»REAL philosophy! Why can't you be TOLD what the matrix is?«

It's that famous line!

"Unfortunately no one can be TOLD what the matrix is. You have to see it for yourself"

Many people have asked (not in these forums mind you) why Morpheus couldn't just say - "You are in a dream world and everything around you is a simulation. Just believe that and you can do super big jumps like me and generally kick ass. There are these truly bogus machines who want to keep us in this world so take this red pill and lets get out of here!"

Well Hilary Putnam in his book "Reason Truth and History" imagines a world in which there is nothing but brains and vats controlled by machines. He claims that the brains in vats could have no meaningful idea of brains or vats and therefore "I am a brain in a vat" would have no meaning to them. However it seems there are some problems with this view being linked to the matrix.

The fact that the people in the matrix have been there all their lives is important, as is the fact that the matrix is run by machines who could never (according to Searle) have a meaningful conscious understanding of the world. This means that the matrix solely involves machines messing with our brains without any link to the actual objects. The images they produce do not have a direct link to the objects on which they are based.

What is a problem is that Morpheus HAS seen the real world and understands "real" things. He should be able to convey the meaning of "real" things to Neo even though Neo has never seen something "real" himself.

Anyone understand why Morpheus can't just tell Neo? (I understand that few people here will have a good understanding of externalism but if anyone does....)

Well anyone who was shown the matrix or told about it would reject it unless the proof was shown to them. If someone came up to you personally and told you that you were asleep in a dream world would you believe?
Or would you have to see for yourself?

I think that is a good response but it is missing the point.

People wouldn't believe in the matrix whether they have been taken out of it or not. So quite naturally Neo takes a while to fully believe in the matrix.

However, the question is whether Neo can be TOLD about the matrix before he hasn't yet escaped. Since he is being told by Morpheus he SHOULD be able to - yet Morpheus claims he can't.

The idea is that while within the matrix we cannot have any meaningful ideas about real objects because we have never seen real objects. Only from a causal link to real objects can they have any meaning.

This is called externalism and I realise it will make a lot more sense if you look at the explanation found on the official matrix philosophy section

... but that applies to just about anything.

Someone can describe to you what it's like to drive a car, but you won't actually *know* until you do it.

If Morpheus told him, he would not believe. Therefore he has to make the choice to believe it, then be shown what it is.

"The idea is that while within the matrix we cannot have any meaningful ideas about real objects because we have never seen real objects. Only from a causal link to real objects can they have any meaning."

Yes, Isnt this precisely the reason the matrix is undesireable?
That life in the matrix life isnt real and you are being robbed of the freedom to experience it on your own?
It seemed that the peole in the matrix werent so bad off really. Not like people were being beaten in the streets. Hell the machines actually went through steps to make life more acceptable for us.

But given the meaning of externalism as per the matrix. Does externalism exist if we are all the same being experienceing itself subjectively?

From an externalist's standpoint, it makes sense that if who I am is derived from only what I know from the matrix. Then the matrix IS reality. Not the other way around. But I guess what would still allow me to accept the "real" world is the mistake the machines made. Basing the matrix on the "real" world

Ooooh some good points there.

-When Putnam writes about the brain in vats example he points out that computers could not apply meaning to anything. He cites Searle's view that a computer is not conscious even if it could seem it.

Seale's example involves a man in a room with a book of responses to questions in Chinese. When he is given a question in Chinese he looks up the correct response in Chinese in his book and gives it. However, the man does not understand Chinese and never needs to consciously understand the meanings in order to give the correct answers.

Thus the computers cannot give meaning to the ideas since they never posess those meanings. It must also be added that things in the real world like trees and roads no longer exist for them to represent anyway.

- The matrix is not reality by definition. One reason why people in the matrix cannot talk about real things is because they never experience the meaning "real" even indirectly. (In terms of the movie there is a problem with this as I showed above. Morpheus' explanations of the real world WOULD be an indirect link with the meaning of real things)

- You can at least understand the meaning of driving a car from someone elses account.They are your causal link with the meaning of "what it is like to drive a car". It is the meaning of "real objects" which people in the matrix do not understand. Thomas Nagel has pointed out that to understand what is like to be a bat is out of our grasp (bats sense objects through sound waves and, of course, they cannot talk to us about this)

- I don't understand why you could possibly think that the whole world is one being experiencing itself subjectively. I am not even sure what "experiencing itself subjectively" means so I may need a better explanation.

