What do you think?
Rate this book
Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy
Virtual reality is genuine reality; that’s the central thesis of Reality+. In a highly original work of “technophilosophy,” David J. Chalmers gives a compelling analysis of our technological future. He argues that virtual worlds are not second-class worlds, and that we can live a meaningful life in virtual reality. We may even be in a virtual world already.
Along the way, Chalmers conducts a grand tour of big ideas in philosophy and science. He uses virtual reality technology to offer a new perspective on long-established philosophical questions. How do we know that there’s an external world? Is there a god? What is the nature of reality? What’s the relation between mind and body? How can we lead a good life? All of these questions are illuminated or transformed by Chalmers’ mind-bending analysis.
Studded with illustrations that bring philosophical issues to life, Reality+ is a major statement that will shape discussion of philosophy, science, and technology for years to come.
Along the way, Chalmers conducts a grand tour of big ideas in philosophy and science. He uses virtual reality technology to offer a new perspective on long-established philosophical questions. How do we know that there’s an external world? Is there a god? What is the nature of reality? What’s the relation between mind and body? How can we lead a good life? All of these questions are illuminated or transformed by Chalmers’ mind-bending analysis.
Studded with illustrations that bring philosophical issues to life, Reality+ is a major statement that will shape discussion of philosophy, science, and technology for years to come.
544 pages, Hardcover
First published January 25, 2022
About the author
David J. Chalmers
28 books460 followersDavid Chalmers is University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and codirector of the Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness at New York University. He is the author of The Conscious Mind, The Character of Consciousness, and Constructing the World. He has given the John Locke Lectures and has been awarded the Jean Nicod Prize. He is known for formulating the “hard problem” of consciousness, which inspired Tom Stoppard’s play The Hard Problem, and for the idea of the “extended mind,” which says that the tools we use can become parts of our minds.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 172 reviews
February 23, 2022
The simulation hypothesis states that, as civilizations advance, they develop the capability to simulate entire worlds, and once they do, they will create hundreds or even thousands of them. With hundreds or thousands of simulations running, the number of individuals within simulations will far outnumber non-simulated individuals in the universe. And if that’s the case, then it’s more likely that you exist within a simulation than in a non-simulated world. Therefore, it’s reasonable for you to believe that this has already happened, and that you currently inhabit a simulation.
Some people, like David Chalmers, believe that this argument should be taken seriously. While Chalmers doesn’t claim to know we are living in a simulation, he does think it’s a serious possibility, enough so to write an entire book about the prospect and what it means for the future of our VR and augmented reality technologies.
I, for one, do not find the simulation hypothesis to be persuasive. While I might ultimately be living in a simulation, and I can’t prove that I’m not, this is not the same thing as making the claim that it is reasonable for me to suppose that I am, especially without any convincing evidence.
Chalmer's argument makes a few critical mistakes: (1) it inappropriately shifts the burden of proof, (2) it incorrectly assumes that knowledge requires certainty, and (3) it seriously underestimates the difficulty involved in creating simulations of entire worlds with conscious inhabitants.
Chalmers makes all of these mistakes in his latest book, Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy. The problem for the reader is, if you don’t find the simulation hypothesis to be persuasive, you’re not going to find the rest of the book to be very persuasive (or, at times, very interesting) either. If you do find the simulation hypothesis to be persuasive, however, you will learn more about its implications than you ever could have imagined.
Despite disagreeing with Chalmers, I did find his arguments to be well presented and thought-provoking nonetheless. Chalmers uses the simulation hypothesis—along with VR technology—to introduce the full spectrum of philosophical problems ranging from the nature of reality, knowledge, and values to the deepest questions we can ask about the mind, language, science, religion, and politics. It’s a fascinating journey and an interesting spin on the problems of philosophy, but in the end, in my mind, it’s an ultimately misguided one.
Some people, like David Chalmers, believe that this argument should be taken seriously. While Chalmers doesn’t claim to know we are living in a simulation, he does think it’s a serious possibility, enough so to write an entire book about the prospect and what it means for the future of our VR and augmented reality technologies.
I, for one, do not find the simulation hypothesis to be persuasive. While I might ultimately be living in a simulation, and I can’t prove that I’m not, this is not the same thing as making the claim that it is reasonable for me to suppose that I am, especially without any convincing evidence.
Chalmer's argument makes a few critical mistakes: (1) it inappropriately shifts the burden of proof, (2) it incorrectly assumes that knowledge requires certainty, and (3) it seriously underestimates the difficulty involved in creating simulations of entire worlds with conscious inhabitants.
Chalmers makes all of these mistakes in his latest book, Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy. The problem for the reader is, if you don’t find the simulation hypothesis to be persuasive, you’re not going to find the rest of the book to be very persuasive (or, at times, very interesting) either. If you do find the simulation hypothesis to be persuasive, however, you will learn more about its implications than you ever could have imagined.
Despite disagreeing with Chalmers, I did find his arguments to be well presented and thought-provoking nonetheless. Chalmers uses the simulation hypothesis—along with VR technology—to introduce the full spectrum of philosophical problems ranging from the nature of reality, knowledge, and values to the deepest questions we can ask about the mind, language, science, religion, and politics. It’s a fascinating journey and an interesting spin on the problems of philosophy, but in the end, in my mind, it’s an ultimately misguided one.
January 25, 2022
Thanks to major IT companies putting a lot of time and effort into it (not to mention changing their company names), virtual reality is rarely out of the news at the moment. So it's timely that David Chalmers should attempt an exploration of the nature of virtual reality. What he sets out to persuade us is that 'virtual reality is genuine reality'. That virtual worlds don't have to be illusory, the objects within virtual worlds are real, life can be good and meaningful in a virtual world and that the simulation hypothesis - the idea that what we usually think of as reality could itself be virtual, while not provable could be true.
I became a little wary early on as Chalmers is clearly a virtual reality enthusiast: he tells us he has 'numerous virtual reality systems' in his study. This is not normal. You might think from all the hype that everyone except you is an inhabitant of virtual worlds, but it's still a pretty small minority - around the 1 per cent mark in the UK - and there highly focussed on young gamers. Until the whole business is far less cumbersome and more high quality, I can't see it becoming mass market. (Remember when everyone was supposed to be watching 3D TV within a few years. That went well.)
However, while I don't agree with Chalmers on the idea that VR will soon be ubiquitous, I was still interested to see his arguments. Unfortunately, they turned out to be classic waffly philosophical ones. There was never any convincing evidence, for example, that VR was in any sense real - in the sense, for example, that without necessarily being able to vocalise it, we know what reality is and it should not be capable of being switched off. In a sense this issue reflects the nature of philosophy. I can define an object in a way that requires it to be made of atoms: quite clearly then it is not true that objects in virtual reality are real. That doesn't make me right - but equally it can't be countered.
I'll be honest, I found the constant philosophical noodling tedious - this is real 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin' territory. (Funnily enough, there is little evidence much time was ever spent discussing angels and pinheads in reality - by which I don't mean virtual reality.) Because of the VR context I had expected more scientific basis for the content, but there was very little that went beyond attempts at proof by argument rather than evidence. The handwaving felt distinctly frustrating, but I suppose it's the nature of philosophy.
Chalmers had an interesting idea to explore virtual reality's relationship with true reality - and the book is worthwhile because of that - but I didn't feel I had learnt much at the end of its 450+ pages.
I became a little wary early on as Chalmers is clearly a virtual reality enthusiast: he tells us he has 'numerous virtual reality systems' in his study. This is not normal. You might think from all the hype that everyone except you is an inhabitant of virtual worlds, but it's still a pretty small minority - around the 1 per cent mark in the UK - and there highly focussed on young gamers. Until the whole business is far less cumbersome and more high quality, I can't see it becoming mass market. (Remember when everyone was supposed to be watching 3D TV within a few years. That went well.)
However, while I don't agree with Chalmers on the idea that VR will soon be ubiquitous, I was still interested to see his arguments. Unfortunately, they turned out to be classic waffly philosophical ones. There was never any convincing evidence, for example, that VR was in any sense real - in the sense, for example, that without necessarily being able to vocalise it, we know what reality is and it should not be capable of being switched off. In a sense this issue reflects the nature of philosophy. I can define an object in a way that requires it to be made of atoms: quite clearly then it is not true that objects in virtual reality are real. That doesn't make me right - but equally it can't be countered.
I'll be honest, I found the constant philosophical noodling tedious - this is real 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin' territory. (Funnily enough, there is little evidence much time was ever spent discussing angels and pinheads in reality - by which I don't mean virtual reality.) Because of the VR context I had expected more scientific basis for the content, but there was very little that went beyond attempts at proof by argument rather than evidence. The handwaving felt distinctly frustrating, but I suppose it's the nature of philosophy.
Chalmers had an interesting idea to explore virtual reality's relationship with true reality - and the book is worthwhile because of that - but I didn't feel I had learnt much at the end of its 450+ pages.
February 3, 2022
Terribly repetitive, speculative, and overall underwhelming for what could have been a very thoughtful, investigative book. I never leave reviews; that's how disappointed I am.
January 2, 2024
There’s an idea, discussed widely these days, that what we call “the universe” may be a simulation running on a gigantic computer: the Simulation Hypothesis. Now, if you like you can simply take this literally (as Hollywood has done), but for me its real interest is that it provides a fresh new way of looking at stale, often millennia-old, questions. For example, back in the 17th Century René Descartes was asking: how can I know that anything outside my own head is real? What if I’m dreaming all this, or some evil demon is deceiving me into thinking there’s a world out there when there isn’t? Were he alive today in the computer age, Descartes’ question would be more along the lines of: how can I know that I’m not in some kind of simulation?
David Chalmers’ Reality+ explores this new angle on philosophy. It covers: the nature of knowledge (i. e. how we know about the outside world) and how far we can trust that knowledge; the nature of the world (or universe) we are looking at; the nature of the instrument (mind) doing the looking; God (as creator of that universe, and possible nature of); value (what is “good”, what is “right”)…all squinted at through the newfangled lens of the Simulation Hypothesis. In addition, there’s something even newer too—virtual reality—and, while still unwieldy at present (headset, gloves and so on), it’s certain to become ever more subtle and invasive. Much of this book is about VR and what it may already be telling us about the relationship between mind and world. Running through it is what Chalmers calls “Simulation realism”, his contention that virtual objects are real—i.e. things which are part of a virtual world are real in the fullest sense of that word; and that if something (or someone) is part of a simulation, that doesn’t make it (or them) any less real.
Chalmers, a philosopher himself, makes his case very well, and one particular chapter out of the book’s twenty-four contained an idea so striking I’ve been mulling it over myself ever since. As for the Simulation Hypothesis itself though, I’m not, so far, persuaded by that. But it is like opening a window and letting some fresh clean air into the musty atmosphere of a philosophy class; and what’s also obvious to me is that, as we begin to design and run simulated universes ourselves, it’s going to let in a whole lot more.
David Chalmers’ Reality+ explores this new angle on philosophy. It covers: the nature of knowledge (i. e. how we know about the outside world) and how far we can trust that knowledge; the nature of the world (or universe) we are looking at; the nature of the instrument (mind) doing the looking; God (as creator of that universe, and possible nature of); value (what is “good”, what is “right”)…all squinted at through the newfangled lens of the Simulation Hypothesis. In addition, there’s something even newer too—virtual reality—and, while still unwieldy at present (headset, gloves and so on), it’s certain to become ever more subtle and invasive. Much of this book is about VR and what it may already be telling us about the relationship between mind and world. Running through it is what Chalmers calls “Simulation realism”, his contention that virtual objects are real—i.e. things which are part of a virtual world are real in the fullest sense of that word; and that if something (or someone) is part of a simulation, that doesn’t make it (or them) any less real.
Chalmers, a philosopher himself, makes his case very well, and one particular chapter out of the book’s twenty-four contained an idea so striking I’ve been mulling it over myself ever since. As for the Simulation Hypothesis itself though, I’m not, so far, persuaded by that. But it is like opening a window and letting some fresh clean air into the musty atmosphere of a philosophy class; and what’s also obvious to me is that, as we begin to design and run simulated universes ourselves, it’s going to let in a whole lot more.
September 17, 2022
The book deals with several philosophical questions that may seem a little contrived today but are likely to become relevant to our day-to-day life in the near future. The primary focus here is to gain a broader understanding of what we call Reality. At a superficial level, we only call the physical and verifiable surroundings Real, like the chair, the orange, the sun, and you and me. However, increasingly we are entering alternative realities in video games, Augmented Realities, Virtual Realities, and other computer-simulated environments. So far, these synthetic realities are easily recognizable as distinct from the Real world, but inevitably, over time, the two will come closer. The author tries to argue that intrinsically these digital worlds are as real as our physical world and makes a strong case for why we need to broaden our definition of Real.
This argument becomes more poignant when he brings up the issue of whether we are already in a giant computer simulation. Many other philosophers have discussed this possibility, and people like Nick Bostrom also tried to argue that based on statistical reasoning, we are more likely to be a simulation than not. If we accept this point of view, then the thing that we call our objective reality may itself be a construction of the simulation we live in. There is no obvious way to prove that we are not in a simulation.
While I could agree with the first claim that we need to expand our notion of Reality, I am far less convinced of the simulation argument. I am not claiming it is provably wrong, but I believe there are arguments to show that it is extremely unlikely. Here's one example argument. If someone tries to simulate the current world in which the simulation is taking place, then this simulation must also include a simulation of the computer on which the simulation is happening. Whenever a computer tries to simulate itself, the resulting simulated computer will have to be many times slower than the original computer because it must simulate all the internal states explicitly. This does not pose a conceptual problem because if the original computer is incredibly fast, the simulation can still run at a decent speed. However, the simulated computer cannot have the same memory capacity as the original computer since every memory location of the simulated machine must be represented by a memory location in the physical computer. If the physical computer is simulating a whole world, which includes many such simulated things, including this simulated computer, then the simulated computer will have a tiny fraction of the memory capacity of the original machine. Therefore, it is not possible to simulate a world that is at the same level of technology. The best we can do is to simulate an ancient world. I can think of many such arguments that can progressively weaken the probability that we are in a simulation.
As a pure thinker and as a philosopher, Chalmers' approach makes little distinction between what is possible and what is plausible. In his approach, anything that is possible is a plausible reality. I have a more realistic mindset, and therefore while I intellectually enjoy wild speculations, after a while, I find contemplating highly implausible scenarios a waste of time. For example, I don't want to spend too much time pondering if my mind is a Boltzmann Brain (a random arrangement of matter that has the same structural properties as my brain).
