B8 EZ BD THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13 , 2022civilization. After all, if such simulations can
exist, they will eventually outnumber original
realities. Accordingly, it is statistically unlikely
that our world is — as we often like to assume —
reality plain and simple. Rather we are living in
part of “Reality+,” a “cosmos ... contain[ing]
many worlds (physical and virtual spaces).”
Like all great philosophical theories, the
simulation argument can seem simultaneously
world-shattering and coldly convincing. Chal-
mers, who largely endorses this idea, is adept at
making the hypothesis clear without sacrific-
ing its complexity. Indeed, “Reality+” some-
times reads like two books in one. It stands as a
welcoming work for first-time readers of phi-
losophy, full of genial references to cultural
touchstones such as “The Matrix” and “Rick
and Morty.” Simultaneously, it remains sub-
stantial enough for those familiar with the field
and its ongoing conversations.
As a graduate student at Indiana University
Bloomington, Chalmers worked with Douglas
Hofstadter, the author of “Gödel, Escher, Bach,”
a compelling but sometimes cryptic medita-
tion on math, mind and music. And “Reality+”
often reads like an attempt to both reproduce
and soften this earlier book’s thorny genius.
Like Hofstadter’s work, “Reality+” is frequently
weird, wild and wonderful; it captivates the
common reader by refusing to condescend. But
where Hofstadter is playfully enigmatic and
brashly brainy, Chalmers’s writing is perspicu-
ous and teacherly — an approach that keeps it
from collapsing into recalcitrant obscurity.
For instance, in a series of brisk but capa-
cious set pieces, Chalmers shows how the
“simulation argument” subtly complicates,
deepens and extends questions in ethics (Are
real lives more valuable than simulated ones?),
philosophy of science (Is the fundamental
structure of reality a kind of computer code for
atoms rather than bits?) and philosophy of
mind (Can I simulate consciousness?).
Throughout, Chalmers often returns to a set of
questions that he thinks inevitably arise once
we grant the soundness of the simulation argu-
ment. These include the “knowledge” question
(If I were tricked into a simulation, would I
know the difference between this virtual world
and the real thing?), the “reality” question (Is
virtual reality somehow incomplete or second-
rate relative to the original?) and the “value”
question (How could I live a “good,” meaningful
or just life in virtual reality?).
It’s when it is answering these questions that
“Reality+” is at its most surprising and auda-
cious.
If a truly powerful simulation set out to trick
us, Chalmers contends, it would succeed. That
can seem like a despairing conclusion if you’re
committed to the idea that virtual reality is
inferior to the real thing. But, in what is
probably the book’s most controversial move,
Chalmers wants us to think otherwise: Simu-
lated or virtual reality can be just as significant,
sturdy and full as the real thing — perhaps even
more so. “If I’ve lived my whole life in a
simulation, every flower I experience has been
digital all along,” he writes. The beauty we
appreciated when we looked at those simulat-
ed blooms was authentic, so why would it
matter that they’re not “real”?
Chalmers argues this thesis tirelessly and
well. To my mind, though, he is less convincing
when he seeks to extend it. This occurs when
Chalmers sets out to convince us not just that
simulations are real in their own right but that
they are likely to improve on bare existence.
While he is sometimes neutral on this point —
“As with most technologies, whether VR is good
or bad depends entirely on how it’s used” —
there is a recurrent techno-optimistic note
sounded throughout “Reality+” that often feels
false: “VR may be better than ordinary physical
reality,” he writes, adding that it “may allow
many experiences that are difficult or impossi-
ble in physical reality: flying, inhabiting entire-
ly different bodies, new forms of perception.”
But Chalmers too quickly waves away the
obvious counter-argument: that technology,
while seemingly enriching life or making exis-
tence easier, necessarily alienates, diminishes
and restricts. Think of how social media turns
the promise of authentic interpersonal interac-
tion into a dreary, theatrical, moralizing blood
sport. Other philosophers, perhaps most nota-
bly Jürgen Habermas, have explored these
problems, but Chalmers never really takes the
time to stage their arguments or offer a re-
sponse. Instead, he contents himself with the
possibility that our doubled existence is, in its
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bestseller lists alternate between hardcover and paperback each week.) Bestsellers at washingtonpost.com/bookslife, from birth to old age, before being thrust
back into this one. Zhuangzi famously won-
dered whether he was a philosopher who some-
times dreamed of being a butterfly or a butterfly
who became a philosopher when it slept. In the
modern era, the most influential version of the
puzzle — and the one that “Reality+” most
dwells upon — appears in the opening sections
of René Descartes’ “Meditations.” There, Des-
cartes wonders how he can tell reality
from a dream, and then considers the
possibility of a nearly omnipotent de-
ceiving demon that could thrust him
into an ersatz existence.
