The Virtual isn’t Real

The suggestion that we might live in a giant computer simulation seems plausible in large part because the hypothetical sophistication of the hypothetical simulation can be increased to meet almost any objection. From an engineering standpoint, the technological increases required by this strategy may not always be feasible. Proceeding nevertheless from an idealization, David Chalmers argues that the virtual objects and worlds displayed in perfect and permanent computer simulations could be regarded as real because, on those terms (perfection and permanence), our own world could just as well be virtual. I counter that real reality, or RR, possesses (at least) five features that no VR simulation could ever reproduce: RR involves genuinely causal regularities, it is older than any machine, it will outlast any machine, it supports living bodies in ways that cannot be replaced, and thus belongs to an entirely different category than artifacts. These differences are especially robust, since they all grant the possibility of present-moment indistinguishability while halting any collapse or blurring of the virtual/real distinction.