Before we ever hear about VR, in the actual world we seem to be able to distinguish between reality from perceptual imitations of reality in art, entertainment, etc. When we see a movie, we can be deeply moved or disturbed by the story or physically aroused by the graphic images or the language; but we always seem to know that it is just a show, not part of reality. Why? Let us look into it.
Suppose I am in an airplane flying to a place I have not visited. I am near-sighted so I am wearing a pair of eyeglasses. It's a long trip in the air so I fall to sleep. When I am asleep, somebody replaces my eyeglasses with a similar-looking pair that lets me see a 3-D movie that is visually very realistic. Everything is arranged in such a way that as soon as I wake up and open my eyes a 3-D movie will begin to show so that I will see a gunman threatening to kill me unless I give him my Rolex which I always wear. Now I wake up and everything runs as planned. So I believe at first that I will either be killed or need to give up my Rolex. When will I begin to suspect that the gunman is just an illusion?
When I attempt to take my Rolex off my wrist, I at first try to move my hands. But to my surprise, I cannot see my hands anywhere, and in fact my whole body has disappeared from the scene. Since the image of my body is the least likely to disappear in the real world, its disappearance is a very good indication that the real scene of the world has been blocked from my vision and what I am seeing is not part of the real world. At this moment, I might begin to notice other abnormal signs: I may, for example, pay attention to what is outside the edge of my glasses and see a discrepancy between the gunman's surrounding and the background outside the frame of my glasses. But how can I know that the real is outside the frame and the illusory inside the frame? The answer cannot be that eyeglasses are a manmade device and a manmade device always distorts reality; this cannot be a valid answer because my original glasses for my near-sightedness are also manmade but they are supposed to help me see the real world, not to distort it. The reason why I believe that I know which part is real and which illusory is as follows. Outside the frame I can see my own body, the existence of which I know for certain; but inside the frame through my glasses my body does not show up. A real visual environment at least allows my body to appear in it; a visual environment that does not allow my body to appear is illusory. So I am applying a tentative rule (or T-Rule for short) implicitly as follows:
T-Rule 1: The visual environment in which my body image sustains can be real, and objects seen in that environment can also be real; the visual environment in which my body image does not sustain cannot be real and thus is illusory, and objects seen in that environment are also illusory.
I call it a tentative rule because it is not an established rule I can follow through without a trouble. Now suppose the 3-D movie incorporates my real-time body image into it interactively, in addition to the image of the gunman. In such a case when I try to raise my hands I can see my hands raised as supposed. So I do not have a chance to apply T-Rule 1. What would be the next clue I can make use of to tell the real from the illusory? I will take my Rolex off my wrist and place it on the table which I can reach. But to my surprise, when I see my hand touching the table, I do not feel any resistance to my hand, neither a sense of texture or whatever that should be part of my sense of touch. I cannot hear any noise either when I strike the table. Since I can feel the sense of touch with my Rolex, I know my hand is not numbed; I can hear sounds from other sources, I know I am not deaf. Therefore I would assume that the table as I see it visually is an optical illusion and thus is not real because it does not lead to an agreement between my sense of vision and my sense of touch. So I am now implicitly applying another T-Rule:
T-Rule 2: A real object must give different sense-modalities of my body simultaneous stimuli with mutual agreement in my perception; any alleged object that does not satisfy this condition is illusory.
But now suppose when I try to place my Rolex on the illusory table, my hand does receive appropriate tactile stimuli at the right time from an independent but well-coordinated unknown source, and I also hear well-coordinated but independently generated sound, etc. In such a situation, T-Rules 1 and 2, taken as necessary but not sufficient conditions for the distinction between the real and the illusory, are both circumvented. What is the next clue that can lead me to see through the trick? Suppose now the objects before me, the gunman and the table, etc., disappear suddenly, and re-appear later, and so on, at random; my sense of touch with the table also comes and goes in a ghostly fashion along the visual image. In such a situation, regardless of the agreement among my different modalities of sense, I would nevertheless begin to doubt the status of reality of these objects. Or, if the "gunman" acts like a cartoon character that defies laws of nature, say, flying without wings; I would also begin to think that it is no real gunman and I don't have to lose my Rolex. Here, I am applying another T-Rule implicitly:
T-Rule 3: If the change of an apparent object, as seen, felt, etc., does not show a certain sort of regularity as I expected, then the object is illusory.
