Matrix and Philosophy The
The Matrix and Philosophy
Welcome to the Desert of the Real
Edited by
WILLIAM IRWIN
For Peter H. Hare,
Morpheus to many
Contents
Introduction: Meditations on The Matrix
Scene 1
How Do You Know?
1. Computers, Caves, and Oracles: Neo and Socrates
WILLIAM IRWIN
2. Skepticism, Morality, and The Matrix
GERALD J. ERION and BARRY SMITH
3. The Matrix Possibility
DAVID MITSUO NIXON
4. Seeing, Believing, Touching, Truth
CAROLYN KORSMEYER
Scene 2
The Desert of the Real
5. The Metaphysics of The Matrix
JORGE J.E. GRACIA and JONATHAN J. SANFORD
6. The Machine-Made Ghost: Or, The Philosophy of Mind, Matrix Style
JASON HOLT
7. Neo-Materialism and the Death of the Subject
DANIEL BARWICK
8. Fate, Freedom, and Foreknowledge
THEODORE SCHICK, Jr.
Scene 3
Down the Rabbit Hole of Ethics and Religion
9. There Is No Spoon: A Buddhist Mirror
MICHAEL BRANNIGAN
10. The Religion of The Matrix and the Problems of Pluralism
GREGORY BASSHAM
11. Happiness and Cypher’s Choice: Is Ignorance Bliss?
CHARLES L. GRISWOLD, Jr.
12. We Are (the) One! Kant Explains How to Manipulate the Matrix
JAMES LAWLER
Scene 4
Virtual Themes
13. Notes from Underground: Nihilism and The Matrix
THOMAS S. HIBBS
14. Popping a Bitter Pill: Existential Authenticity in The Matrix and Nausea
JENNIFER L. McMAHON
15. The Paradox of Real Response to Neo-Fiction
SARAH E. WORTH
16. Real Genre and Virtual Philosophy
DEBORAH KNIGHT and GEORGE McKNIGHT
Scene 5
De-Construct-Ing The Matrix
17. Penetrating Keanu: New Holes, but the Same Old Shit
CYNTHIA FREELAND
18. The Matrix, Marx, and the Coppertop’s Life
MARTIN A. DANAHAY AND DAVID RIEDER
19. The Matrix Simulation and the Postmodern Age
DAVID WEBERMAN
20. The Matrix: Or, The Two Sides of Perversion
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
The Potentials
The Oracle’s Index
Acknowledgments
About the Editor
Popular Culture and Philosophy
About The Matrix and Philosophy
Praise for The Matrix and Philosophy
Credits
Copyright
About Open Court Publishing Company
About PerfectBound
Introduction:
Meditations on The Matrix
Which pill would you choose, the red or the blue? Is ignorance bliss, or is the truth worth knowing, no matter what? After watching The Matrix we are impressed by the action and special effects, and also besieged by questions. Is it possible that we ourselves are prisoners of the Matrix? Is this a Christian film? A Buddhist film? There is no spoon?
A student of mine at King’s College, Adam Albert, first drew my attention to The Matrix. He immediately saw the connections between the film and Descartes’s speculations on the possibility of deception by dreams or an evil deceiver. My experience and his were similar to those of philosophy professors and students around the world. The magazine Philosophy Now even held an essay contest for college students. The topic: Which pill would you choose? Why?
With this book, professors follow the trail blazed by their students. Each author asks and answers questions about the philosophical significance of the film. As culture critic Slavoj Zizek suggests, The Matrix is a philosopher’s Rorschach inkblot test. Philosophers see their favored philosophy in it: existentialism, Marxism, feminism, Buddhism, nihilism, postmodernism. Name your philosophical ism and you can find it in The Matrix. Still, the film is not just some randomly generated inkblot but has a definite plan behind it and intentionally incorporates much that is philosophical. The Wachowski brothers, college dropout comic-book artists intrigued by the Big Questions, readily acknowledge that they have woven many philosophical themes and allusions into the fabric of the film. The Matrix and Philosophy does not in every instance attempt or purport to convey the intended meaning of the writers and artists responsible for The Matrix. Rather, the book highlights the philosophical significance of the film.
To paraphrase Trinity, it’s the questions that drive us. The contributing authors draw on Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, Sartre, Sellars, Nozick, Baudrillard, and Quine (among other philosophers) to address the questions: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? What is real? What is happiness? What is the mind? What is freedom, and do we have it? Is artificial intelligence possible? Answering these questions leads us to explore many of the major branches of philosophy including metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and political philosophy. Despite the multitude of questions, there is but one imperative: WAKE UP!
People like popular culture; it is the common language of our time. Did you know that Aaliyah died before completing the sequel to The Matrix? Did you know that W.V. Quine died less than a year before that? Many people know about the pop star, Aaliyah, while most people have never even heard of the great philosopher, Quine. The contributing authors of this book aim to bring the reader from pop culture to philosophy. Willie Sutton was a criminal mastermind, a genius of sorts. Once asked, “Willie, why do you rob banks?” he replied straightforwardly, “Because that’s where the money is.” Why write about pop culture like The Matrix? Because that’s where the people are.
