1 of 1- Jason
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Virtual reality
Guys, I came across an article yesterday about virtual reality and Elon Musk’s comments see here . I know he is no philosopher but I think his reasoning is based on assumptions that could be challenged such that in virtual reality (as of today) you are basically just potential in the game and not actual. But could we reach to a point where even that gap is removed entirely like the matrix movie, I think yes. Even then the game may have the potential to cause you harm for instance and turn that into an actuality.
I have the following three questions
1) Any thoughts on what Elon Musk said?
2) Am I thinking correctly in terms of actuality and potentiality about virtual reality? If not what would be the right direction to think about it? (Any good links from a Thomist's perspective would be appreciated here)
3) Is there a deep sense in us that actually point us to the ultimate reality (i.e. God) where anything less than God seems like a “virtual” reality anyway?
Thanks.
- z10
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Re: Virtual reality
Elon Musk really should be citing the philosopher he took this idea from: Nick Bostrom.
- Greg
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Re: Virtual reality
I think the argument's silly and technocrats like being melodramatic.
“The strongest argument for us probably being in a simulation I think is the following,” he told the Code Conference. “40 years ago we had Pong – two rectangles and a dot. That’s where we were.
“Now 40 years later we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it’s getting better every year. And soon we’ll have virtual reality, we’ll have augmented reality.
“If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, just indistinguishable.”
There are two ways you could take claims that humans are living in virtual reality. On the one hand, you might think that one could create a simulation in which there is a new "virtual" world, complete with thinking subjects etc., and one could think that we exist in such a virtual world.
That does not seem to be what Musk is claiming. He is noting that one can create the appearance of virtual worlds, i.e. on television; if these were sufficiently improved and addressed all of the senses, then one could create a virtual reality "projector" like Hilary Putnam's brain in a vat or Robert Nozick's experience machine. Musk's claim seems to be that it is extremely likely that humans are really just brains in vats.
The first sort of virtual reality thesis is I think the sillier. The interesting thing about the second is that the subjects still exist noumenally, so a lot of the language of virtual reality rhetoric applies a bit oddly to it. We would in that case be in "base reality".
- iwpoe
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Re: Virtual reality
I like the concept of Base reality here. Virtual reality is a kind of prosthesis, on that way of thinking I think.
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
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It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
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- AKG
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Re: Virtual reality
If it turned out we are living in virtual reality does anyone have worries that this could undermine arguments for God's existence as what if this virtual reality does not reflect the actual reality and everything we know is false such as changing things?
- iwpoe
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Re: Virtual reality
AKG wrote:
If it turned out we are living in virtual reality does anyone have worries that this could undermine arguments for God's existence as what if this virtual reality does not reflect the actual reality and everything we know is false such as changing things?
Well, one, I don't think that's internally coherent. You're in a Descartes situation: you still know that you're real and that your thoughts were present and changing, and since you're thoughts change and you're real, then actual change is present in the world, and thus all the metaphysical implications of the presence of change, and etc.
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
- DanielCC
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Re: Virtual reality
If it turned out we are living in virtual reality does anyone have worries that this could undermine arguments for God's existence as what if this virtual reality does not reflect the actual reality and everything we know is false such as changing things?
No, if only because at worst it would only effect certain arguments*. Principles such as the PSR which are reached by retorsion would still hold as would the more 'ontological' proofs such the argument from Eternal Truths and the MOA (as Russell pointed out if a set of arguments for universals goes through then it goes through just as much on solipsism).
*Even then the outcome is debatable: notions like act/potency and the four causes are meant to apply to all possible beings.
- Greg
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Re: Virtual reality
That is a theme John Haldane developed in one article as well as (I think) in his debate with J.J.C. Smart (at least in the expanded edition): the traditional proofs seem to be just as successful given idealism.
- Jason
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Re: Virtual reality
Thank you for all the insightful responses, appreciate it.
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Thread Starter- DanielCC
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Re: Virtual reality
The features of reality on which the 5 ways (for example) depend still exist even on idealism; a fortiori if we inhabit some virtual reality.
The First Way: Change. Still exists given idealism. My intellect and will change.
The Second Way: Causation. Even if I don't cause those things which I think I cause, I (or perhaps something else) cause myself to believe that I have. Also see Mumford's cogito argument for causation.
The Third Way: Division of reality into contingent and necessary; the reality of time. Both work with idealism.
The Fourth Way: Being, truth, goodness. Still exist given idealism. I exist, and the convertibility of the transcendentals takes care of the rest.
The Fifth Way: Finality. My intellect and will exhibit finality.
On top of that, as others have pointed out, any ontological argument works with idealism, as does an argument from knowledge (e.g. Augustine, Plato, Haldane). The theistic argument which would be hit worst by idealism or virtual reality would probably be the Paley-style design argument, though it would do better with virtual reality than with idealism.
I might query Ways One and Five. It seems the Idealist might claim that the mind is a self mover (although we might ask more how this relates to Two and Three) and that finality is essential to intentional processes and thus need no derive from anywhere. The cost of this though is actual Idealism, something which is ironically incompatible with the brain in a vat/Matrix style virtual reality scenarios people like to use.
P.S. Out of interest where does Haldane put forward a knowledge argument? It's the first I've heard of it.