Descartes Philosophy Depicted In The Film The Matrix

The movie The Matrix, was a film that is about a man who lives two lives. By day the main character named Neo is an average computer programmer and by night he is a well-known hacker known as Neo. After a while he finds himself targeted by the police when he is contacted by a legendary hacker named Morpheus. During the movie Morpheus shows Neo the real world which is a ravaged wasteland that most of humanity has been captured by machines that live off of human body heat and electrochemical energy and imprison their minds within an artificial reality known as the Matrix. This movie has a lot of philosophical theories that it can relate to but the 2 main philosophers and ideas that catch my eye with this movie is Plato and his allegory of the

They both have evil demon that is vividly realized as the artificial intelligence that forces a virtual reality on humans. Descartes mediations and the movie uses the dream metaphor of the deception of people by a demon. Descartes brings into doubt things that would otherwise be impossible to doubt. Morpheus states this in the movie when he poses the question of what reality really is. Descartes brings into doubt all the senses because once something has been known to deceive, it is prudent to not trust it. An example of this is when the main character Neo sees a women in a red dress. His senses derive him, and he is quickly finding himself realizing that an agent takes his place. Descartes thinks that there must be some evil responsible for deception exist and this connects with the movie because the so called demon in this movie is the artificial intelligence responsible for the creation of the matrix. One could make the argument that Locke’s idea of a person having distinct, incommunicable consciousness at different times could apply to the Matrix because in the movies consciousness Neo has while living in their fake, created reality cannot usually communicate with the consciousness one has while acting as an energy source. In what we call the real world this could not happen. Locke argues that even if a person did experience a split consciousness like this, whether from experiences of drinking/drugs,

Locke believes that our mind is empty and this relates to the Matrix because in the movie the minds is related to the empty room that Neo goes to when he is in between the matrix and the real world. Locke states that the mind is blank slate at birth but in the movie Neo was born into reality. He had no control over anything and had no understanding at all of anything. He was just the product of his environment and was molded by the environment. Showing that Neo was taught through artificial intelligence and later in the movie learned to beat the system comes close with Locke and how he implies that all knowledge comes exclusively through experience. Locke theory also goes against the movie as well with saying that knowledge cannot be inherent. In the movie Neo was one of the biggest hackers in the computer before he was introduced into the new world of the matrix. Also in the movie all men were not created equal because Neo started off with less knowledge as Morpheus about the matrix and how to try and beat the system. Going towards the end of the movie they become equal because Neo learns how to beat the system but to begin with Neo did not have equal power. In some of Locke’s writing he limits the sources and limits of human knowledge. He thinks that all simple ideas are true but this is wrong because this is not happening in the movie.