In this thesis I examine the philosophical views of John Searle, Guy Debord, and Jean Baudrillard. These thinkers have radically different methodologies and theoretical alignments, but they are not entirely dissimilar. John Searle argues that there are two types of facts—those independent of human observation and those whose meaning depends on agreement. Guy Debord posits that modern society ha...

Philosophers can get pretty excited about The Matrix . An apparent exception is Jean Baudrillard, the author of Simulacra and Simulation (henceforth, S&S), the book that appears in the movie. Numerous sources report Baudrillard saying that the movie “stemmed mostly from misunderstandings” of his work. So a natural point of inquiry has been whether or not this is true. Yeffeth (2002) contains tw...

ion today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory—precession of simulacra—it is the map that ...

ion today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory precession of simulacra it is the map that ...