This site is to host your ideas about Philosophy - about doing philosophy as opposed to studying it. To be a philosopher (which is what we are aiming for)you need to think and here you can share your thoughts, get feedback and , hopefully, inspire discussions.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Have you woken up?
Is this philosophy? What questions does it ask? Does it provide any answers?
“Ha ha ha now you are dead now I can live in ignorance again as ignorance for normal people is bliss but not for philosophers”
this scene from the matrix supports the quote from the other video because neo picks the tablet which reveals the truth. by doing so, he condemns himself to a life suffering.
I feel that the Matrix is extremely similiar to the world we are living in. "Blind you from the truth" raises a question if 'truth' actually exists. In addition, it also raises a question that how can we possibly distinguish the difference between the truth and the lie.
When we are sleeping, we are blissfully ignorant that we are dreaming and often when we wake up, these dreams seem as vivid and "realistic" as real life occurences, depending on what you dreamed. :)
Although our empirical senses lead us to believe that this world is "real," Morpheus claims that it is merely "a world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." There is no way to prove or acknowledge that we are living in a dream world. However, it cannot be ruled out that there is a sense of doubt that there may be another "world" that Morpheus claims is different and makes us believe what we want to believe.
"We are slaves... and this world is a prison for your mind."
-What is the difference between dreams and reality? Could we be in a virtual reality? How do we know what is real? -There are some things we know that we feel. The feeling is all around - can blind you from the truth. Is thinking/feeling the same as knowing? -I think that our reality is a real, physical one. But then again i only think this I don't actually know for sure. The clip makes me question whether our knowledge is real and whether we know anything at all Could the matrix exist? September 14, 2008 1:09 AM nathan said...
There could be nothing that separates dream from reality, the memerable quote from class can support this, "we only know that we think we know". In addition we need to define all these words? what is a reality? what is virtual, physical? how can we possibly know? well i think at the moment there is no way of knowing and i dont think there will be a way of knowing because you can be sure of one thing but how can you be sure that one thing is real? where did it come from? well louise what is knowing? or thinking? how do we know that we think? the matrix could exist but we have a different name for it perhaps life? or earth? September 14, 2008 5:05 AM April said...
I think that part of our knowledge is an accumulation of what our senses told us (wood is hard, ice is cold etc). This part of knowledge, if we are in a virtual reality, would not tell us what 'true' world is like, since we haven't experienced anything different before.
We really have no way of knowing whether the world that we're living in right now truly existed. Maybe this world is real, and that's the reason why we don't have experiences from another reality (there is NO other reality), or maybe we've been plugged into a virtual world our entire lives and didn't have a chance to experience something from the 'real' world, so we don't know any better.
I'm not so sure of the world 'real': does it mean it from the human understanding (eg. rocks are hard), or does it mean the reality beyond human understanding, if there is indeed one (hypothetical: rocks can feel emotion, but humans don't know. Is the statement 'rocks can feel pain' still real?) September 14, 2008 4:55 PM Ziggy said...
Louise i really like the questions you've provided. I like the idea of there being this divide between reality and a virtual reality.
Questions that came into my mind were silly at first like how did morpheus get out of the matrix and why don't they get caught and stuff. Which isn't very intellectual :)
Now though I am thinking more philosophically and it questions me to wonder about our world. -Our we in the matrix - how do we know we're not? -How do we know that we're not in 'hell' which could explain why so many bad things happen in life i.e. natural disasters, war, rape, murder?
Nathan, what you said about there not being anything that separates dreams and reality - how can you prove/know that? But the rest of your points i agree on.
Cogito Ergo Sum I think, therefore, I am. This has disadvantages though - for example 'cogito' says that there is thinking going on but not necessarily that the person is the one who is doing the thinking. How do we know that these thoughts aren't programmed into us like machines. That these thoughts aren't our own and we really don't have freewill and the reality which we think is a reality is actually structured and planned for us. Everything we feel, smell, hear, see and taste isn't actually real and doesn't actually exist.
Have any of you seen the 'brain in the vat' comics... if possible i'll try and bring in one. Its the idea that a person has hooked up a brain (in a vat) to a computer so that the brain thinks its a living person/society walking around living a life but really it has been programmed do such. This is similar to the matrix - there are these people hooked up to a massive computer and are programmed into this world.
