The Connection Between Senses and Reality in The Matrix,...

The popular movie The Matrix, Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy and Plato’s The Republic have more in common than you would think at quick glance. They all examine the theory that our world is an illusion and question the connection between our senses and reality. The clearest similarity between these works is the doubt of the reality of our world and questioning the reliability of our senses. Descartes proposes that we are dreaming and everything we experience is just an illusion. Plato also proposed a similar idea, a hypothetical situation of a cave where men lay bound up, able only to perceive the shadows of figures on the walls as they passed by. In the movie The Matrix, a mega computer has taken over the world and controls humanity’s minds in a virtual world. These three works are all asking a very similar question, is the world we perceive as reality actually real? Is it all just a dream or an illusion put on by some higher being? Plato, Descartes, and the makers of The Matrix introduce these scenarios where we are being controlled by something outside of ourselves that ordains what we perceive to be real. The difference in these works is not the question that they ask but how they answer the question. In The Matrix, it portrays a society that has been fooled and taken over by a computer, while a small group has come together to fight its control, they realize the world they have known is not reality and have managed to escape Matrix’s grasp. In both