In 1999, a movie called The Matrix forced a generation of Americans to confront a terrifying possibility: Keanu Reeves might make more movies.
Though no one at the time could have envisioned the train wreck that would become Constantine
things turned out as badly as we had feared. Another slightly less terrifying possibility raised by the same film remains shrouded in mystery: Might it be that the world around us is just a simulation piped directly into our brains by evil supercomputers?
And if so, what are the cheat codes? Most people probably were not too concerned with that problem at the time, focusing instead on the impending Y2K crisis and cementing the decade's legacy for the VH1 shows of the future. Still, the possibility that our world is just a less fun version of Halo remains distinct. How can we really know that isn't the case? The answer, disappointing as it may be, is that we cannot. There's simply no conceivable evidence that could prove - beyond a doubt - that we don't live in a Matrix-scenario. As Keanu might say, Whoa ... bummer.
That a mediocre sci-fi film can undermine such a seemingly fundamental assumption about our world might come as a shock. But it raises another question: What do we know for sure? Luckily for us, a compelling answer to this question was set forth about 400 years before the world had ever heard of a computer geek named Neo.
In 1641, Rene Descartes published a book called Meditations on First Philosophy. In the book, he seeks to determine exactly which parts of our knowledge are beyond doubt. He does this through a method - Methodological Doubt - which basically means doubting everything he can think of a possible reason to question. Descartes' first target is empirical knowledge, or in other words, sense experience. It certainly seems to me that right now I am sitting in front of a computer typing words into it. When I pick up the glass of water I'm drinking, I can feel the glass in my hand and taste the water. It must likewise seem to you that you are reading a newspaper, perhaps ignoring a professor as you do so. You can touch the paper, though I would advise against it as the cheap ink always comes off on your hands.
What reasons does either of us have to doubt our respective senses? Even though Descartes was working long before evil super computers were even imagined, he still had a ready answer: Our senses deceive us on a nightly basis; that is, they deceive us whenever we dream. So why should we trust them now?
With all our sensory data thrown into question, the pool of knowledge we can know with certainty has shrunk drastically - but it's not yet empty. There is still everyone's favorite grade school subject: arithmetic. Whether we are dreaming, in an evil robot simulation or on reality TV, two plus two still equals four.
Not so fast, says Descartes. Your puny human mind could be manipulated by a higher power. Isn't it possible that every time you try to work out two plus two in your head, an evil and apparently math-hating God reaches down his hand and messes you up? That certainly would have been a handy excuse to have in grade school. Now things are looking pretty dim. No knowledge we get through our senses can be trusted, and anything else we think we might know could possibly be manipulated by an all-powerful God - who apparently loves a good joke. What, then, could we possibly know? Descartes thought long and hard about this, and as he was thinking, he came up with an answer: he knew he was thinking. Whether he was awake or asleep, he was still definitely thinking. Even if an evil God could interfere with his thinking, the God could not change the fact that he was thinking. When he discovered this, Descartes uttered the now famous words, I think therefore I am. And in doing, he so established a small outpost of certainty in what is largely an uncertain world. And he didn't even have to know kung fu.
- Ben Kington is a senior philosophy major. Send him an e-mail at bk198002@ohiou.edu.
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