Experienceing itself subjectively means that it is seeing itself in different ways or percieving itself in different ways. By seing each part as a separate. Like the people and things you may see in a dream.

Its funny I just thought, with saying that, do the different beings in dreams interact with eachother or rather, do they show evidence that they might have. Does one talk to the other or report events that happened somewhere else in the dream that you didnt know about? Its never happened to me but....

Anyways,
When you say you can told by someone about an experience, do mean that would somehow make it real? Or that you would be able to accept it as being real.
Anything that you do not experience for yourself is not an experience. If told well enough I am sure you could come close to a simulation of the effects of the experience but never actually knowing, right?

About the brains in vats:
Its seems like there was a huge jump that you have to make with the movies. The machines are sentient beings that not only wanted to take a place among human civilizations, but also tried to offer peace so they had some human qualities and they did feel some meaning in values like life. But like the computers you talked about with the vats.
If you were to have a brain inside a vat and it was a living brain, you can expose it to stimuli and wait for the results. like in The animatrix when the machines are prodding the mans brain and he laughs, and then again and he cries. Given enough time to experiment they could concieveably create a world that the human would like to live in just using the information gathered from simple tests. Without any prior knowledge of what they would want or expect. Of course it would be a VERY long process, but they are machines right? If they have anything they have patience. And wasnt our world as we would understand, start in the same way? it wasnt just dumped here and we just appeared. If the theory of evolution is true then we came from the EXACT same thing, Different occurrences of "complex protiens and minerals, everything the body needs" .

If the matrix isnt reality, then what is?
the funny thing about not beign able to know what someone else has experienced is that reality is viewed by everyone differently. I don't know that what I see is what you see is the same. Even if described things so they are exactly they way you decribe them, we could never actually have the same experience. So on a basic level I guess the experience of reality can only be percieved by the individual. His interpretation of the experience can be relayed but not shared.

But understand about the car thing what you mean but you still can never know how to drive the car as that person. Hell, even the bat could express what it would be like to be a bat to you if you knew how to communucate the same as he does. right? Computers can dictate speech in real time for 20 bucks at the computer store now. So they can at least take the language in. So if the computer ran simple tests using the language and the responses he got from words, not only could it talk, it would also know the variance of the responses and equate meaning. Not far from that observations from the same simple tests could lead to a real understanding of the human mind, maybe enough to recreate other humans to keep the test subject company, react to it. Psychology is based on direct observations of human behavior. I admit that most shrinks don't know a damn thing but could you imagine what I am saying?

Please excuse me for rambling on. I find it best sometimes just to type and let my mind go a little sothat I can express myself better. I may sound like a complete idiot and I wont go back over it to read it cause I am sure Ill be here all night with mispellings and just crap but I hope you get a little closer to understanding what I am saying.
Thanks for reading
Latz

The single consciousness thing isn't going to hold any weight for me unless you put it in terms I can understand. There is enough trouble trying to claim that each individual has a self. Trying to claim that every individual consciousness is linked seems to have even less evidence.

I have to admit that now I think about it the driving explanation it is true that some meanings cannot be conveyed. For example if someone has never seen a colour then it seems unlikely that they would be able to gain a meaningful idea of blue. I also think that by talking about experiences like driving a car and being a bat were misleading too since the Brain in a Vat problem is a problem with recognising the meaning of objects and is not really related to experiences.

The brain in a vat hypothesis does not say that computers cannot give us a simulated reality. Simply that would not be able to gain a causal connection to the real objects which the simulation resembles. The simulation does not represent the real world to the computers because a computer can never truly understand the world in a conscious way like we do. This means that in order for us to be able to understand that we were in a simulated world they would have to have seen real objects and have had a direct experience of things in order to give meaning to terms like "causality" and "physical" as we would understand them.

