Wikipedia post about Robert Nozik's Experience Machine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_Machine
Think about how this experience machine is similar to the life Christof created for Truman in the town of Seahaven.
In his Meditations On First Philosophy, Descartes locked himself in a romm and imagined that the entire world, outside of himself, was an illusion created by a cleaver and malicious demon. He concluded that if such a demon existed, all assumptions would have to be called into question. (Kimberly A. Blessing)
"The sky, the air, the earth, colors, shapes, sounds, and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgment. I shall consider myself as not having hands, or eyes, or flesh, or blood, or senses, but as falsely believing that I have all these things" (Descartes)
Descartes concluded that the demon could never make him doubt his own existence as a thinking being. "What am I?-A thing that thinks." (Kimberly A. Blessing)
What are the similarities between Christof and Descartes' "cleaver and malicious demon?"
Is Truman's struggle to understand his world similar to the struggle that Descartes undertook during his meditations?
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