He also read a great deal of science fiction and, by the time he'd finished a maths degree and spent six months travelling around Europe, found himself thinking obsessively about the science of the mind. When he was growing up in Australia in the 1970s, he identified with maths more than philosophy.
Technology in deep time: How it evolves alongside usĬhalmers didn't start out wanting to be a philosopher.Are we close to solving the puzzle of consciousness?.Virtual objects really exist." And the sooner we get used to these ideas, the sooner we'll be able to grasp some of the digital age's deepest tensions. In fact, as Chalmers bluntly puts it in his new book, Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy: "Simulations are not illusions. And the value and purpose of your life are similarly untouched. No matter what the status of your reality, he suggests, your thoughts and experiences remain as real as it gets.
How else to think about the revelation that "reality" is nothing like it seems? For the philosopher David Chalmers, however, none of this necessarily follows. After all, the Matrix movies depict a dystopian nightmare in which humanity has been enslaved by sinister machines. If you woke up one day and discovered that you were living in a virtual world – that everything you'd ever known was, like the Matrix, a form of hyper-realistic simulation – what would this imply for your hopes, dreams and experiences? Would it reveal them all to be lies: deceptions devoid of authenticity?įor most people, the intuitive answer to all these questions is "yes".
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