Hopefully, you are all familiar with 'The Matrix' trilogy. For those of you who are not, 'The Matrix' is a computer-generated, virtual reality world that completely replaces the real world. People remain essentially unconscious and are put to nefarious use by a race of intelligent machines, but remain blissfully unaware, spending their lives in this computer-generated reality. What would one need to do to build a 'Matrix-like' machine? Clearly, we would need to know how to simulate sensation and perception, but would that enough? Could we simulate consciousness with a machine? What are the religious implications of 'The Matrix'? If consciousness is a divine gift, then it would be impossible to simulate consciousness using a machine? Or would it?
Submitted by Matthew Schulkind
on Monday, 9/28/2009, at 9:26 AM