Descartes Meditations On First Philosophy

The movie The Matrix is renowned of it’s confusing plot and attempt to produce a physical example of Descartes philosophy, but to what extent does this question the perception of reality. In the reading, Zynda focuses on three major questions of the Matrix and it’s relation to Descartes. The first question is how do we know we are dreaming? Second, can body exist without mind and vice versa? Third, What is real and how do you define it?

The problem is how do we know what are reality is and can we trust our own senses. The three questions that The Matrix and Zynda pose are simply the same but in different form. Descartes answers that we cannot trust our own physical senses because they are too easily fooled. Furthermore this begs the question of what

is real?

Since our senses are unable to confirm what is real and what is .not outside our mind then we have no way of knowing what is real or what is our reality. How do we know if we are dreaming or if this is reality? We don’t, from the book Meditations on First Philosophy he poses the idea that our senses deceive us the do not have the ability to decide if what we perceive is real and more importantly is the reality we sense our own? However, Zynda counterpoints Descartes rationalism with George Berkeley’s idealism. Idealism is the idea that there is nothing beyond our physical senses. Berkeley believes that your reality is your own and because it is the only one you are able to sense, it is the only reality. That what we perceive from our physical senses is reality, this counterpoints the The Matrix because The Matrix is suppose to make us question our version of reality. Descartes poses the possibility of an “evil genius” that sub-councioussly plants our sensory experiences. The Matrix uses the idea of “evil robots” as their “evil genius” planting the lucid dreams sensory details within the brains of the humans in the dystopian world. But what is the difference

between evil robotic squids and Descartes “evil genius”? Nothing, they serve the same function within both situations. Lastly, is our body able to be separate without our mind? In The Matrix, no, if you die in the matrix you die in real life. If going by a realism ideology, the body is a physical sense not necessarily our own, but our mind because we think is valid so the body is unable to exist without the mind. So how if only one is true? Zynda questions when Neo jumps for the first time and he bleeds and Morpheus days that it is a sensory detail his mind perceives. So if it is a sensory detail would your mind perceive dying only and that something such as being killed is only a physical perception? This is where The Matrix takes a turn to idealism because if you die in the physical sense you also lose the power to think.
Overall, realism and idealism both take different stands that give different answer to these three questions. The Matrix is an excellent prober of philosophy and Descartes writings of what is our reality. As far as my own perception of reality it may be my own with other sensory details given from an “evil genius”. However, my thoughts are a validation of my own presence and no others.