Morpheus tells Neo that human existence is merely a facade. In reality, humans are being 'farmed' as a source of energy by a race of sentient, malevolent machines. People actually live their entire lives in pods, wtih their brains being fed sensory stimuli which give them the illusion of leading 'ordinary' lives. Morpheus explains that, up until then, the "reality" perceived by Neo is actually "a computer-generated dreamworld...a neural interactive simulation" called the matrix.
The Matrix is based on a philosophical question posed by the 17th Century French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes. One of Descartes's most important theses was intellectual autonomy, or the ability to think for oneself. For Descartes, this entails not just having a "good mind", but also "applying it well".
Descartes knew that his sensory experiences did not always match reality, and used the Wax Argument to demonstrate how unreliable the senses are: the senses inform us that a piece of wax has a specific shape, texture, smell, etc. But these characteristics soon change when the wax is brought near a flame.
Everything I have accepted up to now as being absolutely true and assured, I have learned from or through the senses. But I have sometimes found that these senses played me false it is prudent never to trust entirely those who have once deceived us...Thus what I thought I had seen with my eyes, I actually grasped solely with the faculty of judgment, which is in my mind.
Descartes was therefore suspicious of his percepts, the knowledge he obtained through his senses, and all his own beliefs. He became convinced that one must use one's mind, rather than one's senses, to obtain information about the world. In the system of knowledge constructed by Descartes, perception is unreliable as means of gathering information, and the mental process of deduction is the only way to acquire real knowledge of the world.
In Meditations on First Philosophy, published in 1641, he takes this idea to its limits, and comes to the conclusion that perhaps all of his experiences are being conjured up by this evil demon:
...firmly implanted in my mind is the long-standing opinion that there is an omnipotent God who made me the kind of creature that I am. How do I know that he has not brought it about that there is no earth, no sky, no extended thing, no shape, no size, no place, while at the same time ensuring that all these things appear to me to exist just as they do now? What is more, just as I consider that others sometimes go astray in cases where they think they have the most perfect knowledge, how do I know that God has not brought it about that I too go wrong every time I add two and three or count the sides of a square, or in some even simpler matter, if that is imaginable? [but] since he is said to be supremely good...I will suppose...[that] some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me. I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgment.
Descartes therefore approached all knowledge, including his own, from a highly skeptical perspective. Despite his skepticism, Descartes, was certain that one could not be fooled about one's own existence, hence his famous dictum cogito ergo sum (!I think, therefore I am"). With this, Descartes meant that the only thing he did not doubt was his own existence, because the act of thinking about, and doubting, the reality of his perceptions was affirmation of his existence. By saying "I think therefore I am", he was defining "truth" in terms of doubt.
Descartes's argument is an epistemological one. It questions the nature, limits and validity of human knowledge. Instead of inquiring into the nature of reality, Descartes questions his own knowledge and interpretation of reality. Using methodological skepticism, Descartes doubted anything that could be doubted, in order to lay a foundation for genuine knowledge. In terms of epistemology, much of our acquired knowledge is adequate to explain the world, but there is no such thing as "absolute" truth.
A modern version of Descartes's conundrum is a thought experiment called the 'brain in a vat'. This is Hilary Putnam's version of the argument:
imagine that a human being...has been subjected to an operation by an evil scientist. The person's brain...has been removed from the body and placed in a vat of nutrients which keeps the brain alive. The nerve endings have been connected to a...computer which causes the person...to have the illusion that everything is perfectly normal. There seem to be people, objects, the sky, etc.; but really, all the person...is experiencing is the result of electronic impulses travelling from the computer to the nerve endings. The computer is so clever that if the person tries to raise his hand, the feedback from the computer will cause him to 'see' and 'feel' the hand being raised. Moreover, by varying the program, the evil scientist can cause the victim to 'experience' (or hallucinate) any situation or environment the evil scientist wishes. He can also obliterate the memory of the brain operation, so that the victim will seem to himself to have always been in this environment. It can even seem to the victim that he is sitting and reading these very words about the amusing but quite absurd supposition that there is an evil scientist who removes peoples' brains from their bodies and places them in a vat of nutrients which keep the brains alive.
The brain in a vat, although just a rehash of the argument by Descartes, is more directly related to The Matrix. In the film, the pods in which humans spend their lives represent the vat. The only difference is that, instead of just containing disembodied brains, the pods contain the entire body.
In theory, computers could simulate reality if the sensory stimuli corresponding to human experience could be determined and 'executed' as a computer program, which could 'run' in some kind of advanced brain implant. In practice, however, even if the exact computations required to generate a simulated constant stream of consciousness were determined, there is no computer in the world that is powerful enough to perform the necessary calculations. The world's most powerful supercomputer is not powerful enough to process the visual information entering the eye of a fruit fly over a period of one second, let alone generate the stream of consciousness of a human. (Some people would, however, argue, with the acceleration of processing speed and advances in quantum computing, computers may well have the power to simulate human consciousness in the foreseeable future.)
