The man rethinking the definition of reality

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Our minds and perceptions, in other words, are fundamentally non-literal in their readings of reality – while perception itself is a kind of evolved illusion, useful and accurate enough to safeguard our survival, but nothing like as comprehensive as it seems. Virtual worlds and technological mediation are, in this sense, already a kind of second nature so far as humanity is concerned: environments and encounters neither more or less inherently meaningful than anything else we experience. In the end, information itself is the reality that matters.

What is Chalmers’ own take when it comes to the status of his reality? Would he like to live in a simulation – or to know if he were already living in one? “I haven’t quite made up my mind,” he says. “On the one hand, there’s something very cool about the idea of ​​being in the base reality. There are all these simulations, but getting to be in base reality is a very interesting and special place to be. On the other hand, if we are in a simulation, then the Universe is much bigger and grander than we had thought. ”

It’s a line of thought that feels, somehow, autobiographical – a version of the restless curiosity that took him halfway across the world, and that Reality + maps across a succession of philosophical vignettes, provocations and parables. As he put it at the end of our conversation: “I grew up in Australia, and I discovered that at some point, oh my God, there’s a whole world out there that I get to explore beyond this. I think that knowing there’s a world outside our own Universe, perhaps even one that we could in principle explore, would open up horizons and possibilities that are exciting and interesting. ” And his ultimate verdict di lui on that slippery word “reality” – and why it needs to be followed by “plus” to encompass everything he’s trying to say? “I guess I would like to say… that reality is capacious. Space is big. But reality is bigger.”

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Tom Chatfield is a British author and philosopher of technology. His most recent book by him is How To Think (SAGE Publishing)

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