Thinkers · 14 essays, from Plato to Chalmers
Each era restates the same question in the terms of its own period. These are the 14 formulations on which the site draws, each with the sandbox dial that corresponds to it.
around 375 BCPlato’s cavePrisoners, a fire and shadows on a wall: an early picture of a projection mistaken for the world.around 300 BCZhuangzi’s butterflyZhuangzi dreams he’s a butterfly, then wakes up and can’t say which of the two is dreaming.4th–5th century ADVasubandhu’s dreamA shared, orderly world that affects us can appear without outside objects. Vasubandhu argues it with a dream, hungry ghosts and a nightmare of hell.8th century ADShankara’s māyāThe world is real enough to live in and not real in the last analysis. Advaita Vedānta keeps both claims at once.early 12th centuryal-Ghazali’s doubtFive centuries before Descartes, a Persian scholar asked what would make waking life look like a dream.1229Ibn Arabi’s imaginationThe whole world is imagination, made new at every instant. For Ibn Arabi that makes it more meaningful, not less.1635Calderón’s life is a dreamA prince is told his best day was a dream. He decides to act well anyway, in case he wakes.1641Descartes’ demonSuppose a being of great power has put all its effort into deceiving you. What’s left?1710–1713Berkeley’s perceiverTo be is to be perceived, and things nobody is looking at still exist because God is.1940Borges’ circular ruinsA man dreams a son into being, then learns that someone is dreaming him.1974Nozick’s experience machineA machine that gives you any life you choose, one you can’t tell from the real thing. Would you plug in?1981Putnam’s brain in a vatThe demon becomes hardware. Then Putnam argues that a brain in a vat couldn’t truly say it’s in a vat.2003Bostrom’s trilemmaNot an argument that we’re simulated, but an argument that one of three propositions must hold.2022Chalmers: virtual worlds are realThe strongest recent case that a simulated world wouldn’t be a fake one.