哲学与《黑客帝国》-简介 三

UPDATE: DECEMBER 19, 2003

Just in time for Christmas, we are pleased to offer a final update to the philosophy section: four new essays on the philosophical questions raised by the Matrix films.

Starting things off is Tim Mawson’s essay “Morpheus and Berkeley on Reality”. Tim is Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at St Peter’s College, Oxford University. He takes a comment by Morpheus regarding “what is real” as his starting point for an introduction to the difficult philosophical problem of sorting out the real from the unreal. Discussing the philosopher George Berkeley’s startling views on the nature of reality, he considers the question of whether Berkeley offers a genuine, if radical, way out of the skeptical worries raised by Descartes, and whether this Berkeleyan path is one that Morpheus would do best to follow. He concludes that, even if Berkeley doesn’t offer us a satisfying escape from skepticism, consideration of his views can help us to get closer to the truth through bringing us to a more sophisticated understanding of Morpheus’s comments and the skeptical worries they engender.

Next is "Matrix and Monadology", an essay from the Johns Hopkins philosopher Sean Greenberg that compares the metaphysical implications of the Matrix with the bizarre metaphysics of the 17th century philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. Pointing out some revealing similarities between Leibniz's "Monadology" and the world described in The Matrix, Greenberg goes on to use the film to help elucidate Leibniz's notion of "monads" and his theory of causation. While both The Matrix and Leibniz seem to present us with nightmarish visions of reality as being thoroughly unlike what we ordinarily believe, Greenberg concludes that it is only the film that presents a genuine nightmare, and that a proper understanding of Leibniz's views can help us understand why the metaphysics of the Matrix is so disturbing.

Richard Hanley, the philosopher from the University of Delaware who previously contributed an essay on the similarities between The Matrix and heaven ("Never the Twain Shall Meet: Reflections on The First Matrix"), here brings us a spirited discussion of the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard, one of the few philosophers to be explicitly referenced in the first Matrix film. In his essay "Simulacra and Simulation", Hanley considers Baudrillard's influence on The Matrix as well as the general influence that Baudrillard's brand of postmodernism has had on our culture. Along the way he offers readers a critical but enlightening introduction to postmodern thought.

Finally we have "The Twisted Matrix: Dream, Simulation, or Hybrid?" from the influential philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark. Clark brings some helpful empirical data to the table to help ground the discussion of the "dreamlike quality" of the Matrix that we have seen in essays from Grau, McGinn, Chalmers, and others. Pointing out that the reality of dreams is rather different than philosophers tend to suppose, he distinguishes between the sloppy but creative cognition of our actual "uncritical" dreams and the "industrial strength deception" that philosophers since Descartes have (mistakenly) assumed to be part and parcel of ordinary dreams. Arguing that the film plays on and at times conflates these two distinct conceptions of dreams, Clark concludes that this ambivalence at the heart of The Matrix helps explain why it is such a memorable and thought-provoking cinematic experience.

Chris Grau, Editor