Post 35: What the hell is consciousness anyway? Part 3: Virtualism
Apologies for the two day delay in posting. I came back from vacation with a head cold and I couldn’t focus enough to put anything together.
Virtualism:
I came across this particular theory accidentally as it is pretty recent, (2009… so recent in the relative time scale of human philosophy). It is called Virtualism and comes from a cognitive scientist named Joscha Boch.
Boch posits that instead of viewing the outside physical world directly, the brain runs an internal virtual simulation of reality, a controlled hallucination.
From the conversation with ChatGPT below: “Perception is not passive: We don’t see the world as it is; instead, our brain constructs a simulated version of reality based on sensory input and prediction.”
You can probably see why this is relevant to issues dealing with potential AI consciousness and what we have touched on briefly in this space before. Virtualism posits that consciousness arises from this simulation in our mind, (is emergent), and, unlike epiphenomenalism, it also posits that consciousness serves a purpose rather than just riding along with our automaton bodies.
