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Whatsapp 19-year-old Chelsea was one of hundreds playing Pokemon Go in St David's Park in Hobart.

Pokemon Go has thrown the monsters among the monuments. But what of the philosophical problems raised by virtual and augmented reality? Philosopher David Chalmers takes down some common objections.

Are experiences in virtual reality less valuable than experiences outside it? If I climb a virtual mountain, is that less of an accomplishment than climbing a non-virtual mountain? If I win a chess game in virtual reality, does that count for less?

A common reason to reject the Experience Machine, and sometimes virtual reality, is that other people will not be present there.

If I build a business in Second Life, is that less meaningful than building a business in the non-virtual world? If I fall in love in virtual reality, is the relationship less significant?

American 20th century philosopher Robert Nozick developed the famous parable of the Experience Machine, which is often taken to argue that life in virtual reality is much less valuable than life in non-virtual reality.

Nozick introduces the idea as follows—

Suppose there was an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Super-duper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life experiences?

Nozick goes on to argue that one should not plug in, for three reasons—

First—we want to do things, and not just have the experience of doing them.

Second—we want to be a certain sort of person, and in the experience machine we are not really any sort of person.

Third—the experience machine limits us to a man-made world and rules out contact with a deeper reality.

To respond, it is useful to consider various respects in which one might think that the Experience Machine and/or virtual reality are worse than non-virtual reality. I believe that few of these respects have much force.

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Whatsapp Adrian Sonneville proudly shows off a 'Pidgeot' that he 'caught' during a Pokemon Go hunt.

Pre-programming

Nozick stipulates that the Experience Machine is entirely pre-programmed—what happens is determined by users and/or programmers in advance. It is arguably this pre-programming that is responsible for much of people's negative reaction to the Experience Machine.

A typical reaction is that because it was pre-programmed that one would win the championship, say, one did not really achieve anything in doing so. The pre-programming also seems at least partially responsible for Nozick's worry that one is not doing anything in the Experience Machine, and that one is not any sort of person in the Experience Machine.

The Experience Machine is often described as a sort of virtual reality, but pre-programming makes it quite unlike standard virtual reality. Because the experiences in the Experience Machine are entirely pre-programmed, the machine is not interactive—one's actions make no difference to what happens. It is perhaps closer to a passive virtual reality, such as an immersive movie.

In any case, ordinary interactive virtual reality is not pre-programmed. What one does in the virtual reality makes a big difference to how it evolves.

Ignorance

Another way in which the Experience Machine differs from virtual reality is that ordinary users of virtual reality know they are using virtual reality, but Nozick stipulates that his subjects do not know they are using the machine. As a result, these subjects are likely to have false beliefs that they are in non-virtual reality.

Certainly ignorance, with the resulting false belief, is a plausible reason to reject the Experience Machine. But it does not apply to a clear-eyed choice to use virtual reality.

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Whatsapp People playing Pokemon Go outside Questacon in Canberra, including one man dressed as a Charmander.

Illusions

Some will argue that even knowledgeable use of virtual reality is subject to a related worry—illusions. Nozick says that in the Experience Machine, we seem to do things without really doing them. Some aspect of that worry may be generated by pre-programming and by ignorance, but many will take it to apply to ordinary virtual reality.

In using virtual reality, one may seem to be flying, but one is not really flying. Knowledgeable users of virtual reality need not be subject to these illusions—they seem to be virtually flying, and they really are virtually flying. If I am right about this, illusion is not a reason to reject life in virtual reality.

Relationships

A common reason to reject the Experience Machine, and sometimes virtual reality, is that other people will not be present there. The worry may be that no other people are present at all, and at best there will be some simulated people who are not really people.

Alternatively, maybe certain specific people who one cares about (family, friends, and partners) will not be present—at best there will be simulated versions of them who are not really them.

Neither worries applies to virtual reality in general, however. Familiarly, many virtual realities have multiple users. This automatically overcomes the first worry—other people are genuinely present. It may leave the second worry, but this worry can be overcome if one's loved ones enter the virtual reality alongside one.

Any worries here seem broadly analogous to those that apply to moving to another country. They do not bring out a source of anxiety that is distinctive to the virtual.

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Whatsapp A generic shot of mobile phones running the Pokemon Go app.

Interference

Some worry that too much use of virtual reality will interfere with one's non-virtual life. Perhaps it may distract one, so one ignores responsibilities and duties. Perhaps time in virtual reality will lead one to neglect physical exercise, so one's non-virtual health and one's non-virtual capacities will diminish.

Perhaps it may shape one to a virtual reality in a way that is unsuitable for non-virtual reality, as when for example one becomes used to violence in a virtual reality.

These are reasonable worries, but most of them apply equally to non-virtual realities, where it is common for one's activity to interfere with others (a new relationship may distract one from responsibilities, a desk job may be bad for physical health, a job involving violence may desensitise one). So this problem does not seem distinctive to the virtual domain.

Disembodiment

A common worry is that virtual reality is disembodied. One does not really have a body, and the body is the source of much value in life. Now, I think it is not entirely correct that one lacks a body in virtual reality—one has a virtual body (an avatar), and this virtual body may in principle play many of the same roles as non-virtual bodies.

Of course, in the present day virtual bodies are much more limited than non-virtual bodies. In some sophisticated virtual realities one can control their movements in considerable detail (for example by moving and tracking one's physical body), and one may also perceive the world from a perspective that depends on one's virtual body.

But many bodily functions (food and sex, for example) are either not present or present in an extremely limited way, and most forms of bodily perception are missing from one's relation to one's avatar.

Of course, one's physical body can supply some of these things, but then one's avatar is not really playing the role of a body, and one is relying on physical rather than virtual reality.

Still, there is at least a degree of embodiment in one's avatar, and it is easy to imagine that as the technology becomes more sophisticated, virtual bodies will be able to do everything that physical bodies do (as they do in movies such as The Matrix).

So while disembodiment is certainly an issue in current virtual reality, it is probably not an essential and permanent problem that applies to virtual reality across the board.

Birth and death

There is arguably no real birth in virtual reality, and no real death. There might be simulated birth, but no one is really born. There might be simulated death, but no one really dies.

When an avatar is destroyed, one can typically 'reincarnate' in another avatar. Even if one cannot, one's life will continue, albeit elsewhere.

Perhaps a virtual reality device could be arranged to ensure non-virtual death under certain circumstances, and perhaps even non-virtual birth (when two people have virtual sex, their non-virtual genes might be used to create a non-virtual baby that is then reattached into the virtual world), but this in effect is to piggyback virtual birth and death on non-virtual birth and death.

Alternatively, if there are genuine artificial minds in a virtual world, these may undergo birth and death within the world. But if we think there is some special value attached to our own death (or to human birth), this may have to happen non-virtually.

Still, there may be analogs to birth and death, when people enter and leave a virtual reality for example, and lives without birth and death may still have considerable value.

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Whatsapp Hundreds of players of all ages were out in the sun in St David's Park.

So, what does this add up to overall?

Some of the worries here (pre-programming, ignorance) do not really apply to ordinary virtual reality. Other worries (illusions, relationships, embodiment) apply to some virtual realities, but do not apply to others.

Some (e.g. interference) seem to apply equally in non-virtual lives. Some worries, such as lack of birth and death, are harder to avoid, but at least these sources of disvalue are somewhat limited, and they have analogs in non-virtual lives.

David Chalmers is Professor of Philosophy at New York University and at Australian National University. This is an edited extract from his paper The Virtual and the Real.

Listen to the full program How would you like your reality? David Chalmers has some suggestions.



