On 28 Aug 2016, at 11:29, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
I have found a nice paper
Jan Westerhoff, What it Means to Live in a Virtual World Generated
by Our Brain, Erkenntnis (2016) 81:507–528
The author considers the logical consequences from the theory that
the brain generates a virtual world. Below is how Richard Dawkins
describes the theory in his book Unweaving the Rainbow
"We move through a virtual world of our own brains’ making. Our
constructed models of rocks and of trees are a part of the
environment in which we animals live, no less than the real rocks
and trees that they represent."
"There is an easy way to demonstrate that the brain works as a
sophisticated virtual reality computer. First, look about you by
moving your eyes. As you swivel your eyes, the images on your
retinas move as if you were in an earthquake. But you don’t see an
earthquake. To you, the scene seems as steady as a rock. I am
leading up, of course, to saying that the virtual model in your
brain is constructed to remain steady."
Other proponents of the theory are Thomas Metzinger and Steven Lehar.
Westerhoff offers three accounts for such a theory: strong, weak and
irrealism. They differ from each other on the account of an external
world.
The strong account implies a structural correspondence between the
virtual and external world. The week account just says that the
external world exists but one can add almost nothing to this end.
Irrealism on the other hand states the the external world is a part
of the virtual world. I guess that Bruno's theory is close to
irrealism.
Except it is not a theory, but a theorem (in the mechanist theory,
which of course is not mine).
To avoid irrealism, you need to do a strong ontological commitment,
which contradicts mechanism + the usual weak use of Occam.
The author does not seem to be aware of the first person
indeterminacy , nor that mechanism and materialism are incompatible
(unless introducing an infinite amount of magic). Few are aware of
this, still, and I am not much astonished, given what I am reported
very often.
Feel free to ask any question if you (still) believe we can have both
weak materialism and digital mechanism (alias computationalism).
Am 28.08.2016 um 18:07 schrieb Jason Resch:
Why do we dream? I think it is because the brain is a dreaming
machine.
Waking life is merely a dream kept roughly in sync with reality
through clues passed in from the senses.
But this is exactly the question. What reality is for someone that
cannot leave the virtual world by definition?
The sum of all computations going through personal 1p states below our
substitution level. That is why we can test the OR proposition
(computationalism OR malevolent simulation).
Bruno
Evgeny
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