Virtualism
Virtualism is a worldview where everything we know, from the experience of physical externality to abstract and emotional thoughts, is understood as a virtual reality generated by the brain in order for the body to manoeuver in advantageous ways. It’s not denying that there is a true reality outside of this bubble, rather the claim is that the nature of this reality is transcendent to us, i.e. impossible for our understanding to enter into. All we can do is construct models of reality, and trust that these are precise enough for our purposes (walking around, getting food, being social, landing on the moon etc).
Virtuality is rendered by discernible concepts. Usually, we make use of large scale, complex concepts, like ‘person’ or ‘car’. If we need more detail, we see things as a combination of smaller complex parts, like organs in the case of humans or engine, wheels etc. in the case of cars. If we’d like to go even further, to construct a more comprehensive model of reality, one approach that has proven to be very successful is reductionism. This is a method that can be used to any kind of problem: Reduce the scale of perspective until you’re able to conceive of some universal parts (parts that are not unique, but exactly the same as anywhere you look). Then, when conceptual clarity is reached about these miniscule parts you’ve found or postulated, calculate the consequenses for things on the scale relevant to you. This is of course an ingenious method. Atomic theory and quantum physics have been abundantly rich in results. So rich, in fact, that a widely held belief holds that the physicists’ account of reality is true. I strongly disagree with this. I think physics is a scientific endeavor to construct (in a quite concrete and literal sense) a virtual reality capable of predicting all events we can detect. It’s not about portraying reality in a true way, as it is ‘in itself’, it’s about translating events we register into a comprehensive system of concepts which makes it possible for us to avoid surprise at all simple kinds of events, something which at the same time enables us to detect stranger and more obscure events. This has nothing to do with truth, in the philosophical sense at least. Physics may be about real events in a true reality, but is itself trapped within the confines of virtuality, together with emotions, mathematics, concepts, symbolism and everything our experience can contain.
Virtualism has two parts: Epistemological phenomenalism and computationalism. The best explanation of phenomenalism I’ve yet encountered are these two videos by Mike Earl. He uses some different terms from what I do, but his position is very close to my own, at least the phenomenalism part.
The computationalism part of virtualism is a claim that both evolution and the individual mind gravitate toward functional simplicity, in order to become more efficient, and be able to spend the surplus thus made available on improvements of old skills or acquisitions of new ones. Pure symbolic mathematics is the dominant abstract endpoint of this development, but I argue that there are significant “computationally rational” aspects to everything virtual, even things like face perception, personality perception, aesthetics, dreams etc. They might even be completely reducible to computation, but that is so far uncertain.
The ramifications of virtualism are numerous and important. In particular, mythical conceptions can be understood as a ‘game world’ ancient people constructed because they needed it to keep on living their pointless and toilsome lives. And the foundation of mathematics can be understood as psychological. The mind/matter-problem evaporates, because matter as we know it is revealed to be virtual (as we cannot know anything lest it’s translated into virtuality). Still, there is mystery, but the the question of how to connect subjective experience with material reality is no longer the crucial issue. Rather, we’re left with scientific questions, like “What is reality?”, “What is virtuality?” and “What is consciousness?”.
I’d very much like to write several papers on virtualism, perhaps starting with an attempt to connect it to our rich philosophical heritage. Philosophers of particular interest to me in this respect is Kant, Nietzsche, Cassirer and perhaps also Jung. Also, fields like neurophilosophy, linguistics (especially Lakoff) and memetics seem to be both easy and fruitful to attach.
Secondly, I’d like to explore the space of possible experience as revealed by virtualism. Perhaps try to do some cartography work.
Some quick nods to history: Kant is right about epistemology. Nietzsche is even more right about epistemology. Jung might be right about archetypes, but he frames it in a way too mystifying way (or that’s at least my uneducated impression). Huxley et al. is right about psychedelics. George Lakoff is right about metaphors and ‘framing’. Dennett and Blackmore are right about memetics. And finally, Metzinger is right about the fictionality of the self.
All of this should be tied together, and I believe virtualism is a good start.
