Following the previous talk on consciousness and how our mind constructs the sense of reality and the image of the world we live in, we discuss the biology of reality. The fact that vision is our most important sense to perceive the world is related with the human property of conceiving “ideas” – a word by definition based on vision. We examine altered states of mind that lead to altered states of reality, and discuss synaesthesia.

Technology guides our senses to new realities, referred to as “virtual”. Art itself could be considered as a method to alter or escape reality too; could art have been developed to help us do exactly this? Maybe humans actually need to live in “virtual” realities in order to survive.

We examine the Matrix Hypothesis, and we ask: “Are we living in a computer simulation?”

Participants :

Stelios Virvidakis
Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy and History of Science, National & Capodistrian University of Athens, Greece.

Nikos Tzavaras
Neuroscientist. Professor of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece.

Dimitris Charitos
VRchitect. Associate Professor, Department of Media and Communication, National & Capodistrian University of Athens, Greece.

Moderator :

Christos Prukakis
Journalist; Scientific Editor "Eleftheros Typos" Newspaper.