Matrix Philosophie (CP)

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The Philosophy of the Matrix (Christopher Grau) | [Bildung für alle verursacht Krawalle]

Clips:

besprochen in Vorlesung 07

• Die Zahlen, das Tunnel, das Spotlight

Das Bild der Zahlenwelt gibt die Struktur vor, so wie der Ausdruck "Höhle". Es handelt sich bei dem, was kommt, um einen "inferioren" Zustand. Von der Null zum Spotlight führt die Bewegung zu einer Beschreibung der Höhle. Und dort finden sich Menschen, die wie Plato keine Ahnung davon haben, dass sie sich in einer Höhle aufhalten.

• Ohne Körper

Der Ausstieg aus der Höhlenwelt (über die Telefonleitung) führt in die Unkörprlichkeit - aus der Sicht der Höhle. Es ist von dort aus nicht möglich, zu begreifen, wie jemand der Zerstörung des Körpers entgehen kann. Die Voraussetzung dafür besteht darin, dass von vornherein eine Perspektive eingenommen wird, die einen solchen Switch erlaubt. Also in diesem Fall die souveräne Erzählperspektive des Films. Die "Auferstehung von den Toten" ist aus der Sicht der Körperwelt unbegreiflich. Sie macht nur Sinn, wenn wir es mit Wesen zu tun haben, die einen Gutteil ihres Lebens in einer anderen Sphäre verbringen.

• Weckruf

Die Welt, wie wir sie kennen, enthält eine Botschaft, die verwundert. Sie passt nicht in die gewohnten Abläufe. Neo fragt Trinity später: Wie hast Du das gemacht? Die Intervention ist erstaunlich, aber das ist erst der Beginn. Derartige Ereignisse lassen sich immer auch rational bewältigen. Christliche "Wunder" sind ein Beispiel. Das "Aufwachen" ist unterschieden davon, sich auf die andere Seite zu drehen und weiter zu schlafen. Aber dazu muss man bereit sein. Der Topos des Wechsels vom Schlaf zum bewussten Leben wird angewandt auf das bewusste Leben selbst. Platt ausgedrückt: Wenn ich in einem Zimmer das Gesuchte gefunden habe, finde ich im Kasten dieses Zimmers die Antwort darauf, wozu es gut ist.

• Deine Frage

Es reicht nicht, sonderbare Abläufe zu bemerken. Man muss sie verdichten und verallgemeinern. (Die Urananreicherung extrahiert ein Uranisotop, zur Herstellung von spaltbarem Material.) Ausgehend von einem allgemeinen Unbehagen wird eine Frage totalisiert. Dazu bedarf es eines Zuspruchs, der den Prozess des Ausklinkens in die Wege leitet.

• Alice, Splitter, Gefängnis

Der Rückgriff auf "Alice in Wonderland". Der nächste Schritt: die Wahrheit. Du weisst es,, Du kannst es nicht erklären, Du fühlst es.

"Denn während sie sich eines Wissens "um die verborgenen [Dinge des] Satans" brüsten, wissen sie nicht, daß sie sich in die "untere Welt der Finsternis" der Lüge wegwerfen, und während sie sich rühmen, frei zu sein, sind sie Sklaven knechtischer Begierden geworden. (Clemens von Alexandria, Brief an Theodorus

• unten, unten, oben

• Die Wüste des Wirklichen

Technik triumphiert im Zeitalter der künstlichen Intelligenz: Menschen können Intelligenz erzeugen. Und das führt zur Verwüstung. Der traditionelle Ort des Lichtes ist ohne Sonne, dafür ist die Höhle, die Welt der Computersimulation, hell. Die Hauptakteuere (Morpheus, Trinity, Neo) leben in einer dunklen Welt, in die sie "Sklaven" der Sonnenwelt retten.

"Realität". Wenn das die im Gehirn ablaufende Verarbeitung elektro-magnetischer Impulse der Sinnesorgane ist, entsteht ein Regelkreis. Ein Organismus adaptiert sich an die Umweltreizungen und reagiert entsprechend angepasst. Das "brain in a vat" Problem ist ein Höhlenszenario. Schon die Bezeichnung des Problems ist eine Weichenstellung. "Wie können die Höhlenbewohnerinnen wissen, dass sie in einer Höhle sind?" Sofern sie in der Höhle stecken, können sie das nicht. Aber der ganze Auferstehungszauber ist dazu inszeniert, aus der Eindimensionalität in die Doppelperspektive zu gelangen. Die Annahme der kompletten Täuschung, die bohrende Frage "What is the Matrix", ist der Umschlagplatz zwischen den beiden Dimensionen.

