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Feeling a Bit Like Alice?

– Morpheus†

Is there any limit to the extent that such a demon or programmer could deceive us? While certainly the machines were seriously messing with Neo's mind, it appears that they were not nearly as malicious as they might have been. They gave Neo many “privileges” within the deception. For instance:

Neo was not deceived about his body

Despite being deceived about his baldness, Neo wasn't radically deceived about his body. He wasn't programmed to think that he was of a different gender or race, or that he was only four feet tall. And interestingly enough, he was not made to think that he was a sentient machine.⁶

His personality was not distorted

Neo can be grateful that his personality was essentially the same both in and out of the Matrix. For instance, when in the Matrix he was not turned into a cowardly wimp by having feelings of fear pumped into his mind whenever he confronted a dangerous situation.

His memory was not tampered with

When something would happen within the Matrix Neo would remember it, and if he remembered it, then it most likely happened.⁷

Neo was not alone

Many people, thousands, or perhaps even millions, are plugged into the Matrix, providing Neo with plenty of company.

His decisions were not controlled

Neo makes his own choices – they are not “programmed” for him by the machines.

His reasoning ability was not obscured

Neo bases his decisions on reasons. He is able to make inferences about how his world works and use these inferences to achieve his goals.

In theory, there is no reason why the machines had to cut Neo any of these breaks. Imagine the following sort of case:

Neo's worst nightmare

The computers exterminate the entire human race with the exception of Neo. He is then plugged into the Matrix at the age of 25, and his brain is stimulated in such a way as to simulate his “birth.” But his birth is not a human birth, rather, he sees himself on a production line as a computer whose sentience chip has just been “switched on.” While he is surprised at this course of events, he cannot really question them, because all his memories of being human have been wiped away. His personality is now changed. His human desires for companionship, adventure, food, etc. have been replaced with an all‐consuming desire to mop the entire factory floor. However, his brain is manipulated in such a way as to occasionally cause him to forget where he started, so that despite the fact that he has mopped every inch of the floor 1000 times over, he will never believe that he has completed his task.⁸

A Matrix‐type deception could definitely be pursued to torturous limits. And while we cannot be sure that we are not in a Matrix ourselves, we can rest assured that we are not in that Matrix – at least not yet. What more is it possible to know? Is there anything positive that you can assert with absolute certainty? Morpheus seemed to think so. He claimed to offer “the Truth – and nothing more.” But does Morpheus really know the Truth? According to Morpheus, the Truth is that Neo is a slave, but he can be freed from this captivity, and thereby experience the real world. The desert of the real is, of course, the charred remains of human civilization, with its dark, scorched sky, and the underground world of Zion and its hovercraft fleet. But does Morpheus really know that life in Zion is “real”? Can he be absolutely certain that he is free from the Matrix himself?

Of course, when we watch the Matrix story unfold on film, we are supposed to regard Morpheus as awake. In any scene in which Morpheus is on the Nebuchadnezzar or on Zion he is in the real world. And while he regularly enters the Matrix, he is not like the deceived masses of humanity, slumbering away in their cocoons. Despite the fact that his eyes are closed when he jacks in, he remains fully awake to the fact that the world of the Matrix is just a high‐tech illusion. He knows that his muscles have no effect on what he can do in this place.⁹ But what I am suggesting now, is that we think beyond the limits of this particular story. If there are more possibilities to Morpheus's reality than we are explicitly shown in the film, can he really be absolutely certain that he is awake? I contend that he cannot. Morpheus is trapped in the pit of skepticism just like the rest of us.

Consider this “alternative reality,” which is consistent with the central ideas of the Matrix trilogy, but which is not part of the story depicted in the films:

The Matrix within the Matrix

A program monitors all the humans who are plugged into the Matrix. It mainly looks for hackers – people like Morpheus, Trinity, and Neo, who are obsessed with tearing down computerized systems of control. These people generally tend to be the ones who are fighting against the dreamworld provided to them. These humans know, however vaguely, that there is something not quite right with the world. This feeling nags at them – like a splinter in their minds. The machines realize that such people are on the verge of waking up, and therefore, they take precautions against it by giving the hackers a new type of dream – a different Matrix. They switch them over to a dream of being awakened. This causes these restless souls to become more accepting of their experiences – more accepting of the dream. And better still, the machines provide these people with the illusion of fighting to free all of humanity from a world of computer control. This dream totally captivates them, causing them to sleep soundly for the rest of their lives.