This is an important book as it raises questions that will become extremely relevant soon. However, the book could have been much shorter. I think in order to reach a philosophically less sophisticated audience, he made the book repetitive. There is also a propensity to tackle problems that are more akin to brain teasers than actual problems. The book also touched me at an emotional level because I spent several years more than a decade ago creating a series of mechanical art pieces, and the series was called "Synthetic Realities." I wanted to explore our emotional reactions to physical objects, like a pendulum, that look and feel real but are simulated and deliberately distort some physical principles (e.g. gravity)
This argument becomes more poignant when he brings up the issue of whether we are already in a giant computer simulation. Many other philosophers have discussed this possibility, and people like Nick Bostrom also tried to argue that based on statistical reasoning, we are more likely to be a simulation than not. If we accept this point of view, then the thing that we call our objective reality may itself be a construction of the simulation we live in. There is no obvious way to prove that we are not in a simulation.
While I could agree with the first claim that we need to expand our notion of Reality, I am far less convinced of the simulation argument. I am not claiming it is provably wrong, but I believe there are arguments to show that it is extremely unlikely. Here's one example argument. If someone tries to simulate the current world in which the simulation is taking place, then this simulation must also include a simulation of the computer on which the simulation is happening. Whenever a computer tries to simulate itself, the resulting simulated computer will have to be many times slower than the original computer because it must simulate all the internal states explicitly. This does not pose a conceptual problem because if the original computer is incredibly fast, the simulation can still run at a decent speed. However, the simulated computer cannot have the same memory capacity as the original computer since every memory location of the simulated machine must be represented by a memory location in the physical computer. If the physical computer is simulating a whole world, which includes many such simulated things, including this simulated computer, then the simulated computer will have a tiny fraction of the memory capacity of the original machine. Therefore, it is not possible to simulate a world that is at the same level of technology. The best we can do is to simulate an ancient world. I can think of many such arguments that can progressively weaken the probability that we are in a simulation.
As a pure thinker and as a philosopher, Chalmers' approach makes little distinction between what is possible and what is plausible. In his approach, anything that is possible is a plausible reality. I have a more realistic mindset, and therefore while I intellectually enjoy wild speculations, after a while, I find contemplating highly implausible scenarios a waste of time. For example, I don't want to spend too much time pondering if my mind is a Boltzmann Brain (a random arrangement of matter that has the same structural properties as my brain).
This is an important book as it raises questions that will become extremely relevant soon. However, the book could have been much shorter. I think in order to reach a philosophically less sophisticated audience, he made the book repetitive. There is also a propensity to tackle problems that are more akin to brain teasers than actual problems. The book also touched me at an emotional level because I spent several years more than a decade ago creating a series of mechanical art pieces, and the series was called "Synthetic Realities." I wanted to explore our emotional reactions to physical objects, like a pendulum, that look and feel real but are simulated and deliberately distort some physical principles (e.g. gravity)
January 29, 2022
I had fun with it, although I was hoping to be more surprised than I ended up being. Much of it can be summarized by Chalmers just extending the word "real" slightly to also encompass virtual objects that behave similarly to their physical counterparts in some relevant way. Interestingly, this extension was done mainly through an investigation of the implications of the simulation hypothesis, something I found that to be a surprisingly fruitful way of sneaking up on the problem of virtual worlds. The investigation also involved some interesting observations about God as a simulator and certain Cartesian-dualism-compatible scenarios.
The book is quite long and eventuality ended up being sort of a tour of many different areas of philosophy seen through the lense of virtual worlds. This might be a bit annoying to people who already know this stuff, but I didn't, and so I found this aspect of it to be largely helpful and it made me want to read more.
The book is quite long and eventuality ended up being sort of a tour of many different areas of philosophy seen through the lense of virtual worlds. This might be a bit annoying to people who already know this stuff, but I didn't, and so I found this aspect of it to be largely helpful and it made me want to read more.
January 19, 2022
Is virtual reality genuine reality? Are we all living in a simulated reality right now? Is it possible to lead a life in a virtual world that is just as good, or better, than “real life”? In Reality+, a philosopher explains his thoughts on these and six other common philosophical questions in our current computer-enhanced world.
I love a book that makes me stop reading and ponder what I just read. This book does this multiple times. The author takes complex ideas and breaks them down for non-brainiacs. Using pop culture references and cartoon illustrations allows everyone to understand his points.
If you are a gamer and/or loved The Matrix, you need to read this book. It will change the way you view the world. Reality+ also has some brilliant plot ideas for science fiction authors too. 5 stars and a favorite!
Thanks to W.W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.
I love a book that makes me stop reading and ponder what I just read. This book does this multiple times. The author takes complex ideas and breaks them down for non-brainiacs. Using pop culture references and cartoon illustrations allows everyone to understand his points.
If you are a gamer and/or loved The Matrix, you need to read this book. It will change the way you view the world. Reality+ also has some brilliant plot ideas for science fiction authors too. 5 stars and a favorite!
Thanks to W.W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.
March 30, 2022
3.5 rounded up. This is a 465 page book that could and should have been edited to 200 pages. Still, I encountered a ton of interesting and fun speculations on the nature of reality and the limits of knowledge and it was worth the effort.
June 27, 2022
"Reality Plus," by David Chalmers, is an easy read despite its page count, and that’s because it doesn’t have much philosophical insight and because it’s pitched to an introductory level of philosophical sophistication. I enjoyed the halftone cartoons throughout, such as a portrayal of Descartes’s Evil Demon telling a guy that the flowers in his vase are not real flowers, just diabolical simulations. The cartoons are pure silliness, something I enjoy.
Chalmers, however, takes very seriously the idea that the world we live in could be a simulation cooked up by an evil demon, or at least a simulator on a different plane of reality. If our simulation were good enough, say, as good as the one portrayed in the popular sci-fi movie, “The Matrix,” we would never suspect it was a simulation. Chalmers concludes with all seriousness that you cannot know that you’re NOT living in an elaborate simulation.
Okay, fair enough, although that’s not a novel proposition. Plato proposed it in his “Republic” with the famous parable of the cave. You might live in a cave and your experienced reality is no more than shadows on the cave walls.
Crucially however, in both Plato’s cave and in “The Matrix,” someone escapes the confinement and comes back to tell the others: “Omigod, you guys, this is not the real reality!” Is Chalmers that prophet, returning from another reality? He doesn’t claim to be. He imagines he has an omniscient, godlike point of view that can see the “higher” reality. From that exalted perspective, he speculates about whether life in our cave is “really real” or illusory. But of course, not even the great Chalmers is omniscient, and his speculation is fun but vacuous.
Perhaps one should not read him literally. In the past, he argued for philosophical zombies, people who are like us in every way and act appropriately but lack consciousness. I think I might have worked for a p-zombie earlier in my career. Chalmers asked us, how could you be certain that someone was NOT a p-zombie if they talked and acted correctly? The parallel to the simulation hypothesis of this book is obvious.
P-zombies and the simulation hypothesis are thought-experiments, scenarios designed to illustrate a point. P-zombies present the idea of functionalism: if it walks like a duck, it is a duck. Consciousness is irrelevant or even illusory. Similarly, the simulation hypothesis suggests that our gut-belief in the ultimate reality of the external world might be illusory. If the world behaves exactly the way we (and science) expect it to, then it really could be made of computer bits. Reality is as reality does.
This is not a bad insight, if somewhat mundane. The trouble is that Chalmers is not a functionalist (as far as I can tell). He seems to genuinely believe in the fundamental reality of both mind and world. I base that conclusion on his previous two books, “The Conscious Mind,” in 1996, and “Constructing the World,” 2012. He wants to argue that both mind and world have ultimate, irreducible structures, perhaps even interdependent ones. It’s just that those ultimate structures might be other than what we commonly believe. Everything could be made of beer cans and ping-pong balls, and as long as appearances are preserved, it wouldn't matter. Okay, sure. But since we cannot know that, because nobody is god, what’s the point of this speculation?
Chalmers seems to drown in his own speculation because he omits, or is unaware of, several self-evident facts of reality, among them, subjective intentionality, intersubjectivity, and the social context that keeps every individual afloat. He also has an astonishingly naïve notion of perception, describing it as an unmediated wax tablet or video recorder. He seems to think we are windowless monads and imagines that a brain in a vat, provided with appropriate information input, would be conscious of itself and its world. Such a scenario should be risible to functionalists and structuralists, but is not, apparently, to Chalmers.
While reading the book, I thought at times it was an introduction to some basic problems of philosophy designed for high school classes or maybe for book clubs of philosophically naïve readers. If it is that, it’s successful. But at other times, Chalmers’s tone seems so serious and his arguments so labored that I got the feeling he was struggling with these ideas, which seems preposterous given his intellectual standing.
Either I misunderstood the book or it is incredibly naïve. I am sympathetic to some variant of the simulation hypothesis. The distinction between Husserl’s natural attitude and transcendental attitude, for example, suggests that reality is other than what it seems. Advaita Vedanta suggests the same. As a former software engineer, I am less persuaded that reality could be a computer simulation that nobody wrote.
Chalmers, David J. (2022). Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy. New York: W.W. Norton, 520 pp.
Chalmers, however, takes very seriously the idea that the world we live in could be a simulation cooked up by an evil demon, or at least a simulator on a different plane of reality. If our simulation were good enough, say, as good as the one portrayed in the popular sci-fi movie, “The Matrix,” we would never suspect it was a simulation. Chalmers concludes with all seriousness that you cannot know that you’re NOT living in an elaborate simulation.
Okay, fair enough, although that’s not a novel proposition. Plato proposed it in his “Republic” with the famous parable of the cave. You might live in a cave and your experienced reality is no more than shadows on the cave walls.
Crucially however, in both Plato’s cave and in “The Matrix,” someone escapes the confinement and comes back to tell the others: “Omigod, you guys, this is not the real reality!” Is Chalmers that prophet, returning from another reality? He doesn’t claim to be. He imagines he has an omniscient, godlike point of view that can see the “higher” reality. From that exalted perspective, he speculates about whether life in our cave is “really real” or illusory. But of course, not even the great Chalmers is omniscient, and his speculation is fun but vacuous.
Perhaps one should not read him literally. In the past, he argued for philosophical zombies, people who are like us in every way and act appropriately but lack consciousness. I think I might have worked for a p-zombie earlier in my career. Chalmers asked us, how could you be certain that someone was NOT a p-zombie if they talked and acted correctly? The parallel to the simulation hypothesis of this book is obvious.
P-zombies and the simulation hypothesis are thought-experiments, scenarios designed to illustrate a point. P-zombies present the idea of functionalism: if it walks like a duck, it is a duck. Consciousness is irrelevant or even illusory. Similarly, the simulation hypothesis suggests that our gut-belief in the ultimate reality of the external world might be illusory. If the world behaves exactly the way we (and science) expect it to, then it really could be made of computer bits. Reality is as reality does.
This is not a bad insight, if somewhat mundane. The trouble is that Chalmers is not a functionalist (as far as I can tell). He seems to genuinely believe in the fundamental reality of both mind and world. I base that conclusion on his previous two books, “The Conscious Mind,” in 1996, and “Constructing the World,” 2012. He wants to argue that both mind and world have ultimate, irreducible structures, perhaps even interdependent ones. It’s just that those ultimate structures might be other than what we commonly believe. Everything could be made of beer cans and ping-pong balls, and as long as appearances are preserved, it wouldn't matter. Okay, sure. But since we cannot know that, because nobody is god, what’s the point of this speculation?
Chalmers seems to drown in his own speculation because he omits, or is unaware of, several self-evident facts of reality, among them, subjective intentionality, intersubjectivity, and the social context that keeps every individual afloat. He also has an astonishingly naïve notion of perception, describing it as an unmediated wax tablet or video recorder. He seems to think we are windowless monads and imagines that a brain in a vat, provided with appropriate information input, would be conscious of itself and its world. Such a scenario should be risible to functionalists and structuralists, but is not, apparently, to Chalmers.
While reading the book, I thought at times it was an introduction to some basic problems of philosophy designed for high school classes or maybe for book clubs of philosophically naïve readers. If it is that, it’s successful. But at other times, Chalmers’s tone seems so serious and his arguments so labored that I got the feeling he was struggling with these ideas, which seems preposterous given his intellectual standing.
Either I misunderstood the book or it is incredibly naïve. I am sympathetic to some variant of the simulation hypothesis. The distinction between Husserl’s natural attitude and transcendental attitude, for example, suggests that reality is other than what it seems. Advaita Vedanta suggests the same. As a former software engineer, I am less persuaded that reality could be a computer simulation that nobody wrote.
Chalmers, David J. (2022). Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy. New York: W.W. Norton, 520 pp.
February 1, 2022
It is challenging to try to keep up with the author of this book - and I likely was not able to.
This is a book arguing that we are likely participants in a simulation rather than the base reality that most of us assume that we are living. Think about that …. I saw the Matrix movies, even the new one, and thought one of them presented life as a simulation. I saw “The Thirteenth Floor”. I even read “The Anomaly” about the French airplane. So is there something to these modern version of the question of what reality is and whether we are living it. Professor Chalmers argues that we are likely in a simulation - or that we very likely could be. I do not believe that, but I am not quite sure why.
This is a well written effort and merging metaphysics, epistemology, and information theory. It brings to mind “Godel, Escher, Bach” by Douglas Hofstaeder from 1985, although Reality+ is much more ambitious (and perhaps less successful)
Why not a 5? I am not sure I am up to speed on all of the arguments. They sure seem plausible, but there are lots of presumptions behind the logical links here. In particular, there is a combination of logic with statistical reasoning involved in the core lines about the generation of lots and lots of simulations and I am not sure at all about the tightness of the links, I am not quite sure that social scientists make the same sorts of logical claims that philosophers do. I need to go back and take another look. There are wide differences on matters of choice and design and it is not convincing to me the spinning out new worlds of simulations that parallel our world is reasonable. I need to take another look and do not catchup reading.
It is a really good book, whether I end up agreeing or not and is well worth reading.
This is a book arguing that we are likely participants in a simulation rather than the base reality that most of us assume that we are living. Think about that …. I saw the Matrix movies, even the new one, and thought one of them presented life as a simulation. I saw “The Thirteenth Floor”. I even read “The Anomaly” about the French airplane. So is there something to these modern version of the question of what reality is and whether we are living it. Professor Chalmers argues that we are likely in a simulation - or that we very likely could be. I do not believe that, but I am not quite sure why.
This is a well written effort and merging metaphysics, epistemology, and information theory. It brings to mind “Godel, Escher, Bach” by Douglas Hofstaeder from 1985, although Reality+ is much more ambitious (and perhaps less successful)
Why not a 5? I am not sure I am up to speed on all of the arguments. They sure seem plausible, but there are lots of presumptions behind the logical links here. In particular, there is a combination of logic with statistical reasoning involved in the core lines about the generation of lots and lots of simulations and I am not sure at all about the tightness of the links, I am not quite sure that social scientists make the same sorts of logical claims that philosophers do. I need to go back and take another look. There are wide differences on matters of choice and design and it is not convincing to me the spinning out new worlds of simulations that parallel our world is reasonable. I need to take another look and do not catchup reading.