It may be said that since within the matrix Neo has never experienced these things he must first leave the matrix so he can. Maybe since Morpheus' world is so different to the world in which Neo lives (in terms of its being 'real') he cannot possibly explain to Neo what the matrix is in terms of things neo knows.

(Stop reading now if you do not know much philosophy - not because it is complicated, but because only people who have studied Kant will realise how much of a loser he is)
Was looking at Kant today - he claims that the real world beyond the empirical world (or the aspects of objects which we do not experience) or the 'noumena' as he calls it is irrelevant to us since we can never experience it. In the same way perhaps the real world for Neo is irrelevant to him until he has experienced at least some aspects of it directly.

Well Kant also states the opposite at the same time, thats why I dont particularly follow his way of thinking. It seems more of a dead end to take 2 sides to a thesis and contemplate the fact the they are both equally true and equally false.


Here is a stab at an example of the entity experienceing itself subjectively. Well, a couple of stabs. At least where I can understand it. Keep in mind that I am not giving truth to this but just offering it for thought.

Say that all you know to be true about reality IS just your imagination. That the world you live in completely contained within you. In that world were other people, not otheres lik you but more like different parts of your personality. The interactions and balance of which makes the whole that is you. Inside we have alot of different variations of our notion of self that we choose to suppress or express at different times and places. All of these different sides could be represented as people in your dream. You can interact with them only by being one at a time. Now your are experiencing yourself, through your own eyes but different sides of your personality. Therefore a singular conciousness experienceing itself subjectively.

Thats one way to think of it. Lunacy, I admit, but I am always impressed by the amount of things that have occured to me from just entertaining all thoughts that come to mind. The most brilliant minds of all time have to admit, no matter how frustrating it is, that we know nothing of the true nature of the universe. We make observations, record them, label them and react to them. We know water is wet but we do'n't know why it is.


Another more grounded theory that supports the singular being, is that there are so many connections between us. The sub atomic particles that make us who we what we are are the same building blocks. constantly moving in empty space nothing at all.
So if it is held tha matter is made up of nothng, Is it not, acceptable that what we have recieved as stimuli to be nothing. Add that the things that make us understand that we are individuals and keeps us apart, does not exist, it isn't reality. The beginnings of the sudy of quantam mechanics is what may have ended the world as we know it. Because as we can see now from observation, reality is nothing. Just a perception of abstract thought.
I dunno I think I may be able to sit and think on this more and have something better to say. and more coherent. Ill save it for tomorrow.

With the thing you were saying about the carexplanation and someone who never saw a coulor. They could very well find a meaning in the word "red" if he was blind you could put something hot in his handand let him associate it for himself. What he could never do is see red as you do. But still give it meaning, as red is just a word. It is the meaning we "give" to it that matters.

Well why wouldnt the computers be able to simulate a dynamic reailty like that? Don't they live in reality? The machines in the movie would have a great deal of information concerning reality do to the fact that man made the machines a mirror of himself. Starting out as robots to have do simple tasks. But as the evolution of these machines went on could you imagine the strides we would make in creating new and more "human" A.I.?
It is then open to speculate that computers could understand the world as we do . They would have to have created all the algorithms to mimic the same thought processes that humans have. WHile we could not type into the computer an experience but we could give it rules to follow and it could learn as we do.


I dunno I think I may be able to sit and think on this more and have something better to say. and more coherent. Ill save it for tomorrow.
Thanks for letting me share even if I sound like a horses as?
Latz

1. Yeah glad you agree with me on the Kant thing - he IS a loser isn't he?

2. Yeah, the single self idea is lunacy.

3. I don't know how you can say the world is made up of nothing at all. Thoughts are real. Perceptions are real. What they are based on could be anything, but to say that they are based on nothing is simply to say that SOMETHING is based on nothing.

4. NO! A blind man does NOT understand red by feeling a red hot iron! In that situation he experiences 2 things - and very well too! He experiences heat and he experiences pain. Red requires sight in order to be experienced, that is certain. What I wasn't so certain about, i admit, is whether you need to experience of red in order to understand the meaning 'red'. However, your hot iron is still not going to solve that either is it?

