René Descartes also dealt with doubts about reality: "I think, therefore I am!" But where are we?
The quite disturbing idea that our very thinking, something so intimate and seemingly free, is part of a simulation, is based on modern considerations popularised by the Swedish philosopher and futurologist Nick Bostrom or the technocrat, entrepreneur and currently also advisor to the US president Elon Musk. But it may surprise you to know that the famous French philosopher René Descartes, who lived in the first half of the 17th century, also engaged in similar reflections.
In his Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, René Descartes systematically doubted everything, including reality itself. He even presented a thought experiment of an "evil demon" that could deceive us so much that we would perceive the whole world only in appearance, while reality would be completely different. This idea is very similar to modern theories of simulation.
But he argued that whether or not the world around us is an illusion, it is thought itself that is the proof of our existence. In other words, even if reality is a simulation, our consciousness exists at least as the subject of the simulation. This would mean that although we may be part of a system, the very fact that we think cannot be denied.
Descartes' idea in the present
Modern philosophers and scientists wonder whether the mind itself could be simulated, for example, running in some quantum supercomputer. If our thoughts are just processes within a simulation, then it would be possible that we do not exist as independent entities, but only as programs within a wider simulated reality.
To this Descartes would probably reply, "Perhaps everything is an illusion, but if I think about this illusion, I must exist at least as a thinking being." So even in the case of a simulation, Cogito, ergo sum would apply - we might just have to add "... in the simulation."
God as a guarantee of reality
For Descartes, the existence of God as a perfect entity was an escape from the trap of a troubling idea. He argued that God is a perfect being and therefore cannot deceive us - the capacity for deception is, in his view, evidence of imperfection. Therefore, the world we perceive cannot be a mere illusion or simulation. In other words, God, according to Descartes, is the guarantee of the truth of our reality.
If we accept the hypothesis that the world is a simulation, then we could say that the "creator" of this simulation is not the traditional God, but an advanced being or entity that is capable of running the simulation. In this scenario, "God" could be understood as a programmer or higher intelligence that created our world in much the same way that Descartes understood God as the creator of reality.
The aforementioned Nick Bostrom speculates that if the world is a simulation, there is a higher intelligence that created it, which could be a parallel to the theistic concept of God - only this "God" would not necessarily be omnipotent. It would just need to be more technologically advanced than us. In this sense, our world could be a kind of "divine simulation" that has been given to us to explore.
So how is it?
If our world were a simulation, the question arises whether it would make any difference at all - if we don't recognize that we are in a simulation, isn't our world "real" to us anyway? And if there is someone who created this simulation, doesn't it actually have the same attributes as God according to traditional ideas experienced across cultures? Whether we are created by God or live in a simulation, Descartes' point still stands: I think, therefore I am. The question remains: but where do we actually "are"?