Die eine Definition von "Realität" ist ein kybernetischer Ablauf. Das wird als externe Beschreibung angeboten. Es ist eine Behauptung, die Staunen erzeugt. Die Definition erfolgt aus einer Position, die offensichtlich von dieser kybernetischen Schleife ausgenommen ist. Was ist auf dieser Stufe Realität? dazu sagt der Film nichts. Die Realität der verdüsterten Welt kann natürlich ihrerseits dem Globalverdacht unterzogen werden. Oder es gibt eine konkurrierende Definition.

• tödlich, belebend

• das irdische Leben ist eine computergenerierte Illusion
• das echte Leben findet in einer Höhlenumgebung statt
• der scheinbar echte Körper ist eine Täuschung, der echte Körper ist Träger dieser Illusion
• die beiden "Körper" sind verknüpft; der Körper in der Höhlenwelt ist nötig für die Illusion des Körpers in der kybernetischen Welt
• das Überleben in der falschen Welt ist die Bedingung für das Leben in der echten
• der Tod in der Simulation tötet den realen Körper; sie schlägt in die Echtwelt zurück
• Märtyrer: sie leben in der falschen Welt und sterben deren Tod, zusammen mit ihrem wirklichen Körper
• Auferweckung des Fleisches: dem Körper jenseits des platonischen Zwiespalts wird neues Leben eingehaucht
• der auferweckte Körper ist transzendent, er unterliegt weder den Gesetzen der Illusion, noch des echten Körpers, der an diese Illusion gebunden ist
• Verklärung, Erlösung vom Körper inklusive Körper, Superman

Problembereiche

The Matrix of Dreams

by Colin McGinn

It is not that he learns how to dodge real bullets; he learns that the bullets that speed towards him are just negotiable products of his imagination. As Morpheus remarks, he won't need to dodge bullets, because he will reach a level of understanding that allows him to recognize imaginary bullets for what they are. He becomes the ruler of his own imagination; he is the agent now, not the "Agents".

Da wir mit Hilfe unserer Vorstellungen von Athen nach Böotien auswandern oder den Verkehr regeln können, haben wir offensichtlich Einfluss auf unsere Körper. Und wenn wir ein Programm schreiben, das diesen Einfluss wiedergibt, können wir es auch so schreiben, dass es die "normalen" Einflussmöglichkeiten übersteigt. Wenn wir uns vorstellen können, dass es uns nach unserem Tod nochmals gibt, dann können wir auch Programme schreiben, die uns in eine Welt versetzen, in der der Tod uns nichts ausmacht. --anna 08:41, 5. Nov. 2010 (UTC)

The Brave New World of the Matrix

by Hubert Dreyfus and Stephen Dreyfus

That should sound familiar. Indeed, if there are Kantians in the Matrix world, most of their beliefs will be true. They will understand that they are experiencing a coordinated system of appearances, and understand too that they can't know things as they are in themselves; that they can't know what is causing their shared experience of the world and universe. Kantians don't hold that our shared and tested beliefs about the world, and scientists' confirmed beliefs about the universe, are false just because they are about phenomena and do not and cannot correspond to things in themselves. So, as long as Kantians, and, indeed, everyone in the Matrix, don't claim to know about things in themselves, most of their beliefs will be true.

Nonetheless, the Matrix philosophy obviously does not subscribe to the Kantian view that we can never know things in themselves. In The Matrix one can come to know reality. We have seen that existential phenomenologists acknowledge that we are sometimes mistaken about particular things and have to retroactively take back our understanding of them. But, as Merleau-Ponty and Taylor add, we only do so in terms of a new and better prima facie contact with reality. Likewise, in The Matrix version of the brain in the vat situation, those who have been hauled from the vat into what they experience as the everyday world can see that what they took for granted about the causal ground of their experience before was mistaken. They can understand the "thing in itself" as a computer program.

