Experience, Reason and the Matrix Machine. A Genetic View on Knowledge and Meaning Production

Abstract

The Matrix film trilogy is an artistic reflection on the fuzzy limits between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ realities, the nature of human feelings and our struggle for freedom. It offers a powerful metaphor that provides plenty of food for theoretical thought. In particular, I think it offers a good of entry into questions about reason, cognition and experience. In this paper I will argue that semiotics (of a Peircean kind) may offer an explanation of the development of different varieties of experience from which subjectivity and rational knowledge can emerge.