Talk:Substance dualism

David Chalmers' simulation

To the author of the paragraph beginning with "David Chalmers"

I do not want to edit out your paragraph, but it does not seem to make sense. (If I am making a mistake, please correct me.) If the computer simulation were perfect as you have implied, then whatever is true in this world would be true in the simulation. Thus, if substance dualism is not the case it this world, it would not be the case in the simulation.

I'm not sure if this was your intention; I would appreciate some clarification. -- Dar-Ape 21:20, 25 May 2005

Chalmers must have been talking about a simulation which is not 100% perfect. The programmers of the simulation must be deliberately choosing to skip modelling the brain, and just pass the inputs and outputs to and from the 'real brain' outside the simulation. In this situation, those attempting to do science inside the simulation would notice that their own brain is not following the rules exactly.

I suppose the only way the simulation could be 100% perfect would be to simply force the 'real brain' to have the same inputs as the simulated brain. This would lead to the real brain feeling totally out-of-control unless the operators of the Matrix became very invasive. But we can't really guess what the 'real' brain/mind is like, the universe outside the simulation could be utterly unlike that inside the simulation, making it difficult to define 'invasive'.

A 100% perfect simulation would be like Epiphenomenalism, meaning that there could be no complete discussion of consciousness within the simulation. Unless you allow for the crazy idea of the simulated characters thinking they are conscious when they are not - i.e. can you be sure that a perfect physicalist simulation won't result in a characters arguing about the hard problem of consciousness even if they are not conscious? But that's not a reasonable defence of epiphenominalism, whether or not we're in a Matrix. Aaron McDaid 19:30, 28 January 2006 (UTC)