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This is similar to David Lewis's modal realism, which says that every possible world is real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism https://en.wikipedia.

This is similar to David Lewis's modal realism, which says that every possible world is real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism There isn't really much of a connection between this and Bostrom's simulation argument. The simulation argument is about calculating the probability that we live in a simulated universe based on certain assumptions about human behavior and technological development. Bostrom's argument doesn't make any metaphysical claims other than assuming that consciousness is substrate independent. I don't buy into metaphysical theories that claim to deduce the existence of worlds outside our own based on armchair reasoning. We know that the physical universe exists and we can explain everything that we experience in terms of quantum field theory and general relativity. Any theory that wants to challenge this view of the world needs to modify those existing theories, or design an experiment that shows why they aren't adequate to explain reality.

ben_w 3y ago
> we can explain everything that we experience in terms of quantum field theory and general relativity Everything we experience, except experience itself. Conscious/qualia/whatever is still… well, none but God knows what it is, and I have no evidence for the existence of any god let alone that one.
- fasterik 3y ago
  That's because consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, not part of fundamental physics. Every atom in your brain behaves according to the laws of particle physics, and somehow consciousness emerges out of that. Our theories of neuroscience aren't developed enough to explain it yet, but there isn't any reason to believe that there is something magical or non-physical going on.
  - iosystem 3y ago
    How do we know consciousness is real, and we're not just the same as robots or a tv series? Couldn't every moment throughout the universe have been encoded in every atom before the Big Bang?
    - mcronce 3y ago
      That's certainly possible, but it doesn't make your experiences any less real
      - dilyevsky 3y ago
        It certainly does because in this case there is no “you”
        msarchet 3y ago
        You is a very loaded word here.
        ben_w 3y ago
        "There is a thought now" has real experiences without anything we would normally want to call a real experiencer.
        mcronce 3y ago
        And yet here you are reading that comment, writing this one... And those experiences are real.
        dilyevsky 3y ago
        Says who?
        mcronce 3y ago
        You, me, and anybody else reading the comments. If you want to disagree on the metaphysics or whatever go ahead, but this is already proving to be a huge waste of time and I'm not particularly interested.
    - Ycombigatorz 3y ago
      How do you know that when you touch a chair that that sensation is real?
  - perfmode 3y ago
    Why believe consciousness arises from matter? Versus matter arising from consciousness?
    - satvikpendem 3y ago
      Because we can change brain states (ie, manipulating a material object) to go from conscious to unconscious, which is strong evidence for the former. What evidence is there for the latter?
      - placebo 3y ago
        This is evidence that self-conscious beings can stop being self-conscious or that the content of what they are conscious of can change when the stuff that enables self-consciousness to occur is manipulated. It does not prove that consciousness is an emergent phenomena. Suggestions that consciousness is prior to physicalism (and in general prior to the whole division into subjective and objective realities made by a rational self-conscious agent) are not something new and are worth exploring.
  - paulrudy 3y ago
    > consciousness is an emergent phenomenon That's a theory that has yet to be tested, not a certainty. <digression> > Every atom in your brain behaves according to the laws of particle physics... These are assumptions. They're very plausible and useful ones. They may turn out to be absolutely correct, but it's still worth noting that they are theories. "Every atom behaves..." so far, so good, yes it does. "...according to the laws of particle physics"-- presumably yes, with this caveat: The existence of a complete set of inviolable "laws" that explain _all_ physical behavior is an article of faith. It's a plausible potential outcome of the extremely practical process of collective scientific inquiry that so far seems to hold up, but still-- the concept of a set of laws as programs and constraints for absolutely all physical phenomena is fundamentally a philosophy. It has proven to be extremely useful, but it's not a proven or even probable fact. It's a powerful axiom. </digression> > ...and somehow consciousness emerges out of that. Back to the assumption that consciousness is a phenomenon that emerges from the physical activity of a brain: Is a (functional) brain both necessary and sufficient for consciousness to "emerge"? I don't know, I'm just a person interested in this stuff, but I think it's an important question without a definite answer. We tend to assume that having a brain is a necessary requirement for consciousness, but testing for consciousness (not to be confused with mere rationality) is difficult, as far as I know. I can't prove that a stone, plant, or region of spacetime has no consciousness. Even if we came up with a test for "consciousness", and that this test _did_ prove that a brain (or a similarly complex network) is necessary for consciousness to appear, there is still the issue of whether the brain is sufficient. How would we know? Whatever it is that we call consciousness may emerge from the complex physical phenomena of brain activity, as you said. Or the brain may be a catalyst for the phenomena we label consciousness. Or a brain (or human body) may only be a prerequisite for us, with our current capacities, to be able to observe the experience we have come to label "consciousness". "Light" used to mean only the visible spectrum, until we understood there was more to it: Light went beyond the limits of what we had up til then used to recognize its existence, and indeed it occurred even in what we had called "darkness", and blue things didn't contain blueness in and of themselves, nor were blue things producing blue light. I'm not advocating for any particular alternate theory, or proposing that consciousness operates outside of known physical constraints, I'm just a stickler for reminding ourselves what concepts are articles of faith, even in science itself
TheBlight 3y ago
>we can explain everything that we experience in terms of quantum field theory and general relativity. Dark matter would like a word.
- fasterik 3y ago
  As I understand it, the major candidates for dark matter are new elementary particles, so they would still fall under quantum field theory. Of course, there is always the possibility that another revolution in physics happens, but even then our current theories will still be valid in most domains, in the same way that Newtonian mechanics is still valid in most domains.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pringk02 3y ago
Modal Realism was the inspiration for the somewhat infamous, slightly tongue-in-cheek "Possible Girls" paper where Neil Sinhababu argues that people across different modal realities can fall in love with each other (and that explains imaginary relationships) https://philpapers.org/archive/SINPG https://philpapers.org/archive/SINPG It's a fun read

ben_w 3y ago

> we can explain everything that we experience in terms of quantum field theory and general relativity Everything we experience, except experience itself. Conscious/qualia/whatever is still… well, none but God knows what it is, and I have no evidence for the existence of any god let alone that one.