It is a really good book, whether I end up agreeing or not and is well worth reading.
April 28, 2023
chalmers underestimated the importance of consciousness to his argument and overestimated many arbitrary speculations about the nature of future technology. by the end the number of stale pop culture references that minimally contributed to his argument was enough to make me think we were in a simulation because no base reality could be so annoying.
April 4, 2023
4.5 stars. Never a dull moment when reading the work of Chalmers, both within and outside the topic of philosophy of mind. Probably one of the clearest philosophical thinkers out there, whether he's a virtual being or not.
March 11, 2022
Mixed feelings on this one.
For context I spend a lot of time thinking about the idea that the world might be a simulation. Without exaggeration I have probably thought about it most days for about the last three years. As such even though I think David Chalmers brought up some ideas about it which may be relatively novel and new there wasn't much about that particular topic which I had not speculated about myself at some point. As for anything fully new ... maybe the idea that if you're famous you're more likely to live in a simulation?
I guess I thought this book was going to be more about the simulation hypothesis. It is a sort of underlying idea in the book but he often goes on long tangents mostly about other types of virtual worlds like the ones that exist now. I don't really care about current VR. It's underwhelming and has been touted as "the next big thing" for my entire life and we aren't really any closer to a breakthrough than we were 40 years ago. Still I think where this might go some day is very interesting and important. Applying some of those ideas to what exists now is a bit ... boring? No, some dude grinding on someone's second life avatar isn't assault. A lot of these comparisons are currently lame, but may not be in the future.
Do we live in a simulation? Maybe! It can't be ignored that there would be huge computation power to simulate our world. There would be shortcuts which he does acknowledge but still often waves the concern away suggesting that the earth could be contained on a desktop computer or a children's science experiment. While I think the simulation hypothesis is interesting and there is arguably a statistical likelihood that we are simulated there are some assumptions there about the advancement of technology which haven't been clearly demonstrated. In short you'd need a universe full of computer power to simulate a universe so there needs to be shortcuts. Simulating the earth isn't trivial and would require like a solar system's worth of computation if there weren't shortcuts, so there must be shortcuts or the physics are simplified. All ideas he sort of touches on.
This book has way too much boring philosophy! He could make a point very simply. Are simulated chairs or people or cats real? Sure. Super Mario is real in the context of Super Mario Bros. It's about your frame of reference. It's simple. Something can be real in a game or real in a story which is different from being real in the real world. We don't need a bunch of chapters to tease out the philosophy which really is just semantic arguments about what real means. The concept is basic. It felt like he was trying to hit a page count or something. Or he just really likes philosophy.
When he talks early on about programming in basic as a kid I thought this is great! I like to read books about AI and computing concepts from programmers and engineers. I wrote basic programs when I was 12 so I can relate. But this guy didn't decide to work in computers. He decided to muse about consciousness. That's fine but our interests evidently diverged decades ago.
I don't think he's "wrong" about much and I don't think he missed much of the important stuff, though perhaps I would have elaborated or added on other things. Generally decent. Don't think I would recommend it to someone who knew less about the topic because I think they'd be bored or annoyed at the philosophy.
For context I spend a lot of time thinking about the idea that the world might be a simulation. Without exaggeration I have probably thought about it most days for about the last three years. As such even though I think David Chalmers brought up some ideas about it which may be relatively novel and new there wasn't much about that particular topic which I had not speculated about myself at some point. As for anything fully new ... maybe the idea that if you're famous you're more likely to live in a simulation?
I guess I thought this book was going to be more about the simulation hypothesis. It is a sort of underlying idea in the book but he often goes on long tangents mostly about other types of virtual worlds like the ones that exist now. I don't really care about current VR. It's underwhelming and has been touted as "the next big thing" for my entire life and we aren't really any closer to a breakthrough than we were 40 years ago. Still I think where this might go some day is very interesting and important. Applying some of those ideas to what exists now is a bit ... boring? No, some dude grinding on someone's second life avatar isn't assault. A lot of these comparisons are currently lame, but may not be in the future.
Do we live in a simulation? Maybe! It can't be ignored that there would be huge computation power to simulate our world. There would be shortcuts which he does acknowledge but still often waves the concern away suggesting that the earth could be contained on a desktop computer or a children's science experiment. While I think the simulation hypothesis is interesting and there is arguably a statistical likelihood that we are simulated there are some assumptions there about the advancement of technology which haven't been clearly demonstrated. In short you'd need a universe full of computer power to simulate a universe so there needs to be shortcuts. Simulating the earth isn't trivial and would require like a solar system's worth of computation if there weren't shortcuts, so there must be shortcuts or the physics are simplified. All ideas he sort of touches on.
This book has way too much boring philosophy! He could make a point very simply. Are simulated chairs or people or cats real? Sure. Super Mario is real in the context of Super Mario Bros. It's about your frame of reference. It's simple. Something can be real in a game or real in a story which is different from being real in the real world. We don't need a bunch of chapters to tease out the philosophy which really is just semantic arguments about what real means. The concept is basic. It felt like he was trying to hit a page count or something. Or he just really likes philosophy.
When he talks early on about programming in basic as a kid I thought this is great! I like to read books about AI and computing concepts from programmers and engineers. I wrote basic programs when I was 12 so I can relate. But this guy didn't decide to work in computers. He decided to muse about consciousness. That's fine but our interests evidently diverged decades ago.
I don't think he's "wrong" about much and I don't think he missed much of the important stuff, though perhaps I would have elaborated or added on other things. Generally decent. Don't think I would recommend it to someone who knew less about the topic because I think they'd be bored or annoyed at the philosophy.
September 13, 2023
Read for school. Lots of interesting thoughts and ideas here, explained in a very straightforward way: very easy for beginners to philosophy (such as myself) to understand. The primary complaint I have is that Chalmers tends to repeat himself a lot throughout chapters or even within paragraphs, which makes the whole book feel like it's really dragging its feet. As a specific example--at the end of Chapter 4, Chalmers says:
Many hold that when the existence of the external world is in question, Moore is not entitled to simply assume he has hands. In this context, the assumption "I have hands" begs the question; Moore's claim that he has hands presupposes the conclusion of the argument, which is that the external world exists. When the premise of an argument presupposes its conclusion, it's a circular argument; you need to assume the conclusion to get to the conclusion.This is an unnecessarily verbose and chunky passage of text where he could have just said:
Many hold that Moore is not entitled to simply assume that he has hands because that claim presupposes the conclusion of the argument, which is that the external world exists. This is an example of a circular argument.This book was almost 500 pages and it could probably have reduced about a third, or even half, of its length if Chalmers had been more mindful of being concise (or had a better editor...).
August 2, 2023
Leven we in een simulatie? Wat is 'echt' om ons heen? Vooral het laatste is al een eeuwigheid een veel besproken vraagstuk in de filosofie. In dit boek wordt die vraag onder handen genomen, met een interessante kijk op de kans dat wij mogelijk in een simulatie leven. Erg leuk boek, vooral omdat het mijn interesse voor filosofie en de simulatie hypothese combineert.
August 7, 2023
Virtuelle Welten erwirken selbstverständlich mehrere philosophische Fragen. Erst einmal muss man klar definieren was das bedeutet. Was ist eine virtuelle Welt. Ab wann reden wir von Simulationen und ist unsere echte Welt echt? Oder auch nur eine Simulation.
Das Buch ist tatsächlich für ein philosophisches Buch ganz verständlich geschrieben aber dennoch sehr langatmig und ausschweifend.
Das Buch ist tatsächlich für ein philosophisches Buch ganz verständlich geschrieben aber dennoch sehr langatmig und ausschweifend.
Want to read
January 27, 2022https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
"Reality+ — looking forward to life in the metaverse
David Chalmers’ rich and occasionally outlandish work of ‘technophilosophy’ argues that virtual reality is genuine reality"
in:
https://www.ft.com/content/e9d4875c-0...
David Chalmers: “I long to come back every 100 years to take a look”
The techno-philosopher on why life may be a simulation.
in:
https://www.newstatesman.com/science-...
"Reality+ — looking forward to life in the metaverse
David Chalmers’ rich and occasionally outlandish work of ‘technophilosophy’ argues that virtual reality is genuine reality"
in:
https://www.ft.com/content/e9d4875c-0...
David Chalmers: “I long to come back every 100 years to take a look”
The techno-philosopher on why life may be a simulation.
in:
https://www.newstatesman.com/science-...
April 28, 2022
Let's start with the introduction, which works because it's relatable. Chalmers motivates the idea of the simulation hypothesis, "How do you know you're not in a computer simulation right now?" through his pandemic era experiences, from using Zoom, to viewing the 2020 presidential election, to experiments and thoughts with current VR and AR. He then specifically promises to use philosophy to 1) Address new questions about technology, especially virtual worlds and 2) Other, central questions in philosophy. And then, as further enticement, he promises to connect all of that to "Science fiction and other corners of popular culture whenever I can."
I was particularly curious how Chalmer would answer specific questions, such as, "Descarte's problem--That is, how can we know anything about the reality around us?" as well as, "How do mind and body interact? Does the mind extend beyond the body?" and, "Is there a God?"
I have two main gripes with this book. The first is that Chalmer's does not answer some questions satisfactorily. As he warns us in the introduction, "I shouldn't overstate the case. My analysis doesn't address everything Descartes says, and it doesn't prove that we know a great deal about the external world." And we conclude that yes, depressingly, despite leveraging centuries of philosophical and scientific knowledge, Chalmers can't even tell us if we are in a simulation or not, let alone if God exists. Also, as other reviews rightly point out, Chalmer's reasoning that we have a 25% chance of living in a simulation is not convincing. Given Chalmer's background in mathematics, it would have been nice to read a more rigorous deduction.
The second problem is that portions of the book are repetitive and tedious (i.e. very philosophical). For example, one main thread of the book argues that digital objects are real objects. In Part 4, Chalmers runs us through this exhaustive, diagnostic evaluation applied to Virtual Reality. Then, in probably the most excruciating transition, he carries out this same analysis for Augmented Reality.
Despite these issues, I still rate this book highly and am very happy I read it. Here is why:
1) I love the systematic application of philosophy to technology, completed by clarifying his points using science fiction references. I learned a lot of philosophy from this book (or relearned it and can now remember it more easily). Despite, as I mentioned, some transitions being tedious, when the systematic application works, it supports many insightful passages. So, for example, the definition of structuralism and the perceived reality of objects with causal relationships in VR was conceptually informative. I was also surprised by how much I enjoyed the "Have we fallen from the Garden of Eden?" chapter. Being color-blind (deuteranopic) I found Chalmer's discussion of "Red vs. red" not only thought-provoking, but oddly comforting.
2) The book is a practically significant work, and discusses topics that are important to consider. I happen to agree with Chalmers that whether we like it or not, VR and AR will become more ubiquitous in the future. (Even though, as Chalmers says, there are many technical challenges to overcome. Personally, I think audio... making it sound like you are in the same room as someone else... is a key goal toward fluid communication and further adaptation of VR.) So, it is therefore helpful to evaluate, for future generations especially, whether or not a meaningful life can be lived with VR and AR. For those skeptical toward VR and AR as they exist, note that Chalmers also considers other technologies that are already a part of life -- from deep fakes to video games. Evaluation of "What is real and meaningful? " apply there, as well. Chalmer's thought-provoking discussions leave one a more well-adjusted resident of the 21st century.
3) This book helped me to think of new possibilities. I realize this attribute is subjective -- If you have already finished Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, and not only watched everything from the Matrix Trilogy to Rick and Morty, including every single episode of Black Mirror, then yeah, nothing in Reality+ will strike you as novel or thought-provoking. For me though, by focusing my attention on technologies developed so far, including in neurobiology, Reality+ demonstrates that global simulation is more likely than I had considered. Perhaps more importantly, it provided me with tools to evaluate our shared reality in a broader scope. Next to these gifts, the gripes I have with the book are not significant. 4.5
I was particularly curious how Chalmer would answer specific questions, such as, "Descarte's problem--That is, how can we know anything about the reality around us?" as well as, "How do mind and body interact? Does the mind extend beyond the body?" and, "Is there a God?"
I have two main gripes with this book. The first is that Chalmer's does not answer some questions satisfactorily. As he warns us in the introduction, "I shouldn't overstate the case. My analysis doesn't address everything Descartes says, and it doesn't prove that we know a great deal about the external world." And we conclude that yes, depressingly, despite leveraging centuries of philosophical and scientific knowledge, Chalmers can't even tell us if we are in a simulation or not, let alone if God exists. Also, as other reviews rightly point out, Chalmer's reasoning that we have a 25% chance of living in a simulation is not convincing. Given Chalmer's background in mathematics, it would have been nice to read a more rigorous deduction.
The second problem is that portions of the book are repetitive and tedious (i.e. very philosophical). For example, one main thread of the book argues that digital objects are real objects. In Part 4, Chalmers runs us through this exhaustive, diagnostic evaluation applied to Virtual Reality. Then, in probably the most excruciating transition, he carries out this same analysis for Augmented Reality.
Despite these issues, I still rate this book highly and am very happy I read it. Here is why:
1) I love the systematic application of philosophy to technology, completed by clarifying his points using science fiction references. I learned a lot of philosophy from this book (or relearned it and can now remember it more easily). Despite, as I mentioned, some transitions being tedious, when the systematic application works, it supports many insightful passages. So, for example, the definition of structuralism and the perceived reality of objects with causal relationships in VR was conceptually informative. I was also surprised by how much I enjoyed the "Have we fallen from the Garden of Eden?" chapter. Being color-blind (deuteranopic) I found Chalmer's discussion of "Red vs. red" not only thought-provoking, but oddly comforting.
2) The book is a practically significant work, and discusses topics that are important to consider. I happen to agree with Chalmers that whether we like it or not, VR and AR will become more ubiquitous in the future. (Even though, as Chalmers says, there are many technical challenges to overcome. Personally, I think audio... making it sound like you are in the same room as someone else... is a key goal toward fluid communication and further adaptation of VR.) So, it is therefore helpful to evaluate, for future generations especially, whether or not a meaningful life can be lived with VR and AR. For those skeptical toward VR and AR as they exist, note that Chalmers also considers other technologies that are already a part of life -- from deep fakes to video games. Evaluation of "What is real and meaningful? " apply there, as well. Chalmer's thought-provoking discussions leave one a more well-adjusted resident of the 21st century.