No one would object if we turned to the works of Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare to raise philosophical questions. The Matrix does not belong to the list of Western classics, but nevertheless the film raises the same philosophical questions as the great works of literature. If philosophy could be found only in the writing of philosophers and were relevant only to the lives of professors, then it would be the dull and sterile discipline too many people mistakenly believe it to be. But philosophy is everywhere; it is relevant to and can illuminate everyone’s life; like the Matrix, “it is all around us.”
This book is not just for philosophers but for all of us who have ever had a “splinter in the mind, driving us mad.” Let it be a beginning but by no means an end to your study of philosophy.
Scene 1
* * *
How Do You Know?
1
Computers, Caves, and Oracles: Neo and Socrates
WILLIAM IRWIN
I tell them that I’m doing fine
Watching shadows on the wall.
— JOHN LENNON
So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains
And we never even know we have the key.
— THE EAGLES
Many people recognize The Matrix as a retelling of “the greatest story ever told.” The biblical imagery is clear, and the film’s release on Easter weekend 1999 supports the intent. Few people recognize The Matrix as a retelling of “the greatest story never told,” the story of Socrates, an intellectual hero who continued on his quest despite opposition and ultimately paid for his noble defiance with his life.
Why don’t most people know one of the greatest stories our culture has to offer? The main reason is that we leave the job of telling the story to college philosophy professors
. Not everyone attends college and, sadly, not everyone who attends college takes a philosophy course. While Philosophy 101 is an ideal setting in which to study closely and discuss passionately the life of Socrates, there’s no need to wait for an opportunity that may never come. Like the story of Jesus, the story of Socrates should be the subject of children’s books, family and classroom discussions, and TV specials. There should be a movie about it. The Wachowski brothers directed Keanu Reeves in a veiled telling of the tale, but I would cast Steve Martin as the lead in an “unapologetic” Socrates cinematic celebration. Spielberg would direct. The Matrix is many things; a retelling of the Socrates story is just one of them, and indeed viewers are certain to miss this element of the film unless they already know the story. If you’re unfamiliar with the tale, let this essay be your introduction.
Questions and Missions
“We’re on a mission from God,” said the Blues Brothers. They had a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, and one hundred and six miles to Chicago. It was dark and they were wearing sunglasses. Their mission? Play a concert to save the orphanage in which they were raised by an “old school” nun, affectionately called the penguin. Neo is on a mission to save the human race from unwitting enslavement to artificial intelligence. Socrates too is on a mission, a mission from (the) God (Apollo), delivered via the Oracle at Delphi to his friend Chaerephon. His mission, should he choose to accept it, is to “wake up” the people of his hometown, Athens.
In a whisper through the din of Rob Zombie in the Goth club from hell, Trinity tells Neo, “It’s the question that drives us.” Their question: What is the Matrix? Like Neo, Socrates had “a splinter in his mind” and a driving question: What is the good life? Questioning brings trouble to both our heroes. Socrates finds himself on trial, charged with impiety and corrupting the youth, and Neo is accused by the Agents of “committing nearly every computer crime we have a law for.”
Socrates was in the habit of asking his fellow citizens questions, often seemingly straightforward and simple questions whose answers turned out to be elusive. Like a skilled interviewer, Socrates would follow up with more difficult, probing questions which would expose the ignorance of the people he asked. For example, Socrates asks his friend Euthyphro: What is holy? What makes an act holy? Euthryphro’s response: “Holiness is what all the gods love and its opposite is what all the gods hate, unholiness” (Euthyphro 9e). This seems to be a good answer until Socrates poses the difficult follow-up question. “Is what is holy holy because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is holy?” (Euthyphro 10a) As you can imagine, Euthyphro has a difficult time answering this one and grows annoyed with Socrates. This process of asking questions until the person either contradicts himself or makes a mistake has become known as the Socratic method (as Bill and Ted learned at San Dimas High). Not only does the method of persistent questioning intimidate students (as in The Paper Chase) and embarrass politicians (choose your own example), but it made Socrates popular among the socially conscious youth, and despised among the self-interested elite.
Despite what was often perceived as a rather arrogant conversational style, Socrates was utterly humble concerning his knowledge. He claimed ignorance rather than omniscience with his mantra, “I know nothing.” Why does a guy who knows nothing question everyone else so intensely? Like Neo, Socrates’s excellent adventure is sparked by the words of an oracle and some insight concerning the nature of knowledge and wisdom.
What Did the Oracles Say?
The Oracle told Morpheus he would find the One, the person who would break the grip of the Matrix and free humanity with the truth. Thus Morpheus unplugs Neo, and, after some rehab and Kung Fu Fighting, takes him to the Oracle for confirmation. Neo resists this grand possibility and rejects the idea that his life is fated in any such way, telling Morpheus that he doesn’t believe in fate—that he wants to believe he is in control of his life. Socrates was similarly resistant to his fate. At least so he tells us at his trial, recorded by Plato and entitled the Apology.
