chapter 2 Reality to the Test
A Return to the Shadows1
Can we “test” reality? Can we use empirical methods to determine the fun- damental nature of what we perceive as the world around us? The previous chapter examined the question of “hacking” reality from within the system, in a particular kind of digital medium simulation. This chapter, in turn, addresses some specific questions concerning virtual reality or simulated environments of the kind presented in Hilary Putnam’s famous “Brain in a Vat” scenario, and depicted in a popular 1999 film entitled The Matrix.2 The approach here is slightly different from that presented in the preceding chapter: here, the ques- tion is whether we could determine that we exist in a simulated reality purely through direct observation of a phenomenon in that reality. It is interesting to note, in fact, that in the West, the very serious Platonic idea of reality and illusion eventually manifested itself in the form of a popu- lar entertainment—that is, the film The Matrix. In the Islamic world, there is also a connection between the philosophical concept of a “Platonic” realm and popular entertainment. In Islamic culture, the relationship between dunyā and ākhira—generally, the earthly or temporal world and the spiritual realm—is mirrored in traditional Arab shadow theater. One author notes:
The shadow-play employed black cut out silhouette figures … displayed from behind a thin screen-curtain, a veil, with the stick marionette silhouette figures … lit from behind by a single lamp … [I]t has fre- quently been employed as a symbol, to describe the relationship of the
1 I presented a much shorter description of some of these ideas in “Reality Check: The Possible Detection of Simulated Environments through Observation of Selected Physical Phenom- ena”, The University of Cape Coast Journal of Philosophy and Culture 3.2 (July 2006): 86–108. 2 For an introduction to the “Brain in a Vat” scenario, see the first chapter of Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). The film The Ma- trix adopts Putnam’s scenario, along with a number of other philosophical constructs. For a discussion of the film’s premise and its grounding in philosophy, see Hubert Dreyfus, “Ex- istential Phenomenology and the Brave New World of The Matrix”, The Harvard Review of Philosophy 11 (2003): 18–31, as well as Irwin, ed., The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real, cited earlier.
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phenomenal-temporal world to the Almighty, the Prime Mover; He who moves the shadow figures from behind the curtain of this world.3
This reminds us of the puppeteers in Plato’s cave, as well as the character known as the “Architect” in The Matrix. In the Islamic context, the architect or perhaps a “master puppeteer” can be seem in the idea of tawḥīd, the “oneness [of God]”, with God as the true “mover of all” behind the screen:
The form of the shadow play can further be seen as representing the rela- tionship between the figures of this temporal world, the shadows on the screen, and the true figures, those without a shadow that lie behind the screen of the world, in the imaginal world.4
Whether one takes a religious or secular approach, there are several questions. Among them is the question of whether the “apparent reality” of the world that we see around us simply a set of shadows. If what we see is shadows, then we must ask what is behind them. The discussion here does not delve into some of the more complex questions of the nature of knowledge and the role of mind in definitions of “reality”— those topics have been explored at length elsewhere in the philosophical litera- ture. Instead, this chapter examines whether particular observed phenomenon could reveal a simulation from within that simulation.5 Could a phenomenon in our apparent reality reveal that we are living in a world of shadows? The previous chapter looked at a specific kind of simulation—a data stor- age medium—and examined some possible ramifications of such a setup. The data storage model revealed intriguing challenges as to how we perceive what’s “out there”, and how our consciousness might process the dataset comprising
3 See pp. 84–85 of T.M.P. Duggan, “The Temporal World—a shadow play—Court and Urban Shadow Plays of the 11th to 14th Centuries”, Mediterranean Journal of Humanities 1.1 (2011): 83–91. Also see the discussion concerning shadow plays and their cultural and philosophical significance in Dalya Cohen-Mor, A Matter of Fate: The Concept of Fate in the Arab World as Reflected in Modern Arabic Literature (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2001), 21–23, and Li Guo, The Performing Arts in Medieval Islam: Shadow Play and Popular Poetry in Ibn Dāniyāl’s Mamluk Cairo (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 4 Duggan, 90. 5 It is worth noting that this idea was explored in a rather different but intriguing way by the famed novelist, Vladimir Nabokov; see the discussion on pp. 548, 552, and 554 of D. Barton Johnson, “Vladimir Nabokov’s Solus Rex and the ‘Ultima Thule’ Theme”, Slavic Review 40.4 (Winter 1981): 543–556.