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Rene Descartes Meditations On First Philosophy

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Question 1

After reading the synopsis of the Matrix, Plato’s “The Republic” and “Meditation I from Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes” I can see various connections, but I can also see different points of view. When comparing and contrasting, I think that in the movie they are actually showing what they believed as reality is really like a dream. In the movie the human world is just an illusion and that all human thought is controlled by a computer. So going to work, going to school, having a family and everything we do on a daily basis wasn’t happening for real, it was all just an illusion. In the synopsis of the Matrix it talks about how would we know what is a dream and what is reality? When I compare the Matrix with Plato’s …show more content…

In that respect I compare this with the Matrix by stating the humans in the Matrix thought that they were awake, but it was a type of sleep because it was all an illusion and as I’ve stated prior, they were living a virtual life, and that is not real. Descartes goes on to talk about the “malignant demon” and question if all “external things” are basically “nothing better than the illusions of dreams” and that the demon has deceived him. When he seems to resolve that he will stay in his “slumber” he is stating the same thing that Cypher did in the Matrix. Cypher believed that “knowing the truth would make life easier” but he found out that for him he liked being controlled by the computer and wanted to “erase his memories of the truth.” So he wanted to stay in an illusion or a …show more content…

I think that if we use as Garrett DeWeese talked about the “idea of virtue epistemology” and one “faithfully employing intellectual virtues, our noetic structure” would be right because we would be dealing with basically beliefs that are true. When we combine those beliefs with intellectual virtues we get to our “epistemological goals” When Socrates talked about most men wanted to escape the cave and see reality, in my opinion that would be true. In the same token there are those who might not want to leave the cave because that is all they know. If man wants to get out of the cave, what is his motivation? I don’t think he would want to be chained up and not able to move his hands, feet or ever move his head from side to side. So in that respect the harshness of reality would be a lot better than being in a cave. I think that if Cypher wanted to go back to being controlled by the computer and he thought that it was a life of bliss, for him maybe being away from the dream was more than he could hand, but I’m not sure if being in a dream and living a virtual life is bliss. When I look at the intellectual virtues, they employ everything that we should strive for in getting at the truth as it states in Dew & Foreman on page 125. One should always want to make new “discoveries and discern

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