Notes on “The Matrix and Philosophy”

Comments in brackets are mine.

For reference only. Not for publication or distribution.

I. Introduction

Philosophy needs models, metaphors, allegories, examples

Example of a dream
-Descartes – spoiler alert! We will read this (in Descartes’ first Meditation) later in the
semester.

The Wachowski Bros. are interested in “piercing through the mendacity, piercing through the
superficiality, not just of America, but of our own modern and postmodern society and
culture.” – Cornel West

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

Descartes metaphor of the deceiver

Hypertext – a text (esp. electronic texts) that contain links to other texts
-hints at multireferentiality – that a given text refers to many other texts

Enlightenment
=knowledge of the nature of reality, and of the nature of one’s own mind.
-but there are stages of enlightenment (and the Matrix shows several of these)

Thought experiment
-see below

II. Title

2 ways of knowing the truth – “the truth is whatever is really the case”

1. Revelation
-the divine reveals itself to humans, through scriptures, through nature, through
spiritual experiences (miracles, visitations, etc.).
-[the talking head seems to dismiss revelation as a source of knowledge, but
keep in mind that even if God reveals the truth, that doesn’t mean that God reveals it clearly or
in such a way that it’s easy to access it - it might require some very difficult processes and
spiritual development to access divine truth.]

2. Critical Reason
-“human beings are going to figure out the truth for themselves.”

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 -philosophy as coordinator of other sciences

The topics of philosophy:

How do we know what we know?

How can we be sure that what we think we know is really the case?
How do I know that the world as it appears to me…is like the world beyond my experience?
What is human consciousness? Why do we have a subjective experience of the world?
How is the mind related to the body? Do we have free will? What is causation? What is a law of
nature?
Why is something right, or wrong?
“The radical incongruity and mystery at the center of things, the mystery of what is.” –Cornel
West
What it means for God to be outside of time, radically other than anything we experience.
The relationship between ourselves and our behavior, and how our environment shapes us.
What can I know, what should I do, and what may I hope, or…what is real?

Thought experiments
-hypotheticals
-science fiction as “well worked out thought experiments”
-if I change the parameters of the world thus, then this happens
-Cyberpunk – Phillip K. Dick, William Gibson

lacunae – lacks, lapses, holes, gaps (the singular is lacuna)

III. 7:37

Modern myth
-a myth is not a fiction – it is an explanatory story; myths tells us how to act, how to be,
how things came to be the way they are
-myths of formation, a journey from innocence through experience to a goal (the self)

“Jazz mythology” – suggestion of eclecticism – combining different texts, symbols, ideas in

seemingly random ways.

The formative myth of the first movie is the Christian story

-Anderson = son of man
-examples of “Jesus” language
-not “traditional” Christianity, but Gnostic Christianity
-“Neo” is an anagram for “One” – is this a Messiah (savior) figure?
-“prophecy and expectations of the One” – the Christian interpretation of the Hebrew
Bible as prophesying the coming of Jesus Christ.

Gnosticism

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 -a broad term for a variety of traditions that competed with each other, “traditional” or
“orthodox” Christianity, and other religious traditions in the Hellenistic (or Greco-Roman
period).
[However, the distinction between “traditional” and “gnostic” forms of Christianity is an
extremely fuzzy one, and what the talking heads say here does not represent the latest
scholarship on the subject. In addition, to say that traditional Christianity is about sin and
repentance, while Gnosticism is about spiritual knowledge, is just wrong. Traditional
Christianity gave equal importance to spiritual knowledge, and Gnosticism gave equal
importance to righteousness.]

Samsara
-in Buddhism, samsara is the wheel of life, death, and rebirth. Karma is the universal
force that creates the illusion of phenomenal reality. Our clinging to that illusory reality leads to
more karma, and the process continues. The goal is at the least to improve one’s karma, so as
to get a good rebirth (preferably as a human); ultimately, the goal is to eliminate all karma and
attain Nirvana (cessation).

Practices of consciousness or awakening (to reality, ultimate spirit, etc.)

-many religious traditions have such practices

But the movie could also have to do with liberation from social and political forms of control.

