Post by Barb on Feb 3, 2004 13:47:38 GMT
With the Buddhist mirror, the mind is the ultimate Matrix. Neo becomes a sort of bodhisattva. A being who has reached awakening and has chosen to guide others. He is transformed into a western kung-fu fighting bullet-time Buddha.
Determinism: What is the difference between knowing the path and walking the path?
"Does the Oracle know everything?" Neo asks on his way to her apartment. "She would say she knows enough," Morpheus replies. The conflict between omniscience and free will is well-known. God, in the traditional conception, is all knowing. But if God knows everything that we will ever do, then it would seem that we do not have free will. If we have no free will, then we should not be held liable for our actions. "It is the sound of inevitability," as Agent Smith might say.
But knowing the future hints at contradiction. It seems to violate the principle that an effect cannot precede its cause. Seeing a future event implies that it has and has not happened. It is a logical paradox.
The idea of causal determinism is one of the cornerstones of The Matrix Reloaded. The Architect explains that there is no free will. That since every event is caused by other events, and all events occur within the constraints of the Matrix, free will is impossible.
The philosopher Schopenhauer, whose influence is greatly seen in the film, did not believe that people had individual will. Instead, they were simply part of a vast and single will that pervades the universe. That the feeling of separateness that each of us has is but an illusion.
On the other hand, the 18th century philosopher Hume, whose influence is also felt in the film, took a different view. If we drop a stone a hundred times and each time it falls to the floor, what will happen the next time we drop the stone? We may state that there is a reason for the stone to fall and that this reason results in a reproducible act in the future as it had in the past. Sound reasonable? The fundamental flaw is that it cannot be proven in the mathematical sense. Why should the past and future be alike? Maybe the next time the stone is dropped it will float to the ceiling. A past experience does not prove the future.
The characters in the Matrix, however, are aware of the Oracle’s predictions and yet they still come true. This suggests that instead of predicting the future, the Oracle is actually shaping it. Her prophecies are self-fulfilling. It does not matter if she actually knows the future only that those who consult her believe she knows the future. It is the choices that spring from that belief that is the difference between knowing the path and walking it. As the German philosopher Immanuel Kant explained, it is not the experiences you’ve had that matter but the kind of choices you’ve made.
"Don’t think of it in terms of right and wrong. She is a guide Neo. She can help you find the path," instructs Morpheus. "She told you exactly what you needed to hear. That is all." The Oracle gives the game away when she answers Neo’s question about how she knew he would break the vase by saying, "What’s really going to bake your noodle later on is would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything?" The answer, of course, is no. Her mentioning it is what brought it about.
Metaphysics: Wandering the desert of the real.
As Neo is being driven to see the Oracle he suddenly recognizes something and says, "God, I used to eat here…really good noodles," only to fall back into his seat disappointed when it occurs to him that "I have these memories from my life…none of them happened." But didn’t they? He remembers them.
About the year 1200 there existed a medieval Christian sect known as the Cathars. The Cathars were convinced that the material world was a deception created by Satan. They believed that Jesus had shown mankind a way beyond that Matrix by standing outside it and seeing through it. The Cathars were fighting a losing battle, but the interesting thing was that they were fighting at all. It is not unusual to take up a sword and die for a belief. What is unusual is to take up a sword to die for the belief that swords do not exist. Sound familiar? Some will note that in Matrix Reloaded, it is also an unreal sword that draws Neo’s blood.
In 360 B.C. Plato describes "The Allegory of the Cave." It tells the story of prisoners who spend their lives chained in a cave, where all they have seen since birth are shadows of puppets on a wall. This "reality" is escaped only by those having the imagination to conceive of an outside existence. The world, reasons Plato, is our cave, our Matrix, and reality is as meaningless as a shadow on a wall unless we can imagine what else there is. Oddly enough, the reality of Zion is the cave.
Neo stashes an illegal disc into a copy of Simulacra and Simulation, where writer Jean Baudrillard argues that people don’t experience anything "real" anymore. That everything in our lives is so filtered that everything has become a simulation of the original. Then Morpheus quotes Baudrillard after showing Neo a simulation of the world, "Welcome to the desert of the real."
