Nozick Matrix Questions on Cinema

Nozick Matrix

Questions on Cinema and Reality

Robert Nozick proposes the following thought experiment. Suppose that you were hooked up to an "experience machine." Once hooked up to the machine, you would forget that you were attached to the machine, and for the rest of you life (which would be just as long) you would have exactly the sort of experiences that you would most like to have, whether these might be experiences of pleasure, of achievement, or heroic sacrifice or whatever. Once attached there would be no going back, but the machine is totally reliable. Would you want to be attached to the machine? How does your answer bear on the question of whether we should take the good to be a mental state such as happiness or whether we should take the good to be the satisfaction of rational preference?

The question at the center of Nozick's dilemma posed by Nozick essentially concerns one's individual willingness to suspend life's uncertainties, challenges, humiliations and failures in favor of an unblemished future of utter satisfaction. But at the heart of this dilemma is implied a great deal more than simply a desire to be relieved of these experiences. To a larger extent, one is being relieved of experience altogether, conceding instead to accept without reflection an illusion that mirrors the greatest of all possible ambitions in superficiality only. What is perhaps most troubling about the dilemma posed by Nozick, as the discussion where here show, is that it is not one posed in idle. To an extent that should not be lost on us, Nozick seems to suggest that many of us already do live in a state of illusion, moving through experiences without any reflection and allowing ourselves to be controlled by forces greater than ourselves.

The exercise offered by Nozick is a philosophical one rather than a practical one. Nozick offers the dilemma already with the knowledge that few in any respondents would agree to be connected to such a machine. The purpose in posing this question then is to force us to recognize that we have greater and perhaps inexplicable instincts that prevent us from surrendering the ability to draw rational preference individually. According to McCarl, Nozick observes, "What does matter to us in addition to our experiences? First, we want to do certain things, and not just have the experience of doing them. In the case of certain experiences, it is only because first we want to do the actions that we want the experiences of doing them or thinking we've done them. (But why do we want to do the activities rather than merely to experience them?) A second reason for not plugging in is that we want to be a certain way, to be a certain sort of person." (McCarl, p. 1)

For me personally, this certainly applies, but also only begins to scratch the surface of why hooking up to such a machine would be inconceivable. And indeed, the reason that this is difficult to articulate is accounted for in Nozick's text. Nozick concedes that there is something intangible about man's desire for something more than just experience. Without necessarily being able to identify this greater ambition universally, Nozick instead surmises that some combination of human instincts that transcends the mere ability to reflect on memories must be present to prevent us from allowing a machine to simulate the mental state composing happiness. For most assuredly, the only form that happiness takes in the experience machine is one of chemical and hormonal response not unlike those achieved under the influence of psychoactive drugs. Nozick explains that we can't reconcile this understanding sufficiently to allow the suspension of ourselves in this manner. According to Nozick, "without elaborating on the implications of this, which I believe connect surprisingly with issues about free will and causal accounts of knowledge, we need merely note the intricacy of the questions of what matters for people other than their experiences." (Nozick, p. 45)

To my own way of thinking, there is little that is surprising about the role played by free will in the discussion. Whether we realize it or not, this is a force which is always at play in the way that we approach the world. And it guides each of us differently to the extent that none of us might be so inclined to accept the notion that a machine might allow for the proper manifestation of free will. I tend to believe that where free will is suspended, we cease to possess one of the attributes that most makes us human. It is perhaps for this reason that Nozick's literature elsewhere seems to focus on the dangers of a tyrannical government. Consistent with the idea expressed here above that for many, life is lived in a state of illusion with free will largely surrendered, Nozick warns against the role played by authoritarian regimes. According to Wolff (2007), the authority of "the state is justified, thinks Nozick, only in so far as it protects people against force, fraud, and theft, and enforces contracts. Thus it exists to safeguard rights, and the state itself violates people's rights if it attempts to do any more than this." (Wolff, p. 1)

Such applications suggest that in many ways, the experience machine exercise is not merely philosophical but in fact practical after all. If we are challenged to question the balance of illusion and reality, we are far more likely to recognize attacks on our shared and individual free will.

2.

What are we supposed to believe about the progress the hero makes in "The Matrix" concerning his ability to deal with the hallucinatory reality he can be programmed to enter? What precisely is the skill he has learned?

The Matrix (1999) would be a groundbreaking film for its special effects, its choreographic inventiveness and its sheer visual stylishness. But its visual presentation, which integrated sleek cityscapes with scenes of post-apocalyptic decay, carried greater meaning than simple pyrotechnics. Instead, the effects are designed to carry the viewer along with Neo-as he comes to understand and eventual 'see' the Matrix. In doing so, they invoke a hallucinogenic experience in the viewer, which is particularly valuable in empathizing with Neo's disorientation and eventual clarity. This is the transition which takes place in Neo and allows him ultimately to look through the exterior visual effects of the Matrix and to see the artifices of the world around him.

This is particularly of value because it allows him the unfettered ability to manipulate the events that 'occur' in the Matrix, a skill that he can access with the power of his own mind. Reljic (2010) identifies this skill as implicative of something far greater and more inherent to the cyberpunk genre of film. That is, the most important skill that Neo-has learned is the ability to undermine the Matrix so as to move seamlessly between the worlds of the Matrix and the Real. According to Reljic, in order for a conflict to emerge in a totalitarian context, some ripple in the fabric of illusion must have occurred. Reljic indicates that "transgression is. . . necessary to get things moving in these narratives. It is the essential trope of the cyberpunk genre; the 'punk' suffix would be pretty obsolete otherwise and it is an implied function when computer hackers are stock characters in the genre. It is because of this that transformation becomes inevitable. The digital world and the 'real' world can only communicate through metamorphic intermediaries, at least in any way that is dramatically significant or that creates any plot conflict." (Reljic, p. 1)

Here, Neo-becomes a metaphorical intermediary. As "The One," he functions as a device in the film through which the state of things can be challenged. With respect to the progress which allows him to do this, we are best served by referring to the words of Morpheus, who at the outset tells Neo-that "no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself." Quite to this point, Neo-is forced to confront the reality that he is, in fact, not who or what he believes himself to be. From his first encounter with Agent Smith to his decision to take the pill from Morpheus to the time that he is physically freed from captivity, Neo-if forced to confront the idea that his whole life has been illusion. The progress which allows for his transformation is ultimately in accepting that this has been so. And as is often the case in the film which takes a dystopian view on the world, the assertion is that we as viewers are also enslaved by our own illusions. Suellentrop (1999) remarks that we empathize with Neo-because "his perceived world is a sham, a mistake, a carefully crafted fake, and you know, deep down, that yours is, too." (Suellentrop, p. 1)