But this T-Rule 3 cannot allow me to draw a final conclusion about what is real or illusory either. Events in a 3-D movie can certainly be made to follow the same laws of nature just as a regular movie if I don't attempt to participate in the story. So the "gunman" and the "table" do not have to behave in a ghostly manner. They can just be made to appear as lawful as I expected and thus circumvent T-Rule 3 while remaining illusory. Given so, what else can I appeal to in order to distinguish between the real and the illusory?
At this point of discussion, let us disregard the "gunman" temporarily and pay our full attention to the illusory table in order to avoid the more complicated philosophical question of other-mind for a while. So how can I know that the table is not real? Instead of perceiving it passively, I now take action and try to carry the table with me to another place. Since the perceived table is only an image on the screen, and my senses of touch, hearing, etc., are only coordinated to that image, there is no way that it could be taken out of the screen. On the other hand, I, the real I, can go to many other places as I wish. Therefore, my attempt to take that perceived table with me must fail, and the failure will reveal the illusory nature of the putative table. Thus, we have the following T-Rule:
T-Rule 4: If I cannot locate a perceived object and move it around in the real space wherein my own body is located, then the object is illusory.
We can apply T-Rule 4 only if we can tell the difference between the illusory space created through the 3-D images on the screen and the real space wherein my body is located. But suppose my attempt to move myself does not lead to my real movement in the real space; it moves instead only devices such as a trekmill that translate my action into corresponding signals. These signals enable the 3-D images and the stimuli to my senses of hearing, touch, motion, etc. to cooperate in such a way that I have an immersive experience of taking a real table with me. In such a case (we are finally getting to VR again), how can I begin to realize that I am dealing with an illusory table?
Presumably, if I become skeptical, I can begin to examine the apparent table's primary qualities as defined classically by John Locke, which are supposed to be inherent in the object. Instead of indulging myself in sensory perception of the secondary qualities, I undertake an active study of the micro-structure of the putative table. I will try to break it up into pieces, or do anything I can do to a real object from a simple strike to smashing its elementary particles such as neutrons and mesons in a super-collider. As soon as the table or its parts respond to my vandalism in an obviously un-physical manner (all parts disappearing suddenly, or broken pieces taking the size of the original unbroken piece, etc.), then I will begin to know that the supposed table is illusory. That is, I would follow such a T-Rule implicitly:
T-Rule 5: If I do not witness the supposed physical object obeying established mechanical laws of physicality as described by physical science and supported by commonsense, then the object is illusory.
This T-Rule 5 is very close to the assumption rooted implicitly in the mind of the majority of scientists who believe scientific realism. Philosophers such as John Searle and Daniel Dennett also hold such a belief because it seems to them that mechanical laws of physics are the bedrock of causal connection, and causal efficacy is the final test of reality.
However, T-Rule 5 can also be circumvented in principle by our so-called "ontology engineering" in programming. With sufficient computational power, we can build all known laws of nature, and/or laws created by us, into the software. Since all empirical knowledge we have about the objects in the world is acquired through our observation of the patterns of their behavior, that is, the lawful events related to them, the same sort of events will lead us to draw the same sort of conclusion about their ontology. When we talk about molecules, atoms, electrons, photons..., down to quarks, we are merely using these concepts to organize phenomena we have observed as a result of our active participation; they are derived from events of which our activities are a component.
Therefore, there is nothing in principle that will prevent us from writing a program in the VR infrastructure to simulate the behavior of actual world. In such a case, when I break my table into smaller and smaller pieces, I would be able to find molecules, atoms, electrons, etc., as long as I encounter the same types of behavior of a table as in the actual world. Or, if I open my virtual watch, I will see all tiny and sophisticated virtual gears, diamonds etc. working together, and the watch is ticking! This can be done only if, of course, we have mastered tremendous computational power at both hardware and software levels, which is difficult in practice (by now) but not impossible in principle. If VR pioneer Myron W. Krueger can program laws of his own creation into his "artificial reality" called VIDEOPLACE, why can we not just copy physical laws, as we read in a typical textbook of physics, and incorporate them into our ultimate programming? Let us see how Krueger describes his virtual world:
In this VIDEOPLACE environment, students would be cast in the role of scientists landing on an alien planet. Their mission would be to study the local flora, fauna, and physics. The world would be deliberately unrealistic. It would operate by unfamiliar physics and would be designed to give children an advantage over their teachers. Their unique behavior, as well as their size and perhaps even what they were wearing, would allow them to discover different things about the environment.[underline mine]
Krueger uses the word "physics" here without hesitation even though the world is "unrealistic." We should be able to see his point now. As long as objects in his VIDEOPLACE environment show some kind of regularity, they will give us a sense of physicality, even though they follow a new set of laws.
