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Home , Hyperreality, Virtual world

Virtual : Hype, Reality, and

John P. Sullins Ph.D. 2002, Ph.D in Philosophy, Computers and Cognitive Science, Binghamton University Sonoma State University Philosophy Department. 2003- The Argument and the Metaphysics of VR • A philosophical argument that provides a methodological case for universal doubt • René Descartes (3/31/1596-02/11/1650) French Philosopher • Systematically doubt the truth of one’s own CARTESIAN beliefs-What beliefs withstand skepticism? SKEPTICISM where does it stop? SKEPTICISM AND THE SIMULATION HYPOTHESIS — DAVID CHALMERS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqbS5qJU8PA

1. CARTESIAN SKEPTICISM

1.1 All things that are not completely certain and indubitable are things to which I should not assent. 1.1.1. CERTAINTY has something to do with truth. In particular, a belief is certain if it is not possible for the belief to be false. (CANNOT BE FALSE) 1.1.2. INDUBITABILITY has something to do with doubt. In particular, a belief is indubitable if is no reason at all for me to doubt the belief. (CANNOT BE DOUBTED) 1.2. Nothing is completely certain and indubitable. 1.3. Therefore, I should assent to nothing. 2. CARTESIAN ANTI-SKEPTICISM

2.1. Cogito ergo sum 2.1.1. A thing that is convincing itself that it does not exist cannot fail to exist while it is convincing itself that it fails to exist. 2.1.2. I am a thing that is convincing itself that it does not exist. 2.1.3. Therefore, I cannot fail to exist while I am convincing myself that I fail to exist. (That is, it is certain that I exist while I am convincing myself that I fail to exist.) 2.1.4. If it occurs to me that 2.1.3 is true, then there is no reason at all for me to doubt the belief that I exist while I am convincing myself that I fail to exist. 2.1.5. It occurs to me that 2.1.3 is true. 2.1.6. Therefore, it is indubitable that I exist while I am convincing myself that I fail to exist. 2.2 WHAT AM I?

2.2.1. I am a being. But what’s a human being? 2.2.1.1. A rational animal? No. 2.2.1.2. Something with both a body and a soul? No. 2.2.1.2.1. I can doubt whether I have a body. 2.2.1.2.2. The soul is a “tenuous” thing. 2.2.1.3. I am a thinking thing, i.e., a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, imagines and has sensory perceptions: “thought; this alone is inseparable from me.” 2.2.2. None of the things grasped through the imagination is relevant to my knowledge of myself. 2.2.3. Imagining is simply contemplating the shape or image of a corporeal thing. 2.2.4. Therefore, it is unreliable (since all corporeal things are in doubt). 2.3 WAXING ANXIOUS

2.3.1. WORRY: “The corporeal things of which images are formed in my thought, and which the senses investigate, are known with much more distinctness than this puzzling ‘I’ which cannot be pictured in the imagination.” 2.3.2. RESPONSE: The wax example 2.3.2.1. What features are inseparable from the wax? 2.3.2.1.1. Extension 2.3.2.1.2. Flexibility 2.3.2.1.3. Changeability 2.3.2.2.“[T]he nature of this piece of wax is in no way revealed by my imagination [or by my senses], but is perceived by the mind alone.” 2.3.2.3.Thus, the intellect, rather than the imagination, is responsible for our understanding of the nature of all things, even of corporeal things. 2.3.2.4.Each act of the mind makes it “much more distinct and evident” that I exist. 2.4 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

