Ep 41: David Chalmers on the Nature of Reality

What are the philosophical implications of virtual reality? Do we exist "physically" or "virtually" and does it matter? Is virtual reality real? How is reality different from consciousness? David Chalmers joins Vasant Dhar in episode 41 of Brave New World to talk about the big questions at the intersection of philosophy and AI that are are being driven by advances in neuroscience and virtual reality. Useful resources 1. David Chalmers at NYU, Google Scholar, Amazon and his own website. 2. Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy -- David Chalmers. 3. The Conscious Mind -- David Chalmers. 4. Douglas Hofstadter on Amazon. 5. Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain -- Patricia Churchland. 6. Anthony Zador on How our Brains Work -- Episode 35 of Brave New World. 7. White Christmas -- Episode 4 of Season 2 of Black Mirror. 8. It From Bit -- John Archibald Wheeler. 9. John Conway's Game of Life. 10. Nick Bostrom on Amazon. 11. The Simulation Hypothesis. 12. World on a Wire -- Rainer Werner Fassbinder. 13. The Matrix -- The Wachowskis. 14. The Naked Sun -- Isaac Asimov. 15. Descartes' Evil Demon. 16. What Is It Like to Be a Bat? -- Thomas Nagel. 17.  Integrated Information Theory -- Giulio Tononi. 18. The Nature of Intelligence -- Episode 7 of Brave New World (w Yann LeCun). 19. The Turing Test. 20. The Consciousness Prior -- Yoshua Bengio.