In our case, the illusory table is made to follow the same set of physical laws as I am familiar with in the actual world and therefore is deliberately realistic rather than "unrealistic." In the virtual environment, we can even find a super-collider in which virtual particles are "smashed" and "elementary particles" such as mesons, protons, pions, etc. are observed through virtual bubble chambers. In such a situation, not knowing the sharp turn of my perceptual history at the moment I was placed into VR while I was asleep, what else can I do to find out that the table is illusory?
You might have already seen the catch: an actual super- collider consumes tremendous amount of energy whereas the virtual one does not consume energy in the same way. In fact, there is no way to write a VR program that makes any virtual event consume more energy necessarily than other events apart from the energy needed for the computational process. Given so, the law of conservation of energy seems to be absent in the virtual world, and that seems to be the final ground on which we can distinguish the real from the illusory. But energy is not something we can see flowing separately from objects that undergo changes while consuming energy. So we need to appeal to the second law of thermodynamics, which tells us that energy does not accumulate itself to serve our intended process of transformation. We must at first intentionally channel energy in a certain way (running an electricity-generating power station, for example) into a specific process in order to use it for the intended result. Therefore, if I can break the apparent table into smaller and smaller pieces and finally run a "super- collider" without locating and operating, or intentionally connecting to, a more and more powerful generator of energy, then the table is illusory. Hence we have:
T-Rule 6: If I can break an apparent object into smaller and smaller pieces without my intended effort to bring in proportionate energy, then the object is illusory.
Does this T-Rule 6 finally save me from the confusion between the virtual and the actual? Not quite. The underlining program can again circumvent this T-Rule if it indeed incorporates all laws of physical science at the level of correlation of all events. "Energy" is no more than another concept used to organize the mandatory regularity of events as perceived by us. In modern physics, the traditional distinction between "particles" and "energy" carried by or transmitted among them already becomes an obstacle to a consistent understanding of physical world in its entirety. Therefore, T-Rule 5 has already covered the content of T-Rule 6 if we understood the former literally.
Therefore, we can make the following events in VR. When I try to break my perceived table into pieces, I do need to assert my physical power increasingly as the size of the pieces gets smaller and smaller. When the work reaches a certain level I must find a knife or a hammer or a chisel in the virtual world in order to continue. Later, when those pieces reach the threshold of visibility, I need to take them to a lab and operate the lab exactly like what I need to do in an actual lab: pushing buttons to start a motor, turning on lights, boosting the computer, etc. Finally, I need to write a proposal that justifies my use of a super-collider. After I receive the approval of my proposal, I take my stuff to the site of the collider, which is operated by a group of "engineers" who appear in the virtual world and are supposed to know how to acquire the needed amount of energy. I will see, hear, touch, and smell whatever I would in an actual facility, including bubble chambers that show traces of "elementary particles" as expected. How can I now apply T-Rule 6 to distinguish the illusory from the real? No, I can't.
Now what am I supposed to do in order to tell the real from the illusory? I must use my own body as a tool for a final test. I must try to perceive whether the supposed destructive (or constructive as well?) process can bring about any perceived consequences to my body as it would in a natural world. If I dip my fingers into a sizzling frying pan but feel no damaging heat, or let a car run over me while I keep whistling Yankee Doo Doo, or the gunman throws his gun on my head but I only feel a feminine touch, etc., then I will conclude that the objects and the events are illusory. On the contrary, if in the perceived environment, a fire can burn me and the smoke can choke me like hell, a knife can cut me real bad and I will collapse soon if the seen bleeding is not stopped, the electricity will shock me in no time if I touch an open circuit, etc., that is, all kinds of event with its energy affecting me as expected, then I will conclude that the objects and the events are real. In such a case, when the gunman pulls the trigger, I will be badly wounded if not killed. If I am indeed killed, I am really killed, and gone with me is the issue of the real as opposed to the illusory table. Thus the T-Rule which I follow implicitly is:
T-Rule 7: If the putative energy in an event cannot hurt me proportionately as expected, and cannot finally threaten to terminate my ability to interact with the environment, then the event that seems to carry energy is illusory.