Morpheus cannot rule out this sort of scenario. All he can say is that his experiences in Zion and on the Nebuchadnezzar do not feel like a dream, and that the belief that he has “really awakened” is consistent with all of his experiences. But notice that the same was true for Neo before he took the red pill. His experience felt real, and, until he found himself naked inside that slimy cocoon, it made perfect sense for him to believe that he had been experiencing the real world all of his life.

So the pit of skepticism certainly goes deeper than even Morpheus realizes. For this reason, Descartes may be a better guide. He was prepared to follow his skeptical doubts all the way down. Ultimately, Descartes faced the possibility that maybe there is nothing at all that is absolutely certain. But after closely examining this possibility, he came to the realization that he did know at least one thing with absolute certainty. Descartes came to this insight when he tried to entertain the notion that the demon was deceiving him about his own existence:

I have convinced myself that there is nothing in the world – no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Does not it follow that I do not exist? No, surely I must exist if it's me who is convinced of something. Let him deceive me all he can, he will never make it the case that I am nothing while I think that I am something.¹⁰

Descartes summarized this conclusion in the Latin phrase Cogito ergo sum – “I think therefore I am” – which has long remained the single most famous line in all of Western philosophy.¹¹

It seems to me that Descartes was right. One cannot be mistaken about one's very existence. Even if you are a victim of a Matrix‐type deception you can be certain that you exist. That is, there has to be a “you” that is being deceived. While everyone else's existence will always be somewhat less certain, the very act of trying to doubt your own existence merely demonstrates that you indeed exist. Of course, you cannot then start jumping to conclusions about what you are, or what the external world is really like. You still cannot be sure that you have a body, or that you are even human. (For all you know, you might be a sentient machine or robot that is deceived into thinking that it is human.) But the certainty of your existence does provide a foothold – a starting point for trying to climb out of this pit. As Descartes noted:

Archimedes required only one fixed and immovable point to move the whole earth from its place, and I too can hope for great things if I can find even one small thing that is certain and unshakeable.¹²

Since it was your ability to think that proved your existence, then perhaps you can build on that. For, if you are at this very moment “thinking of the Matrix,” is not it also certain that you know that you are “thinking of the Matrix”? It seems undeniably true that you are directly and unmistakably aware of your own immediate conscious mental state. Similarly, if you are perceiving a white page in front of you, you know that you are perceiving a white page in front of you. You just cannot jump to the conclusion that the page is “real,” in the sense that it has a separate existence apart from your perception. Not only do you have a direct awareness of your own thoughts and perceptions, but as Descartes put it, you know that you are a “thinking thing,” that is, you are the kind of being that is capable of having these thoughts and perceptions. This is not to say that you are the original source of these thoughts. It is always possible that they are somehow “pumped into your mind” from the outside. But regardless of the manner in which they arise, you must be capable of experiencing them.

So how deep does the rabbit hole really go? “Frighteningly deep” is the short answer. So long as you are willing to entertain the possibility of a Matrix‐type deception, then the only thing that you can be absolutely sure of is your own existence and the contents of your immediate mental state. Certainty about what the world is like outside your mind will always be unavailable to you. This conclusion does not sit very well with most people. And it did not for Descartes either. He tried to eliminate the possibility of such radical deceptions by proving that God exists. His thought was that if he could prove the existence of God as an all‐good and all‐powerful being, then he could rest assured that there was no malicious demon, for surely a benevolent God would not allow him to be deceived about his most clear and distinct perceptions. Unfortunately for Descartes, most philosophers agree that his argument for God fell short of the “proof” that he needed. In the end there may be no way to be absolutely certain that we are not the victims of a Matrix‐type deception.