Against metaphysical interpretations of VR

Abstract

In this chapter, the author argues against the standard interpretation of metaphysical interpretations of VR. The metaphysical orientation often frames the range of theoretical positions on VR through the binaries of real versus virtual, or reality versus fiction. This chapter argues that this framing is unhelpful and that the metaphysical approach to VR obscures and confuses the nature of the medium. One alternative analysis is that VR media involve the remediation of ordinary perception and agency through technical devices such as stereoscopic headsets, virtual audio, and haptic gloves. The chapter argues that stereoscopic headsets can be accounted for by employing theories of pictorial seeing familiar from the philosophy of the arts, and that such visual modes of VR media count as a form of egocentric and interactive picturing. Adopting this alternative theoretical approach has the dual effect of expanding our conception of the full range of fictive, non-fictive, documentary, and prosthetic uses to which VR can be put and deflating many of the ontological puzzles that motivate the metaphysical approach. The sceptical conclusion of this chapter is that the metaphysical puzzles concerning the virtual objects, worlds, selves, and values derive not from the nature of VR but are a species of more general philosophical worries merely prompted by specific, and often speculative and unrealistic, uses of VR.