When virtual reality turns into real imagination

Rating: 8/10 (8 September 2009)

Adding another comment of "The Matrix" (1999) in addition to the over 2'000 almost published ones may seem pretentious. However, as it appears, most people have not understood that the "matrix" is that what we, according to the movie, mistakenly take for "the" reality. It is our ontology and our metaphysics, the space of the objects which we can meet during the trip of our life. But again according to the movie, this reality-matrix is nothing but an artificial construct produced by a computer program, so that it is this "virtual" reality which produces our "real reality". In addition, also the programmers which have written these omnipotent programs, are nothing else but functions of the program itself. So, the program is operated by its programmers, but it also operates on the programmers. Such logical circularity is excluded from any science which is based on two-valued Aristotelian logic - and this all kind of science we are able to technically realize by now. Insofar, this movie is "Science Fiction", but in a good sense of the term.
However, there is one of these long monologues of Laurence Fishburn-Morpheus where he gives for Keanu Reeve's character - and the audience - detailed metaphysical commentaries about the relationship of the two levels of reality, the seemingly real reality produced by the matrix and the indeed "real" virtual reality. Here, one has to say that at least for Morpheus, the "real" (i.e. non-virtual) reality must actually exist, because it serves him as a reference-basis for his explications of the virtual reality which produced the "real" matrix-reality. If it would not, then even Morpheus could not differentiate, let's say, if the "virtual hull" of a crew-member of his or his actual "realy body" has died. Multiplying the traditional one-reality-ontology and metaphysics does not let dissolve this latter concepts, in the opposite, the more realities are constructed, the more important the "real" reality gets as a basis of reference. The reason is that we cannot perceive a priori objects of any reality without "filtering" them with our senses, so we perceive them as signs - and those are, by their very nature, always interpreted. Thus, any reality is already interpreted reality and therefore needs a Tertium Comparationis for the sake of comparison and thus reference. Everything else would be a nightmare which would dissolve the human brain long before being able to create such fantasy worlds.