Reference no: EM133382215

Case Study: The human quest for freedom, like the human quest for knowledge, is as inherent to the philosophical discussion as the age-old topic of the good life.

For this discussion board topic, just as in the Discussion Board topic for Unit 3, I would like to bring in a very famous example that Rene Descartes initially concocted--"The Brain in a Vat/Jar Example," which was most recently adapted into the most famous movie trilogy of "The Matrix." Suppose you haven't seen this movie, no worries. In that case, I will do my best here to set up the background information for the Matrix movies that, again, originally stems from Descartes's aforementioned example. [This Example/Case centers around the two big issues of "Knowledge" & "Human Freedom"]

Example/Case--[A future nuclear apocalypse has occurred on Earth due to the intelligent machines that humans built to monitor these nuclear weapons. That is to say, these machines in the form of artificial intelligence, have acquired minds of their own and have used these man-made weapons against us in their attempt to rule the world. Now after this nuclear war, there were a handful of human survivors. The intelligent machines took these humans and harvested and reproduced them like we presently do with vegetables and fruit, in which we humans are stored in massive towers of pods where these machines extract a great number of our vital fluids and energy for themselves to power their artificial machine bodies and minds. Now in these pods where we lay for life, are minds are still working and in our minds, we think in this post-apocalyptic age that we are living normal lives; yet, the fact is that the machines are in control/power where they are in charge of our thoughts and ideas and the lives we think we lead are just a mental sham. Now it must be noted that for many of us in this made-up mental state/life, our lives are good and pleasurable lives where we have more than we need to survive and where we are living out blissfully ignorant lives.]

Now if one were told the truth of the present world as described in the above case/example, and if allowed to escape this mental sham state and live a more free life in the harsh/brutal present post-apocalyptic versus being controlled by machines in a mental sham state--what would you choose:

Questions:

A) To escape this mental sham state and live a more free life although definitely a more rough and rugged one in the present harsh world that has been massively destroyed by nuclear warfare-or-

B) Choose to remain plugged in to the machine-governed mental sham state and seemingly, in a mental sense, have all the amenities we do now? The big question here is, Would you rather live life as free poor pauper where you are in control of everything you do have, albeit very minimal-or-Would you rather live life as a slave under someone else's control where you are given every amenity you could ask for?

Finally, based upon your above answer-why, do you think it's either important or not important for us humans to live freely?