Virtualism

Here is a very compact explanation of what is claimed from the position of virtualism:

Experience is virtual.

It can only be generated by something real, like for instance human brains.But experience that counts as true empirical knowledge is impossible, so this real mechanism is strictly speaking experientially inaccessible. It can only be postulated, and our understanding of it — as with everything real — can only be speculative. Our attempted and apparently successful grasp of reality is simply an enormously impressive illusion. We mistake our virtual constructions for reality when this is expedient — which it is in pretty much every possible situation but philosophy.

From the above follows that the only independent standpoint from which to secure communication is in virtuality, not reality. This is the only place we can find truth and objectivity. Disbelief in some virtuality-transcendent reality does not follow. The belief is justified, even though we strictly speaking can never know whether or not it is true. The same goes for a very wide range of other beliefs, even beliefs that contradict one another (although these cannot be held at the same time). The most practical thing is to organize different kinds of beliefs into domains, with their own clearly formulated criteria. Science and religion can be seen av two such domains, where scientific beliefs are justified with reference to completely different criteria from those defining the domain of religious beliefs. The former endeavors to model reality on the basis of collected empirical evidence, while beliefs in the latter are selected to comfort and motivate – something which is of great value for a human being in the difficult situation of being alive in a hostile and alien world. Neither of these ways of justifying beliefs warrant proclaiming them to be true. And even though the two domains are in logical conflict with one another, they can coexist just as easily as we can switch from one line of thought to another.

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