When laying claim on something as drastic as the world surrounding us being a simulation, there is little evidence to suggest that we are, in short, based in a simulacrum, whether through the Baudrillard sense or not. There is no such thing as a perfect being of actuality, only in misunderstanding. A simulacrum is defined of that which lacks source material - but a representation of something that frequents a representation we are all familiar with – in this case: our world. The simulacrum is never what hides truth, but it is the truth that hides the fact there is none at all. There was none to start with. That does not ring true for our own world, for even a lack of technological simulation, we would still exist as facets of reality.
Nick Bostrom proposed an argument where he suggested it is likely our “posthuman” descendents controlling the simulation, but in tandem, a physics lecture by Leonard Susskind asked that if we were living in a simulation, how would we translate our blood outside? Who would actually be running the simulation? Then we would end up with the same question all over again.
To break down different states of evidence against this notion: Hilary Putnam argued about the “brains-in-a-vat” perspective, stating that our worlds and theories refer to independently cognized entities through linguistic and social links, rather than controlled. A famous claim of his revolved around that if we were brains in a vat, it would be seen as self-defeating, because the referents would not correspond to our world. If our scientific theories did not refer to something real, then science would simply cease.
Putnam says that if the vats held us tight, the language we use would not function in the usual way, so the hypothesis would be undermining itself. It provides philosophical constraint on radical skepticism, as well as any simulacra claims.
David Chalmers engaged with the hypothetical concept that we might live within a simulation (a computer universe, is what he entailed), but he did not treat that as the meaning of nothing should be regarded as real. He argued that even if we are found to be in a “simulation,” that “simulated” world would still be genuine reality, thus being a world nonetheless, considering that what we define as reality would be what we know and believe. He distinguished different senses of “real”: whether something properly exists, it is independent of one’s mind. As, in his argument, digital objects, such as settings in VR landscapes, could count as real in many aspects.
Chalmer emphasized that the fact we are capable of speaking about this “simulation” does not mean we actually are within one. Perhaps it cannot be ruled out, but nihilistic beliefs that a simulation is our nonreality would be inaccurate.
The world, in this case, could be a “simulation,” but it would not meet the same definition that is often paired with these arguments: that nothing is real. Our world is more plausibly real, in any sense, than any assortment of empty simulacrum.
The argument I offered earlier draws on the Baudrillard definition of “pure simulacrum.” Through putting this definition in retrospect, we can reject that this can be applied to our world, given we pertain to referents, structure, and empirical manipulability, all of which would prove as difficult when put beside Baudrillard’s “fourth order” in his successive orders of simulacra.
Therefore, we are able to use Baudrillard’s own criteria to diagnose the simulation claim as untrue, using his own interpretation of such.
Hence, while one might entertain the “simulation” hypothetical scenarios, to believe that “the world is a simulation” lacks plausible support, other than key points that exist as contradictions themselves.
