René Descartes Meditations On First Philosophy

Another philosophical reference found in the Matrix is the work of René Descartes. He is responsible for Cartesian coordinates, a system that specifies each point uniquely in a plane by a pair of numerical coordinates, and the phrase, “I think, therefore I am.” In his book Meditations on First Philosophy, he poses the question of how we can know that the world we experience daily is not an illusion being forced upon us by an evil demon. Because we believe what we see and feel when we are dreaming, how can we trust that our senses will tell us when we are no longer dreaming. If senses cannot provide us with proof that the world we live in actually exists, then senses are unreliable and that for all we know, the world might be under the control