Compare And Contrast Plato Descartes And The Matrix

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Compare and Contrast: Plato, Descartes, and The Matrix
There are some similarities and differences in the excerpts by Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” (Retrieved from Liberty.edu/blackboard), Descartes’s “Meditation I of The Things of Which We May Doubt” (Retrieved from Liberty.edu/blackboard), and the Synopsis: The Matrix (Retrieved from Liberty.edu/blackboard). All three stories are similar in that they seek understanding of accurate natural knowledge, but also have differences relating to “Common Sense Skepticism” (Foreman, 2016). According to Foreman (2016) “This is a healthy kind of skepticism that we all tend to have when we hear stories of things out of the ordinary” (Foreman, 2016). In addition, each of the authors use some reasoning …show more content…

It depicts people living as having the ability to learn, gain knowledge, have righteous character, moral, or religious belief, or values, yet have profound doubts about reality. As stated by Dew and Foreman (2014), “…the degrees of certainty arise from the nature of the objects, entities or issues that we inquire about” (Dew & Foreman, 2014, p. 162). Each individual character in some way or the other is seeking understanding about true or healthy cognitive development. Although shown in different ways, each story makes an attempt to capture the human’s natural ability to distinguish between the real world and personal discernment. In Plato’s excerpt, he depicts a similar skeptical way of experiencing life vicariously through restricted life experiences, possibly with fewer given choices, or even less edifying opportunities. His skepticism about the levels of life experiences pertains to the level of knowledge a person accomplishes. Skepticism is also the basis of Descartes’s story, his doubtfulness about attained natural knowledge or education. His point of view shows that his concern is based on a person’s learned behavior during childhood that later in life can be mistaken as “false opinions for true” (p. …show more content…

Per Dew and Foreman (2014), “Skepticism raises important questions about our cognitive and perceptual limitations but goes too far and leaves us with nothing, or almost nothing, that can be known. In the end, there are good reasons for thinking that we can have varying degrees of knowledge about the world” (Dew & Foreman, 2014, p. 162). Furthermore, Dew and Foreman state that “Virtue epistemology attempts to emphasize the important role that intellectual virtue should play in our pursuit of knowledge” (Dew & Foreman, 2014, p. 125). They show similar and different ways people can gain knowledge through individual “internal or external” life experiences, but no matter the experience individuals are capable gaining true

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