[Chaerephon] was a friend of mine . . . [H]e went to Delphi one day, and went so far as to put this question to the oracle . . . he asked if there was anyone wiser than me; and the priestess of Apollo replied that there was no one wiser. (Apology 21a)
When I heard the priestess’s reply, my reaction was this: “What on earth is the god saying? What is his hidden meaning? I am well aware that I have no wisdom, great or small. So what can he mean by saying I am so wise?” (Apology 21b)
Indeed, how could it be that no one was wiser than he who claimed to know nothing? Socrates tells us he set out to disprove the prophetic words of the oracle.
What I did was this: I approached one of those who seemed to be wise, thinking that there, if anywhere, I could prove the reply wrong, and say quite clearly to the oracle, “This man is wiser than I am, whereas you said I was the wisest.” (Apology 21c)
Socrates was disappointed upon questioning this man, a politician, to find that the man thought he knew much but really didn’t know anything. Persistent by nature, Socrates did not give up but proceeded to question the esteemed playwrights and then the skilled craftsmen of Athens. He was similarly disappointed. Ironically, in realizing his own ignorance Socrates was indeed the wisest man in Athens.
Consequently, Socrates took it as his divine charge to question his fellow citizens, to expose them to their own ignorance so that they might wake up and join him in seeking knowledge.
It is as if the city, to use a slightly absurd simile, were a horse—a large horse, high mettled, but which because of its size is somewhat sluggish, and needs to be stung into action by some kind of horsefly. I think god has caused me to settle on the city as this horsefly, the sort that never stops, all day long, coming to rest on every part of you, stinging each one of you into action, and persuading and criticizing each one of you. (Apology 30e)
Like a pest, a horsefly (or gadfly), with constant questioning Socrates aimed to awaken the city at large to the truth—that the glue factory, not bliss, awaits those who rest in idle ignorance.
The homes of the two Oracles are quite different. According to mythology, Zeus released one eagle from the east and another from the west to find the center of the world. They flew until they impaled each other in mid air above a spot in Delphi, thus declared the omphalos, or navel, of the world. At Delphi, a place of majestic beauty at the foot of Mt. Parnassus, Apollo spoke through his priestess, the Oracle, known also as the Pythia. Morpheus takes Neo, not to the omphalos of the world, but into the heart of the Matrix, to a place as unlike Mt. Parnassus as possible, an inner-city tenement, the home of an unlikely Oracle.
Neo, very unsure of himself asks Morpheus, “She knows what? . . . Everything?” Morpheus responds, “She would say she knows enough.” Neo, still skeptical, asks, “And she’s never wrong?” Morpheus with aloof, paradoxical assurance replies, “Try not to think of it in terms of right and wrong. She is a guide, Neo. She can help you to find the path.”
A visitor to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, after making the appropriate sacrifices and payments, would ask his (no women allowed) question of one of the Oracle’s assistants who would ask it of the priestess. Seated on a tripod, the priestess would inhale the breath of Apollo, the fumes (probably ethylene) emanating from a chasm in the earth. Like a midnight toker at Woodstock, the priestess of Apollo would prophesy by speaking in tongues. A priest would then interpret the incoherent babbling and usually put it in hexameter verse. Like the sage advice one gets from calling 1-900-PSYCHIC, the prophecies of the Oracle were usually vague and open to more than one possible interpretation. Socrates, as we know, found puzzling the Oracle’s declaration that there was no one wiser than he. Knowing the Oracle’s reputation for cryptic prophecies though, he set out to disprove it, only to discover its ironic meaning. Less wise was King Croessus, who wanted to know of the Oracle whether it was an auspicious time for him to make war against the Persians. The Oracle’s response was, “If y
ou go into battle now a great kingdom will be destroyed.” Taking this as terrific news the King led his troops to war and to the slaughter. He had no genuine grounds of complaint to the Oracle who simply pointed out that he was mistaken about which kingdom she had meant.
The Oracle of The Matrix not only lives in a rough part of the virtual city, she is a grandmotherly black woman—“not what you expected,” much as the Pythia were, for a time, selected from women over 50 rather than from virginal maidens whose virtue would be less secure. Unlike her Delphic counterpart, the inner city Oracle meets face to face with those who seek her. And despite the fact that, sitting on a tripod, she blissfully breathes the cookie fumes issuing from her oven and inhales smoke from her cigarette, she does not speak in tongues. But don’t let that fool you; her message, though apparently plain, is Pythian in its purpose. Oddly, this Oracle asks the questions. “You know why you’re here?” “What do you think? Do you think you’re the one?” Neo responds, “I don’t know.” Socrates had always claimed not to know, but Neo really does not know. As the Oracle quips, he’s cute but not too bright. She allows him to conclude for himself that he is not the One and tells him that being the One is like being in love. No one can tell you. “You know it through and through, balls to bones.” A poor consolation, she tells him, “You got the gift, but it looks like you’re waiting for something.” “What?” he asks? Her prophetic reply: “Your next life maybe. Who knows? That’s the way these things go.”