The Matrix: How Do We Know What Is Real?

“You ever get that feeling where you’re not sure if you’re awake or still dreaming?” asks a bewildered Neo.  I can honestly answer, yes, I have on several occasions found myself pacing around my house, touching the furniture and smelling the fruit in the kitchen, seeing everything in what I believed at the time to be perfect and accurate detail, only to suddenly see something terribly wrong or out of place.  A complete inability to read words, the unexplained yet accepted presence of a complete stranger in the house, or doors in places they shouldn’t be.  However, unlike myself, Neo does not have these markers to make him doubt the reality around him.  

“The Matrix,” by Andy and Larry Wachowski raises several philosophical issues, one of which is ‘How do we know what is real?’  There are several ways we can address this question in the context of the film.  The first is through the use of Plato’s Cave.  Falzon’s description of Plato’s Cave bears a shocking resemblance to the operation of the Matrix within the movie.  Prisoners since childhood are bound so they can only see shadows on the wall in front of them, cast by unknown beings carrying artefacts before a fire, and accept without question that what they see is all there is to reality (Falzon, 2007).  In comparison, “The Matrix” depicts nearly the entire human race as prisoners, literally bound within coffin sized pods by cables and wires, electronically fed a false reality so believable that hardly anyone stops to question it.  The shadows on the wall is the Matrix itself, controlled and created by the Machine race; the carrier of artefacts and jailers of the human race.  

In the film, the rebels are certain that the Matrix is the illusory reality, and the harsh and scorched post-apocalyptic Earth is the actual reality.  But how do we discern reality from illusion?  As Morpheus says, “What is real?  How do you define real?”  “Real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”  So how do Morpheus and the rebels know the real world from the fake one?  Falzon suggests the possibility that the protagonists of the film never truly escape the matrix, and they have moved from one false reality to another, a ‘higher level’ matrix as he puts it (2007).  It is entirely possible that the rebels’ fight against the machines is a contingency plan set up by the Machine Empire in order to satisfy those humans who reject the safer “reality” of 1999.  This idea lets us explore another philosophical view on how to discern reality: Descarte’s evil demon theory.  More sinister than a natural dream, the demon (the Machines) creates a realistic dream specifically designed to quell all thoughts about whether the dreamer is awake or not, usually with the intent on exploiting the dreamer, in this case the metabolic and electrical brain energy to fuel the robots that now rule the planet.  Part of this theory is that the demon (or genius, depending on sources) can tell when the victim starts to doubt the reality fed to them, and is able to alter that fed reality to satisfy the victim (Falzon, 2007) (Malcomson, 2004).  In other words, the human rebellion of “The Matrix” may think they have escaped the matrix and are satisfied in fighting against the machines, when in reality they are still captives in pods, completely unaware of their continued imprisonment.

This contrasts with Plato’s cave, in that prisoners who escape from the cave usually find the outside reality to be a more pleasant and enjoyable place, whereas the evil demon theory suggests that most humans are content to live in ignorance due to a fear that reality may not be as comfortable as their dream world (Malcomson, 2004).  Sypher is the representation of this view, with his willingness to betray Morpheus due to his belief that “ignorance is bliss.”

References

Falzon, C. (2007). Philosophy goes to the movies (2^nd ed.). New York: Routledge

Malcomson, P. (2004). The Matrix, liberal education, and other splinters in the mind. Humanitas, 17(1/2), 139-158.