The Matrix and Descartes: Doubt, Reason, and Reality

Introduction

The film The Matrix represents many of the ideas of René Descartes regarding perception and reality, truth and selfhood, and knowledge and falsehood. The film follows a man who is awakened from a simulated world and shown the reality of his life. His objective is to free humankind from its enslavement by machines — an objective he achieves by putting mind over matter. This paper discusses how scenes in The Matrix represent Descartes' ideas on doubt, reason, the self, and knowledge, and explains how the film correlates with our own society today.

Doubt

In the quest for certainty, Descartes turns to doubt. Doubting in order to find truth is a way to check whether what one believes actually corresponds with reality. When researchers conduct research, they typically test a hypothesis — a form of doubting whether a thing is true — and run a test to see if the expected outcome is what actually occurs.

For Neo in The Matrix, this same moment occurs in the scene in which he is escaping from the Agents at his workplace. Morpheus guides him by phone, and Neo asks, "How do you know all this?" Morpheus says there is no time to explain, and Neo trusts his guidance — but when things become difficult outside the window, Neo begins to doubt his capacity to follow the instructions he is being given. The result is that he ends up in the hands of the Agents. His doubt forces him to interact directly with that which he fears, and this interaction ultimately reinforces his conviction that Morpheus and he are right about the truth and the need to fight the Matrix, which represents falsehood.

Three Reasons for Doubting

The first scene that represents one of Descartes' reasons for doubting current beliefs — the inability to distinguish dreams from reality — comes early in the film, when Neo wakes up after having passed out at his computer to find a message from Trinity on his screen. This has never happened to him before and he is confused. He even asks his visitors, whose arrival Trinity had predicted, whether they have ever been unsure if what is happening is a dream or reality. His visitors make a joke and invite him out. The irony, of course, is that Neo is in reality asleep inside the Matrix; his growing questions are precisely what awakens him to the possibility of arriving at a true understanding of his situation. It is similar to the individual inside Plato's cave, who begins to see that what he is watching are shadows on a wall and not real life.

The second scene that represents one of Descartes' reasons for doubting current beliefs — the deceptive nature of sense perception — comes when Neo is beginning to train to fight the Matrix. Because the Matrix sends powerful signals to the brain when one is plugged into it, Neo must learn to reject these signals and recognize that he is actually in control of his own body. When Neo demonstrates that he can adjust accordingly and dodge bullets within the Matrix, he shows that the deceptive nature of sense perception is something one must, and can, guard against.

The third scene that represents one of Descartes' reasons for doubting current beliefs — the evil genius — comes when Neo meets Morpheus, who tells him about the Matrix for the first time, describing it as wool "pulled over the eyes" to keep everyone enslaved. Neo doubts the evil genius of the Matrix and takes the red pill to proceed toward a true discovery of reality.

Proof of the Existence of the Self

Descartes' proof of the existence of the self rests on the utility of the mind. I think, therefore I exist is the way Descartes puts it. For Neo, this realization arrives when he learns that if he dies within the Matrix, he dies in real life as well. Morpheus explains why: the body cannot live without the mind. This is essentially the same principle Descartes espouses in his proof of the self's existence. The fact that a person can reason and think — even if only to doubt his own existence — is proof enough that he does indeed exist.

In The Matrix, if you stop thinking, you are dead. A death of the mind within the Matrix results in the death of the individual in the real world. As Morpheus puts it, the body cannot live without the mind. Neo agrees with this, because it corresponds with everything he has experienced: the mind is the life of the person, and it is that upon which the body ultimately depends.

Conclusion

Truth is something written within every human mind. Descartes demonstrated this simply through the act of doubting. By doubting what we know, we arrive at certain certainties — namely, that the capacity to doubt is itself an indication that we are alive; that being alive indicates something brought us into existence; and that something having brought us into existence points toward a Creator as the first cause of things. Through the use of reason, we can arrive at truth.

What we do upon arriving at that truth is up to us: we can, like Cypher, return to the dream; or we can, like Neo, stand up and fight for truth. What Descartes would have us do is recognize truth for what it is and affirm it. For what it is worth, the creators of The Matrix appear to indicate that they would have us do the same.