Week 5 Essay

After reading the three readings, I can see some similarity and differences between the readings from the philosophers. Comparing the Matrix and Plato’s, the similarity is they both agree that the life we are experiencing is not as real as what it appears to be. It is simply an illusion and a life that we can question and doubt about.

From Matrix’s story this happens when Neo ‘the hacker’ had a dream that made him think about the reality and the thought that there is something more to life. When Morpheus came and told him “that the world is an illusion, an elaborate system of deception perpetrated to keep people contentedly under control” (Wachowski & Wachowski, 1999). Neo then choose to eat the pill and see the truth that the human race is only relying on a machine to keep their bodies alive. Human beings are actually unconscious, therefore they are controlled by the machine. Because of this, what we see or do today happens because we are programmed into a computer simulation called Matrix.

From Plato’s allegory, we see it when Socrates described men’s nature being as prisoners since childhood; being chained inside a cavern not being able to move their heads, but only looking. When one of the prisoners was released and was given the opportunity to see the light; and guided with what was going on. The human being that has seen the light will think what “he had seen before was all a cheat and an illusion. He will then want to turn toward real things” (Plato). He suggests that life or “reality to be nothing else than the shadows of the artificial objects.”

From Descartes’ reading, we see that he believed the notion of nothing is for certain in this world. When he was old and retired he began to question and doubt all his knowledge he had received through his lifetime. He started doubting his senses that turns out to be unreliable