The notion, propounded by Descartes, that all our perceptions are false at first seems ridiculous, but it is, in fact, impossible to disprove. And Descartes was right to distrust his senses. Optical illusions are a good example of sensory stimuli that produce a discrepancy between what we see and what we experience, and there are numerous other examples, such as psychiatric conditions in which visual of auditory hallucinations are symptoms. In the case of opitcal illusions, we are aware of the discrepancy, but, otherwise, we do not normally question our senses. For Descartes, even the most basic assumption about reality was to be doubted.
Even when we are not looking at optical illusions, and perceive the world as we should be perceiving it, we are still being fooled by our senses. In neurobiological terms, "reality" is little more than a representational model of the world, a construct generated by multiple neural circuits acting in parallel. This model is based on sensory experiences received by the brain via the senses, which can detect only the narrowest range of stimuli. The human eye, for example, is sensitive to electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength of between approximately 400-750 nm (nanometers, billionths of a meter), an infinitesimal fraction of the entire spectrum. In that respect, the other senses are not much different.
So the brain can be thought of as something like a radio, tuned in to just several of billions of channels. Plato alludes to the narrow limits of the senses in this passage from The Republic:
Imagine human beings living in an underground, cavelike dwelling, with an entrance a long way up, which is both open to the light and as wide as the cave itself. They've been there since childhood, fixed in the same place, with their necks and legs fettered, able to see only in front of them, because their bonds prevent them from turning their heads around. Light is provided by a fire burning far above and behind them. Also behind them, but on higher ground, there is a path stretching between them and the fire. Imagine that along this path a low wall has been built, like the screen in front of puppeteers above which they show their puppets...Then also imagine that there are people along the wall, carrying all kinds of artifacts that project above it - statues of people and other animals, made out of stone, wood, and every material. And, as you'd expect, some of the carriers are talking, and some are silent.
The cave-dwellers get a hint of reality from the shadows on the walls. They may see a shadow of an object, and construct a mental representation of that object. But, according to Plato, knowing the form of the object is not sufficient to have a full understanding of it, which can only be obtained by more direct experience. For him, the world as we perceive it is no more or less real than that perceived by the people in The Matrix, as neither we, nor they, actually have any direct experience of that world.
In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake reiterates Plato's argument, and refers directly to the cave allegory:
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.
For Blake, we are deceiving ourselves about our understanding of reality. Plato's argument, like that of Descartes, involves deception by other entities. Whereas Descartes believes he is being deceived by his demon about the nature of reality, the cave-dwellers are being deceived by the mysterious puppeteers behind the wall. 'Reality' for the cave-dwellers is little more than the shadows dancing on the walls. These are mere impressions of what lies behind the wall, yet the cave-dwellers use them to construct their models of the world, because it is the only information they have.
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the information presented to our brains by our senses is as much as our minds can bare.
No, it's older than that.
google Gnostic Matrix
This is perhaps one of your best! Your matrix analogy to life is very very relevant.
Hmm... I'm a tad surprised you didn't mention Jean Baudrillard at all, who was, more directly, an inspiration for the Matrix.
There's a scene early on in the movie where Neo pulls out a book - the one he has computer disks stashed in - and the book quite clearly is a copy of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. (You can see the screen shot of the book in the film here - scroll down about half-way.)
To quote the wikipedia article, which states it rather crudely, "Baudrillard claims that our society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that in fact all that we know as real is actually a simulation of reality. The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are signs of culture and media that create the reality that we perceive."
Apparently, the Wachowski brothers tried to get Baudrillard's help while making the movie but he declined, at least partly because they were misinterpreting his ideas.
Baudrillard has some fun theories and he's pretty provacative, like when he said "The Gulf War (the first one) did not take place."
Hi, I'm enjoying your blog having signed up just a few weeks ago.
I was wondering if there was some research behind your quote about computer processing:
I've read that the human eye processes about 10 million bits of data per second (my post about it), but I'm not so familiar with fruit flys. :)
-Stan
The philosopher Schliermacher thought Descartes wasn't skeptical enough.
He pointed out that the presence of a thought only implied the presence of a thinker (or brain) if we assume that our experience of the world, where brains are what have thoughts, is accurate. But this is precisely the kind of assumption that cartesian doubt forbids.
Strangely, I don't recall Schliermacher calling Descartes out on his more obvious error - the assumptions that (a) a god exists and (b) this god would not allow us to be misled.
