A talk by Michael Newall
Saturday 20 July 4pm
live-streamed on zoom: click here
The British philosopher Nick Bostrom argued in a notorious 2003 essay that there is a chance – perhaps a very strong chance – that we are in fact living in a computer simulation. In this accessible, illustrated talk, Michael Newall examines Bostrom’s idea and explores responses that can be made to it. Michael will also sketch out how the idea that we live in a technological simulation and not the “really real” world can be placed in the broader context of ideas, culture, politics, and art – including that of the artists showing in the current TLM exhibition, ‘Are you living in a computer simulation?’, which takes its title from Bostrom’s essay.
Michael Newall is Co-Director of The Little Machine and Co-Curator of ‘Are you living in a computer simulation?’ He writes philosophy, art history, and criticism, and currently teaches at the SA School of Art, UniSA Creative. Michael taught at the University of Kent from 2004–20, where he held various roles including Director of the Aesthetics Research Centre. He has won two of the American Society for Aesthetics’ major prizes, the John Fisher Memorial Prize (2010) and the Outstanding Monograph Prize (2019). His recent writing focuses on perception and colour, and includes ‘A Study in Brown’ (Synthese, 2022), and ‘Painting with Impossible Colours’ (Perception, 2021), which argues for the reality of impossible colours by inducing their experience in observers (see also philpapers.org/archive/NEWPWI.pdf for a version of the text).
Read Nick Bostrom’s essay here