Philosophy: Berkeley, Locke and Descartes

Philosophy: Berkeley, Locke and Descartes

Philosophy Question 1: Berkeley, Descartes, Locke

According to the idealist philosopher George Berkeley, what humans think of as the 'real' world does not 'really' exist at all. In other words, the world that the escaped refugees from the Matrix are living in is no more 'real' or exterior to the mind than the created world of the Matrix. The people of the Matrix simply live in a fictive computer generated world, but human beings have always lived in a so-called world that is 'really' populated by objects that are creations of the mind and senses. Their senses are simply being acted upon in a different fashion in the age of computers. If watching the film, Berkeley would say that the film is simply a dramatization of what is already the case, in reality. All sensible objects are perceived by the senses, thus they are objects of the mind (Downing, 2004). It would not matter if a person took the red or the blue pill.

Descartes, the rationalist philosopher, focused not on sensory objects as proof of the world outside of the mind, but of the fact that we were thinking beings in general, hence his famous contention, 'I think therefore I am.' He was skeptical about the possibility of knowing anything for certain, but used that skepticism as a touchstone to prove the existence of God through the process of thought. The mind was the origin of consciousness, the body just an extension of the mind (Smith, 2004). Thus, like Berkeley Descartes would say that the Matrix world was not so awful, although he might have objections, unlike Berkeley, to the engineering of a world that was not created by God. Although both Berkeley and Descartes are Christians, Christian thought and the idea of delusions generated by demons would be far more disturbing to Descartes, given the focus of proving the existence of God in his works. Descartes would thus finally say to chose the red pill, or the real world.

Locke alone would be disturbed by the idea of the Matrix and say -- take the red pill in no uncertain terms. First of all, Locke believed in the existence of objects with external properties, substances external to ourselves, of which God was one (Uzgalis, 2007). Objects had primary qualities of an independent of the observer, like mass, motion, texture, etcetera, as opposed to subjective qualities like color, taste, and smell. As the Matrix world was wholly subjective, it was therefore a false world and one should seek to escape it, as it shut a person out from full participation in a world of external substances, including God, and also the primary qualities of other objects. The Matrix world was entirely a world of secondary properties. Furthermore, because of Locke's stress upon human freedom, having one's body and perceptions controlled and determined by an external entity like a tyrant would be horrifying to the philosopher.

Question 2 Opinion