The Matrix is iconic for introducing ideas of philosophical skepticism to a broad audience. By philosophical skepticism, we refer to philosophical views that question the possibility of knowledge. The question that Matrix poses can be framed as follows: “Can we know that we are not, in fact, in a simulation?”
The ancient mnemonic “Method of Loci” has been in use for thousands of years. From memory competitors to students, the method helps to memorise items by combining visual and spatial cues. Many have perhaps heard of the technique through popular TV shows such as Sherlock…
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Perhaps no dream is as universal, or as grand, as that of time travel. Being able to return to the glorious past, or speed away into the sci-fi future. Ever since humans began to have the notion of something happening now, this necessarily had to…
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In Tao Te Ching, perhaps the most widely translated Eastern Philosophy texts of all time, we hear of the philosopher Chuang Tzu. One night, Chuang Tzu dreamed that he was a butterfly. He dreamt that he was flying around from flower to flower and while…
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Virtual Reality technology is wonderful for a philosopher because it brings alive some of the greatest philosophical questions — David Chalmers In the installment from which the above quote was taken, the distinguished philosopher and consciousness researcher goes on to mention Descartes’ suspicion of the external world…
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Søren Kierkegaard, the father of Existentialism, famously described anxiety, or angst, as the dizziness of freedom. Hardly a cheerful fellow—though his brilliant, satirical wit often forces one to smile—Kierkegaard clearly was no stranger to this “dizziness” he so often spoke of: I see it all perfectly; there…
Continue reading The Existential Problem of VR
In his book «Dawn of the New Everything» Jaron Lanier, often called the father of VR, wrote that the question he was most asked in the 1980s was to which degree VR was similar to LSD. Not a psychonaut himself, however, Lanier was not necessarily…
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In this piece, we discuss the relationship between Hinduism and Virtual Reality. The cosmology of the religion category “Hinduism”; the broad metaphysic of the East, is a very interesting one. Radically different from that of the West, it is a refreshing albeit heavy shower of…
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VR has the capability of enchanting us. It has the power to introduce us to virtual worlds — and represent our designs in ‘the format of reality’. The content appears non-mediated, something Metzinger relates to the «phenomenal transparency» of the mind — we see «through…
Continue reading From Thought to Reality
The term “Philosophy” can refer to a method or approach to investigate how we should relate to and understand ourselves and the world. Moreover, how we understand ourselves and the world is dependent on technology — especially in the case of mediums that present and abstract information…
Continue reading Existentialist Design