Physical World as Virtual Reality?

The paper of Witworth from 2007 [423]^16.1 discusses an interpretation of the physical world as a virtual reality. This idea is not new - as it is also pointed out several times in the paper (c.f.(p.5)) - but Witworth condenses the different ideas under the label of a 'Virtual Reality' in a specific manner.

His arguments depart from several findings of modern physics which he presents in a way that these appear - compared with our 'everyday' thinking - as strange, paradoxical, incomplete, or the like (cf. e.g. 'creation from nothing' (p.3) or 'physical effects without causality' (p.3)).

Witworth introduces then a new conceptual framework called 'virtual reality' (cf. (p.5ff)) with it's own 'logic'. He 're-interprets' then the physical phenomena by applying the virtual-world logic onto these.

Example: He cites from a popular book of Smolin [347] the statement ``There is nothing outside the universe'' as illustrating the position of modern physics, and opposes this statement with the 'prime axiom' of his virtual-reality conceptual framework ``There is nothing in our universe which exists of or by itself'' (p.5).

• The cited statement of Smolin as such tells - strictly speaking - 'nothing' because isolated from a formal framework of a theory an isolated statement has no real meaning. Thus the Smolin statement can tell nothing and everything at once. From the context we can suggest that the Smolin statement shall be part of Physics as empirical science. Empirical sciences based on empirical measurements have either isolated measured data $d_{i} \in D$ or they have a formal mathematical structure$T$ which can be 'interpreted' over a set of possible 'theoretical objects' $O_{T}$ into which the data $D$ can be 'mapped' $m()$ as instances of such objects $m(D) \subseteq O_{T}$. Therefore empirical statements can only cover measured data or those which 'in principle' could be measured. Empirical theories can never make statements about meta-theoretical facts because this belongs to 'meta-physics', which is not part of the empirical sciences. If the Smolin-statement is intended as such a meta-theoretical statement - eventually as a meta-physical proposition - then this is not a statement of physics as an empirical science.

• Witworth gives a so-called 'definition' of virtual reality (VR) as well a 'hypothesis' inferred from the virtual reality definition.
• 'Definition': ``A virtual reality is here considered to be a reality created by information processing, and so by definition it cannot exist independently in and of itself, as it depends upon processing to exist. If the processing stops then the virtual reality must also cease to exist.''(p.5)
• The definiendum (the thing to be defined) is traced back to the concept of 'reality' as something 'known given'. And then it is postulated that the known given 'reality', insofar it is 'created by information processing', becomes 'virtual'.
• This raises the question what a 'reality' is independent of a creating process? Philosophically the only known 'reality as such' is the subjetive experience of human persons where we talk of 'given experiences', 'phenomena', which 'are there' as the 'content' of our consciousness. Other kinds of 'givens' are philosophically not possible.
• Besides this we know meanwhile a lot about the brain and the correlation of brain-phenomena to conscious phenomena that we have to assume that the content of the consciousness can be mapped to a subset of the measurable brain-states. Thus the brain can be interpreted as a kind of a 'processor' $P_{NN}$ which generates the set of measurable brain states which can change by time $P_{NN}: S_{NN} \longmapsto S_{NN}$ with $nps: PH \longmapsto S_{NN.PH}$. In this reading the brain 'creates' the phenomena $PH$ as a subset of brain-states $S_{NN.PH}$ and in this sense are the phenomena as contents of the consciousness virtual and the 'reality' as perceived in our consciousness is a virtual reality according to the definition of Witworth. Therefore the only 'reality' knowable by humans is already a 'virtual reality' and the brain is the primary simulator.
• The so-called empirical objects are known to human persons by being translated into phenomena - and as such being 'virtual' -, but these phenomena can be 'traced back' to measurement operations 'outside' of the body as controllable by every kind of - not completely impaired - human person. In this framework we human persons have a 'primary' (subjective) reality, which is a 'virtual' reality and with the aid of this virtual reality we interact with a 'reality outside the boy' which is only given as a 'theoretical construct' from within the 'virtual' reality. The so-called empirical theories are located in the virtual reality of the body called consciousness and function as models of a reality 'outside' the body which is called 'empirical' on account of measurements as well as objective.

Thus we as human persons are from the beginning of our individual existence operating in the 'mode' of a virtual reality, which as such is 'our (primary) reality', and 'through' this primary (virtual) reality we are 'perceiving' and 'thinking' of possible realities 'beyond' this primary reality. This basic fact of philosophy (especially related to epistemology) is not explicitly stated from Witworth.

Witworth brings forward another additional statement called the virtual reality (VR) hypothesis: ``That our physical reality is a virtual reality that depends upon information processing to exist, which processing must occur outside of itself''.

1. The concept of an 'information process' is not explicitly defined. Informally it assumes a 'processing' of 'information' where the processing has to be seen 'outside' of the information 'as such'. The information as such is the 'reality' which is classified as 'virtual' because of the assumed 'processing' which is also called a 'creation'.
2. Additional requirements postulated are a 'discrete' input/output, 'calculable' algorithmic processes, and 'finite' memory and processing. (cf. p.8)
3. The only known theoretical concept of calculation until today is the concept of the turing machine (with many formally equivalent concepts) which includes an infinite (!) information space $W$ with a finite (!) processor as a finite set of distinguishable states $Q$ operated by a finite transition function $\Delta$ where the discrete input-output is realized by a finite read-write head which can be placed at any position.
4. Because no alternative is known we assume here that Witworth understands his 'information processing' as the processing of a device which is formally equivalent to a 'truing machine'.
5. Compared to an empirical theory $T$ the 'objects' of a turing equivalent structure are 'information units' (distinguishable discrete units).

To 're-interpret' the empirical objects with the framework of a turing machine equivalent structure one has to (i) map the empirical objects $O_{T}$ into the set of information units $W$ and has (ii) to make plausible that all observable changes of the empirical objects $O_{T}$ can be interpreted as finite calculable processes.

But even if one would not be able to observe a discrepancy between these two assumptions (i) + (ii) this would not 'prove' that 'beyond' the observable changes there 'exists' such a processor as a 'real' entity. Changes can have many possible 'causes'.

Whether assumptions (i) + (ii) are empirically sound is a question which I cannot decide because I am not an expert in physics. That the 'basic units' of matter are 'discrete' is an often written statement. That the observable changes shall represent 'finite processes' is not clearly to decide. What is a 'finite process' in the 'empirical world'? The fact that one can determine a 'beginning' of all measurable processes from where all other observable phenomena can be computed (as far as we can understand today) points in the direction that the empirical universe represent a 'finite process' until now. But there is no formal reason why this process should stop.