3) This book helped me to think of new possibilities. I realize this attribute is subjective -- If you have already finished Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, and not only watched everything from the Matrix Trilogy to Rick and Morty, including every single episode of Black Mirror, then yeah, nothing in Reality+ will strike you as novel or thought-provoking. For me though, by focusing my attention on technologies developed so far, including in neurobiology, Reality+ demonstrates that global simulation is more likely than I had considered. Perhaps more importantly, it provided me with tools to evaluate our shared reality in a broader scope. Next to these gifts, the gripes I have with the book are not significant. 4.5
March 21, 2022
I had a lot of fun listening to this book. I was looking for something philosophical on audible and here it was :) Despite the fact I don't agree with Chalmers on most of the things, I think this is a great read. He's going through some very hard metaphysical questions in this pop-science-writer kind of style, so everything written is very easy to understand and imagine. There is a lot of play with the language as well (sometimes his arguments seem to me like just using a different name for something, rather than discovering anything new), which I enjoy catching people at :) And the problems covered here are very fascinating: is virtual reality real? Would it be real real when it's as good as the one we saw in Matrix? How about if we upload our brain to it? Is the virtual person with our uploaded brain conscious and morally relevant? I love questions like that. They push your brain out of the comfort zone and give you a lot of joy when thinking about them. You can play with your knowledge and intuitions, come to almost no definite conclusions but that's the beauty of philosophy. So thanks David J. Chalmers, I really had some fun <3
Read
April 18, 2022I was really excited to read this book, because it promised to explore an idea that I've been turning over for a while now: what if we are living in a simulation? What would that possibly mean for us? And what are the chances that we are?
Some parts of this book are fascinating. Some, alas, literally put me to sleep, or even made me angry: not because of the ideas, but out of frustration with my own failure to follow what the writer was talking about.
I fear I am not the ideal reader; too ignorant to be comfortable with the level of philosophical discourse this is set on. Mostly I like reading on my kindle, but this was one book I wish I could have held in my hands, for easier skimming past the boring or incomprehensible parts, for easier turning back to reread the parts that fired my imagination.
Some parts of this book are fascinating. Some, alas, literally put me to sleep, or even made me angry: not because of the ideas, but out of frustration with my own failure to follow what the writer was talking about.
I fear I am not the ideal reader; too ignorant to be comfortable with the level of philosophical discourse this is set on. Mostly I like reading on my kindle, but this was one book I wish I could have held in my hands, for easier skimming past the boring or incomprehensible parts, for easier turning back to reread the parts that fired my imagination.
September 7, 2023
David Chalmers’ work of techno-philosophy Reality+ is at its best when using simulation-based thought experiments to probe the deepest issues in philosophy, such as dualism versus materialism. But it falls down in its claims to refute some forms of scepticism or convince the reader of the reality of objects in Virtual Reality (VR). The arguments used to support these positions are either convoluted or faintly tautological. In short, the book is a thought provoking read but is unlikely to convince the reader of the deeper claims it tries to make. The rest of this review will explore what the book covers and its pros and cons.
What is the book trying to achieve? Chalmers is an engaging, easy-to-read author who tackles a range of classic topics in philosophy – what is real, how do we know anything, the problem of other minds – from a new vantage point: VR and fully-immersive simulations. He uses this standpoint to defend two hypotheses. The simulation hypothesis, which says that “we are and always have been in an artificially designed computer simulation of a world” based in a reality ‘one level up’ from our own; and simulation realism, which says that “If we’re in a simulation, the objects around us are real and not an illusion”.
These are not the only points the book makes but are, in my view, the key ones. The simulation hypothesis could simply be a Matrix-style ‘brain-in-a-vat’ scenario or something more ‘pure’ whereby our brain is entirely created within a simulation. Chalmers argues for this on statistical grounds – essentially saying that, in our reality, we are likely to be able to create such simulations soon. So, what is stopping us being in a simulated world given the vastness of space and the high likelihood some civilisation has beaten us to the punch and begun experimenting with thousands of such simulations already? The ease of spinning up simulations would mean there are far more sim-realities than the non-sim sort, leading to us likely being in such a simulation on the balance of probabilities.
Simulation realism is Chalmers attempt to refute certain forms of scepticism by arguing that the world around us is real regardless of whether we are in a simulation or not. The arguments for this are covered in depth below but a key idea in this is that, were we to discover that the world is underpinned by a digital physics - 1s and 0s (bits) – we would not decry the world as ‘unreal’; we would simply espouse an it-from-bit hypothesis. Why should we claim objects in an immersive simulation are, therefore, unreal despite also being rooted in digital processes? In other words, simulation objects are real.
In addition to these two central claims, the author argues for virtual realism – the idea that even VR of today is real in a certain sense. We are then treated to sections looking at what simulations have to say about ethics and theory of mind. The book closes on a much denser section ‘Foundations’ in which some of the details of simulation realism and its links to structuralism are explored, as well as considerations of whether our consciousnesses could be founded on fleeting ‘dust clouds’ that happen to generate conscious processes instantaneously.
What works in Reality+? At its best, the book leverages the question ‘what if we are in a simulation’ to probe the deepest questions of philosophy. For example, our simulator would be an ersatz god for us. If that simulator, as seems likely, builds and runs many other simulations, they would have little time to take an interest in our world, providing an answer for why ‘god’ so rarely intervenes in our world. The simulator would also likely inject randomness so as not to create a whole host of identical simulations. Given this, it is no wonder that bad things happen, meaning the simulation hypothesis offers an explanation for the presence of evil in the world.
Simulations can be used to explore other topics too. A classic ontological challenge is Cartesian mind-body duality: simulations could offer a concrete illustration of how dualism is objectively true. In a Matrix scenario of hooking brains up to simulations, a sim-Descartes expressing a view that his mind is entirely distinct from the world around him is, literally, correct: his brain sits in reality 1 while his experience of time and space occurs in the simulated world (reality 2). This is backed up with great diagrams to illustrate these ideas; I have never once cited diagrams as a plus (or negative) in a work of philosophy, but they truly stand-out here. Dualism raises epistemological challenges about how the mind substance can come to know anything about the world-substance. The simulation hypothesis offers interesting ways to tackle this too: the simulator, naturally, can set things up in such a way that their subjects can know things by tailoring simulations so the mind-processes and world-processes can interact.
To be clear, beyond the simulation hypothesis itself, Chalmers is not arguing that we are brains in vats or that cartesian dualism is true. Rather, he is using ideas of simulations to probe ideas in philosophy – like the received idea that dualism is wrong. This playful experimentation is where the book shines.
In addition, the book offers a good overview of several trends in modern philosophy through these discussions, covering recent developments in theory of language or the problems of consciousness, like how “identifying a brain mechanism that leads us to classify a stimulus as red doesn’t tell us [about the] conscious experience of redness”. Similarly, the discussions of whether or not chaotic processes – like random fluctuations of dust clouds in the cosmos – could, instantaneously, produce a sentient being like us (effectively just a probabilistic argument based on size and age of the universe) is cogently dissected by the author as well.
What are my issues with the book? At its core, the book is an argument for simulation realism as a means to tackle the threat of scepticism about the external world. This hinges on what I view as sophistical arguments that are not convincing. By this I mean the author arrives at his conclusion that things are real, even if we’re in a simulation, via convoluted syllogisms and subtle adjustments of what we mean by specific words. Perhaps individual steps can be agreed with, but the overall arc of the argument ends up seeming hollow – like a sleight of hand rather than a convincing demonstration.
Chalmers’ discussion of Hilary Putnam is a case in point. The author describes Putnam’s ‘externalist’ approach to language: rather than meaning being ‘all in the head’, Putnam argues that meaning is anchored in the environment. For example, water is what plays the water role – it is not a purely mental construct; it hangs on something out there. Putnam illustrates this with the thought experiment of Earth and Twin Earth. On Earth, water is H2O; on Twin Earth, what is referred to as water has some other chemical structure XYZ. They are, scientifically, different things even if Putnam on Earth and Twin Putnam on Twin Earth do not know this. Putnam argues that despite the use of the same word, and the similarity of the substances, water on Earth and Twin Earth mean different things and, therefore, meaning is anchored in the environment. This could be dubbed a “causal theory of reference”.
The two things Chalmers does next is really the crux of the problem. First, he leverages this causal theory of reference to argue for simulation realism. He begins with Daniel Dennett’s objection to the idea of VR being real that “virtual hurricanes don’t make you wet”. Chalmers argues that, in fact, someone living in a simulation has actually been using the word hurricane to refer to digital (it-from-bit) hurricanes the whole time. A sim person’s word hurricane, per Putnam, has a different (but still causal) referent than a non-sim person’s ‘hurricane’: “If we’re on Sim Earth, then ‘hurricane’, ‘water’ and ‘wetness’ refer to digital entities that people on Earth call virtual hurricanes, virtual water, and virtual wetness.”
The punchline is that the person in the simulation is well within their right to refer to such events as hurricanes, and will go on to experience digital (virtual) wetness. A person saying a (virtual) hurricane doesn’t make you wet is making something of a category mistake –confusing the sim from non-sim setting.
This is problematic. Chalmers is relying on structuralism (water is what plays the water role) to arrive at the idea that (some) objects in virtual worlds are real. But adopting a ‘structuralism’ about language appears to integrate into his argument the very thing the author set out to prove: that things in simulations are real and scepticism is avoided. This is why, for me, the argument rings hollow. It has a hint of circularity about it. At best, it feels a bit cute, like we are simply adding the word virtual in a few places so rendering virtual objects real. A great example of this is the following:
This seems pretty tautological and does not really get us anywhere with establishing ‘reality’ of objects in simulations in my view except in a narrow, quasi-technical sense. It’s also worth pointing out how Chalmers goes on to debunk a similar move of Putnam’s to prove we are not a simulation in a vat. Putnam argued that if I claim I am a brain in a vat, I am making a nonsensical claim similar to the hurricane-wet issue. I don’t have access to the referent of my true brain in my reality so to claim I am a brain-in-a-vat is to make a category mistake. Putnam uses this to debunk Matrix-style brain-in-vat scepticism, but Chalmers argues Putnam is wrong. It is a subtle argument related to which words are truly covered by Putnam’s theory and are “anchored to a specific system”. My issue is that I believe Chalmers is guilty of just the same kind of subtle manoeuvring to refute scepticism and his challenge of Putnam only highlights the weak, dialectical nature of his own approach.
Other arguments are deployed for simulation realism. The author spends considerable time building up the idea of the it-from-bit creation hypothesis and arguing this is equivalent to simulation realism. The argument starts with a “perfect, global, and permanent simulation”. The crucial step is to get ‘its’ – i.e. things in the world of the sim person – to arise from bits. This relies on structuralism in physics: “theories in physics can be boiled down to their structure … a theory in physics is true if this structure is really present in the world. If the structure of atomic physics is really present in the world, for example, then atomic physics is true, and atoms exist”.
This leads to the realist claim: “if we’re in a simulation, most of our ordinary beliefs are true”. But what has Chalmers really done here? He has adopted a structuralist viewpoint about physics stating that structures we identify have reality. By coding the laws of physics from the non-sim world (even approximately) into a simulation, when a sim person refers to an object like a quark they are accurately describing quark structures in the bits of their simulation and so, per structuralism, that quark is real. Put more succinctly: if I build a simulation with a certain set of structures, and sim people identify those structures, they have true beliefs.
Again, I’m honestly not sure what we’ve achieved here. Structuralism, again, appears to be baked into the argument of what we are setting out to prove, undercutting any sense, as Chalmers claims, to have put a dent into the imposing edifice of philosophical scepticism.
There is also an interesting ontological challenge here (at least to my humble eye): Chalmers repeatedly refers to a “perfect” simulation while at the same time using structuralism to impute reality to objects identified in physics. What does it mean to understand our own physics perfectly so as to be able to render it algorithmically? I have not worked out the details of this issue, but it appears to me that the notion of ‘perfect simulation’ clashes with structuralism in some way.
I also believe the very possibility of rendering sentient life within a simulation (and not just philosophical ‘zombies’ like perhaps ChatGPT) is glossed over far too quickly. This and other technical challenges, like the amount of computing power required to create the number of complex, nested simulations that Chalmers needs to motivate his statistical arguments in favour of the simulation hypothesis, are not argued for nearly convincingly enough.
Beyond the core arguments for the simulation hypothesis and simulation realism, some of the claims around VR fall a little flat. Here we are considering not fully immersive, scepticism-inducing simulations but the sorts of VR we have today. Chalmers’ claim is that “when using VR, you are perceiving virtual objects that really exist. They are concrete data structures inside a computer”. My reaction to this “virtual realism” is that it is hard to agree or disagree particularly strongly – does anything hinge on the reality or otherwise of my avatar in VR? Or the ontological status of a concert I attend in VR (“Virtual events really happen. They just happen in virtual reality.”)? This appears to vex the author, as if there is a strong lobby denigrating VR experiences as unreal, which I’m not entirely sure is the case.
Overall, the section on VR is the weakest of the book. It insists on arguing points that are one part uncontroversial to one part inane. Another grating feature of the author’s writing revealed in this section is the incessant spelling out of cases and subcases, as if to deflect hyper-picky readers. I imagine this is something of an occupational hazard for a philosopher, but it gets extremely boring. For example, there is a detailed discussion of deepfakes and the types of ‘sim Hilary / Pizzagate scandal’ and how we could variously describe these as real or otherwise. Elsewhere, there is a tedious enumeration of how various pre-programmed simulations may call into question different aspects of simulation realism (in a discussion leveraging Robert Nozick’s famous ‘experience machine’). None of which is necessary for the points being made at the time.
My last challenge to the book, despite being dressed up in a genuinely interesting techno-philosophical garb, is that it is ultimately not that different to the philosophy of Kant. The German philosopher argued for a metaphysics of a world divided into that which we experience (phenomena, or Chalmers’ ‘its’) sitting above a substrate of unknowable things-in-themselves (noumena, or Chalmers’ ‘bits’). Kant insisted this did not make him a Cartesian sceptic (we can never know the world as it really is) and spent the better part of the Critique of Pure Reason building a complex schema of categories to illustrate how we can have knowledge of the world via his transcendental deduction of the categories of experience. This, according to Kant, is how we can make true statements about the world and not succumb to Humean scepticism in which all our knowledge is only a posteriori.
Chalmers follows straight in Kant’s path. He splits the world into the experience we can know about and the substrate (the simulation) we cannot know about. He even, at one point, introduces Kant’s famous unknowable X that may underlie the bits his simulation hypothesis utilises (“its-from-bits-from-X”). He has the simulator to gel together the world itself with our minds, solving the knowability of the outside world issue just like Kant’s categories. And, like Kant, despite arguing for what would appear to be an extremely sceptical viewpoint – viz. that we cannot know the transcendent thing-in-itself or we are in a simulation – both philosophers believe they have retained reality and avoided the pitfall of scepticism. Kant because he believes he has arrived at the conditions of experience a priori; Chalmers via various arguments in favour of simulation realism (that often pivot around structuralism).