5. The machines have information yes. They process information yes. They understand information? Well no. Without understanding can their artificial reality convey meaning - THAT is the question. It is questionable whether they could convey the meaning artificially even if they DID understand it. After all, within an artificial reality how can you understand meanings of things like "causation" or "physical"?

6. You don't sounds like a horse. Don't worry about that one

well after some sleep this weekend I think that I have my mind back. And after a 3rd time at the IMAX theater to see Revolutions I have a new batch of theories based on the 3 movies as a whole.
But for this particular corroespondence....

Well basically when I say that the world is made up of nothing at all I mean at its most basic level matter itself is made up of sub atomic particles moving around in empty space. ALOT of empty space. It was once thought that atoms were little bulding blocks for all matter. But this has since been shown to be untrue. Atoms are small electrons and a nucleus with the electrons being small chrges of energy. these charges move around in VAST regions of empty space. But the dont move from place to place like we would expect though. They make quantum leaps and their postion cannot be precisely predicted. The probability of their position can be calculated but never pinpointed. So it seems that matter, at its base level, is only empty space that has a high probability of being the objects we percieve. I am not physicist but this is the discovery that has confused scientists and negated years of quantum theory.
What makes matter solid is its atomic connections. Because all atomic particles share connectionsit is possible that we are all the same being.
Or the same energy.
The thought of us all being the same being is not as incredible as you might think. Take this into consideration. The human being is combrised of billions of seperate parts. each of these parts regenerate in cycles with varying frequencies throughout the human body.
Is it so hard to imagine these cells to be beings themselves? Given that they seem to have qualifying characteristics of being lifeforms.

As for the blind man seeing red. You are right. The blind man could never see red the way that you do. It would be impossible to do that but red is a word.
And just like red hot is a word
What if he were to cross the meanings of this?
Words are our labels to put on things so we can communicate them to eachother. And that is all they are.
So if I wanted to believe that the word blue was what you would call hot. It doesnt matter what we call it. It is the meaning we associate with the word.
Would you doubt that we would have different meanings of the word love?
Hate?
Would either of us be incapable of finding meaning in these words because we do not agree on the meaning of them? More important than the fact that we find meaning is the fact that we find meaning that is important to us individually.

Which finally leads me to my last part about the machines. What is meant by understanding. And what meaning would they have to convey?
The machines, being created by man would at least have some understanding of the workings of the world or how else would they function. How would they move around and accomplish things? Or would they sit in one spot like a computer but then how could they operate the vats? The level to which A.I. can be developed as measurable potential seems to be unlimited. but lets just say that you can only teach a machine so much
No matter what.
Lets then throw another elementy into the equation. Suppose that humans built the matrix. And the machines maintain it for a certain period of time. We designed all the rules of reality in a way that we could survive in our cocoons for a period of time until we were set free. Or freed ourselves.

Or, suppose that machines were replaced with a separate being with superhuman intelligence. Suppose that these beings did this to grow us, not for heat, but for food. would the idea be easier to accept?

Revolutions opens with an image zooming deeper and deeper into the matrix code - at first it is green but the image zooms deeper and deeper to show the gold code.

The gold code is not part of the matrix which has been programmed by the machines. The gold code is the fundemental fabric of space/time or energy if you will. They call it THE SOURCE but it is fundemental to both man and machine - the worlds we see (real and matrix) both "sit" on top of this source - once you can see the gold code the boundaries between a consciousness human soul and an active programme become pretty blurry.

This source is manipulated by architect and oracle together but in very different but necessary ways. The architect only wants to acheive mathematical balance - the easiest way for this to be acheived would be for a sum of zero's - perfect balance if you like - unfortunatley this would be a rather dull existense and the human population would very rapidly reject this "zero" scenario (depending how you want to look at it the human would either "wake up" from the matrix or would be dead).