So what is reality? To the brain it isn't just a brain in a vat hooked up to a computer - it lives a life in a world which has been created for it. Just like, if God really exists, we have been put in this world that has been created for us. So is reality what we are living in or are we just a brain in a vat hooked up to the computer or are we in the matrix or we part of one of the universes that is said to exists in a tiny little atom? September 16, 2008 3:31 AM Ziggy said...
sorry for my many typos! September 16, 2008 3:32 AM Luca said...
I really like this clip, neo is told about the matrix ect... but if i may, i would prefer to talk about the part just after this section where Neo talks to the members of the team.
What i thought neo's conversation kid (the guy who wrote the program...i don't know) was interesting. The kid talks about the the senses that they had in the matrix. The kid recalls his description of what he tasted when eating chicken, however if the matrix was made by computers then the computers created the taste of chicken. The question then arises how did they know what chicken tasted like? could our taste of chicken be incorrect, could chicken taste like potatoes? Is
Lets apply this to our world, say we are cloaked by a matrix type thing...how do we know that what we sense is not a figment of our imagination, or that it is real? Is ice cold, is wood hard?
Morpheus said that the matrix was a blanket pulled over neo's eyes, once again, the question how do we know that what we see and respond to is real. Do we believe our world and our lives are real because the world and people respond to us and 'our decisions'? or are we puppets in a bigger game.
--
just for some fun... what if the creators of 'our matrix' made the matrix film for some entertainment (watching the people in a matrix theorize the existence of a matrix). Maybe the creator of the matrix is god like being.
--
maybe we are players in a predetermined game. we have a prepared objective, as the person playing you think you have absolute control. however, you are actually being guided through a map to your objective. is our life governed by the game creator? September 16, 2008 3:40 AM Luca said...
does anybody know how they actually get neo's body. There is that scene where they are trying to track him, but how did they physically get his body what was that about?
or is there a matrix for every person? and the farming thing is a different story?
but i still come back to this question, how did they get him?
and one more thing, when he lives in reality he goes back and still has memories of the food he ate and his house, would he still have those memories even if his reality that they were based on were not real? September 16, 2008 3:45 AM Natalia said...
Morpheus gives Neo a choice between the blue pill and the red pill. Does Neo think that he knows that he has a choice or has it already been decided by fate or a greater power that he will chose the red pill. There is yet again the question 'Do we only know what we think we know?'
As people, we generally accept what we think we know is reality, after all what else could reality be? But could we be in the matrix? could we be living in a game of The Sims, having our race, height and occupation picked out for us?
Is reality different in different situations? For us, reality is that ice is cold, wood is hard, fire is hot. This is because we have either experienced it or been given enough proof and information to believe so. Some, however, may be skeptical that God is real. Now take a fish in the sea. It's reality is that It's world is made of water. If it swims down far enough there will be an ocean floor and if it swims to the top it should not come out of the water because it will not be able to breathe. This is it's reality.
To know what is beyond the surface of the water, the fish will have to die and see. Likewise, to know if there is a God, we will have to die and see.
Also, could we not say that what we think we know is reality is indeed reality? Back to The Sims idea. Can we not say that reality to the characters in the sims (everything we have created for them) is just as much a reality to them as our experiences, what we think is real and the fact that we are playing The Sims is a reality to us? Can there only be one reality?
I also just wanted to point out the symbolism i saw at the end of the clip. Neo is being lifted up into the light and it could be interpreted as 'Plato's Cave', the whole struggle, gaining knowledge thing etc. :) September 17, 2008 2:58 AM Catriona said...
Supposing we were in the matrix, orlife were a sort of matrix within itself? Would that be such a bad thing? Would knowlede of an unknown outside world make us any happier, or would the matrix simply be a way to comfort our minds to the harsh, real world? What if the matrix were a way to comfort us, not lull us into control?
But then again, what if LIFE were the matrix, the accumulation of knowledge until our eventual death, as they say 'youth is wasted on the young', and therefore death were an escape from the matrix, similar to the ending and the sereotypicl light seen before death. Maybe death would be a way towards knowledge, as Christians believe that heaven is unity with God - would we get his knowledge? his omnipotnce? omniscience? OR would being human prevent this. OR if it were a blue pill red pill choice, to become all knowing like God, with knowledge of human pain or suffering, or remain in ignorance, about to see, withut knowing the full extent? September 17, 2008 4:26 AM Jack said...
