The Matrix example as an approach to the question of the meaning of truth.

[TheVisionofEr]

I use an oft cited example from The Matrix 1999, in order to investigate what human beings mean by truth. A man can have Rindfleisch, steak, and a sexy wife with intoxicated flesh obsessed by her handsome and wealthy husband in a fictional world which will seem to him as though true. On the other hand the true world is a harsh desert. It is more noble to accept the truth even though this objectivity is a harsh desert. The Truth is thereby shown to be preferable to even the most pleasant or good fiction. The fictional good can not be equal to the real good of the truth. The truth is unpleasant, but it is good because it is true. However, what draws our attention to this account of truth is that as it turns out the rationale for choosing the harsh desert is the possibility of a real or true overcoming of the unpleasant difficulties. The fiction is pleasant, but offers no approach to the real difficulties, and therefore no real good can ever be achieved. The good of the harsh desert is exactly that it is the way to the true good. Thus, the example is like the theoretical teaching of Francis Bacon. We must obey nature or the external world in order to conquer nature or the external world.

In subsequent episodes of the film the distinction between the true and the false is so thoroughly undermined as to disappear in the chaos which comes to invade the whole of time.

[Impenitent]

you are still a brain in a vat

-Imp

[tapaticmadness]

you are still a brain in a vat

-Imp

Both of you guys are substantialists. By that I mean that you both think there is a substantial world apart from the world of appearances. I am an anti-substantialist. No matter, no mind that all the phenomena are "in". The phenomena are real. And that's all there is. The desert and the world of sensual pleasure and the brain vat are all equal. And they are all real.