Philosopher of Mind David Chalmers: "Virtual reality is genuine reality."

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Thought some of you might be interested in David Chalmers' new book, Reality+. Chalmers is a very prominent philosopher in the philosophy of mind, particularly on the topic of consciousness.

Description of the book:
Virtual reality is genuine reality; that's the central thesis of Reality+. In a highly original work of "technophilosophy," David J. Chalmers gives a compelling analysis of our technological future. He argues that virtual worlds are not second-class worlds, and that we can live a meaningful life in virtual reality. We may even be in a virtual world already.

Along the way, Chalmers conducts a grand tour of big ideas in philosophy and science. He uses virtual reality technology to offer a new perspective on long-established philosophical questions. How do we know that there's an external world? Is there a god? What is the nature of reality? What's the relation between mind and body? How can we lead a good life? All of these questions are illuminated or transformed by Chalmers' mind-bending analysis.

Here is a Guardian article about it as well in case you don't want to take the time to read it but still get the basic idea. As far as I can tell it's not up on Lib Gen yet (a book pirating website). When it is, I'll post it so people can access it easily. In the meantime, do you think virtual worlds are "real"; what does it even mean for a world to be real?
 
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My only response to this is that the author got flagged by my coincidence detector add on
Chalmers is definitely not an (((early life section-er)))
 
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Chalmers is definitely not an (((early life section-er)))
Ill take your word for it since I haven't heard of him before. Regardless his ideas stem from the same poisonous source. The notion that a virtual world is 'real' is a perfectly logical conclusion from a secular materialist worldview since organic life would have no greater meaning than what we physically observe. Once you remove god from the equation it becomes impossible to argue for an objective purpose for life that couldn't easily be fulfilled plugged into a simulation.

This Book and others like it are part of a recent larger push for transhumanism to become mainstream since it is the end point of secular liberalism. In VR you can be as free as you want and experience all your desires unrestricted by reality, its a liberal utopia. No materialist can argue against this from any rational position and will only oppose it out of natural disgust or other emotional angles. Retard liberals will easily be convinced of this for the reasons I just mentioned. Managerial/satanic elites endorse it because its a perfect system of control and management, especially since its being spearheaded by corporations like Facebook.

Conclusion: I hate the antichrist
 
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s0ren

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Ill take your word for it since I haven't heard of him before. Regardless his ideas stem from the same poisonous source. The notion that a virtual world is 'real' is a perfectly logical conclusion from a secular materialist worldview since organic life would have no greater meaning than what we physically observe. Once you remove god from the equation it becomes impossible to argue for an objective purpose for life that couldn't easily be fulfilled plugged into a simulation.

This Book and others like it are part of a recent larger push for transhumanism to become mainstream since it is the end point of secular liberalism. In VR you can be as free as you want and experience all your desires unrestricted by reality, its a liberal utopia. No materialist can argue against this from any rational position and will only oppose it out of natural disgust or other emotional angles. Retard liberals will easily be convinced of this for the reasons I just mentioned. Managerial/satanic elites endorse it because its a perfect system of control and management, especially since its being spearheaded by corporations like Facebook.

Conclusion: I hate the antichrist

Chalmers is actually the foremost supporter of secular dualism and is anti-physicalism, which is basically what you are refering to when you say materialism here. I haven't read the book yet because I'm going to wait until I can just pirate it, but based on what he says in the Guardian article it is his dualism which informs his position on VR. Essentially, just as our non-physical minds interact with the physical world, our non-virtual minds interact with the virtual world in the same or a similar way. The ontological division of substances in both cases creates the same type of interaction. He is mainly concerned with the philosophical question of what our relationship to virtual reality is rather than the political or social positioning to it our current corporate hellscape implies. However, I think he also says somethings in the article which rub in the same direction as what you're describing, but it starts from a different perspective. At the same time though he acknowledges the fears you're talking about and likely does so at length in his book. From the article: "If virtual worlds are controlled by corporations, as they seem to be right now, will that lead to potentially dystopian realities where the corporations are controlling everything in our environments? I think there are obvious reasons to worry about that," Chalmers says.

I think you might enjoy reading his first book based on his PhD dissertation, The Conscious Mind, which argues against materialism. Importantly, even though his philosophy of mind is secular, it is possible to read in a non-secular answer to the questions he poses. He only goes as far as arguing that physicalism/materialism cannot explain mind/consciousness, you are free to answer those questions yourself with a religious explanation.
 
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I think you might enjoy reading his first book based on his PhD dissertation, The Conscious Mind, which argues against materialism. Importantly, even though his philosophy of mind is secular, it is possible to read in a non-secular answer to the questions he poses. He only goes as far as arguing that physicalism/materialism cannot explain mind/consciousness, you are free to answer those questions yourself with a religious explanation.
Ill definitely give it a read. If I understand his argument correctly though from what you've mentioned, it still only moves things forward by one step. Conceding that consciousness is immaterial has no real ramifications on morality in a secular framework, which is why he arrives at the same conclusion as people who think consciousness is just chemicals in the brain. Without a greater meaning, our consciousness is reduced to a player controlling an RPG character. If a more fun minigame exists within the RPG, there is no reason to continue playing the main game. Adding layers layers of separation between our consciousness and the real world means nothing when the real world has as much meaning as Skyrim.

Taking this into account, his concern with corporate control of VR is just his liberal bias for freedom kicking in rather than a moral problem. "Its fine if we live as brains in vats plugged into the matrix so long as evil companies don't restrict our freedoms in the matrix". Part of me really feels bad for atheists considering how much effort they put into constructing narratives that end up being dysfunctional.
 
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We've been having this conversation ever since World War II ended, it's nothing new.

In fact, most of what this guy is blabbering about is already happening and has been happening for a decade, it's just that everyone forgot about the last times it was sensationalized 10-15 years ago.
 
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