Online research in philosophy

This article seeks to reconsider how traditional notions of ethics-ethics that privilege reason, truth, meaning, and a fixed conception of "the human"-are upended by digital technology, cybernetics, and virtual reality. We argue that prevailing ethical systems are incompatible with the way technology refigures the concepts and practices of identity, meaning, truth, and finally, communication. The article examines how both ethics and technology repurpose the liberal humanist subject even as they render such a subject untenable. Such an impasse reformats the question of ethics by introducing questions of radical alterity, making it possible for new ethical systems to emerge.

Debate concerning virtual reality is often drawn in terms of sharply defined dichotomies--for example, between "real" (or "actual") and "virtual," "authentic" and "inauthentic," and "natural" and "artificial." In this paper we offer an alternative approach by suggesting a conception of a virtual world that highlights a continuity and commonality with our sense of everyday reality. We accomplish this in part by an examination of the English picturesque garden as if it were a virtual world partially constructed out of ideas and objects collected during travels to foreign lands on the Grand Tour. Such foreign travel transformed not only the English person's sense of self, but also altered the English landscape. We conclude that in one sense the "real" England is also a "virtual" reality.

The Virtual Embodied is intended to inform and provoke. It juxtaposes cutting-edge theories, polemics, and creative practices to uncover ethical, aesthetic and ecological implications of why, how and in particular where, human actions, observations and insights take place. It refuses simply to hold a euphoric view of technology yet equally resists the apocalyptic scorn which surrounds the new. The contributors use a range of interdisciplinary strategies to point to a re-worked aesthetic for embodying knowledge and explore such areas as colonialism and the internet, the virtual unconscious in electronic systems, theatre as a virtual space, 'information' and the capitalist society, ecstatic bodies and the rave scene, desire and the 'virtual comfort' zone. In The Virtual Embodied many of the authors, artists, performers and designers apply their interdisciplinary passions to questions of embodied knowledge and virtual space.

This is a follow-up article toPhilip Brey's ``The ethics of representation andaction in Virtual Reality'' (published in thisjournal in January 1999). Brey's call for moreanalysis of ethical issues of virtual reality(VR) is continued by further analyzing issuesin a specialized domain of VR – namelymulti-user environments. Several elements ofBrey's article are critiqued in order to givemore context and a framework for discussion.Issues surrounding representations ofcharacters in multi-user virtual realities aresurveyed in order to focus attention on theimportance of additional discussion andanalysis of specialized aspects of VR.

This paper provides a critical analysis of virtual environments made in recent leisure and cultural studies discussions, which claim virtual reality to be the technotopia of post-modern society. Such positions describe virtual realities as worlds of in nite freedom, which transcend human subjectivity and where identity becomes no longer burdened by the prejudices of persons. Arguing that cyberspace offers little more than a token gesture towards such liberation, the paper suggests a shift in focus from the power relations that might change or remain because of virtual environments, to an awareness of their implications for human beings. Such technologies as chat rooms, the Internet and cyber-sex, are used to illustrate the fundamental challenge of virtual leisure to the human condition. This human condition is often presumed to represent ‘reality/actuality’ and, as such, is said to be in contrast to virtual environments. However, this paper extends its critique of virtual reality, by questioning such a distinction and arguing that new cyber-virtual reality is no more or no less than a sophistication of virtualness that has always re ected the human, embodied experience. Consequently, it is argued how cyberspace is more profound for its challenge to identity construction than for its emancipatory function.

We approach the virtual reality phenomenon by studying its relationship to set theory. This approach offers a characterization of virtual reality in set theoretic terms, and we investigate the case where this is done using the wellfoundedness property. Our hypothesis is that non-wellfounded sets (so-called hypersets) give rise to a different quality of virtual reality than do familiar wellfounded sets. To elaborate this hypothesis, we describe virtual reality through Sommerhoff’s categories of first- and second-order self-awareness; introduced as necessary conditions for consciousness in terms of higher cognitive functions. We then propose a representation of first- and second-order self-awareness through sets, and assume that these sets, which we call events, originally form a collection of wellfounded sets. Strong virtual reality characterizes virtual reality environments which have the limited capacity to create only events associated with wellfounded sets. In contrast, the logically weaker and more general concept of weak virtual reality characterizes collections of virtual reality mediated events altogether forming an entirety larger than any collection of wellfounded sets. By giving reference to Aczel’s hyperset theory we indicate that this definition is not empty because hypersets encompass wellfounded sets already. Moreover, we argue that weak virtual reality could be realized in human history through continued progress in computer technology. Finally, within a more general framework, we use Baltag’s structural theory of sets (STS) to show that within this hyperset theory Sommerhoff’s first- and second-order self-awareness as well as both concepts of virtual reality admit a consistent mathematical representation. To illustrate our ideas, several examples and heuristic arguments are discussed.

In Virtual Worlds, Benjamin Woolley examines the reality of virtual reality.

What is an avatar -- More than just another pretty face : the avatar effect -- Interview with the virtual cannibal -- Virtual presence -- X-reality, a conclusion.

This essay addresses ethical aspects of the design and use of virtual reality (VR) systems, focusing on the behavioral options made available in such systems and the manner in which reality is represented or simulated in them. An assessment is made of the morality of immoral behavior in virtual reality, and of the virtual modeling of such behavior. Thereafter, the ethical aspects of misrepresentation and biased representation in VR applications are discussed.