Reality+

Chalmers is a joy: an exuberant guide through challenging terrain, quick with anecdotes and arguments, wit and wild ideas – Kieran Setiya * TLS *Delightfully - or perhaps worryingly - convincing… A brilliant and very readable philosophical investigation… [Chalmers] tackles some frankly mindbending ideas, but does so in a lively and entertaining style, filled with references to pop culture – PD Smith, Book of the Day * Guardian *Everyone should read this important book – Josh Glancy * Sunday Times *Fascinating… Thoughtful, clear and funny… Reality+ is a gripping act of philosophical escapology… Hugely entertaining – Kit Wilson * The Times *One of the most important living philosophers, existing in an exclusive club of living thinkers who are on compulsory reading lists for undergraduate philosophy students… He writes with admirable clarity and there’s something quite rock’n’roll about him – Bryan Appleyard * Spectator *[Chalmers] deftly interweaves the finer points of ancient Chinese philosophy and Cartesian dualism with the metaphysics of the Matrix films and the World of Warcraft computer games… A rich, scintillating […] book that reflects many fascinating facets of our virtual worlds – John Thornhill * Financial Times *A David Chalmers book is a competition. On the one hand the writing is so clear and engaging that you want to keep turning pages; on the other, the ideas are so surprising and profound that you are continually stopping to think about them. Reality+ is a treasure trove of provocative reflections on cosmology, consciousness, artificial intelligence, ethics, and more. Reading it will change the way you think about the universe – Sean Carroll, author of Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of SpacetimeFasten your seatbelt and put your helmet on, David Chalmers is going to take you on an amazing trip. Reality+ is wild, profound, and playful, placing famous arguments from the history of philosophy next to surprising observations about video games. Cleverly disguised as light reading, this book carries a large payload of new ideas about existence, knowledge, and what makes life worth living – Jennifer Nagel, University of TorontoAs humanity enters a brave new world of artificial superintelligence and computer-generated virtual realities, how can we humble hunter-gatherers, descended from cavemen, begin to grasp our astonishing technological future? The answer lies in this book. We must think about the ultimate nature of reality. In Reality+ David Chalmers provides the roadmap to your future – Susan Schneider, NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation, and author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your MindA stunning achievement. In effortless prose David Chalmers explores new ways to think about everything from consciousness to computation, deities to democracy. Reality+ shows time and again how familiar topics take on interesting new forms when viewed through the lens of virtual reality – Scott Sturgeon, author of The Rational Mind

David J. Chalmers is University Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University. His previous books include The Conscious Mind and Constructing the World. He has given the John Locke lectures and has been awarded the Jean Nicod Prize. He is known for formulating the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, which inspired Tom Stoppard’s play The Hard Problem, and for the idea of the ‘extended mind’, which says that the tools we use can become parts of our minds.