I try to avoid blanket praise without specific content, but I have to violate my rule and just say, great post. I really enjoyed it.
Quote:
The truth - believe it or not - is that we all live in a matrix, albeit one composed of several hundred billion neurons and the quadrillion (1024) or so synapses formed by them.
I would say, we are a matrix of neurons and synapses. I know of no I that is separate from them.
Great post. I have some commentary on my blog:
http://brainvat.wordpress.com/2007/08/07/whats-in-a-name/
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Jean Baudrillard, as the Wachowski brothers were more directly influenced by his writings. His book, Simulcra and Simulation, even
has a cameo appearance of sorts.
Here's a good interview with Baudrillard on the film caution:
postmodern jargon ahead.)
very interesting. I particularly like your matrix-neural network analogy in the conclusion.
Try this one on for size:
The Codex Veritas Neo
You might find that there's a lot more out there - in truth and quantum reality, matter and mind - than you think. And there's a man working to make this idea more than a cozy debate; but you'll have to, to quote the bad movie, "See it for yourself". He's been at it for ten years, however, and I've known 'im for six of them. So my vote's cast.
Note that Plato's version of the solipsistic challenge requires enforced and overwhelming constraint -- Putnam's version involves actually tampering with the victim's memories. One could argue that Blake's argument was answered by Huxley, but that involves hallucinogenic drugs.... ;-)
The realistic answer here, is that the world provides its own proofs by way of being rigidly persistent and consistent, to the point where we can in fact use it as a double-check for our individual senses. ("Hey, do you see that?") Indeed, faking a world convincingly appears to be "arbitrarily" hard. The problem of simulating a "real" environment may well be worse than "AI-complete"!
That said, Blake is right in that most humans barely see the world around them through their personal filters and interpretations. Some of us are a little better at seeing the world "directly", but that isn't always a good thing! (Cough, cough, Autistic Spectrum. Normal humans filter the world so that they have more time to think about it!)
oh yes there are! they are called advertisers.
Baudrillard has it right. Much of what we experience as reality is not objective nor even personally subjective but is our own perception of the skilful (though often demented) output of others minds. How much of our generation's worldview is TV-derived, for example? Various popular fancies 'sell' better than realism.
I think one of the gravest dangers to society is the coming to power and influence of convincing manipulators. The tendency towards cults of personality and celebrity, and numerous historical instances, illustrate how the herd can elevate to power and long tolerate a demagogue whose motives are not the common good and whose decision-making is fundamentally corrupt.. Hitler and Stalin, for example. Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" describes the failure of Easter Island society through obsessive competitive building of statues honouring rival tribal chiefs, consuming resources to the point of ecological collapse.
In the past couple of years I have fought against 'leaderism' in a church congregation - where untruthful and frankly irrational behaviour has been accepted and defended, and where 'leaders' (office-bearers and trustees) still resist open acknowledgement and discussion of blatantly obvious facts. But to admit to human failings in those we have elevated to pre-eminence is costly, and social cohesion perpetuates dysfunctional systems of co-dependent deludedness, often, till collapse occurs. In this congregation it is likely to be brought about through ongoing financial shortfall, since congregants know facts have been suppresssed and so longer trust leaders with money as they used to.. my analysis!
Well philosophers are all wrong when it comes to the debate on an internal and external world. On the one hand they talk about it all being in the brain, but the brain is only there because it has been observered by the outer world. How do you know you have a brain, what is observing the brain.
I think right now we are seeing a tension between philosophies between the mind and the sensual perception.
Baudrillard is also very important to understand the Matrix. Like Descartes, he is very interested in the verification of reality.
But a criticism of the Matrix/Simulacra is that you to have the physical environment, a mastery of a network of societies, and a mastery of individual consciousness.
As one domain is mastered, mastery of the next is sought, until the state's ubiquitous control extends even to the minutia of human consciousness. But there are many forces acting to the contrary.
There are a number of social phenonemon that lead us away from the matrix: the green movement, the "Secular Sabbath" (no machines once a week), noosphere (Teilahrd de Chardin and Verdansky), the "slow food" movement, fitness, and the explosion of the mind-body movement (Eastern Philosophies, Contemplative Prayer, and Wellness).
There is a very interesting course on itunes from Berkeley on Consciousness that goes through the whole mind-body debate philosophically from Descartes through modern philosophers and incorporates neuroscience.
Also physicists have been looking at how quantum physics relates to consciousness.
I am very interested in these matters as I recently discovered that I have a disability in sensor fusion -- my eyes, ears, balance, motor skills are all a bit whacked. As I have been going through therapy to recover these skills, I have started to ask my self the basic questions that you are posing? How do I know what I know? How do I relate to the world? http://journeythroughthecortex.blogspot.com