2.4.1. I have an idea of an infinite being, i.e., a being that is “eternal, infinite, [immutable,] omniscient, omnipotent and the creator of all things that exist apart from [me]” (p. 30). 2.4.2.There must be as much formal reality in the total cause of an idea as there is objective reality in the idea itself. 2.4.2.1.FORMAL REALITY: The reality that an object has independent of one’s thinking (i.e. having an idea) of that object. [This is the actual reality, independent of thought, of an object.] 2.4.2.2.OBJECTIVE REALITY: The formal reality that a thing is presented as having (in an idea). 2.4.3. Therefore, there must be as much formal reality in the total cause of my idea of an infinite being as there is objective reality in the idea itself. 2.4.4. I am a being that is created, limited and substantially finite. 2.4.5. Therefore, something other than me is the total cause of my idea of an infinite being. 2.4.6. Therefore, there is something other than me, and that thing is a being that is “eternal, infinite, [immutable,] omniscient, omnipotent and the creator of all things that exist apart from [me].” 2.4.7. Therefore, God exists. 2.5 THE NATURE OF GOD

2.5.1.God has all of the perfections. 2.5.2.The will to deceive is an imperfection. 2.5.3.Therefore, “it is impossible that God should ever deceive me.” (p. 99). 2.5.4.Moreover, “I know by experience that there is in me a faculty of judgement which, like everything else which is in me, I certainly received from God” (p. 99). 2.5.5.“God does not wish to deceive me” (p. 99). 2.5.6.Therefore, “[God] surely did not give me the kind of faculty which would ever enable me to go wrong while using it correctly” (p. 99).2.5.7.Therefore, my faculty of judgment is such that it never “enable[s] me to go wrong while using it correctly.” 2.5 THE NATURE OF GOD CONTINUED

OBJECTION: Why do I ever go wrong? DESCARTES’RESPONSE: 1. Error depends both on the will and on the intellect. 2. I err when the scope of my will exceeds the scope of my intellect. 3. So far as Descartes knows, the universe as a whole might be more perfect “because some of its parts are not immune from error.” 4. We can avoid error, according to Descartes, by “withhold[ing] judgment on any occasion when the truth of the matter is not clear.” 2.5.8. Therefore, when I use my faculty of judgment correctly, not even a malicious demon can make that faculty deceive me 2.6 CONCLUSION, SKEPTICISM IS WRONG

2.6.1.Given the conclusion expressed in 2.5.8, we can effectively eliminate the malicious demon hypothesis, i.e., the hypothesis that a malicious demon makes it so that our faculties deceive us even when we use them correctly. 2.6.2.Given the conclusions in 2.5.3 and 2.5.8, we can effectively eliminate the dreaming hypothesis, i.e., the hypothesis that at this moment, in an optimal perceptual situation, our sensory experiences are simply the products of a dream. 2.6.3.Having eliminated these two hypotheses, we have found our way out of the skepticism that Descartes attempts to establish in the First Meditation. • BIV • A brain in a vat would have all the same BRAIN IN THE experiences of an identity and external world as VAT ARGUMENT you do. Your experiences of identity and an external world cannot guarantee that you are not a brain in a vat • A philosophical argument that provides an update to Cartesian Skepticism • Nick Bostrom (3/10/73), Oxford, Future of Humanity Institute. • One of the following has to be true: THE SIMULATION 1. The fraction of human- civilizations that ARGUMENT reach a posthuman stage is very close to zero; 2. The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor- is very close to zero; 3. The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one. ARE WE LIVING IN A MASSIVE COMPUTER PROGRAM? OR A SIMULATION? | JOSCHA BACH

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kpyT4wOMgk BREAK WE ARE LIVING IN A

A version of VR has come to pass that is a bit different from what early visionaries dreamed of, but it is a virtual life nonetheless. • Phone-life • My students report that they spend 25-50% of their waking day interacting with each other on various social networking apps. PRECURSORS TO VR

Linear Perspective Cartesian Coordinates VR VISIONS OF THE 70S-MYRON KRUEGER

No wearable equipment, just , video projections and human- computer interactions

1975 VR VISIONS OF THE 80S AND 90S

Initially imagined as a new utopian technology for self expression and the discovery of new forms of . A place where physical limitations of reality no longer apply. And escape from “meat-space”