At this point, we have reached the crucial junction where the virtual and the actual meet and separate decisively. This is the junction the causal process is blocked at large from the sub-causal on the one hand, and generate corresponding stimuli for the foundational part of our VR experience through the Home Reality Engine and the bodysuit in a sub-causal process. Filtered by this kind of causal/sub-causal exchanger, we can control the causally real process under the protection of the causal blockage so that the amount of energy won't exceed the maximum tolerance of our sense organs. Speaking of the virtual world from the perspective of the actual world, we can say that we are carrying out remote control of actual process most of the time while experiencing the directness in our sense perception within a pre-set energy threshold.
Insofar as T-Rule 7 gets to this bottom line in distinguishing the real from the illusory, it seems to be finally grounded on the foundation. But such a foundation is not there. Why?
If there were only the expansive part of VR, T-Rule 7 would be the final rule that I can use to tell the illusory from the real. But that only applies to the expansive part of VR. We have not forgotten that there is also a foundational part of VR. This part of VR renders T-Rule 7 futile. In this foundational part of VR, robots in the actual world are being manipulated by us from the virtual world to affect the actual process in the actual world. What we see in VR have counterparts in the actual world, and what we do will affect the physical process and thus will have predictable causal consequences to us, physically and experientially.
Thus when I am threatened by a real force, from outside the virtual world, that is destructive to my body, the foundational part of my VR experience will show a corresponding series of events perceived as destructive. If I am doing something meant to correspond to an act of hammering a nail down a wall, then there is an actual nail being knocked hard, and the energy involved is proportional to my effort to swing the hammer. When I see an image that stands for a bullet finally hitting me, the destructive force, either carried by an actual bullet or something equivalent, will penetrate my bodysuit and then my body; it will wound me badly if not kill me. I will feel the pain as expected and need to be taken to an emergency room as soon as possible. At the moment my bodysuit is destroyed, the division line between the causal and the sub-causal is eliminated and I am brought to the actual world from the virtual world. If you are doing something that is meant to make the actual building you are in collapse, your body suit and your body will very likely be destroyed when the building collapses.
Now compare the bodysuit, the goggles etc., which I wear, with my skin and my eyes, you will realize that the actual is no more real than the virtual, and the virtual is no more illusory than the actual, because the only difference is the difference between the artificial and the natural. Why cannot we have artificial reality and natural illusion instead of the opposite?
Therefore, T-Rule 7 is also a tentative rule. Passing the test of this rule does not guaranty a final distinction between the illusory and the real. But what else can we appeal to for a final distinction? On the experiential level, we cannot go any further, because this test of T-Rule 7 is a test of life and death; it does not leave room for more experiential tests.
Of course I could recover from my injury and lose my goggls and bodysuit forever, that is, I would live in the actual world rather than in the virtual world. But such a switch is between two parallel worlds experientially, not between the illusion and the realily ontologically.
I seem to have ordered the seven T-Rules arbitrarily. But the order is not arbitrary. A later T-Rule is needed only if all earlier T-Rules have already been circumvented in our attempt to distinguish the illusory from the real experientially. If you change the order between any two of them, such a sequence will be broken. Therefore each following T-Rule cuts deeper into the question of the putative experiential demarcation between supposed reality and illusion: 1) the coherence within one single modality of sensation: something happens at this moment; 2) the agreement among different modalities of sensation: there is an agreement that what is happening is something; 3) the regularity over temporal duration: there is a constant "it" that endures; 4) the mobility in the space: that "it" is out there in the space; 5) the mechanical lawfulness: there is a conservation of spatial idendity in "it" 6) the correlativity between change and the known supply of energy: "it" does not create or destroy itself by pure chance; 7) the proportional causal impact on the person's body: the conservation of energy is not fake. But in the end, none of them survives a progressive process of deconstruction.
Now what about that gunman? Is he real? Since this involves a much more complicated philosophical problem of other-mind, we need a separate discussion later.
This is an Excerpt from a Book,
Get Real: A Philosophical Adventure in Virtual Reality
Order this book Get Real here now
|
�
�
Get your own Free Home Page