Descartes And The Matrix Comparison Essay

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As unlikely as it seems, Plato, Descartes, and the Matrix all have a similar theme throughout them. One of the most obvious similarities between The Matrix and the other two pieces of literature is the idea that the reality of life is nothing but an illusion. All three question the notion that experiencing reality through the senses is real or if it is fake. In The Matrix after taking the red pill , Ne realizes that his life is nothing but a massive computer generated system that only lets on the idea that people are living their lives as they wish. Similarly, Descartes, when looking at the excerpt from Meditations on First Philosophy, felt similarly about life. He often pondered whether or not life was nothing more than the dreams he had …show more content…
They all have a different source of that illusion. In The Matrix, the illusion is the source of a master computer, “It turns out that almost the entire human race is lying unconscious in giant machines that are keeping their bodies alive. Their brains are all connected (via cables) to a powerful computer on which a programed simulation of the world is running, and they are all unconsciously living out virtual lives as individual players in this computer simulation.” (Synopsis). Descartes explanation stems from his ideal of a supreme being of love being unable to deceive him on purpose, therefore it had to be something else deceiving him. The source states, “I will suppose, then, not that Deity, who is sovereignly good and the fountain of truth, but that some malignant demon, who is at once exceedingly potent and deceitful, has employed all his artifice to deceive me. . .” (Descartes). Lastly, when looking at Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave, we can see that his explanation for those prisoners placement in the cave comes from enlightened men keeping them there with only the reality of the shadows. (Plato). Even though all three of these sources were written at different times by different people, all three have the same idea of an illusion of reality. It makes you wonder of they were all onto
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