Virtualism: how AI replaces reality

Abstract This paper traces the shift from the age of realism to the age of virtualism we are currently witnessing. To do so, I draw on older theories announcing this advent (mostly Baudrillard in Simulacra and simulation . Transl. Sheila Glaser. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1994 1981; Serres in Atlas . Édition Julliard, Paris, 1994; Virilio in The vision machine . Transl. Rose J. Indiana UP, Bloomington, 1994). I will describe how AI destabilizes fundamental distinctions upon which reality is built—such as the difference between truth and fiction, between existence and simulation, between the actual and the potential, between game and everyday life, between person and avatar. Against the backdrop of a broader notion of the virtual (drawing on Deleuze in The actual and the virtual . Transl. Eliot Ross Albert in Parnet C Dialogues. Bloomsbury, London, pp 148–152, 2006 1996), I will read current realist theories (Chalmers in Reality plus—virtual worlds and the problems of philosophy . Allen Lane, London in 2022; Gabriel in Why the world does not exist . Transl. Gregory S. Moss. Polity, Cambridge, 2015; Ferraris in Positive realism . Zero Books, Arlesford, 2015; Meillassoux in After finitude—an essay on the necessity of contingency . Transl. Brassler R. Bloomsbury, London, 2008) as symptoms of the ongoing shift (rather than countermeasures against it), because they result in an inability to do justice to the epistemic and existential changes resulting from the erosion of the foundations of reality. The consequences of this shift are hard to predict and can only partially be outlined in this paper, which will end in a cautious attempt to do so (chapters 5 and 6). Starting off with a brief overview on this topic (chapter 1), I will trace the reasons for my diagnosis focusing first on what I call the “age of reality” currently coming to an end (chapter 2), then on why virtuality cannot be subsumed under reality (chapter 3), then how virtuality is currently replacing reality (chapter 4).