Dialectical materialism
-the philosophical component of Marxist Communism
-a historical critique that shows how we passively conform to “a prison that you cannot
smell, or taste, or touch.”
-“people are the means of production”
-“when we become passive consumers, we’re surrendering our life force.”

Hegemony = control
-the “hegemonistic society” consists of those elements that control society

Cornel West argues that black people define themselves according to the values of the
dominant, hegemonic white society.
-this idea is similar to Jean-Paul Sartre’s idea of the Gaze of the other – that our identity
is determined by the judgments of other people. E.g., the way in which women are subjected to
the “male gaze,” which determines how they view their own body.

Socrates
469-399 B.C.E.

Wisdom is to know that you do not know, to recognize the limits of our knowledge.
Awareness of the limits of knowledge is the beginning of changing that condition. – Ian
Partridge

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The Cave Allegory 16:25
-“the life you led is not in fact the totality of what is possible for you.” -Partridge

Metaphysics
-“what is real?”
-the term was first coined by Aristotle’s editor.
-if you find a “metaphysical” section in the bookstore, it will not be philosophical
metaphysics, it will be occult or New Age literature.
-According to Aristotle, metaphysics is “first philosophy,” because it deals with the most
general, ultimate principles of things. The most general and ultimate principle is Being, since
anything that does not exist cannot be thought, and conversely, if it can be thought, it must
exist.
-Metaphysical terms are abstract concepts, like justice, truth, the Good, beauty. These
are general conceptual categories – this is what metaphysics studies, not individual things (like
other sciences).

René Descartes (1596-1650) [We’ll be reading him later in the semester.]

-methodological doubt: looking for foundations for thought
-cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am
-doubt cannot undermine the cogito, because if you are doubting, you are thinking
-Cartesian dualism – “the problem of the external world,” or mind/body dualism.

George, Bishop Berkeley (1685-1783)

-rejected the Newtonian, calculated world of modern science
-what shows up to perception is reality – it is subjective
-but human subjectivity is rooted in the universal subjectivity of God.

[But Berkeley’s point is not that existence is “my illusion,” but that “existence” means nothing
more than perception of existence.]

Ontology = theory of Being

Subject and Object

[Hubert Dreyfus is a great Heideggerian interpreter. You should listen to his lectures on
youtube.]
-Dreyfus mentions that the modern concept of the “subject” is an invention of
Descartes’.
-as he notes, this is a radical reinterpretation of the human self.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

-we only know the world independent of the mind by means of the mind
-the mind makes the things given by perception meaningful

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 [But Ken Wilber’s interpretation, that Kant says that we invent the world, is overstating
the case for Kant. As the next guy says, we don’t invent phenomena – there is something “out
there,” in some way independent of the mind.]
-the structures of the mind “bring forth” the world – in the sense that it gives it
meaning.

Phenomenon – from Greek, phainomenon, “lit up”: phenomena are those things that “show
up” to consciousness (i.e., they have meaning).

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) 23:08

-the herd morality [not, as Wilber says “herd mentality”] must be overcome by acts of
self-creation; the self is not given, but created.
-most people live by moralities that they take as absolute, but which are in fact created.
-Übermensch – the Overman, one who overcomes all limitations by their own will

Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)

-The Desert of the Real
-postmodernism – “reality” a construct, as is the self
[but NOT simply constructs of the mind, as the talking head says, but constructs of
socio-economic and other forces]
-simulacrum: a copy of which there is no original
-postmodern reality is a reiteration of a model that has no reality. [E.g., Disneyland]

Jorge Luis Borges – the perfect map would be one that cannot be told apart from the territory it
describes, in which case the perfect map is useless.
-according to Baudrillard, the map has lost all reference to reality – it is a map of a
territory that no longer exists.

Cipher
-an image of “illusory safety,” “ignorance is bliss”

[The world of the Matrix is pleasurable – but the Wachowski brothers address this (in the
Animatrix movies?). They point out that initially the machines had given humans only
pleasurable experiences, and the humans had rebelled. So they gave them experiences that
balance pleasure and pain.]

Robert Nozick (1938-2002)

The Experience Machine – would be choose to be plugged in, or do we care about the
truth?

Free Will and Determinism

-what is free will? How free is it?
-are we purely physical beings, and therefore completely determined?
-does the Oracle represent fate?

