Real Enough

For my Philosophy 481 class, we're reading Rene Descartes, who famously decided to begin his quest for certainty by discarding any notion for which there was any doubt. In doing so, he found himself in a position where he (at least initially) wasn't sure whether anything really existed, even himself. He soon concluded that at least he himself existed, even if his body didn't, and at our current place in the readings, he acknowledges that his senses are feeding him information about the world, but I'm not sure whether he is sure if that world he "sees" is real or not. And throughout all of this, I've been wondering, what does it matter?

It's possible that this world is a real planet somewhere in a real space, but it's also possible that this is all a dream or simulation. Either way, it's performing one of its main purposes: to  test us. God wanted to give us an opportunity to prove what sort of people we are, and He wanted to give us experiences that can help us grow into the people we can become, but those tests and experiences can have their desired effects, even if they're all in our heads. And there is actually at least one practical reason why God would want this to all be some kind of simulation. God doesn't want His children to get hurt, yet we frequently hurt each other, whether we intend to or not. God could prevent that sort of pain by putting each of us into isolated simulations, each designed to test only the individual who experiences it. If that's true, and this is your simulation, then every other person you meet is just part of the simulation. It's possible that you're the only person in the entire world who is "real."

But even so, the world and the other people in it are real enough. They seem real enough to convince us that they could be real, and our interactions with them really will effect our standing with God. Destroying robotic, holographic, or illusory people might not bear any moral consequence inherently, but if this is a simulation meant to test our behavior, it's likely in our best interest to treat every (fake) person we see as if they were real people with real emotions.

Personally, I don't think this world is an illusion. One of the reasons God created the Earth, we're told, is to give His spirit children a place to gain physical bodies, so, in theory, this is a physical place and we are all physically on it. But even if it's not, and this is all a simulation, I think that this simulation is real enough that we ought to treat it as though it's real, even if we can't logically prove its reality. Plus, there's Pascal's Wager to consider. If this world is real, and we treat it like it isn't, I imagine that there'll be worse consequences than if it actually isn't real, but we treat it like it is. We may not know for sure, logically, whether this world is real or not, and I'm okay with eventually learning that this was all a simulation, if it is. But for now, as far as I and this moral test are concerned, this world and everything in it are real enough for me.