Natural Freedom

I came across this article while googling the matrix and im trying to understand if he agrees with that Matrix exists or not. Feel free to critique it because i am not at that level yet.


The Matrix & Skepticism

Can You Trust Anything You See in the Movies?


Warning: This section contains spoilers for the Matrix: Reloaded. It also contains speculations about Matrix: Revolutions which turned out not to be true. I leave those speculations in place because they continue to be valid from a philosophical perspective, even if they were not correct.



One of the basic philosophical themes of the Matrix movies is skepticism - specifically, philosophical skepticism that questions the nature of reality and whether we can ever actually know anything at all. This theme is played out in the conflict between the "real" world where humans are struggling to survive in a war against the machines and the "simulated" world where humans are plugged into computers in order to serve the machines. Or is it?

A very curious feature of the Matrix movies is how they seem designed on the one hand to get us to ask difficult questions about reality and what we can know by showing us such a perfectly constructed simulation of our reality, but on the other hand they also rely upon us failing to question what we are told about the genuinely "real" world. How can these two principles co-exist?

The truth of the matter is, we aren't actually given any particular reason to believe that the "real" world of Zion portrayed in the movie is "real" after all. Even the character of Morpheus suggests that what is "real" is open to question, stating: "What is 'real'? How do you define 'real'? If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain."

Before Neo leaves Zion for the final time in The Matrix Reloaded, he is given a gift: a spoon. This is a reference to the first movie where he learned that the principle of questioning and manipulating the simulated "reality" of the Matrix can be summarized in the phrase, "There is no spoon." In other words, what appears to be real is actually illusion - there is no spoon, just your mind. But wait of minute, Neo was just given a real spoon - so there is a spoon now. Or is there?

There is one possibility worth considering: we haven't actually been shown the "real" world in Matrix movies yet. What is portrayed as "real" is, instead, a meta-simulation that exists around the computer-generated world of that Matrix that we have already seen as a deception. Sound crazy? Perhaps - but that is one of the problems of radical skepticism. Once you start, there is no means to stop.

No one who is "awakened" from the Matrix has much cause to believe that the new world around them is "real" after all. There are in fact a few reasons to suppose that the Matrix and the "real" world share much more in common than was originally described by the first movie. The most obvious occurs near the end of The Matrix Reloaded when Neo, now in the "real" world of Zion, realizes that he can "feel" the Sentinels chasing them. As they approach, he reaches out with this hand, stops them, and causes them to self-destruct.

How can this happen? That's a power of Neo in the Matrix, where he is able to manipulate the code which describes the simulated world, not of Neo in the "real" world. Perhaps we can speculate that he is developing telepathic and telekinetic powers, but that would be inconsistent with the principles already established in the Matrix. A much more consistent explanation would be that the "real" world is a meta-simulation and Neo is now learning to manipulate that code as well.

Another internal reason to suspect that something strange is going on is the ability of Agent Smith, now apparently a rogue program, to transfer something of himself to the "real" world. There are other possible explanations for this - it doesn't contradict the principles of the Matrix world to suspect that a program might alter a human consciousness. However, it has already been established that a human mind in the Matrix can be hacked by the computer programs, so if a human mind in the "real" world is still in a simulation and Agent Smith has become aware of this, it could be easy for him to influence events there as well.

There are further, philosophical reasons to wonder if perhaps the line between the Matrix and the "real" world is as firm as is generally portrayed. On the psychological front, it makes a lot of sense for whomever controls the Matrix to provide a sort of "safety valve" to allow for the release of rebellion among those not given to obeying authority. The creation of a meta-simulation where people can imagine that they have been "awakened," acquired knowledge of "reality," and are fighting for freedom will prevent them from genuinely doing it and genuinely threatening those in charge.

Notice that in Zion there is no evidence of the freed humans doubting their "reality" or thinking very hard about why things are the way they are. They are committed to that reality, so "hopelessly dependent" upon their roles as freedom fighters that "they will fight to protect it." Sometimes, channels of dissent are only channels of further control - and the Prophecy of the One may allow those behind the Matrix to gradually improve their levels of control over humanity.

Epistemologically, a strict division between the Matrix and reality may not even be possible. A person's reasons to believe that she has awakened to the "real" world are predicated upon categories of thought and action which developed while in the "unreal" Matrix. But if the experiences of the Matrix cannot be believed, then those categories of thought and action are no longer reliable - and, as such, are an inadequate basis upon which one can say that they now know what the "real" world is.

In other words, if we wake up and Morpheus tells us that the Matrix has been feeding us lies all our lives, then we really don't have any firm basis upon which we can conclude that Morpheus must be telling us the truth. Believing Morpheus takes away our reasons to believe Morpheus: it's a self-refuting belief. This is a subtle, but important point. If a we are going to be able to make our way in the "real" world at all, there have to be a whole lot more similarities between it and the Matrix in which we grew up than we realize - but if the "real" world is just a meta-simulation for above-average rebellious minds, then those similarities would only be natural.

Ah, but the attraction of radical skepticism is powerful. I keep being drawn to the scene near the end when Neo is talking to the Architect and the walls around the room frame Neo with multiple images of himself on monitors. Behind the image of Neo on each of the monitors are more banks of monitors with more images of Neo. Twice through the conversation we focus in on one of those images, move through the screen, and now that is the "real" Neo speaking. Worlds within worlds within worlds.

If the Matrix is a computer simulation that exists within a larger simulation that encompasses Zion, what about the world beyond that? And the world beyond that? Just how deep does the rabbit hole actually go? Once we reject the truth of one utterly convincing reality, we are compelled to doubt and question the reality of any other world presented to us as being "real." There might not be an end to the rabbit hole at all - perhaps that is a message of The Matrix: no matter how deep we delve, we'll never reach an end of illusions, questions, and doubts


http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/r ... x_skep.htm