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 -are all choices binary?

IV. The Matrix: Reloaded (29:52)

Animatrix
-a series of anime-style short films that give the back story of The Matrix movies
-humans lost control because of vanity and corruption, and brought their doom on
themselves.
-the spirit of the machines was good until humans turned against them; then they took
evil forms.
-dualism: the idea that there are two fundamental principles of reality, e.g., good and
evil, body and spirit.

[There is a suggestion here of Tibetan Buddhist “bardos,” or levels of illusory reality that are
projections of the mind.]

Gnosis (spiritual knowledge) is not the final goal.

-this would leave out “material incarnation,” the body, emotions, etc. [It would also
leave out morality or righteousness.]

Tantra
-a tradition in Hinduism and Buddhism
-Tantra does not distinguish between good and bad karma, but regards all things as
manifestations of enlightened energy. Therefore, anything – even “evil” things – can be used
for the sake of enlightenment. [Wilber, like most Western commentators, emphasize the use of
sex for this purpose, but sexual energy is only one kind of problematic energy that can be used,
according to Tantra.]

[The machines represent bodiless intellect, and the rave scene shows that humans represent
bodily and sexual energy. Therefore, the sex between Neo and Trinity transcends or subverts
the intellect/body binary. If Neo is the Messiah, and he should be free from attachments, then
he has failed. But in the context of the three movies, it is his failures to conform to the binary
logic of the machines – his glorification of the body, of choice, of love, or self-sacrifice – that
makes him the true savior.]
Advaita Vedanta

Advaita = non-dualistic
Vedanta = the tradition of Hinduism that is seen as the culmination of the Vedic scriptures.

The Upanishads
-philosophical scriptures of Advaita Vedanta
-monism – all things are united as one; Brahman is the source of all being; our soul, or
Atman, is of the same nature as Brahman: “Brahman is Atman, Atman is Brahman.”

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The New Testament
-“The Old Testament reloaded.”
-issue: free will and grace
[While the issue of free will and grace is important to all forms of Christianity, it is most central
to Protestant Christianity, beginning with Martin Luther.]

Epistemology = theory of knowledge

Determinism
1. everything that exists or occurs has a cause
2. each cause makes its effect inevitable

Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827)

-if we knew the position of every atom at a moment, and their position in the next
moment, an omniscient knower could know all possible states of the future.

Quantum indeterminacy – the idea that at the sub-atomic level, the “normal” laws of cause and
effect don’t apply. Most scientists do not think that there is no meaning or order at the most
basic level of reality, but just that we don’t understand that meaning or order yet.

David Hume (1711-1786)

-raised skeptical doubts about causality (cause and effect).
-however, to say that a particular cause will give rise to a particular effect (all conditions
being the same) in the future is really only a matter of custom or habit or superstition.
-if the belief that the future will be like the past is superstitious, then physical laws are
not laws at all. If there are no laws of nature, then there is no science, no knowledge.

Binary choices
-either/or choices or dichotomies.
-In the second movie, Neo cannot transcend these choices; he takes one or the other.
-Neo realizes that his own role as savior is itself determined – “another system of
control” – we think we make choices, but we don’t.

Volition – the faculty of will

Artur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

-human experience is subjective; the only foundation is choice.

“the manifest world” refers to the world that shows up to us – it may or may not be the “real”
world.

[The talking head at 43:07 draws a distinction between Eastern and Western philosophy.
Eastern philosophy, he says, focuses on practices of enlightenment, while Western philosophy
is an academic head trip. This is a vast simplification of both traditions.]

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The Architect’s Speech 44:05
[Is there a connection between the character of the Architect, and Plato’s idea of the
Demiurge, the creator god who takes the divine ideas and joins them to matter.]
-why is “why am I here?” the most irrelevant question? Perhaps because, from the
Architect’s perspective, it’s all determined?

Neo is not unique. There have been previous saviors.

Non-fungible = non-replaceable, unique

Neo’s love for Trinity unifies Neo’s conflicting selves.

[I find it interesting that none of the talking heads mention that Trinity is, by definition, not a
single person in the normal sense – she represents the unity of persons through love. Yes, Neo
fails to me a savior in the common way of thinking about a savior; but he chooses that which
the machines cannot co-opt – love for all beings, self-sacrificial love.]

