Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy

by David J. Chalmers

Physical reality is real because it’s roughly the way it seems. When it seems that there’s a ball in front of you in physical reality, there’s typically a ball there. According to the standard view, virtual reality isn’t real because it isn’t the way it seems. In VR it seems that there’s a ball there, but there’s not. In virtual reality, the story goes, things are not as they seem—that is, virtual reality is an illusion. Right now, it seems to me that I’m sitting in a chair, using a desktop computer, in a house somewhere in the Hudson Valley. It seems to me that there’s an algae-covered pond outside the window, with geese wandering around. It seems to me that I’m a philosopher working on a book on reality. It seems to me that I grew up in Australia and that I now live in New York. All this and more constitutes what we might think of as my apparent reality. This apparent reality is real if, and only if, things are as they seem. If I’m really sitting in a chair, and there is really a pond outside the window, and I really grew up in Australia, then things are the way they seem, and all this is real. If I’m not really sitting in a chair, and there is not really a pond outside the window, and I didn’t really grow up in Australia, then all this is not real.