(Photo: ) 1991 NASA/VPL VR VISIONS OF THE 80S AND 90S

(Photo: NASA) 1985 (Photo: NASA) Late 80s

VR VISIONS OF THE 80S AND 90S

Ambitious arcade games

(Photo: Associated Press) NEC Tokyo 1992 (Photo: Virtuality) 1991 FAILED VR PRODUCTS OF THE 80S AND 90S

(Photo: Forte Technologies) VFX11995 (Photo: Nintendo) NES 1980s TIMOTHY LEARY’S LAST TRIP JG - So not only can you have a relationship with an Indian in “For centuries, the definition of a mystic the Peruvian Andes, but the Peruvian could approximate the experience was ‘ineffable.’ Now, it is experience he or she would have on a certain local drug, store it possible to design your own altered on disk, and send it to you back here in Beverly Hills. states; to share them, so that they can be mutually designed; and to store them.” TL - Exactly. The whole point of is brains to brains. 11/14/93 And brains love to be turned on. Brains love to be flooded and changed. Brains adore being used at the speed for which they were designed. http://enter-magazine.com/news-perspectives/timothy-leary-immersive-technology-virtual-sushi-and-future-traveling-light

• Beyond symbols, a direct expression of thought/feeling POST-SYMBOLIC • Jaron Lanier COMMUNICATION • Digital objects are summoned to present meanings that supersede textual or ideational communication. • “Musical instruments are the only good user interfaces.” TRANSHUMANISM • The reduction of all reality into data • Upload to a virtual world where we are free of the limitations of nature and free of our human body • The virtual does not create an illusion of reality—it is a new reality! • A rapture of intersubjective experience (Ommeln, 2005) • “Realizing the limits of the , the Renaissance trajectory comes up against its own dark side. The post modern psyche now needs therapy to recover from modernity.” Michael R. Heim, 2014

PARADOX OF VIRTUALITY NEW NEW ETHICS?

• Actual VR technologies have not brought us to the worlds dreamed of by Leary or the other Transhumanists • Instead they have become much more mundane or at least there is a mix of realities such that our real embodied reality still trumps the virtual. At the very least, you still have to eat and sleep • We don’t use a lot of fancy VR gear, we use phones, mobile devices, tablets, and the myriad apps available on them to create the virtual communities and worlds we actually live in SHERRY TURKLE—ALONE TOGETHER (1995) GRAPHIC IMAGE ALERT!! Virtual murder? Do actions we commit online in realistic games follow us to the real world? https://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-gamers-dilemma-virtual-murder.html SOME TERMINOLOGY TO HELP CLARIFY

• Generic term • Modal term • Pets (generic term) • Denote modalities of facts or sentences • Cat, dog, goldfish (sub-concepts) • Necessary, possible, existent • Communities (generic term) • , Virtual Worlds (Modal • Virtual communities (sub category) terms) • Relationships (generic term) • Virtual romance, Virtual friends (sub categories) JOHNNY SØRAKER (@METUS) • Philosopher at Google • Distinguishes between • Virtual Communities: chat rooms, forums, social networking, MUDs, MOOs • Virtual Worlds, Reality, Environments: games like GTA, , etc. • Ethics applies differently to generic and modal sentences. We have to know if we are talking about Virtual communities, Virtual Worlds, or both. • E.G. something done on Facebook where you have a tight connection between your actual identify and your avatar is more worrisome than in a stand alone game • But game behavior gives you a clue about your true self CHARLES ESS • Digital Media Ethics (Norway)

• What this all means in ethical terms • 1990’s dualisms about virtual life “it’s only a game” can only apply to certain thin virtual interactions • We now know that we bring our sense of selfhood with us into and other virtual worlds, thus our actions there are real and have consequences • The problem arises when technologies try to hide this fact and make us act as if we are playing GTA when in reality it is not a game • See the book “Ender’s Game” DAVID CHALMERS - VIRTUAL IMMORTALITY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcfgekn8iIc