Two Worlds, Two Realities

In Rene Descartes’ Second Meditation, he explores the nature of the human mind and specifically goes into deep contemplation about his own existence. He raises the question of how one can know that they exist. He does not take long to answer this question, “I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it” (Fumerton & Jeske 134). The next part the reflection is about what it is that defines his existence. He describes the qualities that he possesses. Descartes speaks of his sensation and nourishment, but he attributes that to the body saying that without the body we cannot experience such things. He continues by saying that even though the body experiences such things as sensation, humans can perceive things which they believe are senses but then awake to find that they did not truly experience it. Thus he questions the ability to think and concludes that he is not more than something which can think. I believe he implies that what humans think of as “self” is the mind/soul of each individual which has the capacity to think, and not the bodies which our minds/souls inhabit.

I think that an interpretation of Rene Descartes’ Second Meditation can be a look into what is reality. It is likely that he has explored the issue of reality in other works or maybe even in this work and I have overlooked it, but I believe that as he questions himself in this work he is also contemplating what is real. What is a real human? Are my thoughts real or is what is real what I can sense? These are questions that come forth from the Second Meditation. The movie The Matrix certainly seems to incorporate the issue of reality. The movie begins with a man named Neo who believes his life I normal, but then he is confronted by a group of individuals who claim to know “the truth” and tell him that his world is not reality. In the world that Neo is currently in, known as the Matrix, he has all of the full senses of a normal human. He can sense and interact with the world before him. He has every reason to believe that the Matrix is real, but he also has a feeling of something being wrong. After a while Neo joins the individuals and awakens in what they call “the real world”.

The idea that there are two worlds, one that is “real” and one that is fabricated makes me really wonder about what reality is. Going back to Descartes’ Second Meditation, reality is obviously something that we experience. As a part of his explanation of what he is, Descartes speaks of how humans contemplate and reason. These qualities are what qualify us as possessing minds or souls. All of the people within the Matrix can do this. After Neo enters the “real world” he learns about what the Matrix is and discovers that they can freely go between both worlds. According to the movie, the Matrix is a fabricated world which is only an illusion, but if we analyze it through Descartes perspective thn is the Matrix really a false world?

Whether in the “real world” or the Matrix, each of the characters can think, and therefore they exist within both worlds. Descartes makes a statement about when one exists, “I am, I exist, this is certain. But how often? Just when I think; for it might be the case if I ceased entirely to think, that I should likewise cease altogether to exist” (Fumerton & Jeske 134). A human’s existence is essentially contained to the moments that they think. Within the movie a character in the “real world” is able to think and so exists in a place that is real. When these people travel to the Matrix they do no longer exist in the “real world”, even though their bodies are left behind. They now exist in the Matrix because that is where their minds/souls go. They actively think in the Matrix and therefore they must exist in that world which is just as real as the other. Now it is true that there may be logic issues within the Matrix but this does not mean the Matrix is not reality, it just follows a different set of logical rules. Lastly the connection between the two worlds is demonstrated with the rules of death that govern the connection. If one dies within the Matrix they will die in the “real world”. Similarly if one is killed in the “real world” then they too die within the Matrix. The universe of the movie The Matrix is one where there are two realities that are connected essentially by human existence. There are beings that think inside both worlds, and so it can be argued that if one can exist in one world they can equally exist in the other, and so both worlds are equally real even though they are very different.