I think that this clip identifies the problems of knowledge, that even though Neo has experienced the Matrix as true and that everything in it is true, it's only a virtual reality of what is true. This is like Platos analogy of the cave, he has only seen shadows of the truth and when he leaves the matrix it's like leaving the cave and experiencing reality. In the matrix 2 and 3 his task is to find more people to take out of the matrix but as with plato's story, many people do not want to leave the cave, and that ignorance is bliss.
Back to louise's point of knowing what we feel. We could know what we think we feel but is that a true feeling? for instance Neo thinks he feels many things when in reality its fake.
If we lived in the matrix it would be hard to say whether it was real or not seeing as this is the only real thing that people experience. September 17, 2008 4:57 PM Chloé said...
For me reality is a personal concept no matter who we are we all percieve things differently. However so are dreams so how do we differentiate between the two, if they both have the same elements (going back to louise's point)?
what I found interesting with the blue and red pill was what they stood for...is reality worth pursuing in this case? The only thing we truly know is that we do not know. Everything that ever happened has been taught to us might have never existed (though that is going a bit far)
Like what natalia said could everything we percieve be pre-determined? Say in Neo's case, it might not been a matter of choice but what someone else wanted him to do. If so, does the human race actually have free will? September 18, 2008 5:56 AM Luca said...
The Brain in a vat.
This philosophy was first coined by Hilary Putnam, and was used in our movie, the Matrix.
I will condense what she philosophized - Imagine a brain in a sink (vat), that is full of nutrient so that it will stay alive and function. Now, the nerve endings are connected to a supper scientific computer that is able to send impulses to the brain. These impulses create the illusion that everything is normal. The brain thinks its a person ect.
- in a supper awesome time where we have crazy technology this brain (or kind of person) will be connected to a supper cool, awesome computer that is able to simulate reality. Now biological brains and fake/computer brains will each think they are real and will recognize each other as real. 50% of society is computer and the other 50% is biological, society is split into two but they don't know it.
Now what's to say that time isn't now... The Matrix adopted this idea that you cannot know whether you are in the real world or in the word of a computer simulation.
The same questions arise. are we in a matrix? what is reality? how do we know what is reality? are we living predetermined lives? we think we know many things but how can we defend those claims? is the experience of dreaming indistinguishable from our walking experience?
so how can we know? All we know is that we think we know. September 20, 2008 1:17 AM
5 comments:
neo is told that everything he once thought was real and true is a lie which leads us to ask questions like:
what is real? does free will exist? do we possess free will? how do we know what is real? is there a purpose in life?
“Ha ha ha now you are dead now I can live in ignorance again as ignorance for normal people is bliss but not for philosophers”
this scene from the matrix supports the quote from the other video because neo picks the tablet which reveals the truth. by doing so, he condemns himself to a life suffering.
I feel that the Matrix is extremely similiar to the world we are living in. "Blind you from the truth" raises a question if 'truth' actually exists. In addition, it also raises a question that how can we possibly distinguish the difference between the truth and the lie.
When we are sleeping, we are blissfully ignorant that we are dreaming and often when we wake up, these dreams seem as vivid and "realistic" as real life occurences, depending on what you dreamed. :)
Although our empirical senses lead us to believe that this world is "real," Morpheus claims that it is merely "a world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." There is no way to prove or acknowledge that we are living in a dream world. However, it cannot be ruled out that there is a sense of doubt that there may be another "world" that Morpheus claims is different and makes us believe what we want to believe.
"We are slaves... and this world is a prison for your mind."
12 comments:
Louise said...
-What is the difference between dreams and reality? Could we be in a virtual reality? How do we know what is real?
-There are some things we know that we feel. The feeling is all around - can blind you from the truth. Is thinking/feeling the same as knowing?
-I think that our reality is a real, physical one. But then again i only think this I don't actually know for sure. The clip makes me question whether our knowledge is real and whether we know anything at all Could the matrix exist?
September 14, 2008 1:09 AM
nathan said...
There could be nothing that separates dream from reality, the memerable quote from class can support this, "we only know that we think we know". In addition we need to define all these words? what is a reality? what is virtual, physical?
how can we possibly know? well i think at the moment there is no way of knowing and i dont think there will be a way of knowing because you can be sure of one thing but how can you be sure that one thing is real? where did it come from?
well louise what is knowing? or thinking? how do we know that we think? the matrix could exist but we have a different name for it perhaps life? or earth?
September 14, 2008 5:05 AM
April said...
I think that part of our knowledge is an accumulation of what our senses told us (wood is hard, ice is cold etc). This part of knowledge, if we are in a virtual reality, would not tell us what 'true' world is like, since we haven't experienced anything different before.
