[lit-ideas] Re: Decisions, decisions

  • From: Robert.Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Robert Paul)
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: 23 Oct 2004 20:46:23 PDT

Janette Poulton writes:

>Robert Paul notes it is 'banks of human material that feed the matrix'  -

>Doesn't this imply that the virtual world is in fact based on flesh and blood.
that the ontological basis of the virtual is the physical
or, the bottom line is physical reality?

>No (human ?) flesh and blood - no Matrix.

>SO - it seems the film assumes/proposes an answer to the ontological question.
----------------------------------------
I'm not sure what further ontological question there is. I've already said that
there's an answer in the film to one of the film's questions. Of course 'the
bottom line is physical reality' insofar as we're meant to assume that those
fantastic machines are real fantastic machines, even though the way they work
their magic is to put it mildly highly theoretical. I suppose too that
Descartes' Evil Genius would be a real Evil Genius; that Nozick's experience
machine would be a real machine; and that the vats in which brains are kept are
real vats.

If the conceit is that it is the 'physical reality' of human beings which lies
behind everything (even human beings who have been processed through an
electronic Cuisinart), perhaps that is true: but this is possibly the wrong
outcome if we're concerned with mental phenomena and their origin.

Robert Paul
Reed College

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