Like Kant, I believe Chalmers fails. Kant’s project was incredibly influential in re-framing metaphysics. His ‘Copernican turn’ pushed philosophers to think about how we, the subject of experience, frame the world and find in it things that we actually put there (like causality). But, on Kant’s terms, his project was a failure. His book, like Chalmers, explicitly set out to put a nail in scepticism. Yet subsequent thinkers like Hegel went out of their way to re-interpret his works to remove the unknowable thing-in-itself, viewing it as a deeply sceptical, unwanted artefact. Kant even added additional material to his first Critique to limit the accusation that his thing-in-itself turned him into a Berkelian idealist, such was his concern at being seen to fall into total idealism (in other words, total scepticism about the external world).
I raise all this for two reasons. Firstly, because Chalmers only draws the parallel with Kant right at the end of the book (“my interpretation of the simulation hypothesis clearly has a Kantian flavour”) whereas it deserves acknowledging much earlier on. Secondly, and more problematically, I believe that having at last stated the parallel, it is extraordinary that such a well-regarded philosopher does not learn the lessons of 200 years of philosophy and attempt to arm himself against the pitfalls into which Kant’s project fell and that threaten his own. Specifically, that he too will be charged with a thoroughgoing scepticism by creating an unknowable thing-in-itself (bits, or bits-from-X) which his simulation realism forever dooms us with (however ‘real’ we may incessantly label the objects around us).
To wrap up, this is an engaging read. It is on far stronger ground when re-interpreting old philosophy in modern technological terms than when it attempts to break new ground. An extremely thought-provoking and worthwhile read, to be sure, but one that, like Kant, fails in its central aim.
What is the book trying to achieve? Chalmers is an engaging, easy-to-read author who tackles a range of classic topics in philosophy – what is real, how do we know anything, the problem of other minds – from a new vantage point: VR and fully-immersive simulations. He uses this standpoint to defend two hypotheses. The simulation hypothesis, which says that “we are and always have been in an artificially designed computer simulation of a world” based in a reality ‘one level up’ from our own; and simulation realism, which says that “If we’re in a simulation, the objects around us are real and not an illusion”.
These are not the only points the book makes but are, in my view, the key ones. The simulation hypothesis could simply be a Matrix-style ‘brain-in-a-vat’ scenario or something more ‘pure’ whereby our brain is entirely created within a simulation. Chalmers argues for this on statistical grounds – essentially saying that, in our reality, we are likely to be able to create such simulations soon. So, what is stopping us being in a simulated world given the vastness of space and the high likelihood some civilisation has beaten us to the punch and begun experimenting with thousands of such simulations already? The ease of spinning up simulations would mean there are far more sim-realities than the non-sim sort, leading to us likely being in such a simulation on the balance of probabilities.
Simulation realism is Chalmers attempt to refute certain forms of scepticism by arguing that the world around us is real regardless of whether we are in a simulation or not. The arguments for this are covered in depth below but a key idea in this is that, were we to discover that the world is underpinned by a digital physics - 1s and 0s (bits) – we would not decry the world as ‘unreal’; we would simply espouse an it-from-bit hypothesis. Why should we claim objects in an immersive simulation are, therefore, unreal despite also being rooted in digital processes? In other words, simulation objects are real.
In addition to these two central claims, the author argues for virtual realism – the idea that even VR of today is real in a certain sense. We are then treated to sections looking at what simulations have to say about ethics and theory of mind. The book closes on a much denser section ‘Foundations’ in which some of the details of simulation realism and its links to structuralism are explored, as well as considerations of whether our consciousnesses could be founded on fleeting ‘dust clouds’ that happen to generate conscious processes instantaneously.
What works in Reality+? At its best, the book leverages the question ‘what if we are in a simulation’ to probe the deepest questions of philosophy. For example, our simulator would be an ersatz god for us. If that simulator, as seems likely, builds and runs many other simulations, they would have little time to take an interest in our world, providing an answer for why ‘god’ so rarely intervenes in our world. The simulator would also likely inject randomness so as not to create a whole host of identical simulations. Given this, it is no wonder that bad things happen, meaning the simulation hypothesis offers an explanation for the presence of evil in the world.
Simulations can be used to explore other topics too. A classic ontological challenge is Cartesian mind-body duality: simulations could offer a concrete illustration of how dualism is objectively true. In a Matrix scenario of hooking brains up to simulations, a sim-Descartes expressing a view that his mind is entirely distinct from the world around him is, literally, correct: his brain sits in reality 1 while his experience of time and space occurs in the simulated world (reality 2). This is backed up with great diagrams to illustrate these ideas; I have never once cited diagrams as a plus (or negative) in a work of philosophy, but they truly stand-out here. Dualism raises epistemological challenges about how the mind substance can come to know anything about the world-substance. The simulation hypothesis offers interesting ways to tackle this too: the simulator, naturally, can set things up in such a way that their subjects can know things by tailoring simulations so the mind-processes and world-processes can interact.
To be clear, beyond the simulation hypothesis itself, Chalmers is not arguing that we are brains in vats or that cartesian dualism is true. Rather, he is using ideas of simulations to probe ideas in philosophy – like the received idea that dualism is wrong. This playful experimentation is where the book shines.
In addition, the book offers a good overview of several trends in modern philosophy through these discussions, covering recent developments in theory of language or the problems of consciousness, like how “identifying a brain mechanism that leads us to classify a stimulus as red doesn’t tell us [about the] conscious experience of redness”. Similarly, the discussions of whether or not chaotic processes – like random fluctuations of dust clouds in the cosmos – could, instantaneously, produce a sentient being like us (effectively just a probabilistic argument based on size and age of the universe) is cogently dissected by the author as well.
What are my issues with the book? At its core, the book is an argument for simulation realism as a means to tackle the threat of scepticism about the external world. This hinges on what I view as sophistical arguments that are not convincing. By this I mean the author arrives at his conclusion that things are real, even if we’re in a simulation, via convoluted syllogisms and subtle adjustments of what we mean by specific words. Perhaps individual steps can be agreed with, but the overall arc of the argument ends up seeming hollow – like a sleight of hand rather than a convincing demonstration.
Chalmers’ discussion of Hilary Putnam is a case in point. The author describes Putnam’s ‘externalist’ approach to language: rather than meaning being ‘all in the head’, Putnam argues that meaning is anchored in the environment. For example, water is what plays the water role – it is not a purely mental construct; it hangs on something out there. Putnam illustrates this with the thought experiment of Earth and Twin Earth. On Earth, water is H2O; on Twin Earth, what is referred to as water has some other chemical structure XYZ. They are, scientifically, different things even if Putnam on Earth and Twin Putnam on Twin Earth do not know this. Putnam argues that despite the use of the same word, and the similarity of the substances, water on Earth and Twin Earth mean different things and, therefore, meaning is anchored in the environment. This could be dubbed a “causal theory of reference”.
The two things Chalmers does next is really the crux of the problem. First, he leverages this causal theory of reference to argue for simulation realism. He begins with Daniel Dennett’s objection to the idea of VR being real that “virtual hurricanes don’t make you wet”. Chalmers argues that, in fact, someone living in a simulation has actually been using the word hurricane to refer to digital (it-from-bit) hurricanes the whole time. A sim person’s word hurricane, per Putnam, has a different (but still causal) referent than a non-sim person’s ‘hurricane’: “If we’re on Sim Earth, then ‘hurricane’, ‘water’ and ‘wetness’ refer to digital entities that people on Earth call virtual hurricanes, virtual water, and virtual wetness.”
The punchline is that the person in the simulation is well within their right to refer to such events as hurricanes, and will go on to experience digital (virtual) wetness. A person saying a (virtual) hurricane doesn’t make you wet is making something of a category mistake –confusing the sim from non-sim setting.
This is problematic. Chalmers is relying on structuralism (water is what plays the water role) to arrive at the idea that (some) objects in virtual worlds are real. But adopting a ‘structuralism’ about language appears to integrate into his argument the very thing the author set out to prove: that things in simulations are real and scepticism is avoided. This is why, for me, the argument rings hollow. It has a hint of circularity about it. At best, it feels a bit cute, like we are simply adding the word virtual in a few places so rendering virtual objects real. A great example of this is the following:
You might object that a creature in a simulation would have many false beliefs. For example, a sim might think, ‘I’m in New York,’ when in fact the simulation is running on a server in Silicon Valley. Is the sim’s belief false this time? No! When the sim says, ‘New York,’ the name doesn’t refer to the unsimulated New York on Earth. It refers to a place on Sim Earth: Sim New York. The sim is indeed in Sim New York … when a sim says ‘in,’ that word means virtually in,’ … so when the sim thinks ‘I am in New York,’ this means that the sim is virtually in Sim New York, which is true.
This seems pretty tautological and does not really get us anywhere with establishing ‘reality’ of objects in simulations in my view except in a narrow, quasi-technical sense. It’s also worth pointing out how Chalmers goes on to debunk a similar move of Putnam’s to prove we are not a simulation in a vat. Putnam argued that if I claim I am a brain in a vat, I am making a nonsensical claim similar to the hurricane-wet issue. I don’t have access to the referent of my true brain in my reality so to claim I am a brain-in-a-vat is to make a category mistake. Putnam uses this to debunk Matrix-style brain-in-vat scepticism, but Chalmers argues Putnam is wrong. It is a subtle argument related to which words are truly covered by Putnam’s theory and are “anchored to a specific system”. My issue is that I believe Chalmers is guilty of just the same kind of subtle manoeuvring to refute scepticism and his challenge of Putnam only highlights the weak, dialectical nature of his own approach.
Other arguments are deployed for simulation realism. The author spends considerable time building up the idea of the it-from-bit creation hypothesis and arguing this is equivalent to simulation realism. The argument starts with a “perfect, global, and permanent simulation”. The crucial step is to get ‘its’ – i.e. things in the world of the sim person – to arise from bits. This relies on structuralism in physics: “theories in physics can be boiled down to their structure … a theory in physics is true if this structure is really present in the world. If the structure of atomic physics is really present in the world, for example, then atomic physics is true, and atoms exist”.
This leads to the realist claim: “if we’re in a simulation, most of our ordinary beliefs are true”. But what has Chalmers really done here? He has adopted a structuralist viewpoint about physics stating that structures we identify have reality. By coding the laws of physics from the non-sim world (even approximately) into a simulation, when a sim person refers to an object like a quark they are accurately describing quark structures in the bits of their simulation and so, per structuralism, that quark is real. Put more succinctly: if I build a simulation with a certain set of structures, and sim people identify those structures, they have true beliefs.
Again, I’m honestly not sure what we’ve achieved here. Structuralism, again, appears to be baked into the argument of what we are setting out to prove, undercutting any sense, as Chalmers claims, to have put a dent into the imposing edifice of philosophical scepticism.
There is also an interesting ontological challenge here (at least to my humble eye): Chalmers repeatedly refers to a “perfect” simulation while at the same time using structuralism to impute reality to objects identified in physics. What does it mean to understand our own physics perfectly so as to be able to render it algorithmically? I have not worked out the details of this issue, but it appears to me that the notion of ‘perfect simulation’ clashes with structuralism in some way.
I also believe the very possibility of rendering sentient life within a simulation (and not just philosophical ‘zombies’ like perhaps ChatGPT) is glossed over far too quickly. This and other technical challenges, like the amount of computing power required to create the number of complex, nested simulations that Chalmers needs to motivate his statistical arguments in favour of the simulation hypothesis, are not argued for nearly convincingly enough.
Beyond the core arguments for the simulation hypothesis and simulation realism, some of the claims around VR fall a little flat. Here we are considering not fully immersive, scepticism-inducing simulations but the sorts of VR we have today. Chalmers’ claim is that “when using VR, you are perceiving virtual objects that really exist. They are concrete data structures inside a computer”. My reaction to this “virtual realism” is that it is hard to agree or disagree particularly strongly – does anything hinge on the reality or otherwise of my avatar in VR? Or the ontological status of a concert I attend in VR (“Virtual events really happen. They just happen in virtual reality.”)? This appears to vex the author, as if there is a strong lobby denigrating VR experiences as unreal, which I’m not entirely sure is the case.
Overall, the section on VR is the weakest of the book. It insists on arguing points that are one part uncontroversial to one part inane. Another grating feature of the author’s writing revealed in this section is the incessant spelling out of cases and subcases, as if to deflect hyper-picky readers. I imagine this is something of an occupational hazard for a philosopher, but it gets extremely boring. For example, there is a detailed discussion of deepfakes and the types of ‘sim Hilary / Pizzagate scandal’ and how we could variously describe these as real or otherwise. Elsewhere, there is a tedious enumeration of how various pre-programmed simulations may call into question different aspects of simulation realism (in a discussion leveraging Robert Nozick’s famous ‘experience machine’). None of which is necessary for the points being made at the time.
My last challenge to the book, despite being dressed up in a genuinely interesting techno-philosophical garb, is that it is ultimately not that different to the philosophy of Kant. The German philosopher argued for a metaphysics of a world divided into that which we experience (phenomena, or Chalmers’ ‘its’) sitting above a substrate of unknowable things-in-themselves (noumena, or Chalmers’ ‘bits’). Kant insisted this did not make him a Cartesian sceptic (we can never know the world as it really is) and spent the better part of the Critique of Pure Reason building a complex schema of categories to illustrate how we can have knowledge of the world via his transcendental deduction of the categories of experience. This, according to Kant, is how we can make true statements about the world and not succumb to Humean scepticism in which all our knowledge is only a posteriori.
Chalmers follows straight in Kant’s path. He splits the world into the experience we can know about and the substrate (the simulation) we cannot know about. He even, at one point, introduces Kant’s famous unknowable X that may underlie the bits his simulation hypothesis utilises (“its-from-bits-from-X”). He has the simulator to gel together the world itself with our minds, solving the knowability of the outside world issue just like Kant’s categories. And, like Kant, despite arguing for what would appear to be an extremely sceptical viewpoint – viz. that we cannot know the transcendent thing-in-itself or we are in a simulation – both philosophers believe they have retained reality and avoided the pitfall of scepticism. Kant because he believes he has arrived at the conditions of experience a priori; Chalmers via various arguments in favour of simulation realism (that often pivot around structuralism).
Like Kant, I believe Chalmers fails. Kant’s project was incredibly influential in re-framing metaphysics. His ‘Copernican turn’ pushed philosophers to think about how we, the subject of experience, frame the world and find in it things that we actually put there (like causality). But, on Kant’s terms, his project was a failure. His book, like Chalmers, explicitly set out to put a nail in scepticism. Yet subsequent thinkers like Hegel went out of their way to re-interpret his works to remove the unknowable thing-in-itself, viewing it as a deeply sceptical, unwanted artefact. Kant even added additional material to his first Critique to limit the accusation that his thing-in-itself turned him into a Berkelian idealist, such was his concern at being seen to fall into total idealism (in other words, total scepticism about the external world).
