Analysis Of Plato's Allegory Of The Matrix

A very white, vampiric looking man lives a boring life of what seems to be a daily routine, dragging himself from his house to work and back again. One day Neo starts questioning the world around him through late night computer hacking and discovers a man named Morpheus whom comes around with the answers; telling Neo that he lives in world controlled by machines and everything is not what it seems. Morpheus gives him the option of getting out of this alternate reality through a red pill. He gets out of the system in order to receive training by Morpheus and defeat the three suited men that control the whole system. In the movie, “The Matrix” by Joel Silver, there are many motifs parallel to philosophy. Plato’s allegory of the cave is one running …show more content…
There is a fire by the opening of the cave where people are walking by with object portraying shadows upon the wall and different sounds echoing throughout it. One prisoner is released into the real world which he slowly grows accustomed to and is then returned to the cave. When he returns to the cave, he could not convince the others about the what he saw. The point of Plato’s Allegory of the cave what we sense is not real: what is presented to our senses is constantly changing. The shadows on the wall represent a false truth, which shows that one cannot acquire knowledge by means of sense because they are not physical objects. Plato is hinting that the it is hard to see the truth, but we do see shadows of the truth which we mistaken for it. In “The Matrix”, they illustrate the difference between fantasy and what is reality; because it is about a part time computer hacker that is dissatisfied with the life he is living and wants to find change his life or find the true meaning of life. Neo and the prisoners share the same trait, when in the matrix, they have tubes and wires connected to their entire body just like the prisoners in the cave that prevents him from being free to do or see what he wants. Another similarity, the matrix uses the sentinel programs and artificial intelligence, …show more content…
The motif of the feasibility theory appears in the movie, which is knowledge by indefeasible justified true beliefs tells us what knowledge is not. In the movie, Neo thought he was living in a real world and his justifications were that he could walk, talk, go to work, breathe, and do daily activities just like any human. But in fact, Neo finds out through Morpheus that the world he thought he was living in is just his brain being controlled by the robots, therefore his knowledge of living in the real world is not. The next motif is the causal theory which is based on the fact that one saw it, you are being suitably causally connected to the object of the the belief. In the movie, Morpheus tells Neo that reality is outside of this alternative reality through reasoning, as well as the pill, and Neo gets out of the pod and witnesses the real world first hand. He now believes that he is out of the matrix by seeing it with his own eyes, unless he is in a matrix of the matrix? The last motif in the movie is reliabilism and the reliability theory, which is a belief that is justified based on how it is formed. Beliefs based on reliable belief-forming mechanisms are likely to be true, beliefs based on unreliable belief-forming mechanisms are unlikely to be true. Justification is ones determined by the believer and states to which the believer has infallible access. Reliabilism is represented through Neo knowing that there was another meaning to life other than the dull