“Reality+” takes these stories of
dreams, shadows and hallucinations
seriously. They are not, Chalmers in-
sists, simply the idle fantasies of eccen-
trics, nor are they outmoded puzzles
from philosophy’s past. In fact, the
proliferation of contemporary ver-
sions of this question — What if I’m a
brain in a vat? What if I’ve been thrust
into the Matrix? What if I’m an un-
knowing and unwilling contestant on
a very unethical reality show? — shows
that concerns about the unreality of
what passes for everyday life are thriv-
ing in our cultural imaginary.
And for good reason. Chalmers ar-
gues that ongoing advances in technol-
ogy — especially in virtual reality and
computer simulation — are eventually going to
make the scary stories told around seminar
tables about dreams and simulacra into real
possibilities. After all, I don’t need to imagine a
demiurgic deceiver, as Descartes did, if (or
when) it becomes possible to plug a person into
a truly real-seeming virtual world. Once that
happens, another question follows: Could I
have somehow slipped into a simulated world
without noticing?
Answering this question leads Chalmers to
what is sometimes called the “simulation argu-
ment,” essentially the modern, technological
version of past philosophy’s caves, demons and
dreams. In a nutshell, the simulation argument
says this: If we ever manage to develop a fully
convincing virtual world, then it is likely that
our reality, right now, is merely a simulation
wrought by some “higher,” more advancedP
hilosophy, the critic Arthur Danto often
argued, is defined by its singular obses-
sion with doubles. Take two things —
exactly alike to our senses — and show why one
is stone and the other shadow. That’s philoso-
phy.
Page through philosophical writing and
you’ll find Danto’s contention confirmed again
and a gain. Philosophy o f language often asks u s
to imagine a “Twin Earth,” a world just
like ours but different in some critical
way that transforms the definition of,
say, the word “water.” Writing on per-
sonal identity, meanwhile, might
thrust you into a Star Trek-style tele-
porter, asking you to consider wheth-
er your original self makes the trip or
if you are replaced by an atomically
identical replica. Pick up a book on
consciousness and you’ll encounter a
horde of “philosophical zombies,” be-
ings just like you and me — they can
speak, write, perform complex ac-
tions — with one key difference: None
of these activities feel like anything to
the zombies. They are intelligent but
have no qualia: the ineffable sense of
“what it’s like” that seems to define
conscious experience.
This last group of speculative dop-
pelgangers often shambles through
the writing of David Chalmers. Zom-
bies make an appearance in his latest book,
“Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of
Philosophy,” along with the aforementioned
Twin Earth. But all these familiar pairs and
impostors play a supporting role in Chalmers’s
quest to solve what may be the greatest of
philosophical double puzzles: How do I know
this world is the real one?
As Chalmers notes, you can find variations of
this enigma throughout the history of philoso-
phy — both Eastern and Western. Plato chal-
lenges his readers to recognize that what they
take for reality is nothing of the sort; we are in
direct contact not with the real but rather with
copies and reflections, shadows projected on a
cave wall. The Indian sage Narada, punished by
Vishnu for his hubristic insistence that his
intellect could pierce even the most powerful
illusion, was made to live a second, entirely falseOur whole world mightb e a simulation. Wouldthat really be so bad?REALITY+
Virtual Worlds
and the
Problems of
Philosophy
By David
Chalmers
W.W. Norton &
Company.
544 pp. $32.50PHILOSOPHY REVIEW BY JESS KEISERJess Keiser is an associate professor in the
English department at Tu fts University and the
author of “Nervous Fictions: Literary Form and the
Enlightenment Origins of Neuroscience.”SIMON MAINA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
David Chalmers argues that virtual reality isn’t necessarily an inferior reality — and in fact
“VR may be better than ordinary physical reality,” providing a wider range of experiences.