Chalmer's Theory Of Skepticism Essay

Humans, especially philosophers, often ask the question 'How do we know that everything around us is real?' Skepticism was born from this question and is associated with incredulity. A skeptic is someone who questions things (particularly received opinions) and also practices the suspension of judgment. One of the oldest theories of Skepticism is the brain in a vat fable. The brain in a vat fable states that a disembodied brain is floating in a vat and being controlled in a scientist laboratory. A modern version of this, which, Chalmers tries to argue against, is the matrix. The matrix is modeled after the film The Matrix where the main character Neo thinks he lives in a city in 1999 but in reality he is floating in a pod in space, it's the

“The creation hypothesis states Physical space-time and its contents were created by beings outside physical space-time” (Chalmers pg. 408). The creation hypothesis clearly states the world was created by beings that exist outside our space and time. For the sake of this essay, the beings that Chalmers refers to could be the machines that are controlling us. This hypothesis is not a skeptic argument because the existence of a God or some greater being doesn't really change the general beliefs about the external world. The next hypothesis discussed is the Computational hypothesis. “The Computational hypothesis says Microphysical process throughout space-time are constituted by underlying computational processes” (Chalmers pg. 408). This simply means that physical processes on the smallest scale are formed piece by piece by algorithm processes. This hypothesis, like the creation hypothesis, is not a skeptical argument because even if it turned out that it was false, very little would change about our everyday beliefs. “The Mind-Body Hypothesis says the mind is (and has always been) constituted by processes

My first criticism of Chalmers’s hypothesis is his third hypothesis, the mind-body hypothesis. Chalmers says that our mind and body do not have to exist in the same reality, but I don’t think it is possible for our mind and body to exist in two separate time and space realities. I am in agreement with Chalmers’s second hypothesis, the computational hypothesis which says that our world are ruled by computational processes, which is especially true in the matrix situation, but these computational processes and signals that stimulates our brains are what connects our body to our minds and puts them in the same reality. Without these signals to our brains, the computational process means nothing. It would also be a little difficult for our bodies to play important roles because they won't be driven by anything or anyone. Let’s think of a baby who is brought up and raised into believing wrong things about the world because his parents wanted to test out an experiment. The baby is shown a papaya and told that it’s a type of fruit. The parents then cut up the papaya and tell the infant that it’s an apple. The infant will grow up thinking that something that smells and looks like a papaya is an apple. This belief is obviously false but it is obvious that the infant’s mind is not in a separate time and space reality from the body. However, the