The Thirteenth Floor: Cognitive Constructs of Reality

Within the movie, the theme of reality based on perception is a central focus. After Hannon Fuller, the millionaire, is murdered, his friend Hall dives into a 1937 world simulation to follow clues about the murderer. As he is working his way through the simulated reality, which is very real, the people and places are familiar and based on the characters from his 1990 life in Los Angeles. As changes are made to his 1990 reality, the characters have assumed new roles but still look the same as before. Hall’s own figure is actually David, who was the one committing the murders. When Hall wakes up in the real world, in 2024, he realized that he was living in a simulation as well. Because each life or reality is based on the same characters, stories and places, it is all based off of the perception of an individual. The only things that are physically real, even in the virtual realities, are what are extended from his perception. 

The notion of perception dictating what is real is fully correlated to Berkeley’s model of subjective idealism, in which physical objects are just ideas. Indeed, without a mind to perceive the environment, events or people, nothing would exist. All of the qualities of objects and anything physical comes from it being perceived by someone or some eternal spirit. The eternal spirit within the movie is the simulated reality, which is a mega computer hosting the environment which is molded by the memories and perceptions of the people within it. Berkeley also remarked that an object cannot exist without being perceived as it would not have any qualities. Since physical objects must have qualities and characteristics, they must come from perceptions.

Existence based on perception is epitomized in the film on two primary occasions. Firstly, when Hall takes Hannon’s advice and tries to find a place that he has never been to before, he drove to the outskirts of town. To his astonishment, all he could see at the end was a green frame of a landscape. In relation, because he had never perceived that area before and the virtual reality had no traces of it, it did not exist. Thus, as there was no perception of the area in reality by the character or the computers, it did not exist: without perception there was no reality, Berkeley’s notion. The second scene is where Hall actually changes his body and moves his consciousness at the end of the movie. Because he was able to shift his mind, it shows that the mind is actually distinct from the ideas we have, or reality. This was the sole reason that the virtual realities even existed. Because the mind was able to move independently of realities (or merely ideas), the movie supported Berkeley’s notion of independence of ideas, the mind and objects.

As Hall switched between worlds and bodies in the movie, his physical reality was distinct from his mind and body while being based on his perceptions. The central theme of the movie was the power of perception as the characters and events all closely resembled a similar script of what he thought was real. Moreover, the scene of going to a new place showed that the landscape did not exist because it was not perceived, so it had no characteristics except those given by default from the computer. Finally, because Hall was able to freely move through the virtual realities and switch bodies, realities and places, the clear mutually exclusive nature of mind, body, reality and ideas was shown.