255. David Chalmers — Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy
The Michael Shermer Show
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Is Something in Virtual Reality Real?
i distinguish like five different meanings for the word real, of which maybe the three most are important. Something is real if it makes a difference, if it can actually affects things in the world, if has causal powers. And i argue that virtual reality can be real in all those senses. Just because you're diginal, just because these things are made of computer processes, doesn't follow that they're not real. They're perfectly real entities, but they're at some level made of diginal processes. I think even if we're in the simulation senario, i think they really are dogs and cats and people out there. But underneath, ah, at the level of just as there
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