I raise all this for two reasons. Firstly, because Chalmers only draws the parallel with Kant right at the end of the book (“my interpretation of the simulation hypothesis clearly has a Kantian flavour”) whereas it deserves acknowledging much earlier on. Secondly, and more problematically, I believe that having at last stated the parallel, it is extraordinary that such a well-regarded philosopher does not learn the lessons of 200 years of philosophy and attempt to arm himself against the pitfalls into which Kant’s project fell and that threaten his own. Specifically, that he too will be charged with a thoroughgoing scepticism by creating an unknowable thing-in-itself (bits, or bits-from-X) which his simulation realism forever dooms us with (however ‘real’ we may incessantly label the objects around us).
To wrap up, this is an engaging read. It is on far stronger ground when re-interpreting old philosophy in modern technological terms than when it attempts to break new ground. An extremely thought-provoking and worthwhile read, to be sure, but one that, like Kant, fails in its central aim.
July 12, 2022
Τα τελευταία χρόνια διαβάζω σχεδον αποκλειστικά non-fiction. Μετά απο αυτό το βιβλίο έπρεπε να κανω ενα διάλειμμα, και να διαβάσω για λίγο καιρό λογοτεχνία, ωστε μπορέσω να χωνέψω ολη την πληροφορία που μου έδωσε.
Το όλο θέμα θέμα του είναι μια άσκηση σε αυτό που ο Chalmers αποκαλεί «τεχνοφιλοσοφία» – θέτοντας φιλοσοφικά ερωτήματα σχετικά με την τεχνολογία και χρησιμοποιώντας τη νέα τεχνολογία για να απαντήσει σε φιλοσοφικά προβλήματα. Καταπιάνεται με κάποιες ειλικρινά δυσνόητες ιδέες, αλλά το κάνει με ένα ζωντανό και διασκεδαστικό ύφος, γεμάτο αναφορές από τον χωρο του κινηματογράφου των ηλ. παιχνιδιών, των βιβλίων επιστημονικής φαντασίας. Αυτό αφενός βοηθάει πολύ στην κατανοήσει και, αφετέρου, αποτελεί και ένας σπουδαίος τέτοιων μέσων - ιδιαίτερα βιβλίων.
Καθώς η τεχνολογία εξελίσσεται, τα γυαλιά AR ή οι φακοί επαφής μπορεί να αντικατασταθούν από εμφυτεύματα αμφιβληστροειδούς ή εγκεφάλου. Μια διεπαφή εγκεφάλου-υπολογιστή θα επέτρεπε στα μάτια μας και σε άλλα αισθητήρια όργανα να παρακαμφθούν, παρέχοντας πρόσβαση σε ένα πλήρες φάσμα προσομοιωμένων αισθησιακών εμπειριών. Τελικά, αυτό θα μεταμορφώσει τον τρόπο με τον οποίο ζούμε, εργαζόμαστε και σκεφτόμαστε. Η εικασία του βιβλίου, άλλα και η δικιά μου, είναι ότι μέσα σε έναν αιώνα θα έχουμε εικονικές πραγματικότητες που δεν διακρίνονται από τον μη εικονικό κόσμο.
Ο Chalmers απορρίπτει την ιδέα ότι οι ψηφιακές εμπειρίες είναι πάντα απλές φαντασιώσεις απόδρασης, όπως μπορεί να είναι στα βιντεοπαιχνίδια. Οι προσομοιώσεις για αυτόν δεν είναι ψευδαισθήσεις. Οι εικονικοί κόσμοι είναι πραγματικοί. Τα εικονικά αντικείμενα είναι πραγματικά. Είναι σαφές ότι δεν είναι το ίδιο με τα μη εικονικά αντικείμενα, αλλά μια εικονική καρέκλα δημιουργείται χρησιμοποιώντας ψηφιακές διαδικασίες, ακριβώς όπως μια φυσική καρέκλα είναι κατασκευασμένη από άτομα και κουάρκ.
Επομένως, αυτό που συμβαίνει στους εικονικούς κόσμους συμβαίνει πραγματικά. Θα μπορούσατε να οδηγήσετε ολόκληρη τη ζωή σας σε έναν εικονικό κόσμο και να το βρείτε, κάλλιστα. ουσιαστικό και ικανοποιητικό. Άρα, είναι πιθανών να είμαστε κάτοικοι μιας εικονικής πραγματικότητας. Δεν μπορούμε ποτέ να αποδείξουμε ότι δεν είμαστε σε μια προσομοίωση υπολογιστή επειδή οποιαδήποτε απόδειξη της συνηθισμένης πραγματικότητας θα μπορούσε να προσομοιωθεί.
Ο συγγραφέας αναπτύσσει αυτήν την σκέψη ενδελεχώς. Επισημαίνει ότι οι άνθρωποι έχουν ήδη εφεύρει παιχνίδια που προσομοιώνουν την πραγματική ζωή, όπως το The Sims. Αυτά θα γίνουν πιο εξελιγμένα με την πάροδο του χρόνου, με τις εκδόσεις τους να εκτελούνται σε εκατομμύρια συσκευές. Επιπλέον, εκεί έξω στο υπόλοιπο σύμπαν, αν κάποιοι εξωγήινοι έχουν νοημοσύνη σε ανθρώπινο επίπεδο, θα πρέπει τελικά να αναπτύξουν υπολογιστές και να τους προγραμματίσουν. Αν αυτοί οι εξωγήινοι πολιτισμοί επιβιώσουν για αρκετό καιρό, πιθανότατα θα δημιουργήσουν προσομοιωμένα σύμπαντα. Στατιστικά μιλώντας, αυτό σημαίνει ότι τα προσομοιωμένα όντα πιθανότατα ήδη ξεπερνούν κατά πολύ τα "πραγματικά". Με άλλα λόγια, είναι πιο πιθανό να ζούμε σε μια προσομοίωση παρά στην αρχική έκδοση του κόσμου μας.
Αυτην την υπόθεση προσομοίωσης, ο Chalmers την εξετασει σε πολλες προεκτασεις. Η πιο εβδιαφερουσα για εμενα, δίνει μια προοπτική κάποιων διαφορετικών τρόπων σκέψης για τη ζωή μετά το θάνατο. Για παράδειγμα, ίσως αν είμαστε όλοι κομμάτια κώδικα μέσα στην προσομοίωση, τότε υπάρχει μια πιθανότητα ότι μετά τον φυσικό θάνατο μέσα στην προσομοίωση, αυτός ο κώδικας θα μπορούσε να ανυψωθεί από τους προσομοιωτές και να μετακινηθεί σε κάποιον άλλο εικονικό κόσμο ή σε κάποιο άλλο τμήμα της προσομοίωσης. Δίνει επίσης απάντηση στην ερώτηση που είχα πάντα: Αν μεταφέρουμε τον εγκέφαλο μας σε μια προσομοίωση του και τον ανεβάσουμε με ψηφιακό τρόπο στο cloud, πως θα ξέρουμε τι αυτό που βρίσκεται εκει είμαστε οντως εμείς; Θελω να πω ειναι ένα αντιγραφο που θα λειτουργεί ακριβως οπως θα λειτουργούσαμε σε ανάλογες περιστάσεις εμείς, άλλα όταν πεθάνουμε και έχουμε μεταφέρει την συνείδηση μας εκει, πως θα μπορέσουμε να μεταφέρουμε την ιδια μας την ύπαρξη και με τον τροπο αυτο να αποφύγουμε τον θάνατο; Το βιβλίο λέει οτι αν κάνουμε για πολύ καιρό μια σειρά απο ασκησεις, θα μπορέσουμε στο τελος να μην εχουμε διαίσθηση της διαφοράς μεταξύ του εαυτού μας και του ψηφιακού εαυτού μας. Δηλαδή, αν, π.χ., για 25 χρόνια κινούμαστε στο cloud με το φυσικό μας σώμα αντιγράφοντας πλήρως τις διαδικασίες του σώματος, του εγκεφάλου, των αισθήσεων κλπ, κάποια στιγμή που το σώμα αυτό, αναπόφευκτα. πεθάνει, ο εαυτός μας θα είναι τόσο συνυφασμένος με την προσομοίωση στο cloud, που δεν θα τον νιώσει ως κάποιου είδους θάνατο άλλα ως έναν ακρωτηριασμό, ας πούμε. Θα συνεχίσει να παράγει της λειτουργιές του μονό που θα το κάνει χωρίς να μεσολαβεί το ο εγκέφαλος, και η συνείδηση θα μπορέσει να φυτευτεί σε ένα άλλο ρομποτικό σώμα ή ακόμη και να υπάρχει αιώνια σε έναν παγκόσμιο δίκτυο υπερυπολογιστών. Μπορεί, μάλιστα, αν για κάποιον λόγω οι άνθρωποι συνεχίζουν να έχουν το ένστικτο της τεκνοποίησης κάτω από αυτές τις συνθήκες, αυτό που αποκαλούμε εμείς ζωή να μην είναι πάρα ένα στάδιο, οπού το ανθρωπινό σώμα θα μπαίνει στην διαδικασία ψηφιοποίησης και παντοτινής ύπαρξης.
Αυτά τα τελευταία είναι δικές μου εικασίες, δεν αναφέρονται στο βιβλίο. Πάντως, τα βρίσκω όλα αυτά συναρπαστικά και άκρως ρεαλιστικά. Πιστεύω πως μια μέρα η ανθρωπότητα, αν δεν καταστραφεί, μέσα στα επόμενα 300 χρόνια, θα μπορούσε κάλλιστα φτάσει σε αυτό το σημείο.
Το όλο θέμα θέμα του είναι μια άσκηση σε αυτό που ο Chalmers αποκαλεί «τεχνοφιλοσοφία» – θέτοντας φιλοσοφικά ερωτήματα σχετικά με την τεχνολογία και χρησιμοποιώντας τη νέα τεχνολογία για να απαντήσει σε φιλοσοφικά προβλήματα. Καταπιάνεται με κάποιες ειλικρινά δυσνόητες ιδέες, αλλά το κάνει με ένα ζωντανό και διασκεδαστικό ύφος, γεμάτο αναφορές από τον χωρο του κινηματογράφου των ηλ. παιχνιδιών, των βιβλίων επιστημονικής φαντασίας. Αυτό αφενός βοηθάει πολύ στην κατανοήσει και, αφετέρου, αποτελεί και ένας σπουδαίος τέτοιων μέσων - ιδιαίτερα βιβλίων.
Καθώς η τεχνολογία εξελίσσεται, τα γυαλιά AR ή οι φακοί επαφής μπορεί να αντικατασταθούν από εμφυτεύματα αμφιβληστροειδούς ή εγκεφάλου. Μια διεπαφή εγκεφάλου-υπολογιστή θα επέτρεπε στα μάτια μας και σε άλλα αισθητήρια όργανα να παρακαμφθούν, παρέχοντας πρόσβαση σε ένα πλήρες φάσμα προσομοιωμένων αισθησιακών εμπειριών. Τελικά, αυτό θα μεταμορφώσει τον τρόπο με τον οποίο ζούμε, εργαζόμαστε και σκεφτόμαστε. Η εικασία του βιβλίου, άλλα και η δικιά μου, είναι ότι μέσα σε έναν αιώνα θα έχουμε εικονικές πραγματικότητες που δεν διακρίνονται από τον μη εικονικό κόσμο.
Ο Chalmers απορρίπτει την ιδέα ότι οι ψηφιακές εμπειρίες είναι πάντα απλές φαντασιώσεις απόδρασης, όπως μπορεί να είναι στα βιντεοπαιχνίδια. Οι προσομοιώσεις για αυτόν δεν είναι ψευδαισθήσεις. Οι εικονικοί κόσμοι είναι πραγματικοί. Τα εικονικά αντικείμενα είναι πραγματικά. Είναι σαφές ότι δεν είναι το ίδιο με τα μη εικονικά αντικείμενα, αλλά μια εικονική καρέκλα δημιουργείται χρησιμοποιώντας ψηφιακές διαδικασίες, ακριβώς όπως μια φυσική καρέκλα είναι κατασκευασμένη από άτομα και κουάρκ.
Επομένως, αυτό που συμβαίνει στους εικονικούς κόσμους συμβαίνει πραγματικά. Θα μπορούσατε να οδηγήσετε ολόκληρη τη ζωή σας σε έναν εικονικό κόσμο και να το βρείτε, κάλλιστα. ουσιαστικό και ικανοποιητικό. Άρα, είναι πιθανών να είμαστε κάτοικοι μιας εικονικής πραγματικότητας. Δεν μπορούμε ποτέ να αποδείξουμε ότι δεν είμαστε σε μια προσομοίωση υπολογιστή επειδή οποιαδήποτε απόδειξη της συνηθισμένης πραγματικότητας θα μπορούσε να προσομοιωθεί.
Ο συγγραφέας αναπτύσσει αυτήν την σκέψη ενδελεχώς. Επισημαίνει ότι οι άνθρωποι έχουν ήδη εφεύρει παιχνίδια που προσομοιώνουν την πραγματική ζωή, όπως το The Sims. Αυτά θα γίνουν πιο εξελιγμένα με την πάροδο του χρόνου, με τις εκδόσεις τους να εκτελούνται σε εκατομμύρια συσκευές. Επιπλέον, εκεί έξω στο υπόλοιπο σύμπαν, αν κάποιοι εξωγήινοι έχουν νοημοσύνη σε ανθρώπινο επίπεδο, θα πρέπει τελικά να αναπτύξουν υπολογιστές και να τους προγραμματίσουν. Αν αυτοί οι εξωγήινοι πολιτισμοί επιβιώσουν για αρκετό καιρό, πιθανότατα θα δημιουργήσουν προσομοιωμένα σύμπαντα. Στατιστικά μιλώντας, αυτό σημαίνει ότι τα προσομοιωμένα όντα πιθανότατα ήδη ξεπερνούν κατά πολύ τα "πραγματικά". Με άλλα λόγια, είναι πιο πιθανό να ζούμε σε μια προσομοίωση παρά στην αρχική έκδοση του κόσμου μας.