If one jumps from a building believing the fall is an illusion, the computer, nonetheless, gives one the appropriate visual experience of falling, and the fall still looks dangerous, but, if one doesn't believe in the causal laws governing falls, one understands one is free from the causal consequences, viz. getting hurt, and that somehow blocks the visual and tactile experiences one would have had as one was spattered over the pavement. One's disbelief in the illusion somehow forces the computer to give one the experience of still being intact. Or, to take a simpler example, if one doesn't accept the causal relations of rigidity and force, when one's brain gives out the neural output of bending a spoon, the computer is forced to give back the visual input that the spoon is bending. This is a literal example of what Morpheus calls "bending the rules." Likewise, if one believes that one can stop bullets, one will look for them where one stopped them and the computer will obediently display them there. So, after he learns the Matrix world is an illusion, Neo doesn't see things differently - the impulses to his brain still control what he sees - but he is able to do things that he couldn't do before (like bend spoons) and that affects what he sees (the spoon bending). How this suspension of causality works in not explained in the film.

It's easy to think that this is a Gnostic, Buddhist or Platonic/Christian parable, in which what we take to be reality is an illusion, and we have to wake from the world of appearances to some kind of higher spiritual reality. On this reading, Neo would lead people out of the illusions of Plato's cave, the veil of Maya, or the darkness of the world into a disembodied eternal life. But this association would be all wrong! True, the conformist Matrix world is a sort of tranquilizing illusion and Neo will lead us out of it. But this does not mean learning that our mortal bodies are an illusion and that salvation consists in leaving our vulnerable bodies behind in exchange for some kind of eternal bliss. In the film, salvation means the absolute opposite of this religious dream. True, the ones who see through the illusion of the Matrix can get over some of the limitations of having a body.23 But such flying takes place in the Matrix world. In the real world to which Neo "awakes" and into which he will, we suppose, eventually lead everyone, there will be no more flying. People will have earth-bound, vulnerable bodies and suffer cold, bad food, and death. It may look like Neo evades death, but his "resurrection" in the hovercraft is not to a world where death has been overcome by a miraculous divine love, rather, he has been saved by a loving intervention _ a sort of tender CPR _ quite within the bounds of physics and chemistry. So he still has his vulnerable body and will have to die a real death one day. What he has gotten over is not death but the herd's fear of death that presumably inhibits people in the Matrix world, and he has thereby overcome the most serious constraint that people normally accept.

The Matrix - Our Future?

by Kevin Warwick

With the port connected into my nervous system, my brain was directly connected to a computer and thence on to the network. I considered myself to be a Cyborg: part human, part machine. In The Matrix, the story revolves around the battle between humans and intelligent robots. Yet Neo, and most of the other humans, each have their own brain port. When out of the Matrix, they are undoubtedly human; but while they are in the Matrix, there can be no question that they are no longer human, but rather are Cyborgs. The real battle then becomes not one of humans versus intelligent robots but of Cyborgs versus intelligent robots.

The status of an individual whilst within the Matrix raises several key issues. For example, when they are connected are Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity individuals within the Matrix? Or do they have brains which are part human, part machine? Are they themselves effectively a node on the Matrix, sharing common brain elements with others? It must be remembered that ordinarily human brains operate in a stand-alone mode, whereas computer-brained robots are invariably networked. When connected into a network, as in the Matrix, and as in my own case as a Cyborg, individuality takes on a different form. There is a unique, usually human element, and then a common, networked machine element.

As a brain ages, or as a result of an accident, the brain's workings can change; this often appears to the individual to be a change in what is perceived rather than a change in that which is perceiving. In other words, the individual thinks it must be the world that has changed, not his or her brain. Where a brain is part of a network, however, there is a possibility for alternative viewpoints to be proposed by different nodes on the network. This is not something that individual humans are used to. An individual brain tends to draw only one conclusion at a time. In some types of schizophrenia this conclusion can be confused and can change over time; it is more usually the case, though, that such an individual will draw a conclusion about what is perceived that is very much at variance with the conclusion of other individuals. For the most part, what is deemed by society to be `reality' at any point, far from being an absolute, is merely a commonly agreed set of values based on the perceptions of a group of individuals.

Neo is kidnapped by Luddites, dinosaurs from the past when humans ruled the earth. It's not the future. We are in reality heading towards a world run by machines with an intelligence far superior to that of an individual human. But by linking into the network and becoming a Cyborg, life can appear to be even better than it is now. We really need to clamp down on the party-pooper Neos of this world and get into the future as soon as we can_a future in which we can be part of a Matrix system, which is morally far superior to our Neolithic morals of today.

