Notes on a Cosmology - Series Introduction

Note: This is the first in a planned series of posts about a cosmology. I will not be covering the history of other cosmologies or comparing the cosmology presented in this series with other, contemporary cosmologies.

Philosopher Nick Bostrom has published a paper titled, "Are you living in a computer simulation?" [1] (PDF link) that puts forward what is lately being called the Simulation Argument (SA). The SA is not a scientific hypothesis, rather, it is a probability argument that puts forward a choice of several alternatives and argues that, if we suppose all of these alternatives are improbable, then the probability that we are living in a simulation is very large. The argument itself is couched very indirectly because modern philosophy is a very technical business but Bostrom's reasoning is refreshingly direct. Restated in my own words, Bostrom is arguing that if we suppose (a) that human technological progress will continue on its current trajectory, (b) that humans will desire to model their ancestors in order to scientifically understand their own origins and (c) that (a) and (b) would be true of any civilization that reaches a level of advancement equivalent to ours, then it is overwhelmingly probable that we are already living in a simulation. I will call this restatement of Bostrom's SA the Simulation Hypothesis, or SH. The Simulation Hypothesis is the hypothetical assertion that we are living in a simulation.

Bostrom's SA is concerned with giving a framework for why you should or should not believe the SH. I am not interested in that argument in this series. Rather, I am interested in what a cosmology that assumes the SH from the outset might look like.

What is a cosmology? A cosmology is a metaphysical theory of what is, of the world around us, usually in respect to its physical laws, physical origins and eventual fate. In this respect, the usual meaning of the word cosmology is too narrow for the purposes of this series. I am going to be using the word much more broadly, in a manner similar to how Willard Sellars has defined philosophy itself: "The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term."

The goal of this series is to ask - and sketch an outline for answering - the following question: Given the Simulation Hypothesis, how do things - in the broadest possible sense of the term "things" - hang together - in the broadest possible sense of "hanging together"?

The pure philosopher could argue that this is putting the cart before the horse - you cannot have a cosmology without a philosophy. But that does not concern me because I will not be using a rigorous approach to philosophy in this series. Rather, the approach that I will use in this series will be a no-holds barred epistemology. What I mean by "no-holds barred epistemology" is that I am not concerned with questions of the certainty of knowledge, nor even with persuading anybody. It could be called "exploratory thinking", that is, hypothetical thinking in the most general sense, starting from the idea of the Simulation Hypothesis.

In the first part of this series, I will be covering the precursors to the Simulation Hypothesis - what it means to be simulated and why anyone ever hypothesized simulation, in the first place. Later in the series, I will be covering the larger implications of simulation and misconceptions about what it means to be simulated.

Next: Part 1, A Toolbox for Thinking

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1. [Philosophical Quarterly (2003) Vol. 53, No. 211, pp. 243‐255]