We really have no way of knowing whether the world that we're living in right now truly existed. Maybe this world is real, and that's the reason why we don't have experiences from another reality (there is NO other reality), or maybe we've been plugged into a virtual world our entire lives and didn't have a chance to experience something from the 'real' world, so we don't know any better.
I'm not so sure of the world 'real': does it mean it from the human understanding (eg. rocks are hard), or does it mean the reality beyond human understanding, if there is indeed one (hypothetical: rocks can feel emotion, but humans don't know. Is the statement 'rocks can feel pain' still real?)
September 14, 2008 4:55 PM
Ziggy said...
Louise i really like the questions you've provided. I like the idea of there being this divide between reality and a virtual reality.
Questions that came into my mind were silly at first like how did morpheus get out of the matrix and why don't they get caught and stuff. Which isn't very intellectual :)
Now though I am thinking more philosophically and it questions me to wonder about our world.
-Our we in the matrix - how do we know we're not?
-How do we know that we're not in 'hell' which could explain why so many bad things happen in life i.e. natural disasters, war, rape, murder?
Nathan, what you said about there not being anything that separates dreams and reality - how can you prove/know that? But the rest of your points i agree on.
Cogito Ergo Sum I think, therefore, I am. This has disadvantages though - for example 'cogito' says that there is thinking going on but not necessarily that the person is the one who is doing the thinking. How do we know that these thoughts aren't programmed into us like machines. That these thoughts aren't our own and we really don't have freewill and the reality which we think is a reality is actually structured and planned for us. Everything we feel, smell, hear, see and taste isn't actually real and doesn't actually exist.
Have any of you seen the 'brain in the vat' comics... if possible i'll try and bring in one. Its the idea that a person has hooked up a brain (in a vat) to a computer so that the brain thinks its a living person/society walking around living a life but really it has been programmed do such. This is similar to the matrix - there are these people hooked up to a massive computer and are programmed into this world.
So what is reality? To the brain it isn't just a brain in a vat hooked up to a computer - it lives a life in a world which has been created for it. Just like, if God really exists, we have been put in this world that has been created for us. So is reality what we are living in or are we just a brain in a vat hooked up to the computer or are we in the matrix or we part of one of the universes that is said to exists in a tiny little atom?
September 16, 2008 3:31 AM
Ziggy said...
sorry for my many typos!
September 16, 2008 3:32 AM
Luca said...
I really like this clip, neo is told about the matrix ect... but if i may, i would prefer to talk about the part just after this section where Neo talks to the members of the team.
What i thought neo's conversation kid (the guy who wrote the program...i don't know) was interesting. The kid talks about the the senses that they had in the matrix. The kid recalls his description of what he tasted when eating chicken, however if the matrix was made by computers then the computers created the taste of chicken. The question then arises how did they know what chicken tasted like? could our taste of chicken be incorrect, could chicken taste like potatoes? Is
Lets apply this to our world, say we are cloaked by a matrix type thing...how do we know that what we sense is not a figment of our imagination, or that it is real? Is ice cold, is wood hard?
Morpheus said that the matrix was a blanket pulled over neo's eyes, once again, the question how do we know that what we see and respond to is real. Do we believe our world and our lives are real because the world and people respond to us and 'our decisions'? or are we puppets in a bigger game.
--
just for some fun...
what if the creators of 'our matrix' made the matrix film for some entertainment (watching the people in a matrix theorize the existence of a matrix). Maybe the creator of the matrix is god like being.
--
maybe we are players in a predetermined game. we have a prepared objective, as the person playing you think you have absolute control. however, you are actually being guided through a map to your objective. is our life governed by the game creator?
September 16, 2008 3:40 AM
Luca said...
does anybody know how they actually get neo's body. There is that scene where they are trying to track him, but how did they physically get his body what was that about?
or is there a matrix for every person? and the farming thing is a different story?
but i still come back to this question, how did they get him?
and one more thing, when he lives in reality he goes back and still has memories of the food he ate and his house, would he still have those memories even if his reality that they were based on were not real?
September 16, 2008 3:45 AM
Natalia said...
Morpheus gives Neo a choice between the blue pill and the red pill. Does Neo think that he knows that he has a choice or has it already been decided by fate or a greater power that he will chose the red pill. There is yet again the question 'Do we only know what we think we know?'
