If i had a Virtual Reality head set that was just the same as Reality. Would that be Reality?

Question

If i had a Virtual Reality head set that was just the same as Reality. Would that be Reality?

Answer 1

Maybe to you, but it wouldn't be reality as it actually exists.  Reality is based a lot on personal perception.  That's why some mental patients act differently, because their perceptions of the world around them are askew.

Answer 2

thats the movie the matrix

Answer 3

This is the "brain in the vat" thought experiment created by philosophers, actually. First thought up by Descartes in 1641 (possibly. And his was an evil demon) and more recently popularised by The Matrix... And yes, that would be equivalent to your perception and understanding of reality. The objective reality would not change, but as we probably don't percieve an objective reality now, that wouldn't matter to us personally. So that would be our reality, but not external reality (which does not rely on our perceptions to exist)

However as Daniel C Dennett puts it, the cominatorial explosion problems in programming such a virtual reality that is so realistic it utterly fools us would make such programming impossible (too many minutely different possibilites. Computer games suffer from the same problem). At least at the moment, we don't have to worry about this much. In case you were wondering.

Answer 4

absolutely not.