Brain-in-a-Vat Skepticism

by Christopher Grau

Descartes (Meditations, 15)

Instead of having just one brain in a vat, we could imagine that all human beings (perhaps all sentient beings) are brains in a vat (or nervous systems in a vat in case some beings with just nervous systems count as ‘sentient'). Of course, the evil scientist would have to be outside? or would he? Perhaps there is no evil scientist, perhaps (though this is absurd) the universe just happens to consist of automatic machinery tending a vat full of brains and nervous systems. This time let us suppose that the automatic machinery is programmed to give us all a collective hallucination, rather than a number of separate unrelated hallucinations. Thus, when I seem to myself to be talking to you, you seem to yourself to be hearing my words…. I want now to ask a question which will seem very silly and obvious (at least to some people, including some very sophisticated philosophers), but which will take us to real philosophical depths rather quickly. Suppose this whole story were actually true. Could we, if we were brains in a vat in this way, say or think that we were? (Reason, Truth, and History, 7)

Putnam's surprising answer is that we cannot coherently think that we are brains in vats, and so skepticism of that kind can never really get off the ground. While it is difficult to do justice to Putnam's ingenious argument in a short summary, his point is roughly as follows:

Not everything that goes through our heads is a genuine thought, and far from everything we say is a meaningful utterance. Sometimes we get confused or think in an incoherent manner -- sometimes we say things that are simply nonsense. Of course, we don't always realize at the time that we aren't making sense -- sometimes we earnestly believe we are saying (or thinking) something meaningful. High on Nitrous Oxide, the philosopher William James was convinced he was having profound insights into the nature of reality -- he was convinced that his thoughts were both sensical and important. Upon sobering up and looking at the notebook in which he had written his drug-addled thoughts, he saw only gibberish.

Just as I might say a sentence that is nonsense, I might also use a name or a general term which is meaningless in the sense that it fails to hook up to the world. Philosophers talk of such a term as "failing to refer" to an object. In order to successfully refer when we use language, there must be an appropriate relationship between the speaker and the object referred to. If a dog playing on the beach manages to scrawl the word "Ed" in the sand with a stick, few would want to claim that the dog actually meant to refer to someone named Ed. Presumably the dog doesn't know anyone named Ed, and even if he did, he wouldn't be capable of intending to write Ed's name in the sand. The point of such an example is that words do not refer to objects "magically" or intrinsically: certain conditions must be met in the world in order for us to accept that a given written or spoken word has any meaning and whether it actually refers to anything at all.

Putnam claims that one condition which is crucial for successful reference is that there be an appropriate causal connection between the object referred to and the speaker referring. Specifying exactly what should count as "appropriate" here is a notoriously difficult task, but we can get some idea of the kind of thing required by considering cases in which reference fails through an inappropriate connection: if someone unfamiliar with the film The Matrix manages to blurt out the word "Neo" while sneezing, few would be inclined to think that this person has actually referred to the character Neo. The kind of causal connection between the speaker and the object referred to (Neo) is just not in place. For reference to succeed, it can't be simply accidental that the name was uttered. (Another way to think about it: the sneezer would have uttered "Neo" even if the film The Matrix had never been made.) The difficulty, according to Putnam, in coherently supposing the brain in a vat story to be true is that brains raised in such an environment could not successfully refer to genuine brains, or vats, or anything else in the real world. Consider the example of someone who has lived their entire life in the Matrix: when they talk of "chickens," they don't actually refer to real chickens; at best they refer to the computer representations of chickens that have been sent to their brain. Similarly, when they talk of human bodies being trapped in pods and fed data by the Matrix, they don't successfully refer to real bodies or pods -- they can't refer to physical bodies in the real world because they cannot have the appropriate causal connection to such objects. Thus, if someone were to utter the sentence "I am simply a body stuck in a pod somewhere being fed sensory information by a computer" that sentence would itself be necessarily false. If the person is in fact not trapped in the Matrix, then the sentence is straightforwardly false. If the person is trapped in the Matrix, then he can't successfully refer to real human bodies when he utters the word "human body," and so it appears that his statement must also be false. Such a person seems thus doubly trapped: incapable of knowing that he is in the Matrix, and even incapable of successfully expressing the thought that he might be in the Matrix! (Could this be why at one point Morpheus tells Neo that "no one can be told what the Matrix is"?)

Ein relativ guter Überblick über die Idee von "Brains in a vat" findet sich hier: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brain-vat/ --Yadseut 14:05, 4. Nov. 2010 (UTC)