As people, we generally accept what we think we know is reality, after all what else could reality be? But could we be in the matrix? could we be living in a game of The Sims, having our race, height and occupation picked out for us?
Is reality different in different situations? For us, reality is that ice is cold, wood is hard, fire is hot. This is because we have either experienced it or been given enough proof and information to believe so. Some, however, may be skeptical that God is real.
Now take a fish in the sea. It's reality is that It's world is made of water. If it swims down far enough there will be an ocean floor and if it swims to the top it should not come out of the water because it will not be able to breathe. This is it's reality.
To know what is beyond the surface of the water, the fish will have to die and see. Likewise, to know if there is a God, we will have to die and see.
Also, could we not say that what we think we know is reality is indeed reality? Back to The Sims idea. Can we not say that reality to the characters in the sims (everything we have created for them) is just as much a reality to them as our experiences, what we think is real and the fact that we are playing The Sims is a reality to us? Can there only be one reality?
I also just wanted to point out the symbolism i saw at the end of the clip. Neo is being lifted up into the light and it could be interpreted as 'Plato's Cave', the whole struggle, gaining knowledge thing etc. :)
September 17, 2008 2:58 AM
Catriona said...
Supposing we were in the matrix, orlife were a sort of matrix within itself? Would that be such a bad thing? Would knowlede of an unknown outside world make us any happier, or would the matrix simply be a way to comfort our minds to the harsh, real world? What if the matrix were a way to comfort us, not lull us into control?
But then again, what if LIFE were the matrix, the accumulation of knowledge until our eventual death, as they say 'youth is wasted on the young', and therefore death were an escape from the matrix, similar to the ending and the sereotypicl light seen before death. Maybe death would be a way towards knowledge, as Christians believe that heaven is unity with God - would we get his knowledge? his omnipotnce? omniscience? OR would being human prevent this. OR if it were a blue pill red pill choice, to become all knowing like God, with knowledge of human pain or suffering, or remain in ignorance, about to see, withut knowing the full extent?
September 17, 2008 4:26 AM
Jack said...
I think that this clip identifies the problems of knowledge, that even though Neo has experienced the Matrix as true and that everything in it is true, it's only a virtual reality of what is true. This is like Platos analogy of the cave, he has only seen shadows of the truth and when he leaves the matrix it's like leaving the cave and experiencing reality. In the matrix 2 and 3 his task is to find more people to take out of the matrix but as with plato's story, many people do not want to leave the cave, and that ignorance is bliss.
Back to louise's point of knowing what we feel. We could know what we think we feel but is that a true feeling? for instance Neo thinks he feels many things when in reality its fake.
If we lived in the matrix it would be hard to say whether it was real or not seeing as this is the only real thing that people experience.
September 17, 2008 4:57 PM
Chloé said...
For me reality is a personal concept no matter who we are we all percieve things differently.
However so are dreams so how do we differentiate between the two, if they both have the same elements (going back to louise's point)?
what I found interesting with the blue and red pill was what they stood for...is reality worth pursuing in this case?
The only thing we truly know is that we do not know. Everything that ever happened has been taught to us might have never existed (though that is going a bit far)
Like what natalia said could everything we percieve be pre-determined? Say in Neo's case, it might not been a matter of choice but what someone else wanted him to do. If so, does the human race actually have free will?
September 18, 2008 5:56 AM
Luca said...
The Brain in a vat.
This philosophy was first coined by Hilary Putnam, and was used in our movie, the Matrix.
I will condense what she philosophized
- Imagine a brain in a sink (vat), that is full of nutrient so that it will stay alive and function. Now, the nerve endings are connected to a supper scientific computer that is able to send impulses to the brain. These impulses create the illusion that everything is normal. The brain thinks its a person ect.
- in a supper awesome time where we have crazy technology this brain (or kind of person) will be connected to a supper cool, awesome computer that is able to simulate reality. Now biological brains and fake/computer brains will each think they are real and will recognize each other as real. 50% of society is computer and the other 50% is biological, society is split into two but they don't know it.
Now what's to say that time isn't now... The Matrix adopted this idea that you cannot know whether you are in the real world or in the word of a computer simulation.
The same questions arise.
are we in a matrix?
what is reality?
how do we know what is reality?
are we living predetermined lives?
we think we know many things but how can we defend those claims?
is the experience of dreaming indistinguishable from our walking experience?
so how can we know? All we know is that we think we know.
September 20, 2008 1:17 AM
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