This paper considers the particular ways in which the familiar letter and twenty-first century technologies like the Internet differingly shaped and shape our experience of distance and presence. It follows Heidegger, Dreyfus, and Borgmann in critiquing the kinds of experience and action the Internet makes possible, and—by way of Benjamin’s concept of “aura”—argues that while mediated communication over distance might have never been easier, faster, or cheaper, this increase in our effective power comes at the cost of a diminution of (...) the affective power of the messages carried. (shrink)

Building on Alfred Schütz’s work, this essay conceptually scrutinizes virtual worlds with an aim to clarify what is at stake with the virtualization of the late modern society. The diffusion of technological artifacts, devices of communication and the Internet in particular, have transformed the life-world of essentially everyone. In the past few years our everyday life, including its livelihoods, has seen a proliferation of activities within virtual worlds, such as games and virtual social networks. We can now live and experience (...) actively in different virtual realms, as compared to being mere passive receivers in the era of television and radio. This has direct implications for what is inherently relevant for people and, in consequence, we have to take such transformation into account also in conceptual terms. This article makes a major contribution to the conceptual understanding of phenomenological sociology that due to the virtualization, we can no more equate the paramount reality as the zone of primary relevance. The paramount reality as conceived as the sensorily perceivable, physical world of concrete objects is increasingly far from being equated to that part of the world within our reach which we can immediately observe and also at least partially dominate, that is, the zone of primary relevance. It is furthermore argued that the ongoing virtualization of societies urges us to conceive of virtual worlds as transforming the chief finite province of meaning, that of the world of working, instead of seeing virtual worlds merely as other sub-universes of reality. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary volume consist of papers on various problems in contemporary ethics. It presents the following issues: equalizing the level of positive liberty, the phenomenon of human cooperation, ethical questions related to artificial intelligence, extending ethical obligations toward artifacts, and soteriological threads of alienation criticism of religion.

Although the importance of the concept of immersion in game studies is indisputable, its meaning remains imprecise and ambiguous. My goal here is to develop a phenomenological clarification of this concept. I begin by clarifying how immersion has been understood in game studies. I further contend that immersion in digital games should be recognized as one modality of immersion among others. This basic realization allows one to open a dialogue between game studies and phenomenology. I develop a phenomenological conception of (...) immersion, which relies on Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology of multiple realities and Theodor Conrad’s phenomenology of immersion. Although such an approach provides us with a general conception of immersion, it does not clarify what specific features characterize immersion in digital games. I argue that this form of immersion is a hybrid phenomenon, which shares certain features with immersion in non-digital games and other features with immersion in other types of digital media. I further demonstrate that immersion in digital games is characterized by a specific function of embodiment. With this in mind, I conclude my analysis by introducing a phenomenologically grounded distinction between actual and virtual embodiment, thereby clarifying in which sense immersion in digital games is an embodied and a disembodied experience. (shrink)

This paper applies a very traditional position within Natural Law Theory to Cyberspace. I shall first justify a Natural Law approach to Cyberspace by exploring the difficulties raised by the Internet to traditional principles of jurisprudence and the difficulties this presents for a Positive Law Theory account of legislation of Cyberspace. This will focus on issues relating to geography. I shall then explicate the paradigm of Natural Law accounts, the Treatise on Law, by Thomas Aquinas. From this account will emerge (...) the structure of law and the metaphysics of justice. I shall explore those aspects of Cyberspace which cause geography to be problematic for Positive Law Theory and show how these are essential, unavoidable and beneficial. I will then apply Aquinas’s structure of law and metaphysics of justice to these characteristics. From this will emerge an alternative approach to cyberlaw which has no problem with the nature of Cyberspace as it is but treats it as a positive foundation for new legal developments. (shrink)

The paper attempts to describe a kind of transformation of the way we represent the world in the digital age. Starting from the definition of a precise meaning of “the term "digital", a conceptualisation of digital representation is proposed based on some moments of Immanuel Kant’s thought and concluded with some current reflections.

When we talk about things like the 'lost art of letter-writing' or the 'digital communications revolution,' what do we mean? What do we lose and what do we gain as we move towards digital ways of being in the world? Critically engaging with many of the canonical writers in the philosophy of technology , and following what has been termed the 'empirical turn' in that discipline, this thesis answers such questions by means of a philosophical, comparative study of epistolary technics (...) and praxis in the early nineteenth and 21st centuries, making use of Romantic era archival letters and related materials to compare and contrast our own, Internet-enabled experience of communicating over distance. In so doing, it seeks to contribute towards our understanding of the ways in which information and communication technologies influence humanity by taking a long-view of many of the more radical claims for the ways in which the Internet effects change in culture, society and self. The thesis is structured thematically, with chapters examining the experience of distance and presence in these two periods, the potential for meaningful engagements by way of communicative media, the technological reconfiguration of social networks, and shifts in the public/private distinction. In its conclusions it is broadly sympathetic to the somewhat pessimistic positions of Heidegger and Borgmann, finding evidence and supplying argument to support the notion that the Internet does in some circumstances serve to diminish our meaningful involvements with the world and each other. It is, however, critical of many of the more extreme arguments for the substantive impact of the Internet, which very often lean too heavily towards naive technological determinism, neglect the social shaping of technology, overemphasise the radical novelty of the Internet, or simply deny or downplay many of its undoubted benefits. (shrink)