movie Matrix and the Allegory of the Cave shares is that both Neo and the Freed man are prisoners to a system. The most important difference was that Neo never actually lived and experienced anything, but the freed man actually lived and experinced life.
As Trinity tell Neo, "The Matrix can not tell you who you are." By being courageous enough to turn around and take the red pill, we, just like Neo and the Freed Man, are making the first step towards personal independence.
These men, known as agents, hold Neo down and insert a metal like device into his stomach. He soon awakes at his house and is told by Morpheus that he is “the one.” When he meets with Trinity and Morpheus, Trinity removes the metal device from his stomach which shocks him because he didn’t believe that to be real. Morpheus soon offers to reveal the Matrix to Neo. He is given the option of a red pill or blue pill; the blue in which he will go home and remember nothing, red in which will allow him to see the truth.
Fate is non-existent as one's future is based upon their own personal decisions. It is believing
Trinity tells Neo, “The Matrix can not tell you who you are”. Neo is brave enough to walk away and take the red pill, just like the freed prisoner, Neo , and human kind itself, are making the first step towards personal independence.
Choices made by Hamlet, which ultimately lead to his death, are all guided by his own free will. In mourning his father's death, Hamlet chooses to do so for what others consider to be an excessive amount of time. “But to persever/ In obstinate condolement is a course/ Of impious stubbornness”(I.ii.99-100), according to Claudius. During this period of mourning, Hamlet meets his father’s spirit and promises to avenge his father’s death. However, upon reflection, he questions the validity of the ghost’s message. At this point he carefully goes about choosing a plan of action that will inevitably show that “the king is to blame” (V.ii.340) In following his plan, Hamlet freely chooses to kill Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Ophelia, Laertes, Claudius and himself.
The definition of fate is the development of events beyond a person’s control. It is regarded as something determined by a supernatural power, but I believe otherwise. In fact, I believe the exact opposite. I believe that people do in fact have the power to manipulate their fate; Based on the good or bad choices they’ve made in the past. The novel Silas Marner by George Eliot , helps to explain this. Through the actions of three major characters Dunstan Cass, Godfrey Cass, and Silas Marner. These characters were chosen because they all made good or bad choices throughout the novel with a clear punishment or reward; Or in other words these characters show how they control their fate based on previous actions or choices.
The happenings of an individual’s life are undoubtedly owed to fate. As humans, we have control over nothing that happens to us. This is because life, though it may seem complex is actually just a simple equation. The equation of life is a person's genetics plus the random events that happen to the person throughout their life and the person is whatever the combination of the former two variables dictates. Everything you ever do is owed to a predetermined genetic code reacting to the random events life throws at you.
Within the context of Paradise Lost, it seems that Milton viewed free will as being somewhere between the ability to do whatever you wish and having all of your life events predetermined by God. Using this definition of free will Adam, Eve, Satan, the Son, and the Angels have the ability to choose their actions within situations that have been predetermined by, or are at least known to, God. It can then be proposed that the fall was not predetermined and that Adam and Eve had the choice to reject the temptation they were presented with but failed, leading to the fall of mankind.
Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground has been deemed a strange literary piece (Roberts 2). It is written in two parts, contains a neurotic character that is unsettling to some readers, and addresses the Social Radicalist ideology that was popular during that time (Roberts 2; Frank 2). However, it can be argued that this character is portrayed in such a way that he is self-absorbed, petty, and imprudent for good reason. During the time that this work was written, Social Radicalists were spreading the idea that free will does not exist (Frank 7). As a result, Dostoyevsky created the Underground Man to prove how impossible it would be for one to not have free will and successfully integrate into society. This train of thought also strongly believed