The Matrix as Metaphysics: An Anti-Skeptical Argument

David Chalmers

University of Arizona

A canonical version of the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis holds that one's cognitive system is receiving its inputs from and sending its outputs to an artificially designed computer simulation of a world.  This hypothesis (embodied in the movie The Matrix) is usually taken to be a skeptical hypothesis: one whose truth would falsify most of our empirical beliefs.  I argue that in fact it is a non-skeptical hypothesis that is equivalent to a hypothesis about the underlying metaphysical nature of objects in the external world.  The lesson generalizes to many other purported skeptical hypotheses.  The result is to significantly mitigate the force of external-world skepticism.