Assignment Title
Putnam’s Experiment
Is this paper real? Or this assignment is nothing more than an illusion? While these questions require more of a practical answer than the deep thought, the questions arose by Plato, Descartes, and subsequently, the Matrix are a subject for serious philosophical consideration. Is this world real or is it just an illusion? Such questions are often ignored because of their lack of practical outcomes as well as the titanic scale of influence over the human mind. The world we live in often seems mysterious to us, it may seem strange, beautiful, unjust, or even friendly, we try to find the answers to every question that bothers us, but what can we do with the issue that lies outside of our perception, and maybe even outside our possible field of reach. One of such questions is the one mentioned above: "Is this world real or what we experience is just an illusion?" And more importantly: "How can we find it for sure?"
In different epochs, from ancient Greece up to the present people offer their answers to this dilemma, most famous are the answers given by Plato, Descartes, and the recent cinematographic masterpiece – the Matrix. While they are very similar, they also hold substantial differences in their approach. Plato’s cave allegory gives a view on how we might be disguised about the reality we live in, it also describes the process of how one might escape illusion. The most important, however, in the whole story is that without external help one is very unlikely to escape the cave of delusion. Moreover, the process of discovering truth is very painful and requires courage and fortitude to withstand it. Otherwise, the newly freed prisoner will voluntarily return back to his good ol’ understandable and comfortable illusion. In his depiction of the process of escaping from illusion the Matrix is very similar to Plato. The world which everyone consider real is, in fact, illusive. Similarly to the Plato's cave, there is a real world with the light of the stars, not the bleak reflections (which is, by the way, is much less beautiful than in the Plato's version). And there is a way to escape the shackles of illusion (this is what Morpheus’s and other real world rebel groups do). However, the Matrix’s illusive world is much harsher than the one depicted by Plato. While in Plato's settlement the cave is just a position of being deprived of the real world because of ignorance, a position of not being able to experience the joy of knowing and experiencing uncut reality, in the Matrix, people were artificially held in such position and were unable to escape it voluntarily. Moreover, they were hunted if they did manage to escape the surrogate world with someone else's help. In the Matrix, the reality is not as sweet as in Plato's world, there you have to fight the machines, and struggle for your life. Meanwhile, Descartes poses the question which resides even deeper than the ones arisen by Plato and the Matrix. While all three of them ponder on how can we define reality from a dream, Descartes in contrast to the former two, questions not only the world surrounding us but our ability to escape it. As he summons his omnipotent and malicious demon, he wonders whether we can leave this illusion if it is strong and perfect enough. What if we cannot escape illusion even knowing this is not the reality? His example is somehow similar to the Matrix if all the rebels were eliminated by the machines right after Neo chose the red pill. He would be left in the world of illusion knowing it is not real but left to succumb to it because nothing can be done to escape it.
The reality is not always sweet, and not everyone can withstand the new challenges and hardships posed by the real world in contrast to an illusion. As a bright example, Cypher in the Matrix betrays Morpheus to return to the world of ignorance. Although he abandons his friends and exposes them to danger, there is actually nothing he could be blamed of. We do not even have to go as far as fiction because there are plenty examples of this phenomenon in real-life. Everyone was a witness to humans clinging to their former beliefs even if they are proven wrong; it is what the phrase "sweet lies" is about. The judgement about which of the ways is better can be made out of the developmental perspective. As humans grow and develop, their picture of the world is enlarging incorporating new and new concepts and phenomena, thus, contributing to the complex paradigm. The changes in this paradigm are always painful because the transition happens when a person is at the highest point of comfort in the old paradigm. The new world seems to be unknown and hostile, but aside from this, it is much more clear, vast, and bright. This is the brightness itself which hurts (Plato was actually very accurate with such depiction). So, one chooses either to run back in fear or to bravely make a step towards reality. The former is the act of stagnation and degradation while the latter is the evolution in its purest form.
References
Descartes R. (1641). Meditation I of the Things of Which We May Doubt. Meditations on First Philosophy.
Plato, The Allegory of the Cave, The Republic, Book VII, 514A1–518D8.
Wachowski, A., & Wachowski, L. (1999). The Matrix. Directed by Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski. Los Angeles: Warner Bros. Pictures.
