Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy

A long book for general readers that uses virtual reality to work through the central problems of philosophy, starting from Descartes's question of how we know the external world is real. Chalmers's main thesis is that virtual reality is genuine reality. Virtual objects are real digital objects, made of bits, and events in virtual worlds really happen; a life lived there can be as meaningful as one lived offline. He takes the simulation hypothesis seriously, drawing on Nick Bostrom's simulation argument, and argues that we cannot know we are not in a simulation. But even if we are, our world is not an illusion: tables and chairs would still exist, built from digital processes rather than something more basic. Along the way he covers knowledge and scepticism, the idea of a simulator as a kind of god, the 'it from bit' hypothesis, the mind–body problem, whether digital beings could be conscious, augmented reality, and the ethics and politics of virtual worlds.

It is a clear, wide-ranging introduction to the big questions of philosophy through a technology readers already use, and a serious case that virtual lives need not be second-rate.