The metaphor of human and divine love is a very ancient tradition in many religions, using
human sexual imagery to talk about the relationship between humans and God. In the Hebrew
Bible (the Christian Old Testament) the book, The Song of Songs is such a metaphor.

[Intuition, insight, perception, insight in a flash – other things the machines cannot co-opt.]

Gnosticism: we come from Truth, we have fallen, and we have to re-ascend to it.

The language of beginning and the end suggests the Christian language of Christ as the Alpha
and the Omega.

V. The Matrix – Revolutions 48:17

The Eternal Return

-the talking head refers this vaguely to great 20th century scholars of mythology, but the
main source for the term is the great scholar, Mircea Eliade.
-a fundamental structure of all human mythology, in which there is a departure from the
truth (or from innocence), through experience, to a deeper knowledge.

The Book of Revelation

-actual title, The Revelation of St. John; the last book of the Christian New Testament
-apocalypse: a story depicting the end of times, the catastrophe or apotheosis of
creation.
-creation, destruction, resurrection: another pattern of mythologies

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Shiva and Sati

-Sati as a program who can program – an avatar?

Logos
-means word, concept, study of (as the prefix –logy), Divine Word, and many other
things (and the single most important word in ancient Greek philosophy and, arguably, Western
history).
-ancient pre-Christian Greek concept – the underlying structure or meaning of reality,
and of human consciousness
-the Logos, in Judaism and Christianity, is the self-expression of God. In Christianity, this
is identified with Jesus Christ, the Word of God.

Neo pilots the ship, the Logos, to the machine city, in order to bring the words karma, or duty,
and love, or the interconnectedness of all things.

Sacralization – Neo’s mission is one of making sacred the machines.

At 52:52, the talking head lists a number of terms for the enlightened state; her list suggests
that these are synonyms, but while they all refer to enlightenment in some way, they are all
distinct and different conceptualizations:

Heaven

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Pleroma
Nirvana
Moksha
The Eternal Unnameable Tao
The Platonic Form of the Good

Ineffable = unnameable

The Oracle and the Architect as opposites.

Taoism (pronounced, and sometimes spelled, Daoism)

-ancient Chinese religion, begun by Lao Tzu, whose book, Tao Te Ching (The Way of
Changes), is its founding document – and one of the great world scriptures.

[Despite her otherwise excellent comments on Tao, I am surprised that the talking head does
not comment on what Trinity says as they take their ship above the clouds: “Beautiful!” Beauty
transcends the world of humans and machines.]

Yin-Yang: a basic principle of Taoism, signifying that reality is composed of opposing forces that
cannot cancel on another out. The symbol looks like this:

Death and Resurrection

-Ken Wilber comments that this theme is found in many traditions, which is very true,
though it is found in many different forms.
-Socrates said that philosophy is a “daily dying,” a “training for death” – that is, the
death of the ego.

When Neo accomplishes his mission to reboot the Matrix, the voice of the Machine says, “It is
done,” echoing Jesus’ words on the Cross.

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Kabbalah
-A Jewish mystical tradition.
-See Gershom Scholem’s works

Alienation – a making-other; treating others or being treated as an other; being separated from
what belongs to one.

-the gross realm: manifest reality, as opposed to the spirit realm

Perennial Philosophy
-A term coined by Aldous Huxley to refer to a common spiritual thread in civilization.
-Huxley is also the author of “Brave New World,” “The Doors of Perception,” and many
novels, all of which I recommend.
-He also wrote a book called The Perennial Philosophy, in which each chapter addresses
a significant religious theme (e.g., “self-knowledge,” “grace,” “free will,” “spiritual exercises,”
etc.). Huxley provides quotes from and references to scriptures of many different religions,
connecting these quotes with his own insightful commentary. It is a wonderful resource book,
even if you don’t buy Huxley’s version of perennialism (that is, that all religions are different
paths to the Truth).

Motown
Philly Sound
-Cornel West refers here to two of the most important musical scenes in the 1960’s and
70’s.

Ken Wilber’s comments at the end are quite good, eh?

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