Descartes Appearance Vs Reality

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, appearance is defined as “the way that someone or something looks.” The same dictionary defines reality “as the true situation that exists.” This poses the question of whether the way things appear is how they truly exist, and it is along that line that René Descartes wrote his Meditations on First Philosophy. Over 350 years after Descartes published his famous discourse, the American science fiction film, The Matrix, premiered, and pondered a similar question of the difference between appearance and reality. The purpose of this essay is twofold: firstly to evaluate and analyze the concepts of appearance and reality as presented in both the Meditations and The Matrix, and secondly to convince

In the film, characters are imprisoned in a supercomputer, called the Matrix, from birth. Those imprisoned in the Matrix know no other reality, while their bodies are held in stasis in the outside world, connected into the apparatus of the Matrix. The story focuses on a computer hacker called Neo (Keanu Reeves), whose mind is freed from the grasp of the Matrix by Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), and joins Morpheus’ group of freed humans. That group regularly enters the Matrix to free people and conduct surveillance. Those whose minds have been freed are able to tell the difference between appearance and reality. The mind is freed when, within the Matrix, it consumes the “red pill,” awaking its body from stasis in the physical apparatus of the Matrix and making the person aware of the outside

Aside from the previously mentioned “red pill,” which frees the mind from the grasp of the Matrix’s delusion, Morpheus offers Neo, and every other person he frees, the alternate choice of the “blue pill.” A person choosing the “blue pill,” would forget they were ever offered the choice and forget any mention of an outside reality, and would carry on, as if nothing happened, in the fabricated world of the Matrix. While Morpheus and most of his crew of rebels prefer living in the real world over being enslaved, mind and body, in the Matrix, one rebel, Cypher (Joe Pantoliano), has become disillusioned with the grim reality and regrets choosing the “red pill.” His desire to return to the comfort of the Matrix’s delusion leads him to betray and kill several of his fellow crewmates in hopes of completing a deal with the machines to have his body reinserted into the physical apparatus of the Matrix. I can partly sympathize with Cypher’s motivation, though not nearly to the extent to which he is disillusioned, and I have no sympathy for his action. I have occasionally had dreams in which I attained a lifelong goal, or otherwise had some stroke of good fortune, only to wake and be disappointed at the reality. I believe many other people have, at some point or another, experienced a disappointing return to the waking world, and, even if just for a short time, wished they could go back to sleep and reenter their