The Matrix as Philosophy: Understanding Knowledge, Belief, Choice, and Reality

Abstract

The Matrix trilogy’s narrative asks if what we claim to know affects our beliefs, if what we believe affects what we claim to know, and how these competing issues ultimately affect our choices and how they shape our reality. Do we choose what we know? Can we choose what to believe? And if so, does our reality, rooted in knowledge or belief, also become a choice? Given the rise of skepticism seen in the first two decades of the twenty-first century – where entire movements of people choose to reject knowledge, facts, truth, learning, experts, science, and reality – these questions do not just characterize the narrative of The Matrix. They also illustrate the precarious nature of our contemporary world. Thus, understanding how The Matrix and its sequels grapple with the relationship between knowledge, belief, choice, and reality, can help us understand why these issues continue to remain important to the realities we experience. The Matrix trilogy’s significance resides in its ending, which represents the idea of choosing and creating a new reality. Ultimately, choice matters – choosing what to believe and what to know – because choice allows for the possibility that creation and change are imaginable and achievable within a world that is otherwise predetermined. Thus, we aren’t just choosing beliefs, knowledge, and realities, we’re also giving meaning to the beliefs, knowledge, and realities we claim. From this, our lives have meaning, too.