Here are some questions for you.

Are you studying Philosophy in the IB? If not, then I suggest that you think very carefully before taking
on a Philosophy Extended Essay. You would need to show that you understand how to do
philosophy, and that you have a familiarity with standard arguments, in your essay. This is, of course,
not impossible to do if you do not study the subject, but it is harder.

If your answer to the first question is 'no', do you have a potential supervisor in your school who has a
good knowledge of philosophy? If not, I suggest you forget it. It is hard enough for you to get up to
speed on philosophy, but it would be doubly difficult if your supervisor also did not have a good
philosophy background. Read the examiner's reports on Philosophy Extended Essays — they
continually talk about poor essays done in situations like this.

If you have a philosophy background, or a good supervisor and a lot of determination, then answer
this: what areas of philosophy interest you? Which of the standard problems that you have seen really
grab you? This is where to start. Look carefully at one of these problems and pick a small part of the
argument study in more detail. Read one or more of the famous treatments, and find a part that
puzzles you. Narrow down on this. You must do your essay on something that is going to keep you
going, not on something that someone else is interested in.

I don't want to sound too discouraging, but the Extended Essay is a big task, and it has some fairly
stringent requirements as to what counts as a good essay, so you need to pick your subject area and
topic with care. If you want to discuss this further, please email me.

Tim Sprod

Ben asked:

Would you consider all reality to be virtual reality? How can you back up your argument?

============

You might take a look at Putnam's article: Putnam, H. (1973). 'Meaning and reference' The Journal of
Philosophy70 (19), 699-711. It's not quite about what you're asking, but close... and Putnam has
another more relevant article called 'Other Minds' in Mind, language, and realityCambridge [Eng.] ;
New York : Cambridge University Press [1975]. That latter has the old "brain in a vat" idea. That is, if
we are actually brains in vats, with data fed to us simulating reality, could we tell the difference? As
you can see, the movie "Matrix" was about 25 years out of date. Putnam answers in the affirmative. I
and many others disagree... we find his argument to be based on a linguistic trick, basically. But you
may like it.

Now, when you say "all reality", just what does that mean? Somereality is certainly virtual, in the
sense that we imagine things, hallucinate them, even. What you're actually asking, I believe, is the
question above, viz., are we brains in vats, and if not, how could we tell? But, you know, backing up
this argument in a sense depends on your metaphysical position. If you believe that we have
something like "souls" (and I do not understand what that word really means) and some sort of
intrinsic connection to "reality" (and I'm perhaps a teeny bit more clear on that latter, but not very),
then you believe, probably, that we can intuit (know) that we are or are not brains in vats, and your
argument then depends on your conception of what a soul is. Good luck avoiding circularity on that
one. If you're a materialist, then you're really stuck... in the vat, since any signals can be externally
duplicated, to put it simply. Or so I think. Putnam, as I say, disagrees.

Steven Ravett Brown

No. For there to be a virtual reality, it has to be in contrast with [real] reality. Otherwise, it is just
reality.

Tim Sprod