Tumbling Down The Rabbit Hole

Tumbling Down the Rabbit Hole

Introduction

The chapter “Tumbling Down the Rabbit Hole” in the book “Introducing Philosophy through Pop Culture” written by Matt Lawrence. There are a number of important themes on which this chapter has been based. It is very important to understand that philosophy is a wide field and it involves a number of important themes that make up the entire subject of philosophy. The main themes that have been included in the chapter 'Tumbling Down the Rabbit Hole” include knowledge, reality and skepticism. Skepticism is generally referred to any questioning attitude towards facts, knowledge, opinions or doubts regarding the claims that are taken for granted elsewhere. The thesis statement that could be developed is “Skepticism is a concept in philosophy that leads to the situation of questioning knowledge and opinions of the people.” The core focus of this paper is to discuss the concept of skepticism along with a number of examples to make this concept easier to understand.

Discussion

A very significant misconception is that skeptics or critical thinkers are considered to be the people who disbelieve the things. This misconception is famous because the word skeptical is very commonly used. For instance, if we use a sentence that a person is skeptical about the figures presented in a spreadsheet, that means he doubted the validity or the reliability of the figures presented in the spreadsheet. A feeling of being skeptical about things refers to being doubtful about those things and disbelieving them. It is also very important to understand that the true meaning of skepticism is not related to disbelief, doubt or negativity. Skepticism basically refers to the process of applying reason or critical thinking for determining the validity (Landesman, 2003). It is basically a process of finding a supported conclusion rather than providing a justification of a preconceived conclusion.

If we take the example of Matrix, the concept of skepticism is very significant in the setup of this movie. It is presented that Matrix itself is another form of reality. The actions that have been presented by the people in the Matrix are perceived by the mind as real, despite of the existence of these actions as simulation. Thus, it is perceived that if an individual is killed within the matrix, then that individual would also be considered as dead in the real world because the mind perceives the actions which occur ...