Virtual Worlds Are Not Illusions or Fictions

A review of "Reality+"

David Chalmers is one of the best academic philosophers alive. Whatever one thinks of his views, he’s a clear and systematic thinker.

Yet his Reality+ is, taken as a whole, a book of dubious quality. It’s a paradigm example of why academics should not try to write “trade books”. Unfortunately, Reality+ reads like a book that follows lame advice for how to write for an ignorant public: assume the reader knows nothing about philosophy, include unnecessary popular anecdotes and references, and favor breadth over depth. Instead of trying to write “for a general audience,” it’s much better to write a good book.

Despite these issues, because Chalmers is a good philosopher and the book touches on important issues, Reality+ really has redeemable aspects.

The key idea is that virtual reality is a legitimate reality. Virtual worlds need not be any less real or valuable than the non-virtual world. Chalmers calls this idea virtual realism. Because virtual worlds can be real, people can live meaningful and good lives in them. But can one really live a good life in a computer?

While the technology of today is relatively primitive, over the next few centuries it’s possible that virtual realities that are indistinguishable from actual reality are developed. Simulated persons could live in these realities. If human civilization is capable of running sophisticated simulated worlds, there will likely be many of them.

These issues raise a number of classical questions in philosophy: how do we know there is an external world? What is real? What is a good life? And more. Let’s focus on the last two.

There’s a common notion that virtual reality would be a “fake” or “artificial” reality. In such worlds, we wouldn’t see flowers or guitars – we’d just be living in a dream. In dream life we don’t see flowers, we only dream that we do. Simulated reality is on the same plane as imaginary and illusory reality, which is to say that it is not real. In the philosopher Daniel Dennet’s words, “a simulated hurricane doesn’t make you wet!” On this view, virtual antirealism, virtual reality isn’t genuine reality. Since virtual reality isn’t legitimate, virtual lives are less good.

What exactly does it mean for something to be real and why don’t digital worlds make the cut? 

It’s difficult to explain. Chalmers deals with and dismisses four candidates.

First: reality as everything that exists. This doesn’t work because virtual things exist. Ghosts are things that don’t exist. Digital objects do exist, even if they may lack other qualities.

The second attempt: reality as everything that has causal powers. The physical world is real because it is a world of cause and effect. But this doesn’t rule out virtual reality either, since virtual entities can play a role in making things happen. Someone singing in the subway causes others to have an auditory experience. This doesn’t change if we live in a simulation.

The third try is: reality as mind-independence. Things are real because they exist even when they aren’t heard, seen, or touched. The tree outside my house would be real even if there were no one to see it. Of course, the same principle applies to virtual trees. Third try isn’t the charm.

The last attempt is: reality as genuineness. In reality, things are as they seem. When we see a flower, that’s what we see. In virtual reality, when one sees a flower, one isn’t looking at a physical plant, but a digital one. The reply here is subtle and core to Chalmer’s picture. In the full simulation, we can only see and speak of digital flowers. So when we say that we’re looking at a flower, what we mean by flower refers to the digital plant. Hence, we are speaking truly when we say that we see a flower. Because we’re speaking truly, things are as they seem, and virtual reality is genuine.

There is at least one other way in which virtual reality may be less real that Chalmers does not speak of: reality as independence.

A virtual reality is fully dependent on the whims of its creators. This kind of dependence is more fundamental than the way in which humans are generally dependent. Someone who plus into the simulation is in a completely conditional state. Their whole world is contingent on the physical world, but the physical world is not contingent on the virtual one. One can extinguish the virtual world from the physical world, but the opposite cannot occur. The digital stands in an asymmetric relationship to the physical.

Suppose we live in a physical world created by and fully dependent on God. Would that render this reality an illusion? No. Dependence doesn’t render something fake or artificial.

So reality as independence doesn’t justify virtual antirealism.

But there is a sense in which a world that is sustained by God is less real than God because of its dependence and contingency. Likewise, there is a sense in which the digital is less real than the physical.

If independence is something that makes something more or less real, then virtual realities in this world would be less real. So virtual reality is less real than the ordinary world in one respect.

But how much less real is virtual reality overall? That depends on the virtual reality.

If one is solipsistically living in one’s head, your world is effectively a fantasy. A digital life dream.

But if one lives in a world full of other people – not the appearance of other people, but real subjects with their own lives – where one can build rich relationships, cultivate emotional depth, and experience a beauty that renders this world mundane, then virtual reality can be more real. So, it’s not right to paint this picture as virtual antirealism.

Virtual realities can be less real, but if they’re created well, our descendants could be more alive than us.