Doubting Thomas A. Anderson
Parallels Between "The Matrix" and Descartes' "Meditations 1 & 2"
Author: Dew
Property of Dew's Matrix Fan Page http://geocities.datacellar.net/hollywood/theater/9175
IMPORTANT: For those of who are writing Matrix papers for school and wish to use my site as a source remember that all the articles on this site are copyrighted. This means that you MUST list Dew's Matrix Fan Page (http://geocities.datacellar.net/hollywood/theater/9175) as a source and site all references or quotes according to your teacher's requirements. Keep in mind that while I have tried to ensure the accuracy of this site's contents, I do not and can not take responsibility for any errors or omissions. In another words, you should not rely on this site's information without first checking its accuracy.
And while it is not an academic requirement, I strongly encourage you to email me and tell me if you have used, or plan to use, my articles as a source in a paper. I ask for your feedback because it is the only way that I know that my site is useful and helps me gauge what kinds of new articles are needed.
WARNING: Under no circumstances is this site's information/articles to be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, in whole or in part, without prior permission.Trinity [to Neo]: "You're looking for him. I know, because I was one looking for the same thing. And when he found me, told me I wasn't really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It's the questioe that drives us, Neo. It's question that brought you here."
Morpheus [to Neo]: "You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life. That there is something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is but it's there, like a splinter your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me."
"It is some time ago now since I perceived that, from my earliest years, I had accepted many false opinions as being true, and that what I had since based on such insecure principles could only be most doubtful and uncertain; so that I had to undertake seriously once in my life to rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted up to then, and to begin afresh from the foundations, if I wished to establish something firm and constant in the sciences." (1st Meditation: About the Things We May Doubt)
Morpheus [to Neo]: "What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can feek, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain."
Morpheus [to Neo]: "You think that's air you're breathing? Hmmm."
Spoon Boy [to Neo]: "There is no spoon."
"Everything I have accepted up to now as being absolutely true and assured, I have learned from or through the senses. But I have sometimes found that these senses played me falsed it is prudent never to trust entirely those who have once deceived us." (1st)
"Now I know already for certain that I exist, and at the same times that it is possible that all those images, and, in general, all the things one relates to the nature of body, are nothing but dreams or chimera." (2nd Meditation: Of the Nature of the Human Mind; and that it is Easier to Know than the Body)
Morpheus [to Neo]: "The body cannot live without the mind."
Morpheus [to Neo]: "Is it really so hard to believe? Your clothes are different. The plug in your arms and head are gone. Your hair has changed. Your appearance now is what we call residual self image. It is the mental projection of your digital self."
"Am I so dependent on my body and senses that I cannot exist without them?" (2nd)
"[...] we perceive bodies only by the understanding which is in us, and not by the imagination, or the senses, and that we do not perceive them through seeing them or touching them, but only because we conceive them in thought [...]" (2nd)
Neo [to Choi]: "You ever have the feeling where you're not sure if you're awake or still dreaming?
Morpheus [to Neo]: "Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? How would you know the difference between the real world and the real world?"
Morpheus [to Neo]: "You have the look of a man who accepts what he see because he is expecting to wake up. Ironically, this is not far from the truth."
"But in thinking about it carefully, I recall having often been deceived in sleep by similar illusions, and, reflectig on this circumstances more closely, I see so clearly that there are no conclusive signs by means of which one can distinguish clearly between awake and being asleep, that I am quite astonished by it; and by astonishment is uch that it is almost capable of persuading me that I am asleep now." (1st)
"Is there nothing in all this which is as true as it is certain that I am, and that I exist, even though I were always to be sleeping, and though he who has given me my being should use all his power to deceive me?" (2nd)
"But it will be said that these appearances are false and that I am dreaming." (2nd)
"[...] besides, I have frequently believe that I perceived in my sleep many things which I observed, on awakening, I had not in reality perceived." (2nd)
Morpheus [to Neo]: "The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even now in this very room."
Morpheus [to Neo]: "[...] you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind."
Morpheus [to Neo]: "The Matrix is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this."
"I shall suppose, therefore, that this is, not a true God, who is the sovereign source of truth, but some evil demon, no less cunning and deceiving than poweful, who has used all his artifice to deceive me. I will suppose that the heavens, the air, the earth, coulours, shapes, sounds and all external things that we see, are only illusions and deceptions which he uses to to take me in." (1st)
"And who can give me the assurance this God has not arranged that there should be no earth, no heaven, no extended body, no figure, no magnitude, or place, and that nevertheless I should have the perception of all these things, and the persuasion that they do not exist other than as I see them?" (1st)
"Is there not a God, or some other power, which puts these thoughts in to my mind? (2nd)
"But there is some deceiver both very powerful and very cunning, who constantly uses all his wiles to deceive me." (2nd)
"This is why I shall take great care not to accept into my belief anything false, and shall so well prepare my mind against all tricks of this great deceiver that, however powerful and cunning he may be, he will never be able to impose on me." (1st)
Morpheus [to Neo]: "Sentient programs. They can move in and out of any software still hard wired to their system. That means that anyone we haven't unplugged is potentially an agent. Inside the Matrix, they are everyone and no one."
"If I chance to look out of a window on to men passing the street, I do not fail to say, on seeing them that I see men, just as I say that I see the wax; and yet, what do I see from this window, other than hats and cloaks, which can cover ghosts or dummies who move only by means of springs." (2nd)
Morpheus [to Neo]: "You have to understand, most of these people are still part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessy dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it."
Cypher [to Agent Smith]: "You know, I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and sweet. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss."
Morpheus [to Neo]: "You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe."
"But it is not enough to have made these observations; I must also take care to remember them; for those old and customary opinions still recur often in my mind, long and familiar usuage giving them the right to occupy my mind against my will and, as it were, to dominate my mind." (1st)
"Just as a slave who was enjoying in his sleep an imaginary freedom, fears to be awakened when he begins to suspect that his liberty is only a dream, and conspires with these pleasant illusions to be deceived by them longer, so I fall back of my own accord into my former opinions, and fear to awke from this slumber lest the laborious wakeful hours which would follow this peaceful rest, instead of bringing me any light of day into the knowlege of truth, would not be sufficient to disperse the shadows caused by the difficulties which have just been raised." (1st)
Neo [to Trinity]: "I have these memories from my life. None of them happened. What does that mean?"
Trinty's Answer: "That the Matrix cannot tell you who you are."
"I suppose therefore that all the things I see are false; I persuade myself that none of those things ever existed that my deceptive memory represent to me; I suppose I have no sense; I believe that body, figure, extension, movement and place are only fictions in my mind. What, then shall be considered true? Perhaps only this, that there is nothing certain in the world." (2nd)
"But what, then am I? A thing that thinks. What is a thing that thinks? That is to say, a thing that doubts, perceives, affirms, denies, wills, does not will, that imagines also, and which feels." (2nd)
"There is therefore no doubt that I exist, if he deceives me; and let him deceive me as much as he likes, he can never cause me to be nothing, as long as I think I am something." (2nd)
"Another attribute is thinking, and I here discover an attribute which does belong to me; this alone cannot be detached from me. I am, I exist" this is certain; but for how long? For as long as I think, for it might perhaps happen, if I ceased to think, that I would at the same time cease to be or to exist. I now admit nothing which is not necssarily true: I am therefore, precisely speaking, only a thing which thinks, that is to say, a mind, understand, or reason, terms, whose significance was hitherto unknown to me. I am, however, a real thing, and really existing; but what thing?" (2nd)
"But I, who am certain I am, do not yet know clearly what I am [...]" (2nd)
