The Big Picture: An Honest Examination of God, Science, and Purpose by P. D. Hemsley

Author:P. D. Hemsley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Christian Apologetics
Publisher: eLectio Publishing
Published: 2013-10-12T16:00:00+00:00

Our Experience of Self

Science requires objective observation, and so must struggle to explain the subjective experience that (I assume) each person has of themselves. The only person who can know what it is to be me is me. It is impossible for anyone else to have the experience of being me, and so it is impossible to objectively measure the experience.

But we can add objective observation to subjective experience and speculate on questions such as: Where is our inventiveness, our thinking, our learning carried out? Where is our consciousness?

Is our experience of consciousness a function of our amazing brain, that giant organic computer in our skull? Perhaps it’s the neurons reorganising the network pathways, establishing new connections; the brain constantly reprogramming itself. Perhaps it’s the flow of electricity through the network of cells in our brain, through constantly opening and closing microscopic switches in our synapses.

The materialist worldview that matter is all the that there is, requires that there is nothing of consciousness, nothing of “us” that does not comprise the matter that makes up our brain; that our consciousness is an emergent property from the complex electrical interactions within our brain. But if this worldview is correct, what are the implications?

Computer Simulation

In his paper “Are you living in a computer simulation?”90 Nick Bostrom explores the assumption that consciousness does indeed emerge as a result of the brain’s complex construction and operation. Bostrom recognises that computer power is progressing at a massive rate and suggests that if we extrapolate the development then it will be possible to build computers with much greater calculating capability than we have in our human brains. He speculates that scientific knowledge will increase until it will be possible to simulate the operation of the brain, and that it will be possible to build a sufficiently complete model of the universe that it will be indistinguishable to the human mind from the real universe. Therefore, at some time in the future, man’s descendants will be able to build a computer that will simulate the life of an individual human being, interacting with a simulated environment.

Further, it would be necessary and possible for that simulated human being to have other human beings to interact with in order that the simulation is complete. Since there will be a vast computational capacity and plenty of time then the computers would run a great many simulations. As he states in the introduction to his paper:

. . . they could run a great many such simulations. Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct). Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race.

Since we would be unable to recognise the difference between the real universe and the simulated universe, you and I cannot tell whether we are in a simulation or not.

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