Αυτην την υπόθεση προσομοίωσης, ο Chalmers την εξετασει σε πολλες προεκτασεις. Η πιο εβδιαφερουσα για εμενα, δίνει μια προοπτική κάποιων διαφορετικών τρόπων σκέψης για τη ζωή μετά το θάνατο. Για παράδειγμα, ίσως αν είμαστε όλοι κομμάτια κώδικα μέσα στην προσομοίωση, τότε υπάρχει μια πιθανότητα ότι μετά τον φυσικό θάνατο μέσα στην προσομοίωση, αυτός ο κώδικας θα μπορούσε να ανυψωθεί από τους προσομοιωτές και να μετακινηθεί σε κάποιον άλλο εικονικό κόσμο ή σε κάποιο άλλο τμήμα της προσομοίωσης. Δίνει επίσης απάντηση στην ερώτηση που είχα πάντα: Αν μεταφέρουμε τον εγκέφαλο μας σε μια προσομοίωση του και τον ανεβάσουμε με ψηφιακό τρόπο στο cloud, πως θα ξέρουμε τι αυτό που βρίσκεται εκει είμαστε οντως εμείς; Θελω να πω ειναι ένα αντιγραφο που θα λειτουργεί ακριβως οπως θα λειτουργούσαμε σε ανάλογες περιστάσεις εμείς, άλλα όταν πεθάνουμε και έχουμε μεταφέρει την συνείδηση μας εκει, πως θα μπορέσουμε να μεταφέρουμε την ιδια μας την ύπαρξη και με τον τροπο αυτο να αποφύγουμε τον θάνατο; Το βιβλίο λέει οτι αν κάνουμε για πολύ καιρό μια σειρά απο ασκησεις, θα μπορέσουμε στο τελος να μην εχουμε διαίσθηση της διαφοράς μεταξύ του εαυτού μας και του ψηφιακού εαυτού μας. Δηλαδή, αν, π.χ., για 25 χρόνια κινούμαστε στο cloud με το φυσικό μας σώμα αντιγράφοντας πλήρως τις διαδικασίες του σώματος, του εγκεφάλου, των αισθήσεων κλπ, κάποια στιγμή που το σώμα αυτό, αναπόφευκτα. πεθάνει, ο εαυτός μας θα είναι τόσο συνυφασμένος με την προσομοίωση στο cloud, που δεν θα τον νιώσει ως κάποιου είδους θάνατο άλλα ως έναν ακρωτηριασμό, ας πούμε. Θα συνεχίσει να παράγει της λειτουργιές του μονό που θα το κάνει χωρίς να μεσολαβεί το ο εγκέφαλος, και η συνείδηση θα μπορέσει να φυτευτεί σε ένα άλλο ρομποτικό σώμα ή ακόμη και να υπάρχει αιώνια σε έναν παγκόσμιο δίκτυο υπερυπολογιστών. Μπορεί, μάλιστα, αν για κάποιον λόγω οι άνθρωποι συνεχίζουν να έχουν το ένστικτο της τεκνοποίησης κάτω από αυτές τις συνθήκες, αυτό που αποκαλούμε εμείς ζωή να μην είναι πάρα ένα στάδιο, οπού το ανθρωπινό σώμα θα μπαίνει στην διαδικασία ψηφιοποίησης και παντοτινής ύπαρξης.
Αυτά τα τελευταία είναι δικές μου εικασίες, δεν αναφέρονται στο βιβλίο. Πάντως, τα βρίσκω όλα αυτά συναρπαστικά και άκρως ρεαλιστικά. Πιστεύω πως μια μέρα η ανθρωπότητα, αν δεν καταστραφεί, μέσα στα επόμενα 300 χρόνια, θα μπορούσε κάλλιστα φτάσει σε αυτό το σημείο.
June 3, 2023
This book is an erudite, well-reasoned, fascinating trek through perennial philosophical problems using the concepts and questions of simulation theory as a framework.
This book is also an erudite, well-reasoned, fascinating trek through ideas that underlie some of the most dangerous tendencies in our culture and politics. The idea that, in some sense, base reality is either malleable or not real in the traditional sense is a fundamental foundation for all sorts of totalitarian machinations. Once you accept as possible, or more extremely, plausible, the proposition that what is real is determined solely by human minds and the application of intellect, then you are not too far from the plausibility and desirability of curtailing the real liberty of others in order to achieve an ideal.
If you look around at the world and wonder how it came to be that we are having some of the debates we're having (e.g., "Is gender constructed merely by semantics and consensus?") then you would do well to understand the ideas examined in this book.
The author's primary thesis, in his words, is that "Virtual reality is genuine reality. Or at least, virtual realities are genuine realities. Virtual worlds need not be second-class realities. They can be first-class realities."
In short, this idea is not new, although explaining and exploring it in terms of computers, AI, and related technologies is a new way of explaining and exploring it. As the author acknowledges in several places, this perspective is related to (although he does distinguish it from) Plato's Allegory of the Cave. And like Plato's allegory, the idea that perception is in some sense reality--that a virtual reality can be, in some sense, real--is the basis for nearly every major movement against human freedom conceived, beginning of course, with Plato's totalitarian philosopher's republic. The idea that if we can make it seem like things are so, then things are so, has tempted and is still tempting autocrats and elites to the worst of actions based on, at times, the best of motives.
Contra the author's premise, common sense, dystopian fiction, and reams of opposing philosophical positions argue that virtual realities--whether simulated by computers or by politics--are aimed at taking us into the cave, not out of it, while a class of elites remain comfortably in the light of the sun, in the real world, the world they know to be real, despite what they tell those who dwell in the cave under their leadership.
This book will make you think. Hopefully, it will make you try to argue against it rather than persuading you to accept its premises.
And one other aside, while I'm thinking about it: From the perspective of theology, what I find fascinating is that so many are willing to entertain variations on the simulation hypothesis but outright reject traditional religion. I find it strange and weird that someone is fully willing to accept that you and I are characters inside what amounts to a giant game of Roblox while outright rejecting, on supposedly rational grounds, that the hypotheses of traditional religion are false.
We are indeed living in strange times, and this book, although I disagree with its primary argument, goes a long way in helping one understand that strangeness.
This book is also an erudite, well-reasoned, fascinating trek through ideas that underlie some of the most dangerous tendencies in our culture and politics. The idea that, in some sense, base reality is either malleable or not real in the traditional sense is a fundamental foundation for all sorts of totalitarian machinations. Once you accept as possible, or more extremely, plausible, the proposition that what is real is determined solely by human minds and the application of intellect, then you are not too far from the plausibility and desirability of curtailing the real liberty of others in order to achieve an ideal.
If you look around at the world and wonder how it came to be that we are having some of the debates we're having (e.g., "Is gender constructed merely by semantics and consensus?") then you would do well to understand the ideas examined in this book.
The author's primary thesis, in his words, is that "Virtual reality is genuine reality. Or at least, virtual realities are genuine realities. Virtual worlds need not be second-class realities. They can be first-class realities."
In short, this idea is not new, although explaining and exploring it in terms of computers, AI, and related technologies is a new way of explaining and exploring it. As the author acknowledges in several places, this perspective is related to (although he does distinguish it from) Plato's Allegory of the Cave. And like Plato's allegory, the idea that perception is in some sense reality--that a virtual reality can be, in some sense, real--is the basis for nearly every major movement against human freedom conceived, beginning of course, with Plato's totalitarian philosopher's republic. The idea that if we can make it seem like things are so, then things are so, has tempted and is still tempting autocrats and elites to the worst of actions based on, at times, the best of motives.
Contra the author's premise, common sense, dystopian fiction, and reams of opposing philosophical positions argue that virtual realities--whether simulated by computers or by politics--are aimed at taking us into the cave, not out of it, while a class of elites remain comfortably in the light of the sun, in the real world, the world they know to be real, despite what they tell those who dwell in the cave under their leadership.
This book will make you think. Hopefully, it will make you try to argue against it rather than persuading you to accept its premises.
And one other aside, while I'm thinking about it: From the perspective of theology, what I find fascinating is that so many are willing to entertain variations on the simulation hypothesis but outright reject traditional religion. I find it strange and weird that someone is fully willing to accept that you and I are characters inside what amounts to a giant game of Roblox while outright rejecting, on supposedly rational grounds, that the hypotheses of traditional religion are false.
We are indeed living in strange times, and this book, although I disagree with its primary argument, goes a long way in helping one understand that strangeness.
June 3, 2022
Without adopting a skeptical Cartesian hypothesis, I'm not convinced. Yes, I cannot prove that we're not in a simulation. Yet there are many things I cannot prove using the same logic. I cannot prove that I don't have an invisible parasitic alien living on the back of my head. Hell, maybe it's not even invisible and it just manipulates my memory or visual sensory perception. I cannot prove that we're not manifestations of a fictional writer's over-imagination. I cannot prove that I'm not a walking turd. Perhaps when I look in the mirror there's an actual turd standing there looking back at me but I can't recognise it as so because I call that turd my face and recognise it as so (raised in the book as metacognitive skepticism). I cannot prove that an interdimesional agency isn't monitoring everything we do and acting to ensure that we perfectly follow a specific temporal path (the evil demon scanario). I cannot prove that alien-fighting MIBs don't wipe my memory every few days after I accidentally see an alien eat a human being. I cannot prove that a hidden magic subsociety doesn't coexist with ours, occasionally raining down memory-changing phoenix juice when we see too much. There's a lot I cannot prove, as I rely on my senses, memory and my belief in my own perceptual reality. But that doesn't mean any of those situations are actually likely. In fairness, he addressed most of these possibilities. But he didn't address why 'we're all in a simulation' is any more of a possibility than 'we're being manipulated by interdimesional time travellers'?
That said, it is interesting to ask whether me being unconvinced is indicative of a weak argument or of a biased interpretation of the argument. This I am not too sure about. I prefer the former answer, but I would if I were applying a distorted perspective to avoid the cognitive dissonance of accepting the likelihood of the argument. I should also question whether me being unconvinced has anything to do with the quality of the underlying work. Here I think I can state the answer is no. The argument is very thorough. Chalmers is clearly an expert in his field. His knowledge of philosophy, maths and computer science work well together and he refers to common philosophical areas, which extended my knowledge of philosophy quite extensively. Overall, the argument is well researched and well presented, and the quality of the underlying work is quite excellent.
Most of the interesting arguments are based on 'if we're in a simulation, then...' rather than 'why we could be in a simulation'. These (former) arguments explored some of the deeper aspects of philosophy, tying in a sprinkle of physics and mathematical logic (in the latter chapters).
He seems to be selective in his depth in some areas though. For example, in his analysis on ethical philosophy, he was very dismissive of utilitarianism, adopting Bentham's early views on utilitarianism, which admittedly were very weak in many areas, but ignoring later act and rule utilitarianism, which sealed many of the gaps that early theories left exposed. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the question of moral status and the interesting development of the trolley problem by incorporating philosophical zombies and simulated people.
That said, it is interesting to ask whether me being unconvinced is indicative of a weak argument or of a biased interpretation of the argument. This I am not too sure about. I prefer the former answer, but I would if I were applying a distorted perspective to avoid the cognitive dissonance of accepting the likelihood of the argument. I should also question whether me being unconvinced has anything to do with the quality of the underlying work. Here I think I can state the answer is no. The argument is very thorough. Chalmers is clearly an expert in his field. His knowledge of philosophy, maths and computer science work well together and he refers to common philosophical areas, which extended my knowledge of philosophy quite extensively. Overall, the argument is well researched and well presented, and the quality of the underlying work is quite excellent.
Most of the interesting arguments are based on 'if we're in a simulation, then...' rather than 'why we could be in a simulation'. These (former) arguments explored some of the deeper aspects of philosophy, tying in a sprinkle of physics and mathematical logic (in the latter chapters).
He seems to be selective in his depth in some areas though. For example, in his analysis on ethical philosophy, he was very dismissive of utilitarianism, adopting Bentham's early views on utilitarianism, which admittedly were very weak in many areas, but ignoring later act and rule utilitarianism, which sealed many of the gaps that early theories left exposed. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the question of moral status and the interesting development of the trolley problem by incorporating philosophical zombies and simulated people.
November 19, 2023
The "hard problem of consciousness" as put by David Chalmers is concerned with understanding why and how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experiences, also known as qualia. Chalmers argues that even if we were to fully understand the neural mechanisms and physical processes associated with consciousness, there would still be an "explanatory gap" in our understanding of why these processes give rise to subjective, conscious experiences. He started citing to Upanishads in many areas to explain this concept. Unless a person has gone through the teachings of Vedanta this phenomenological quest will sound mundane.
In the context of Advaita (non-dual) Vedanta, especially the concept of Sakuna Brahman, we can draw some parallels. Non-dual Vedanta posits the existence of Brahman, an ultimate, formless reality that transcends distinctions and is beyond conceptualization. Sakuna Brahman refers to Brahman with attributes or qualities, as opposed to Nirguna Brahman, which is Brahman without attributes. Religious practices strongly emphasize devotion to the personal aspect of the divine (bhakti) and, in doing so, establish a separation between the individual (jiva) and the Supreme Being (Ishwara) in most religions but only in Hindu philosophy it goes beyond this through the path of knowledge to explain that there are no distinctions.
In the exploration of consciousness, one could draw an analogy between the "hard problem" and the challenge of understanding how Sakuna Brahman (with attributes) is related to or gives rise to the multifaceted, varied experiences within the phenomenal world. Just as Chalmers highlights the gap in understanding the transition from physical processes to conscious experience, in a Vedantic context, there is an inquiry into the relationship between the attributed Sakuna Brahman and the diverse, manifested reality.
Chalmer attacks Cartesian dualism in its classical form, where mind and body are distinct substances. However, his emphasis on the subjective nature of consciousness and the difficulty in explaining it purely in terms of physical processes echoes some of the themes in the dualistic tradition. He introduces the concept of "property dualism," suggesting that consciousness has irreducible properties that cannot be fully explained by physical properties alone, we can see these observations were lucidly explained in the yogin and advaitin in standard vedantic texts several thousand years back.
As we engage with the world and we perceive it to be true, which is the fundamental question of all the Upanishads. From a logical standpoint, the inquiry into why our individual experiences should constitute the consciousness of the ultimate consciousness where the hiranyagrabha plays the role of explaining these concepts. This perpetual seeking is crucial for self-realization, leading to the understanding that there is no duality—there is only the non-dual essence that is the ultimate reality, referred to as "ekam."
In the context of Advaita (non-dual) Vedanta, especially the concept of Sakuna Brahman, we can draw some parallels. Non-dual Vedanta posits the existence of Brahman, an ultimate, formless reality that transcends distinctions and is beyond conceptualization. Sakuna Brahman refers to Brahman with attributes or qualities, as opposed to Nirguna Brahman, which is Brahman without attributes. Religious practices strongly emphasize devotion to the personal aspect of the divine (bhakti) and, in doing so, establish a separation between the individual (jiva) and the Supreme Being (Ishwara) in most religions but only in Hindu philosophy it goes beyond this through the path of knowledge to explain that there are no distinctions.
