Descartes and "The Matrix"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the nature of reality and the limits of consciousness and dreams by comparing and contrasting a principal philosophy text and a box-office hit movie, Descartes' "Meditations of First Philosophy" and the movie "The Matrix". It focuses on the theme that no human can really judge the limits of existence and knowledge, so therefore we cannot really be sure what is real and what is illusion.

From the Paper:

"For Descartes the primary debate is posed in his Meditation One, in which he illuminates on those things that can be called into doubt. He essentially doubts the separation between wakefulness and dreams because he argues that he experiences the same things in sleep that he does when he is awake. His primary example is that while he thinks he is awake because of all the things he is seeing and doing, "how often does my evening slumber persuade me of such ordinary things as these" (14). With this in mind, one cannot argue that dreams do not prove to have all the same basic elements that we know to exist when we are awake. "

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