Innocence Lost: Simulation Scenarios: Prospects and Consequences
Barry Dainton, University of Liverpool, October 2002 [Draft]
ABSTRACT. Those who believe suitably programmed computers could enjoy conscious experience of the sort we enjoy must accept the possibility that their own experience is being generated as part of a computerized simulation. It would be a mistake to dismiss this is just one more radical skeptical possibility: for as Bostrom has recently noted ["Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?," Nick Bostrum, Philosophical Quarterly (2003), Vol. 53, No. 211, pp. 243-255], if advances in computer technology were to continue at close to present rates, there would be a strong probability that we are each living in a computer simulation. The first part of this paper is devoted to broadening the scope of the argument: even if computers cannot sustain consciousness (as many dualists and materialists believe), there may still be a strong likelihood that we are living simulated lives. The implications of this result are the focus of the second part of the paper. The topics discussed include: the Doomsday argument, skepticism, the different modes of virtual life, transcendental idealism, the Problem of Evil, and simulation ethics.