Te oracles purpose is to introduce extremes, differences leading to the concept of choice - however these extremes, differnces or choices are only possible if the opposite exists in order for overall balance to be acheived - the "words" we use such as love/hate - birth/death - neo/smith....

everything is a balance between two oppostites/extremes - the functioning of the matrix itself is even a balance - the architect and the oracle themselves balance each other and balance the operation of the matrix.

We either have what we have or we have nothing. What the architect is effectively providing is the mathematics which give the rules of the "apparant susbstance around us" these rules "sit" on the gold code, but if this were it and everything were "made" of the same stuff there would appear to be nothing. The oracle provides "existence" simply by serving it in a "rich way" extremes and opposites - in order for us to know what we are we must also experience what we are not.

Thats what its all about.

Good point,
I never even thought too much into the code images in the beginning of the movies.

Red is just a word. ok.... And hot is just a word... yes but they are not the SAME word. You can't get the meaning of one of them from the meaning of the other. That is just being plain daft!

That it is possible to swap meanings in words is not in doubt. Certainly I can talk about "cherries in trees" and you could understand "cherry" as having the meaning I would associate with the word "child" and "tree" as having the meaning i would associate with the word "bed".

In this situation "cherries in trees" would mean "children in beds" to you.

However you cannot get the meaning without some terms on which to base that meaning. A person in the matrix does not have the necessary terms to understand the real world.

What were the terms that we had at birth?
If you must know something or have a basis for something in order to give it meaning then how is it possible to see something we have never seen before and put meaning to it?

How is it possible that you cannot get create meaning from the experience. Isnt that what is supposed to happen?
Isn't each meaning our own?
If not, how do you know that the meaning YOU HAVE GIVEN to something is the same as another?
Isnt that the bottom line of what we are trying to say, meaning can only be given to a thing by an individual. That meaning only has merit to that individual and the people who choose to relate that meaning.

"A person in the matrix does not have the necessary to understand the real world"
Isnt the matrix based on the real world?
I thought that was why it was such a successful prison for the trapped minds.
I realize what you are saying but did you or I have the same problems as infants, percieving the world as it was?
We had no prior knowledge of the world. It is arguable that we carry some instinctual knowledge of the world.
But I doubt that there were very many times where I had the luxury of terms on which to base my understanding of the world. Yet it was my exposure that allowed me to find meaning in it.

What I said was that meanings can only come from the object they refer to. If I see a picture I have not got the terms to understand it then I will not see it as that thing. It is important to see the difference to resemblance and reference. A term can not have meaning if it refers to nothing. Just because something resembles something else does not make it refer to it. An image can only refer to something if you know the meaning of the thing it resembles.

In the matrix no one ever sees anything other than the resembling thing. So they only ever refer to that simulation which resembles the real world. That is not enough to give them the meaning of the real world.

We could only have meanings when we were born of things we had come into contact with. If we came into the world where nothing existed but our minds we would be inconcious since we would have no meanings and therefore no thoughts.

Well I don't think that we would ever agree on this one. Not because I dont understand what you are saying, I just don't agree. we can give meaning to anything. There is no universal meaning to anything that exists. Your vision gives you terms to see the picture. You do not have to understand that you are looking at a picture to know that it is there. On closer examination wouldnt you realize that it was something? You may never know that it was a picture but surely you can give it some value as an object that you see. That you touch.
The information that you recieve would then give you the ability to interpret it as you wanted to.
When you see abstract paintings, or abstract art. You find meaning in the abstract. In something you have never seen before. Some people write whole books on the information and meanings they find in abstract art.
When you dream of something that is not inside the realm of your rational thought but you can still remember it, doesnt that have meaning? Whether you choose to accept it or not?
Doesnt the fact that invention and technology exist, imply that we have the ability to dream and realize those dreams no matter how unrealistic. 500 years ago I am sure that explaining the process of email would have you hanged or burned. Yet we have realized it to the point that email is not even given a second thought. We cannot see an atom, but we can concieve of what it may be and have theories about its structure, and although it has opened more doors we have come closer to understanding more about everything form something we cannot have terms to base meaning

You are seeing this in the wrong way. I agree with what you have said but it does not affect the argument.