Ethics: Why oh why didn’t I take the blue pill?
Which pill would you have taken? Why?
Determinism: What is the difference between knowing the path and walking the path?
"Does the Oracle know everything?" Neo asks on his way to her apartment. "She would say she knows enough," Morpheus replies. The conflict between omniscience and free will is well-known. God, in the traditional conception, is all knowing. But if God knows everything that we will ever do, then it would seem that we do not have free will. If we have no free will, then we should not be held liable for our actions. "It is the sound of inevitability," as Agent Smith might say.
But knowing the future hints at contradiction. It seems to violate the principle that an effect cannot precede its cause. Seeing a future event implies that it has and has not happened. It is a logical paradox.
The idea of causal determinism is one of the cornerstones of The Matrix Reloaded. The Architect explains that there is no free will. That since every event is caused by other events, and all events occur within the constraints of the Matrix, free will is impossible.
The philosopher Schopenhauer, whose influence is greatly seen in the film, did not believe that people had individual will. Instead, they were simply part of a vast and single will that pervades the universe. That the feeling of separateness that each of us has is but an illusion.
On the other hand, the 18th century philosopher Hume, whose influence is also felt in the film, took a different view. If we drop a stone a hundred times and each time it falls to the floor, what will happen the next time we drop the stone? We may state that there is a reason for the stone to fall and that this reason results in a reproducible act in the future as it had in the past. Sound reasonable? The fundamental flaw is that it cannot be proven in the mathematical sense. Why should the past and future be alike? Maybe the next time the stone is dropped it will float to the ceiling. A past experience does not prove the future.
The characters in the Matrix, however, are aware of the Oracle’s predictions and yet they still come true. This suggests that instead of predicting the future, the Oracle is actually shaping it. Her prophecies are self-fulfilling. It does not matter if she actually knows the future only that those who consult her believe she knows the future. It is the choices that spring from that belief that is the difference between knowing the path and walking it. As the German philosopher Immanuel Kant explained, it is not the experiences you’ve had that matter but the kind of choices you’ve made.
"Don’t think of it in terms of right and wrong. She is a guide Neo. She can help you find the path," instructs Morpheus. "She told you exactly what you needed to hear. That is all." The Oracle gives the game away when she answers Neo’s question about how she knew he would break the vase by saying, "What’s really going to bake your noodle later on is would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything?" The answer, of course, is no. Her mentioning it is what brought it about.
Metaphysics: Wandering the desert of the real.
As Neo is being driven to see the Oracle he suddenly recognizes something and says, "God, I used to eat here…really good noodles," only to fall back into his seat disappointed when it occurs to him that "I have these memories from my life…none of them happened." But didn’t they? He remembers them.
About the year 1200 there existed a medieval Christian sect known as the Cathars. The Cathars were convinced that the material world was a deception created by Satan. They believed that Jesus had shown mankind a way beyond that Matrix by standing outside it and seeing through it. The Cathars were fighting a losing battle, but the interesting thing was that they were fighting at all. It is not unusual to take up a sword and die for a belief. What is unusual is to take up a sword to die for the belief that swords do not exist. Sound familiar? Some will note that in Matrix Reloaded, it is also an unreal sword that draws Neo’s blood.
In 360 B.C. Plato describes "The Allegory of the Cave." It tells the story of prisoners who spend their lives chained in a cave, where all they have seen since birth are shadows of puppets on a wall. This "reality" is escaped only by those having the imagination to conceive of an outside existence. The world, reasons Plato, is our cave, our Matrix, and reality is as meaningless as a shadow on a wall unless we can imagine what else there is. Oddly enough, the reality of Zion is the cave.
Neo stashes an illegal disc into a copy of Simulacra and Simulation, where writer Jean Baudrillard argues that people don’t experience anything "real" anymore. That everything in our lives is so filtered that everything has become a simulation of the original. Then Morpheus quotes Baudrillard after showing Neo a simulation of the world, "Welcome to the desert of the real."
Ethics: Why oh why didn’t I take the blue pill?
Which pill would you have taken? Why?