fasterik 3y ago
That's because consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, not part of fundamental physics. Every atom in your brain behaves according to the laws of particle physics, and somehow consciousness emerges out of that. Our theories of neuroscience aren't developed enough to explain it yet, but there isn't any reason to believe that there is something magical or non-physical going on.
- iosystem 3y ago
  How do we know consciousness is real, and we're not just the same as robots or a tv series? Couldn't every moment throughout the universe have been encoded in every atom before the Big Bang?
  - mcronce 3y ago
    That's certainly possible, but it doesn't make your experiences any less real
    - dilyevsky 3y ago
      It certainly does because in this case there is no “you”
      - msarchet 3y ago
        You is a very loaded word here.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        "There is a thought now" has real experiences without anything we would normally want to call a real experiencer.
      - mcronce 3y ago
        And yet here you are reading that comment, writing this one... And those experiences are real.
        dilyevsky 3y ago
        Says who?
        mcronce 3y ago
        You, me, and anybody else reading the comments. If you want to disagree on the metaphysics or whatever go ahead, but this is already proving to be a huge waste of time and I'm not particularly interested.
  - Ycombigatorz 3y ago
    How do you know that when you touch a chair that that sensation is real?
- perfmode 3y ago
  Why believe consciousness arises from matter? Versus matter arising from consciousness?
  - satvikpendem 3y ago
    Because we can change brain states (ie, manipulating a material object) to go from conscious to unconscious, which is strong evidence for the former. What evidence is there for the latter?
    - placebo 3y ago
      This is evidence that self-conscious beings can stop being self-conscious or that the content of what they are conscious of can change when the stuff that enables self-consciousness to occur is manipulated. It does not prove that consciousness is an emergent phenomena. Suggestions that consciousness is prior to physicalism (and in general prior to the whole division into subjective and objective realities made by a rational self-conscious agent) are not something new and are worth exploring.
- paulrudy 3y ago
  > consciousness is an emergent phenomenon That's a theory that has yet to be tested, not a certainty. <digression> > Every atom in your brain behaves according to the laws of particle physics... These are assumptions. They're very plausible and useful ones. They may turn out to be absolutely correct, but it's still worth noting that they are theories. "Every atom behaves..." so far, so good, yes it does. "...according to the laws of particle physics"-- presumably yes, with this caveat: The existence of a complete set of inviolable "laws" that explain _all_ physical behavior is an article of faith. It's a plausible potential outcome of the extremely practical process of collective scientific inquiry that so far seems to hold up, but still-- the concept of a set of laws as programs and constraints for absolutely all physical phenomena is fundamentally a philosophy. It has proven to be extremely useful, but it's not a proven or even probable fact. It's a powerful axiom. </digression> > ...and somehow consciousness emerges out of that. Back to the assumption that consciousness is a phenomenon that emerges from the physical activity of a brain: Is a (functional) brain both necessary and sufficient for consciousness to "emerge"? I don't know, I'm just a person interested in this stuff, but I think it's an important question without a definite answer. We tend to assume that having a brain is a necessary requirement for consciousness, but testing for consciousness (not to be confused with mere rationality) is difficult, as far as I know. I can't prove that a stone, plant, or region of spacetime has no consciousness. Even if we came up with a test for "consciousness", and that this test _did_ prove that a brain (or a similarly complex network) is necessary for consciousness to appear, there is still the issue of whether the brain is sufficient. How would we know? Whatever it is that we call consciousness may emerge from the complex physical phenomena of brain activity, as you said. Or the brain may be a catalyst for the phenomena we label consciousness. Or a brain (or human body) may only be a prerequisite for us, with our current capacities, to be able to observe the experience we have come to label "consciousness". "Light" used to mean only the visible spectrum, until we understood there was more to it: Light went beyond the limits of what we had up til then used to recognize its existence, and indeed it occurred even in what we had called "darkness", and blue things didn't contain blueness in and of themselves, nor were blue things producing blue light. I'm not advocating for any particular alternate theory, or proposing that consciousness operates outside of known physical constraints, I'm just a stickler for reminding ourselves what concepts are articles of faith, even in science itself

TheBlight 3y ago

>we can explain everything that we experience in terms of quantum field theory and general relativity. Dark matter would like a word.

fasterik 3y ago
As I understand it, the major candidates for dark matter are new elementary particles, so they would still fall under quantum field theory. Of course, there is always the possibility that another revolution in physics happens, but even then our current theories will still be valid in most domains, in the same way that Newtonian mechanics is still valid in most domains.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pringk02 3y ago

Modal Realism was the inspiration for the somewhat infamous, slightly tongue-in-cheek "Possible Girls" paper where Neil Sinhababu argues that people across different modal realities can fall in love with each other (and that explains imaginary relationships) https://philpapers.org/archive/SINPG https://philpapers.org/archive/SINPG It's a fun read