You understand abstract art in terms of meanings you have already received from real things elsewhere. However, the brain in vat (or person in matrix) has never seen "real things" in order to interpret the simulation he is in. He will not have an understanding of the real objects until he sees them himself. While in the matrix he only understands the meaning he gains from the simulated objects.

Therefore you must see what the matrix is for yourself from the outside in order to understand the meaning of "I am in the matrix".

Quote:

Therefore you must see what the matrix is for yourself from the outside in order to understand the meaning of "I am in the matrix".

But think about it one level deeper.

The "no-one can see it for themselves" can be taken further - thats becasue there are two word which get confussed easily - SEE & UNDERSTAND.

What we see or more acurately percieve with all our senses can only show you the door to understanding. To understand could be defined as to simply know oneself (like the oracles sign) it doesnt just mean to understand "literally" the perception of the world around us - to know you are in a matrix does not help you know yourself.

@fatpie42 "Anyone understand why Morpheus can't just tell Neo? (I understand that few people here will have a good understanding of externalism but if anyone does....)"

Its simple, if your whole life was a matrix you simply wouldnt believe it because of a psychological effect called cognitive dissonance. Thats why you need a pill to dissolve resistance in your hippocampus brain area, thats where a Matrix would have to connect to.

The theory of cognitive dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance Theory, developed by Leon Festinger (1957), is concerned with the relationships among cognitions. A cognition, for the purpose of this theory, may be thought of as a ³piece of knowledge.² The knowledge may be about an attitude, an emotion, a behavior, a value, and so on. For example, the knowledge that you like the color red is a cognition; the knowledge that you caught a touchdown pass is a cognition; the knowledge that the Supreme Court outlawed school segregation is a cognition. People hold a multitude of cognitions simultaneously, and these cognitions form irrelevant, consonant or dissonant relationships with one another.

Cognitive Irrelevance probably describes the bulk of the relationships among a person¹s cognitions. Irrelevance simply means that the two cognitions have nothing to do with each other. Two cognitions are consonant if one cognition follows from, or fits with, the other. People like consonance among their cognitions. We do not know whether this stems from the nature of the human organism or whether it is learned during the process of socialization, but people appear to prefer cognitions that fit together to those that do not. It is this simple observation that gives the theory of cognitive dissonance its interesting form.

I think you have the basic idea. However I think you can literally understand the objects around you perfectly in the matrix, otherwise you couldn't live a normal life there. What you lack, however, is the meanings necessary to understand that the concept "I am in the matrix". Within the matrix you never see the real objects necessary to understand the sentence "I am in a vat and a machine is sending images into my brain through wires". Neither you, nor anyone you know, will have ever come across real vats, brains, machines or wires so you could not have the right meaning when saying that sentence.

In the real world there is a simple little magic exercise to get rid of your personal matrix. Stand in front of a big mirror, look into your eyes and tell yourself loud and clear the exact oppsite of what you believe in...

You think your liberal? Tell yourself youre a brain dead fascist!
You think you are smart? Tell yourself you are a dumb as a piece of stone...

What is good and real remains, the rest may go.

Ok I am SURE that psychology post from Gawen wasn't there when I wrote my last post.

I think you are forgetting that the people within the matrix would never have had the same cognitions which we have had. They would only have cognitions of the simulated world. That is why they wouldn't have the same thought as us when they think "the world around me isn't real" - they have never seen anything real to gain that cognition from.

A matrix would be a continuum of recognition, a world where actio and reactio work as learned and expected afterwards. If youd tell somebody his recognitions are unreal he would call you a lyar because of psychic self defense. Its that simple. A matrix community would share this false reality and defend it even stronger by giving positive feedback to others also believing in it. Its just believe and community.

A light mutation may have different sensoric input and / or processing and see the wall behind the projection. Manipulation only works within the bandwidth of the simulation. Anything sensed outside can break it. Reality has relatively unlimited bandwidth and is logically not completly simulatable from inside. To keep a matrix alive it has to be continuously enhanced to keep up with evolutionary changes in the population that is to be manipulated. One size doesnt fit all...

For example i left the christian community good and evil matrix continuum and joined the wicked because of different recognition. *g*