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Interview

David Chalmers

David Chalmers leaves behind the hard problem of consciousness for an adventure tour of computer-simulated worlds and virtual reality. Paul Doolan interviews him about his new book, Reality+: virtual worlds and the problems of philosophy.

In his new book, Reality+, David Chalmers leaves the well-trampled garden of human consciousness and travels in a new direction, taking readers on a technophilosophy adventure tour of computer-simulated worlds and virtual reality. He has penned a philosophical page-turner that cascades from Aristotle to Zhuangzi, from Plato’s Cave to Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine, while wrestling with the big questions of knowledge, reality and mind. Discussions of epistemology and metaphysics are as likely to reference the Netflix drama Black Mirror, as the ideas of Daniel Dennett. The Matrix receives more attention than the works of Kant. Sci-fi classics like Snow Crash and Speak Player One stand shoulder to shoulder with Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy and Putnam’s History, Truth and Reason.

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