Philosophy, Reality and The Matrix

securitas writes "The NYT discusses The Matrix as a reflection of American society, the 'war on terror', political allegory and the impact of The Matrix on contemporary philosophy. NPR provides streaming audio conversations with Matrix thinkers, including Jake Horsley, author of 'Matrix Warrior: Being the One'; Prof. Frances Flannery Dailey on violence in the Matrix; and Prof. Greg Garrett, co-author of 'The Gospels Reloaded' and why he doesn't like the kind of hero that Neo has become. Finally, the CSM follows up its The Gospel According to Neo with an online chat transcript with Josh Burek, the author of the essay." As if that's not enough Matrix Philosophy, Here's more and Still more. And just a warning, clicking on any of those links might spoil the movie for you.

Comments

Re:This is going to be instantly moded down

[The Only Druid]

The patronizing attitude you have towards myself and my contemporaries (i.e. academic philosophers) shows just how much you should have taken a few of the classes when you were in college.

If you're not old enough to have taken college classes, then frankly you shouldn't talk about things beyond your kin.

Philosophy serves to do a few things, at the bare minimum: 1, encourage people to critically analyze everything in their life, in the pursuit of enlightenment (be it purely intellectual or possibly mystical), 2, enable people to better apply critical reasoning to every-day problems including everything from law to science to programming.

To overly simplify philosophy as the glib "people who get paid to think of what life might mean" grossly fails to appreciate the depth of the field. The majority of philosophy today deals with epistemology (the study of knowledge, both in terms of its form and its function), ethics (the study of moral systems) and meta-ethics (the study of the origins and basis of moral systems).