Ernst Mach Workshop X 2022: David Chalmers on Virtual Reality

July 7-8, 2022, Prague, Czech Republic

Venue: The main building of the Academy of Sciences, Narodni st. 3, Prague, Czech Republic

Abstracts

Originally a province of science fiction, virtual reality has recently become a technological possibility and increasingly a topic for philosophical reflection. While Bostrom (2003) and Chalmers himself (2003) initially focused the epistemological issues about virtual reality, Chalmers now offers a truly complete philosophy of virtual reality, i.e., of an immersive and interactive reality simulated on a computer. Every branch of philosophy as traditionally conceived must be applicable to virtual reality: epistemology, metaphysics and value theory. Although the book can thus easily serve as an innovative introduction to philosophy, Chalmers also manages to convey to the general reader a number of controversial philosophical theses that he previously defended in his more technical publications: on the irreducible nature of consciousness; on the extended mind; on structural realism; on a structuralist response to Cartesian skepticism, on the nature of computation, on the digital metaphysics of virtual reality and on the character of the manifest image.

There is no registration fee. The event is planned to be held in person and is sponsored by the Strategy AV 21 program of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Local organizers: Juraj Hvorecký, Tomáš Hříbek, Tomáš Marvan, Jakub Mihálik and Martin Zach