Welcome to another episode of Armchair Gaming. The goal for this show is simple: I want to help you learn more about philosophy, and I’ll be using video games as an instrument to help teach it.

For the next stage of our journey through philosophy, we will be departing from death, in a manner of speaking. Today we are taking a look at artificial intelligence, and start to unpack the myriad of problems that we as people encounter with them, ethically, morally and personally.

In today’s episode we will be playing the J-RPG Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization, where the narrative story revolves around humans interacting with AI, and the ramifications of their life-cycles. We will begin to evaluate how more in-depth and true-to-life simulation of humanity performed by AI forces humans in game, and in real life, to address the definition of being human. We will also delve into a bit of the plot around S.A.O to satisfy the Scholarly Gamer‘s love of this franchise as an anime and a game.

About Armchair Gaming

I had the chance to explore philosophy in high school and I loved it so much that I went on to study it at Trent University, where I obtained a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in philosophy. I feel so strongly about the subject that I often find myself going through the books I had purchased over my university career, as well as adding to the collection regularly.

Philosophy is an amazingly exciting subject that can teach us not just what to think, but how to think. Unfortunately, a lot of people see philosophy as some intimidating monster, with difficult concepts and theories to grasp. Conversely, some see it as a waste of someone’s time and intellect. As someone who has dedicated their life to the subject, this Scholarly Gamer wants to bring philosophy to you in a way that is approachable, sometimes funny, and presented through a medium of great importance to himself and millions of other people around the world: Games.

I hope you’ll join us on this journey. And remember, you never go a day in your life without living some philosophy.