Can we create the Matrix?

Question

Can we fully simulate the reality for a Brain in the Vat (BIV)?

For example i clone myself and connect the clone's brain to a very sophisticated computer, which simulates a part of the universe (for example the planet Earth) for it. The simulation should be 100% authentic, in other words, my clone's character in the virtual reality should experience the same impact of fundamental interactions (like gravity), same behaviour of classical and quantum mechanics, same mathematical and logical laws and so on.

I see only 2 ways to do that. Either i should fully comprehend the workings of the universe to create a virtual universe with the exact arrangement; but i fear that it's not possible to have a full knowledge of these fundamental workings. Or i should create such mechanism, that somehow recreates the structure and behavior of our universe in the virtual reality, but i doubt it's even possible in theory.

Considering the above, is it possible (in theory only, as a thought experiment) to create a full or partial yet authentic copy of our universe in a virtual reality and is it possible for dwellers of this virtual universe to create their own universe the same way recursively?

I want to emphasize that i'm not asking if it is possible or practical to create a BIV. Rather i want to ask if it is possible to fool the BIV, that the reality around it is real and make it impossible for the BIV to deduce the unreality of its virtual universe.

Answer 1

My clone's character in the virtual reality should experience the same impact of fundamental interactions.

Someone might argue that if there is no empirical evidence to appeal to in order to establish whether brains in a computer model of the world that can simulate human conscience, then the hypothesis is metaphysical. Many philosophers would maintain that such metaphysical possibilities do not amount to pragmatic cases of doubt: At present, it is physically impossible to make a computer model of the world that can simulate human cognition and replicate the qualitative phenomenology of a human conscience.

The hard problem of consciousness is why or how does some particular brain process produce that particular taste or visual sensation? It is difficult to see any real explanatory connection between specific conscious states and brain states in a way that explains just how or why the former are identical with the latter. There is therefore an explanatory gap between the physical and mental. This difficulty in explaining consciousness is unique; that is, we do not have similar worries about other scientific identities, such as that “water is H2O” or that “heat is mean molecular kinetic energy.” There is an important sense in which we can’t really understand how physicalism could be true. The existence of a "hard problem" is controversial and has been disputed by some philosophers. For philosophers who assert that consciousness is nonphysical in nature, there remains a question about what outside of physical theory is required to explain consciousness.

Consciousness is especially resistant to explanation in physical terms because of the inherent differences between our subjective and objective modes of understanding. But why we must be deluded by schizophrenic and LSD hallucinations to empathetically take on an experiential perspective understanding? Is subjective understanding necessary to make objective science? Some physicists, argue that an interpretation is nothing more than a formal equivalence between sets of rules for operating on experimental data, thereby implying that the whole exercise of interpretation is unnecessary, for example in quantum physics. Any modern physic's scientific theory requires at the very least an instrumentalist description that relates the mathematical formalism to experimental practice and prediction.

Answer 2

All empirical and instrumental interactions a brain has with it's surroundings is conducted through neuron-firing. Your eyes detect light reflected off a coffee cup and signals are sent to your visual-cortex with neural signals. Internally you reconstruct a three dimensional model of the coffee cup from the stereoscopical two-dimensional picture. You decide to move your hand to grasp the coffee cup and your motor-cortex sens out the appropriate neural signals to your muscles.

It's all neuron firings.

So yes, in principle there is nothing preventing you from putting a brain in a vat and hooking it's neural inputs and outputs to a sophisicated computer and simulating a universe for it to interact with, preserving all memories.

There is also nothing preventing you from just using a sophisticated MRI-scanner to read all the configurations of all the neurons and memory-enzymes and neurotransmitter concentrations in the brain and then simulate those directly in high enough fidelity to preserve all the information and thereby the person.

A person is the sum of their parts, i.e. the information stored in the brain and the continuous computational process the brain carries out.