In the exploration of consciousness, one could draw an analogy between the "hard problem" and the challenge of understanding how Sakuna Brahman (with attributes) is related to or gives rise to the multifaceted, varied experiences within the phenomenal world. Just as Chalmers highlights the gap in understanding the transition from physical processes to conscious experience, in a Vedantic context, there is an inquiry into the relationship between the attributed Sakuna Brahman and the diverse, manifested reality.
Chalmer attacks Cartesian dualism in its classical form, where mind and body are distinct substances. However, his emphasis on the subjective nature of consciousness and the difficulty in explaining it purely in terms of physical processes echoes some of the themes in the dualistic tradition. He introduces the concept of "property dualism," suggesting that consciousness has irreducible properties that cannot be fully explained by physical properties alone, we can see these observations were lucidly explained in the yogin and advaitin in standard vedantic texts several thousand years back.
As we engage with the world and we perceive it to be true, which is the fundamental question of all the Upanishads. From a logical standpoint, the inquiry into why our individual experiences should constitute the consciousness of the ultimate consciousness where the hiranyagrabha plays the role of explaining these concepts. This perpetual seeking is crucial for self-realization, leading to the understanding that there is no duality—there is only the non-dual essence that is the ultimate reality, referred to as "ekam."
February 6, 2022
From the point of view of either philosophy or theory of computing, I thought that this book was only B+. It touches lightly on the main issues with a readable and comprehensible style, but there is a lot more depth to plumb on both sides of the equation that is not to be found here.
However, there were two things that I really liked.
First, the basic idea of doing a philosophical analysis of issues pertaining to virtual reality is great fun. There is a lot to think about here, so even though Mr. Chalmers just got me starting to think, he did do that, and I have continued to turn over in my mind some of the issues that he brings up days after I finished the book. It's a subject that is fun to think about and that has many nuances that make it defy easy answers.
Second, unlike most of the philosophy books that I read, Mr. Chalmers "does philosophy" in a way that is interesting and practical -- he uses philosophical methods to analyze and discuss problems that all of us can grasp and have thought about at least in passing. It reminded me of the philosophy discussions that I have with my friend Harvey that always enrich my day when we get together. It's not something that is so obtuse and abstracted that it makes you shrug and wonder why they bother as is the case with a lot of philosophical writing.
On a substantive level, I'm ready to believe some of Mr. Chalmers' propositions, not others. For example, I agree that it is useful to look at virtual reality as being a form of actual reality. It involves some definitional sleight of hand and is a bit circular, but I found it to be a useful construct that reveals some truth. I'm also prepared to believe that we could be living in a simulation, though I think that we probably do not, and I found Mr. Chalmers' arguments that we probably do unpersuasive. My biggest complaint against him is that he purports to give probabilities for things that it seems to me could be true, but about which so little can be definitely said that any attempt to put numerical probabilities on them is false. And I don't think that he deals adequately with the argument that certain known processes in our universe could not be mathematically modeled with any computer no matter how fast. Of course you can say that the puppet master of the simulation has built our world with something fundamentally different than a computer, but then the argument just becomes an appeal to God or magic. It could be true, but we can only judge it as a matter of faith, not science.
However, there were two things that I really liked.
First, the basic idea of doing a philosophical analysis of issues pertaining to virtual reality is great fun. There is a lot to think about here, so even though Mr. Chalmers just got me starting to think, he did do that, and I have continued to turn over in my mind some of the issues that he brings up days after I finished the book. It's a subject that is fun to think about and that has many nuances that make it defy easy answers.
Second, unlike most of the philosophy books that I read, Mr. Chalmers "does philosophy" in a way that is interesting and practical -- he uses philosophical methods to analyze and discuss problems that all of us can grasp and have thought about at least in passing. It reminded me of the philosophy discussions that I have with my friend Harvey that always enrich my day when we get together. It's not something that is so obtuse and abstracted that it makes you shrug and wonder why they bother as is the case with a lot of philosophical writing.
On a substantive level, I'm ready to believe some of Mr. Chalmers' propositions, not others. For example, I agree that it is useful to look at virtual reality as being a form of actual reality. It involves some definitional sleight of hand and is a bit circular, but I found it to be a useful construct that reveals some truth. I'm also prepared to believe that we could be living in a simulation, though I think that we probably do not, and I found Mr. Chalmers' arguments that we probably do unpersuasive. My biggest complaint against him is that he purports to give probabilities for things that it seems to me could be true, but about which so little can be definitely said that any attempt to put numerical probabilities on them is false. And I don't think that he deals adequately with the argument that certain known processes in our universe could not be mathematically modeled with any computer no matter how fast. Of course you can say that the puppet master of the simulation has built our world with something fundamentally different than a computer, but then the argument just becomes an appeal to God or magic. It could be true, but we can only judge it as a matter of faith, not science.
January 28, 2024
In his book Reality+ (2022), (in Swedish: “Virtuella Världar”) David Chalmers discusses a simulation-hypothesis mainly based on today’s VR and AI technology What is really real? Can there be consciousness in a digital world? Is it possible to live a good life in a virtual world?
In a time of disruptive fragmentation David Chalmers articulates crucial philosophical questions. Are we living one level down in a parallel Matrix multiverse? Is the world as we know it about to disappear, and new worlds are about to take shape – a new virtual reality…. How do we know we're not in a computer simulation? Chalmers launches into a long speculative discussion with various dips into the problems of Descartes’, Hume’s, and Kant’s - i.e. how can we know anything about reality at all? And how do mind and body interact? How can something as seemingly non-material as a thought communicate with a body at all? Is there a mind beyond the body, and is there a God? Are illusions real? What is an illusion? Is a computer simulation a reality for the user? How do a VR-user distinguish between reality and the perceived simulations? Are the interactions real or illusions?
How can we understand this dualism? Augmented reality is a fact of life: we spend loads of time with smart watches, calculators, and mobile phones every day; what are the long-term implications of this for humanity, for the human mind, in the decades or centuries to come?
Chalmers does not answer these questions, which is perhaps not so surprising since our epistemology has not really reached the point where these questions can be answered. But Chalmers keep on struggling in those dualities, and friendly trying to strangle René Descartes. And I’m impressed with the eagerness he tries to dig into this. But this computer-AI-VR-simulation hypothesis, based on analogies with today's technology, is risky business. It's historically risky to compare ideas with new items – the arguments will, as Matthew Cobb has shown in his book “The Idea of the Brain” (2020), soon become outdated due to advancements in technology.
Sorry, but the book is a little too long. It seems that no editor had the courage to dare to question, or even the energy to edit the massive flow of words. Very interesting, though, almost like an ongoing personal discussion and very down-to-earth in his way of writing, always open and friendly rather than condescending. A book very worth reading.
In a time of disruptive fragmentation David Chalmers articulates crucial philosophical questions. Are we living one level down in a parallel Matrix multiverse? Is the world as we know it about to disappear, and new worlds are about to take shape – a new virtual reality…. How do we know we're not in a computer simulation? Chalmers launches into a long speculative discussion with various dips into the problems of Descartes’, Hume’s, and Kant’s - i.e. how can we know anything about reality at all? And how do mind and body interact? How can something as seemingly non-material as a thought communicate with a body at all? Is there a mind beyond the body, and is there a God? Are illusions real? What is an illusion? Is a computer simulation a reality for the user? How do a VR-user distinguish between reality and the perceived simulations? Are the interactions real or illusions?
How can we understand this dualism? Augmented reality is a fact of life: we spend loads of time with smart watches, calculators, and mobile phones every day; what are the long-term implications of this for humanity, for the human mind, in the decades or centuries to come?
Chalmers does not answer these questions, which is perhaps not so surprising since our epistemology has not really reached the point where these questions can be answered. But Chalmers keep on struggling in those dualities, and friendly trying to strangle René Descartes. And I’m impressed with the eagerness he tries to dig into this. But this computer-AI-VR-simulation hypothesis, based on analogies with today's technology, is risky business. It's historically risky to compare ideas with new items – the arguments will, as Matthew Cobb has shown in his book “The Idea of the Brain” (2020), soon become outdated due to advancements in technology.
Sorry, but the book is a little too long. It seems that no editor had the courage to dare to question, or even the energy to edit the massive flow of words. Very interesting, though, almost like an ongoing personal discussion and very down-to-earth in his way of writing, always open and friendly rather than condescending. A book very worth reading.
January 22, 2023
As David Chalmers is one of my favourite philosophers, I do have a soft spot for his writings and his ideas. This reading was part of a UG course in the Philosophy of Virtual Worlds and it involved an online call with Chalmers to discuss aspects of his book. Both the book and the call inspired me to write an essay on the neurophilosophical reconciliation of the extended mind hypothesis with the embedded mind hypothesis. An essay that received an exceptionally good grade and which I am now fleshing out into a journal submisssion. I outline this bias I have in favour of Chalmers, so you can take my review with a grain of salt.
I find myself agreeing with Chalmers on the Skeptical Argument and I think it is very difficult to resist him (in my opinion, downright impossible). Bottom line is, you cannot hope to ever prove that you know reality is real (i.e., not a dream, simulation, DMT trip etc...). Still, it does not render your acquisition of knowledge epistemologically impossible.
Some shortcomings (or perhaps strengths?) of the book are that it is clearly written in a pop-science style, for a lay audience. The only chapters I would consider somewhat more specialised are the ones at the end, which delve into a bit more complexity. Still, Chalmers constantly refers to other resources that one can take up in order to deepen their understanding and, perhaps, challenge their philosophical abilities.
That being said, the book excellently surveys the major philosophical areas of investigation (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics & value, and the mind) through the lens of simulated worlds, virtual worlds and augmented reality. From my own perspective, it was a great way to tie up everything I have learned in previous philosophy courses into a themed dissection.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone without a philosophical background, but interested in philosophy, VR or AR. To those with more expert knowledge, I reckon it would still be an enjoyable, laid-back reading!
I find myself agreeing with Chalmers on the Skeptical Argument and I think it is very difficult to resist him (in my opinion, downright impossible). Bottom line is, you cannot hope to ever prove that you know reality is real (i.e., not a dream, simulation, DMT trip etc...). Still, it does not render your acquisition of knowledge epistemologically impossible.
Some shortcomings (or perhaps strengths?) of the book are that it is clearly written in a pop-science style, for a lay audience. The only chapters I would consider somewhat more specialised are the ones at the end, which delve into a bit more complexity. Still, Chalmers constantly refers to other resources that one can take up in order to deepen their understanding and, perhaps, challenge their philosophical abilities.
That being said, the book excellently surveys the major philosophical areas of investigation (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics & value, and the mind) through the lens of simulated worlds, virtual worlds and augmented reality. From my own perspective, it was a great way to tie up everything I have learned in previous philosophy courses into a themed dissection.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone without a philosophical background, but interested in philosophy, VR or AR. To those with more expert knowledge, I reckon it would still be an enjoyable, laid-back reading!
February 12, 2022
Reality+ is a "deep dive" into a topic I didn’t know a lot about, but was utterly interested in learning more about. I had first read an op-ed piece in the NY Times about Chalmers most recent work & went to pick up the book almost immediately at a local bookstore. Prior to starting the book, I thought it would be a take on more of the negatives of the virtual world, but was rather an examination of the positives of virtual reality, from a philosophical perspective. There was also a discussion, from my understanding, that we are already living in a virtual world (or could be). By taking into account the theories of Decartes, Plato, Aristotle; we see life and reality and consciousness from different perspectives. Generally, I give books about 50 pages before I decide to walk away. I stuck with this book, but it did take me about 200 pages to get really enthralled in the material. Perhaps this was becuase the language was so foreign to me, and the discussion about simulations and simulated societies was so lengthy. I took a lot of notes while reading this book- and have points that I want to go back and reference. The first 200 pages read more like a textbook and is very dense. As it moves forward, it gets more compelling, as topics delved into include: reality (how we define reality), mind & value (how do we assign value to things/life)? I found the chapter 16 titled “does augmented reality extend the mind” to be very compelling. We are already using our phones (note sections to jot down notes to remember that are significant) and google to “extend” our knowledge base. In that sense, technology is already so deeply embedded into our society that it is difficult to seperate. Just like the invention of the gutenberg printing press, which revolutionized the way in which we can obtain information and view the written word, phones also have changed the way we obtain information, and it isn’t necessarily a negative change. Although I could understand Chalmers arguments in a variety of ways, I don’t know that I completely agree with his take on virtual worlds. I do believe that life on earth, in a non virtual reality, is best. Chalmers has gotten me to stop and analyze “why do I believe this to be true.” And for that, I am thankful. After finishing all 466 pages of the book, I give it a solid 4 stars. Non fiction work and excellently structured.
January 15, 2023
David Chalmers es un afamado filósofo y científico sobre inteligencia artificial y psicología. Y este libro es un compendio de capítulos en el que se enumeran las diferentes preguntas que podemos hacernos alrededor del dilema popularizado por Descartes en 1641, sobre cómo sabemos si vivimos o no en una simulación.
Lo que pretende persuadirnos es que 'la realidad virtual es una realidad genuina'. Que los mundos virtuales no tienen que ser ilusorios, que los objetos dentro de los mundos virtuales son reales, que la vida puede ser buena y significativa en un mundo virtual y que la hipótesis de la simulación, la idea de que lo que solemos considerar como realidad podría ser en sí mismo virtual, si bien no es demostrable podría ser cierto.
Es un libro muy bien presentado, 24 capítulos, que se pueden leer de manera independiente, e incluso dejarlos a medias. Sin embargo, he leído 150 págs que me han interesado, en las cuales siempre cruza sus argumentos con ideas de la ciencia ficción para facilitar las explicaciones, pero no he aprendido nada nuevo que no supiera, y tampoco me ha convencido sobre la tesis del autor.
Creo que no era mi momento adecuado para esta obra. A pesar de ello, y por lo descrito, 3⭐.
Lo que pretende persuadirnos es que 'la realidad virtual es una realidad genuina'. Que los mundos virtuales no tienen que ser ilusorios, que los objetos dentro de los mundos virtuales son reales, que la vida puede ser buena y significativa en un mundo virtual y que la hipótesis de la simulación, la idea de que lo que solemos considerar como realidad podría ser en sí mismo virtual, si bien no es demostrable podría ser cierto.
Es un libro muy bien presentado, 24 capítulos, que se pueden leer de manera independiente, e incluso dejarlos a medias. Sin embargo, he leído 150 págs que me han interesado, en las cuales siempre cruza sus argumentos con ideas de la ciencia ficción para facilitar las explicaciones, pero no he aprendido nada nuevo que no supiera, y tampoco me ha convencido sobre la tesis del autor.
Creo que no era mi momento adecuado para esta obra. A pesar de ello, y por lo descrito, 3⭐.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 172 reviews