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Chalmer's new work is getting some publicity

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/17/virtual-reality-is-genuine-reality-so-embrace-it-says-us-philosopher

Can't we argue that our (universal, fundamental, current) reality has value analogously to that "other minds" do: if you had no mind, there was no internal reality to your behaviour, you would massively, hugely, less important, of less value, and ultimately devoid of genuine moral rights. I can't imagine it hasn't come up before in futurist philosophy, but it seems like a very cogent argument for the real thing, even if it's not all we have, having near unprecedented, incomparably more, value.

I reread it and noticed he claims it too has reality. Seems like moving the goal posts though: there is a basic sense in which it lacks reality, whether or not it is analogous to philosophical zombies... and I would say it is: they have bodies but illusory minds, and these futurists have minds but illusory bodies.

The induction is from (no) internal reality to (no) external reality.

  • Can simulated bodies really be considered as wholly "illusory", given that they exist as physical states in computing devices of some kind? One could say there is something illusory about how these physical states are translated into visual images and other sensory signals we perceive intuitively, but to some extent you could say the same thing about examples like patterns of ultraviolet coloration on flowers being translated into colors humans can see in a false-color image, I think most would agree this doesn't make the underlying pattern any less real. – Hypnosifl Jan 23 '22 at 17:13
  • I remain unconvinced the induction Is not cogent @Hypnosifl burn the world and hide (joke) if you're saying that there is nothing less real about virtual reality than ours, then I think we are talking about different qualities. doesn't modern philosophy agree that the brain in a vat is not in the "world" (I'm sure you see what I mean)? I find it odd that this can shift as soon as there are real world costs and benefits. ymmv –  Jan 23 '22 at 18:03
  • I agree that virtual worlds can have Being. I don't think they have "reality" in some important sense. is that analogous to the unreality of zombie embodiment (hopefully not too niche))? depends who is asking, imho (you or the zombie) –  Jan 23 '22 at 18:10
  • I tend to think of questions of "reality" primarily in terms of mind-independent truths, but I have doubts that questions of reality/existence that go beyond that are anything more than disagreements about arbitrary linguistic conventions. For example, if we have two people who agree there are mind-independent truths about arithmetic that may go beyond what any human will ever know, but one is a mathematical platonists who believes numbers "exist" while the other is a truth-value realist but doesn't think they "exist", I see no reason to assume one is right and the other is wrong. – Hypnosifl Jan 23 '22 at 19:50
  • So similarly, if two people agree virtual bodies are "real" in the limited sense that perceptions of such bodies map to mind-independent physical states of computational devices, any further disagreement about the reality/existence of such bodies seems to me like it's probably just a matter of linguistic conventions about how you choose to define any further notions of "reality" or "existence" that go beyond this bare minimum. – Hypnosifl Jan 23 '22 at 19:54

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