SEM. Simulacrum — a failure to represent/refer

"This is the world that you know. The world as it was at
the end of the twentieth century. It exists now only as
part of a neural-interactive simulation, that _we_ call
the Matrix."

Morpheus is telling Neo that he has been living in inside the "map", not the "territory", as Baudrillard famously cites Borges in his Simulacrum and Simulation.

Putnam Hilary’s thought experiment of a brain in a vat illustrates a similar idea. He argues that a brain in a vat cannot meaningfully express the idea that “I am a brain in a vat” because by saying “brain” and “vat”, it is not referring to the brains and vats real-life people have experienced; instead, it was the electrical signals conceive me to believe are brains and vats.

Even though Neo has just briefly experienced the “real” world of Zion, his judgment of reality is still based on his memory and habitual belief in the Matrix. Therefore, his concept of the real is a simulation rather than a representation. In other words, it is the true, but not the real; it is a hyper-real.


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